Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and Apple launching new silicon at the end of the year. And according to Mark Gurman, M5 is on track to hit the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro in the fall.
In his Bloomberg newsletter, Gurman has confirmed that the new iPad Pros have progressed to an “advanced testing” stage, which is product-making jargon for “basically ready to go.”
That much is obvious, as he expects the Pro to go into mass production in the second half of this year. Tie that with reports that M5 chips have already entered mass production, and these assertions are looking more and more likely.
According to Gurman, these refreshes are “a lock,” and you’ll probably see it “around the same time of year that it received the M4 processor in 2024 and the M3 in 2023.” Translation: October.
What can we expect from M5?
Not much is known about the M5 chip, or the next-gen iPad Pro for that matter (except for the internal codenames: J817, J818, J820 and J821). But if we take a closer look at what Apple focuses on and the competition around it, we can make some educated guesses.
Obviously, it’s going to be faster. So I won’t make that one of my predictions.
- Don’t expect 2nm: In order to see any big boosts in performance and power efficiency, chip makers are cramming more smaller transistors into their processors. Apple has been on 3nm for M3 and M4, and given the reported delay of its 2nm work to 2026, it looks as if we’ll remain here again. That’s not all bad news, though.
- Another leap forward in graphics: If the AMD Ryzen AI Max chipset in the Asus ROG Flow Z13 has proved anything, it’s that internal graphics are making significant gains this year. Apple’s GPU gains have been huge over the past couple of years, and I’m predicting another leap forward here — particularly in the memory bandwidth to give the M5 a whole lot of video memory to run intensive games.
- Neural Engine gains: Apple Intelligence hasn’t had the best of launches, but it shows that Cupertino is well and truly in on the on-device AI battle. Currently, the M4 chip’s Neural engine is capable of 38 trillion AI operations per second (TOPS), but with competition packing NPUs capable of up to 50, expect that number to go up with M5.
Don’t expect an overhaul
We’re getting lots of reports of more significant updates coming to the iPads and MacBooks, but Gurman is putting them on ice for this year at least. For 2025, you’re getting a spec bump in the same shells.
The MacBook Pro overhaul with a rumored OLED display, alongside a thinner and lighter design, is reportedly coming in 2026. Meanwhile, the use of Apple’s in-house cellular modem — named C1 (found in iPhone 16e) — is expected to come to the iPad Pro in 2027, as the Cupertino crew has begun “early” work.
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