New mini-LED 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros again rumored for 2021 launch

Macbook Air M1
Macbook Air M1 (Image credit: Daniel Bader / Android Central)

What you need to know

  • Apple has again been rumored to have new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro notebooks coming this year.
  • The current 16-inch MacBook Pro hasn't been refreshed since 2019.
  • A new 14-inch MacBook Pro is likely to replace the current 13-inch model.

Apple has big plans for the MacBook Pro lineup, according to reports. We should expect new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro notebooks to be announced before the end of the year according to previous rumors and now Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has again backed that claim up.

According to Gurman's latest Power On newsletter, Apple is finally ready to overcome the manufacturing challenges that have caused the notebooks to be delayed. That means the new mini-LED MacBook Pros should be in stores before the end of the year.

As Gurman notes in his newsletter, The current high-end MacBook Pro hasn't been refreshed in two years, making it overdue for some love. The switch to mini-LED will be part of the new look, something that should allow the 13-inch MacBook Pro to grow to 14 inches, too.

I realized while writing this that the 16-inch MacBook Pro launched in November 2019 is Apple's newest high-end MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, some hiccups have led to production delays for the revamped 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros with M1X chips. But they should still go on sale by the time the current MacBook Pro hits its two-year anniversary.

The new 16-inch MacBook Pro will reportedly also come with a big Apple silicon upgrade over existing M1 chips, possibly supporting as much as 64GB of RAM. That will likely mean the 16-inch model will be the best Mac you can buy for most tasks.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.