Apple should launch its widely expected mini-LED MacBook Pro models sporting 14 and 16-inch displays and other perks sometime between September and November of 2021.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS:
- Mark Gurman says new mini-LED MacBook Pros are due this fall
- The revamped notebooks could launch from September to November
- The claim echoes analyst Ming-Chi Kuo’s earlier prediction
mini-LED MacBook Pros to launch from September to November?
This tidbit was shared by reliable Apple reporter Mark Gurman in the latest edition of his Power On newsletter on Bloomberg. For context, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo recently said earlier in the year that redesigned 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros featuring mini-LED backlighting would enter production sometime in the third quarter of this year.
Gurman’s timeframe is just as inaccurate, predicting a lunch sometime between September and November of this year. It should be pointed out that Gurman’s newsletter does add more color to the rumor, saying these new MacBooks “were supposed to launch earlier, but complications around the new mini-LED display have held up production.”
He’s right about the constrained supply of mini-LEDs because the same problems limited early availability of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro at launch, and continue to affect its production.
Those machines will also bring much longer battery life by ditching the Intel chips for Apple silicon, whether it be the M1, an enhanced M1X or the next-generation version, tentatively named M2. The jury is still out as to whether the upcoming notebooks could be configurable with up to 64GB of unified memory or remain limited to 32 GB of RAM.
Mark’s newsletter also reiterates earlier supply-chain rumors calling for an Apple Watch-like always-on display on the next iPhone, tentatively named iPhone 13.
What would mini-LED bring to MacBook Pro?
Mini-LED technology debuted on the 12.9-inch version of the new M1 iPad Pro.
On the iPad Pro, Apple has swapped a few large LED lights providing backlighting for the tablet’s LCD display for an array of 10,00 tiny LEDs spread across a 12.9-inch canvas.
This lets the device provide OLED-like performance with such benefits as a higher contrast ratio, much higher brightness and lower power consumption. Moreover, the new technology enables local dimming zones (with certain caveats, like the blooming effect).
mini-LED does not, however, come near to replicating true, deep blacks found on OLEDs.