Apple to Announce M2 iPad Pro Next Week, New MacBook Pro Coming Later: Gurman

In this week’s “special early edition” of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman reported that the launch of Apple’s next iPad Pro is almost upon us.

“Apple’s next product launch is just days away,” Gurman wrote. According to the renowned tipster, Apple could launch new 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models powered by its next-generation M2 chips, codenamed J617 and J620, “in a matter of days.”

Gurman originally expected Apple to hold another launch event this month to debut new iPad and Mac models, but has since said that an event is unlikely. Apple will still unveil new devices, albeit without much fanfare.

The two new iPad Pro models will bear the same flat-edge design language as their predecessors, which are now a year and a half old. They will, however, bring a 20% bump in performance thanks to the new M2 chip.

Gurman added that Apple will start rolling out the previously-delayed iPadOS 16.1 around the week of October 24.

Apple is also working on a new entry-level iPad with an A14 Bionic chip, 5G connectivity, and a USB-C port, but there’s no ETA on that just yet.

According to Gurman, Apple wants to position its iPad line as a smart display and home-control hub in the long term, much like what Google is doing with the Pixel Tablet it showed off last week. Google could have a field day with that, given how much the company likes to point out that it pioneered features like crash detection, which Apple later added to its devices.

In addition to an upgraded iPad Pro, Gurman expects Apple to launch new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models this year. These new MacBooks will be the first to get M2 Pro and M2 Max chips — more powerful versions of Apple’s base M2 processor — but will come farther down the line than the iPad Pro.

While the new MacBook Pros are on track to launch in the near future, I wouldn’t expect them to be released alongside the iPad Pro. The company has historically launched new Macs in November, as was the case in 2019 with the initial 16-inch MacBook Pro and in 2020 with the first Apple Silicon-based MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and Mac mini.

A new M2-based Mac mini is also in the works, Gurman reiterated.

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