According to the latest rumours, Apple’s rumoured MacBook Pros with the M2 Pro and Max chips have been delayed again.

According to a DigiTimes report that was highlighted by Tom’s Hardware, the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models have been “delayed once again” (if you recall, these refreshes were originally expected to debut at the end of 2022). Recent rumours said that the laptops might come out in the first quarter of this year, but DigiTimes says that they won’t come out until early 2023.

As always when we hear something through the grapevine, we can’t just take it at face value. We aren’t told when the MacBook Pros will come out, but we can get more information from another source.

Mark Gurman just said in his newsletter that the new MacBook Pros will come out in the first half of 2023. Previously, a well-known leaker said that they might come out in the first quarter of 2023. So, it looks like the launch has been pushed back to the second quarter of 2023.
DigiTimes also says that the number of MacBooks shipped will drop by a lot this quarter and could be 40% to 50% lower than in the last quarter of 2022. Even though a drop is to be expected from Q4 to Q1 (a busy sales period to a slow one), the size of this drop, if it’s true, is surprising.

Analysis: A WWDC Launch, Perhaps?

If the new MacBook Pro models are (again) pushed back to Q2, they might come out in June, when WWDC 2023 takes place. Even though hardware isn’t usually part of WWDC, we have seen devices show up at the event, including the M2 MacBook Air last year.

More rumours about the upcoming MacBook Pros, again from Gurman, say that the laptops will keep the same design and features as the current models, with the M2 Pro and Max chips being the only real upgrade. The leaker recently said that we should only expect a “marginal” performance boost, so overall, we shouldn’t get too excited about what these new notebooks will do.

Which makes you wonder why the MacBook Pros are being delayed if there aren’t any big changes. What could be the problem? We can only guess that it has something to do with the new turbocharged M2 SoCs or maybe with the fact that the number of shipments is going down.

Tom’s Hardware says that the drop in shipments of up to 50% is due to weaker demand for MacBooks in Q4, which is why there are more of them in stock now. So, maybe they are trying to sell off the stock they already have and don’t want to show that new MacBook Pros are coming out because that might make people wait to buy the new models?