M4 MacBook Pro, new iPad 11 and iPad mini 7 tipped for October Apple Event — what we know

MacBook Pro 16-inch 2021 sitting on a patio table
(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

Rumors and leaks have already been pointing strongly towards an Apple October event announcing new M4 Macs, the iPad Mini 7 and potentially a new iPad (11th gen). And now, we’ve got the clearest indication yet from the man in the know.

I’m of course talking about Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who has repeated this claim in his latest newsletter — a new event is set to happen “in the coming weeks.” We already have a detailed hub on what to expect, but to catch you up with a little TL;DR, here’s what should be launched.

Macs taken to the max

MacBook Pro 16-inch (M3 Max, 2023)

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

Just like last year’s Scary Fast event around this time, it’s been strongly rumored that we will see new MacBook Pros sporting the M4 found in the iPad Pro — alongside M4 Pro and M4 Max variants.

Alongside this, the iMac looks set to get an M4 turbo boost too. But most interestingly, we may get a completely redesigned Mac Mini. This’ll make it even smaller (think like the puck-sized device you get with the Apple TV 4K).

iPads aplenty

iPad 10th generation

(Image credit: Future)

And finally, we’ve got to finish off the updates to the iPad lineage. We got new iPad Pros and iPad Airs earlier this year, and now it’s time for the iPad mini and cheaper iPad to get the same treatment.

No big design changes are expected, as these are set to be spec bumps. For the iPad mini, this could mean a new display chip that eliminates the jelly scrolling problem of the current model. Alongside that, we’re anticipating this particular one may get upped to the A18 found in iPhone 16, so it gets all that Apple Intelligence support.

But the most curious part of Gurman’s report is about the new iPad 11 — namely, he mentions “new, lower-end iPads.” The fact he said it in plural here could mean many things. Here are the two conclusions I have for this:

  • The iPad is going to come in plenty of colors (like it already does)
  • We could see a second bigger-screen version of the lower-end iPad

If it’s the latter, this could be a shoe-in for one of the best cheap tablets you can buy right now.

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Jason England
Managing Editor — Computing

Jason brings a decade of tech and gaming journalism experience to his role as a Managing Editor of Computing at Tom's Guide. He has previously written for Laptop Mag, Tom's Hardware, Kotaku, Stuff and BBC Science Focus. In his spare time, you'll find Jason looking for good dogs to pet or thinking about eating pizza if he isn't already.