Apple’s Reality Pro headset and the iPhone 15 lineup should be impressive, but the new iPad, Apple Watch and Mac models arriving in 2023 not so much.
- What’s happening? Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman expects an unexciting 2023 in terms of Apple products, with modest updates to the iPad, Apple Watch and Mac.
- Why care? “2023 is set to be the year of Apple’s mixed-reality headset and not much else” because the rumored headset has consumed Apple’s energies.
- What to do? Hold off upgrading your iPads, Macs and Apple Watches until 2024, when more substantial upgrades to those gadgets should arrive.
Apple’s 2023 product roadmap will be rather unexciting
Gurman published information about Apple’s 2023 product roadmap in the latest edition of his Power On newsletter on Bloomberg, saying Apple will have a somewhat muted 2023 when it comes to the iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV and HomePod.
iPad
The 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro will get a new design and OLED screens in 2024. Larger iPads are in the works but won’t launch in 2023. “Any updates to the iPad mini, iPad Air and entry-level iPad this year won’t be anything more than a spec bump—if they arrive at all,” Gurman writes.
Mac
Updates to the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro include the new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, but the design won’t be updated. The company’s first Apple silicon-powered Mac Pro is coming, but it might not support user-upgradeable RAM.
The new workstation should look the same as the current Intel-based model, but a high-end model with 48 CPU cores and 152 graphics cores has been canceled.
A 15-inch MacBook Air is in the works, but plans for a 12-inch model have been shelved. A larger iMac Pro with Apple silicon is still on the table but will ship in 2024. An M3 version of the 24-inch iMac should happen in late 2023 or 2024.
Apple Watch
This year, there’s no major change to the Apple Watch lineup except for a new chip.
AirPods
No notable updates to AirPods in 2023.
Apple TV
No Apple TV refresh is expected this year.
HomePod
A new version of the discontinued full-size Siri speaker should drop this year with an updated touch panel on the top and the S8 chip from the latest Apple Watches. The speaker should resemble the discontinued model, but expect a lower price.
Fewer new features in iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and macOS 14
The Apple headset has pulled manpower from software teams, too. As a result, the next major updates to Apple’s operating systems may come with only some of the features planned initially. This includes iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, codenamed Dawn. The same goes for macOS 14, which is codenamed Sunburst.
As the reason for those unexciting iPad, Mac and Apple Watch spec bumps, Gurman mentions that the company has been preoccupied with its Reality Pro headset that should be unveiled this spring ahead of the WWDC23 in June.
What about the iPhone 15?
The Reality Pro won’t be Apple’s only hot product introduction this year—an upcoming iPhone 15 family could bring substantial hardware improvements as well.
For starters, the iPhone 15 family could bring the Dynamic Island feature to all models. As for the Pro-branded models, expect titanium supplanting the stainless steel and the arrival of non-moving buttons with haptic feedback.
The iPhone 15 Pros are expected to bring improvements to the camera system, like a periscope lens for deeper optical zoom. All models of the iPhone 15 should adopt USB-C for data and charging, supplanting the proprietary Lightning I/O.