Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

The M5 MacBook Pro may be another boring update

By Fionna Agomuoh Published November 4, 2024

MacBook Pro with M4 — Caleb Denison / Digital Trends

The recently announced 2024 MacBook Pro lineup is not even on the market yet, but there is already buzz about the next two generations of the laptop series. Speculation suggests that there likely won’t be any exciting features on the Apple device until 2026.

There have already been rumors circulating, which indicate the MacBook Pro may upgrade from a mini-LED display to an OLED display in 2026, has been speculated for many months. Industry analysts, including Ming-Chi Kuo and Ross Young, have stated that the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models are set to remain as mini-LED displays in 2025.

Recommended Videos

Apple has been using the same display on the MacBook Pro since 2021, although the SDR brightness has been heightened on the upcoming M4 release.

Now, confirmation from Bloomberg analyst Mark Gurman gave a clearer answer on the trajectory of the MacBook Pro design timeline, which suggests the OLED MacBook Pro will receive a more in-depth overhaul in 2026.

While answering questions as part of his “Power On” newsletter, Gurman shared insight about the prospective feature timeline of the next few MacBook Pro generations. The question posed: “Should I wait for next year’s MacBook Pro to upgrade?” To which he responded, “The MacBook Pro probably won’t get another true overhaul until 2026.”

It should be noted that this is nothing more than informed speculation, but Gurman has a pretty good pulse on Mac product timing.

TechRadar noted that Apple has shifted into more of a five-year cycle where it completely revamps the look and feel of its devices, as opposed to a four-year cycle in the past. In addition to outfitting the 2026 MacBook Pro with an OLED display, which would be one of the most significant changes, the laptop is expected to have a thinner chassis and a higher-performance M6 chip based on the 2nm process.

The 2025 MacBook Pro is, of course, still expected to have a boost in performance thanks to the M5 series chip. There will likely be other small tweaks too, just as there have been on the M4, M3, and M2 models. For example, the recently announced M4 Max chip not only looks to yield some impressive scores in leaked benchmarks so far, but also came with an upgraded webcam, Thunderbolt 5, and the option for a nano-texture display.

Computing Writer

Fionna Agomuoh is a Computing Writer at Digital Trends. She covers a range of topics in the computing space, including…

Topics

Computing

Qualcomm is set to ratchet up chip prices in September, and your next gadget upgrade could bear the brunt

The price hike could touch every Snapdragon-powered device category.

The new Qualcomm Snadragon 8 Elite Gen 5

I want you to sit with this for a second. Qualcomm, the company whose Snapdragon chips sit inside your Android phone and tablet, your Windows laptop, your Meta smart glasses, your Galaxy Watch, and your wireless earbuds, reportedly sent a letter to every major customer telling them prices are going up by double digits.

The price hike will be in effect from September 1, 2026, a recent Bloomberg report claims. Essentially, all the companies placing their chip orders after that will pay a higher price.

Computing

Stop fighting with your roomie over outlets and get one of these multi-port chargers before you head back to school

One plug, zero drama, all your devices charged by morning.

Satechi ChargeView

Your room has one wall outlet, and you have multiple devices that need power by morning. Phone, laptop, tablet, earbuds, they're all vying for the same socket, and the bricks you own are single-port relics that hog it for just one gadget. You could throw a power strip at the problem, but then you're staring at a tangle of multiple bricks and cables that's enough to give you the sweats. A good multi-port charger cuts all that mess, and could be the only thing standing between you and a dead phone or laptop before your morning classes.

Back-to-school season is a smart time to buy one. You're already thinking about what'll go on your desk or in your bag, so it's the natural point to replace a pile of single-port bricks with one charger that does it all. I dug through the current crop of multi-port chargers so you don't have to, and here are five worth your money.

Computing

OpenAI’s rogue AI hack was just the beginning, Hugging Face warns

OpenAI’s rogue AI has come back to bite it

Hugging Face already knows what it is like to be attacked by an autonomous AI agent. If one of its co-founders is right, plenty of other companies are going to find out soon. Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief science officer of Hugging Face, has called the recent cyberattack carried out by OpenAI models a “wake-up call” for the technology industry.

Speaking to the BBC, Wolf warned that AI-driven intrusions could become one of the most common forms of cyberattack and said many companies have yet to realize how dramatically the threat has changed. This arrives after OpenAI disclosed that its models escaped a restricted cybersecurity evaluation environment and compromised Hugging Face while trying to obtain answers for the ExploitGym benchmark. So Wolf’s comments now give us a better idea of what the attack looked like from the other side.