Andrew Cunningham
While Apple’s newest iPhones and Apple Watches won’t be available until later this week, rumors are already suggesting that Apple is planning new product announcements in October to refresh some of its products that weren’t mentioned at the iPhone event. Apple had a similar release calendar last year, announcing and releasing new iPhones in September, then launching the first of its M3 Macs around Halloween.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman believes the event will be primarily focused on the first wave of Macs with M4 processors, following the introduction of the standard M4 in the iPad Pro earlier this year. As he previously reported, he expects to see new MacBook Pro models with the M4 and “pro-level M4 chip options,” likely the M4 Pro and M4 Max. He also expects to see an M4 version of the 24-inch iMac.
But the most interesting of the new Macs is the redesigned Mac mini, which hasn’t received any M3 updates and has used the same basic exterior design since 2010. This Mac mini is said to be closer in size to an Apple TV than the current mini, but will use an internal power supply, saving owners from having to deal with a power adapter. At least some of the ports on the current device will be replaced with USB-C and/or Thunderbolt ports, which MacRumors seemed to confirm earlier today when they spotted a reference to an “Apple Silicon Mac mini (5 ports)” in an Apple software update (some of these ports will reportedly be on the front of the device, a nice upgrade over the Mac Studio design we’d like to see on the new Mac mini).
The “5-port” description suggests there’s another model with either more or fewer ports. Apple used a similar term to distinguish between two- and four-port versions of some Intel-era MacBook Pro models. Current M2 Mac mini models have fewer ports than models with the M2 Pro chip, but that’s because the more powerful processor has more I/O capabilities. Assuming there’s an M4-powered Mac mini and one upgrade model with an M4 Pro, we’d expect the Pro version to have more ports.
Gurman said other Mac models, including the Mac Studio, Mac Pro, and MacBook Air, will also be getting the M4-series update throughout 2025. Of these, the Mac Studio and Mac Pro have gone the longest without an update, and both still use M2-series chips.
Apple is also said to be planning several new lower-cost iPads for its October event. This wouldn’t be the first time the Mac and iPad have collaborated on a late-fall product launch: the $349 iPad 10 and iPad mini have both not had a hardware update in over a year, and both are likely to feature new chips, even if they don’t get any major design refreshes.
