While the main iPhone line has its launch date fixed to early September, the Mac portfolio, especially the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops, has been adrift in the calendar for many years. Thankfully, Apple is settling into a steady rhythm of new releases across its hardware portfolio, bringing some stability to the Mac announcements.
For many, that means regular updates to the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops.
Finding An Annual MacBook Pro Schedule
Apple has indicated that it now prefers annual updates on software and hardware. The recent move to unify the various operating systems to a single number pointing to the year where it will be dominant only works with annual refreshes on the cardinal number and the associated software.
The key hardware upgrade is the Apple Silicon chipset. Over the last five years, Apple has rolled out five major versions of the M-Series chipsets. Through these, Tim Cook and his team have worked to bring the chaotic laptop releases under some control. It now looks like the patterns set in 2024 will continue in 2025 and 2026, which lets us start putting some dates into the calendar.
And it’s the Apple Silicon M-Series that highlights Apple’s consistent upgrade path.
MacBook Pro’s iPad Pro Barrier
The current MacBook Pro was launched in late October 2024, five months after the Apple Silicon M4 chipset debuted with the iPad Pro M4. That happened one month before Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference. That iPad captured the love and ‘new car smell’ of the Apple Silicon M4 away from the Mac family.
That’s not the case this year; not only has a new iPad Pro been announced, but WWDC has also been and gone with no announcement of the Apple Silicon M5. With roughly eighteen months between each of the last three models, this doesn’t come as a huge surprise, given we’re looking at cadences.
That should clear the way for the M5 to arrive inside new Mac products..
When Will The New MacBook Pro M5 Arrive
Apple first launched the MacBook Pro with the M1 Max and M1 Pro chips on Oct. 18, 2021. The M2 Pro and M2 Max models arrived later in the cycle, on Jan. 17, 2023. Normal service resumed on Oct. 30 2023 with the M3 Pro and M3 Max models, with Oct 30. 2024 seeing the M4 Pro and M4 Max models (alongside the vanilla M4 model).
There are enough signs from the supply chain that Apple’s pre-release activities are following the same schedule as last year, for example, the Apple Silicon M5 chipsets are now in production. The schedule has been confirmed throughout the year.
Oct. 30th is a Thursday this year. Apple tends to go earlier in the week for a launch, so it’s likely Tuesday, Oct. 28th or Wednesday, Oct. 29th. Either way, Halloween week is the safest bet so far. And perhaps for more than the MacBook Pro.
The MacBook Pro M5 Competition
As for the eighteen-month window on the iPad Pro, that points to a similar late October launch. Apple will be considering a launch of the iPad Pro M5 alongside the MacBook Pro M5. Both the laptop and the tablet are geared towards different markets with different scenarios, and launching them together to complement each other would allow for the similarities of macOS and iPadOS to be demonstrated, as well as illustrating the different approaches Apple’s mobile computing teams have taken.
It’s worth noting that the current M4-powered MacBook Air was launched in early March 2025, some ten months after the reveal of the M4 chipset in the iPad Pro, putting the consumer-focused laptop close to a year behind the current technology, while still giving the appearance of sitting on the cutting edge.
Will The MacBook Pro M5 Be Enough
All of this stands in the shadow of one key detail around the MacBook Pro M5… that it will be little more than an internal upgrade to allow for the Apple Silicon bump. The external design changes—including the long-awaited arrival of an OLED display—may be waiting for the M6-powered model in 2026.
Now read the latest MacBook Pro, iPhone and WWDC headlines in Forbes’ weekly Apple news digest…
