Apple's 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro refreshes could come this year after all, report hints

The conventional wisdom has been for some time that Apple's best MacBook Pros wouldn't be updated until next year, but that's now been thrown into doubt. That's after a new report by supply chain watchers at DigiTimes claimed that a release in the final quarter of 2023 is still in the cards.

The new report, which is paywalled but picked up by MacRumors, claims that the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros will arrive in the fourth quarter of 2023 which is counter to reports prior to this. The new machines are expected to sport M3 Pro and M3 Max chips, but we don't yet have any M3-based Macs available. Apple is already expected to launch M3-powered 24-inch iMac and Mac mini updates next month, while an updated 13-inch MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro are also possibilities. The true makeup of that announcement isn't yet clear and is a bone of contention among analysts and well-connected pundits, however. That being said, the one thing that everyone seemed to agree on was that the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros wouldn't be updated until next year.

2

This new DigiTimes report goes against all of that, saying that the new machines will have improved miniLED backlighting technology that will allow them to run at brighter levels. However, it's thought that the displays won't be made to appear brighter but that Apple will instead use the new headroom to allow the panels to display the same brightness as older models while using less power.

It's thought that the new miniLED backlighting configuration can produce a display brightness improvement of around 10% when compared to the displays that are currently being used.

Apple continues to work on moving the MacBook Pro lineup to OLED display technology, but that isn't expected to be ready until 2026 at the earliest.

As for how much credence we can place in this latest DigiTimes report, it's important to remember that the outlet gets its information from the supply chain which can mean that timescales aren't always accurate. It's likely that there is indeed a new display with improved brightness, but whether that will ship in a new MacBook Pro as soon as next month is less clear. DigiTimes does have a varied track record when it comes to these things so, as is often the case, we'd suggest taking this latest report with a pinch of salt unless we start to see corroborating reports from other sources of information.