New iPad Pro and MacBook Pro Rumors: What Apple Is Planning Next

Apple’s hardware pipeline is looking unusually busy right now. Between a new iPad Pro reportedly in testing, a freshly redesigned MacBook Pro in the works, a foldable iPhone Ultra priced for the ultra-premium tier, and a free 4K upgrade rolling out quietly in the background — there’s a lot happening at Apple Park that the company hasn’t officially acknowledged yet. Here’s what the latest round of reports actually tells us, and what it means for where Apple’s hardware is heading.

• Apple is testing new iPad Pro models alongside a redesigned MacBook Pro, according to the latest supply chain reports.
• The new iPad Pro lineup is expected to arrive alongside significant hardware updates across Apple’s premium product range.
• Apple has reportedly ordered 10 million foldable iPhone Ultra units, with a rumored price tag of around $2,500.
• Apple’s transition away from Broadcom radio chips could still be five years out, despite years of internal development efforts.

New iPad Pro and MacBook Pro: Apple’s Premium Hardware Gets a Refresh

According to sources familiar with Apple’s development pipeline, the company is currently testing new iPad Pro models alongside a redesigned MacBook Pro. The details on exactly what’s changing remain thin, but that’s not unusual at this stage — Apple typically keeps its internal testing tightly compartmentalized, and leaks at the prototype phase tend to surface in fragments rather than full specifications.

What’s notable is that both products are reportedly in active development simultaneously. That suggests Apple may be planning a coordinated refresh across its professional lineup rather than staggering updates. It wouldn’t be the first time — Apple launched updated new iPad Pro and MacBook Pro models in close proximity during its M-chip transition years, and the strategy worked well for driving upgrade cycles among creative professionals who use both devices.

The MacBook Pro in particular is due for some kind of evolution. The current M4 Pro and M4 Max models, released in late 2024, were well-received — but Apple typically refreshes its pro laptops on an annual cadence now that its silicon team is operating at full velocity. The question isn’t really whether a new MacBook Pro is coming, it’s what the M5 generation brings to justify the upgrade.

For the new iPad Pro, the calculus is a bit different. Apple’s last major iPad Pro redesign came with the ultra-thin OLED models — among the thinnest products Apple had made. Another industrial redesign so soon would be surprising. More likely, the new iPad Pro models in testing are chip-driven updates rather than form factor overhauls, bringing M5 silicon and potentially some display improvements to Apple’s flagship tablet. That still matters enormously to the professional illustration, video, and music production communities that have made the new iPad Pro a serious creative tool.

Apple Quietly Rolls Out Free 4K TV Show Upgrades

Buried beneath the hardware chatter is a genuinely customer-friendly move from Apple: the company has begun offering free 4K upgrades for previously purchased TV shows in the Apple TV app and iTunes Store. If you bought a season of a show in HD years ago, you can now access the 4K HDR version at no additional cost — provided the content is available in 4K from the studio.

This isn’t entirely new territory for Apple. The company previously started upgrading purchased movies to 4K for free when the Apple TV 4K first launched, but TV show purchases were conspicuously left out of that initial rollout. It’s taken nearly a decade to extend the same courtesy to TV content, which will frustrate anyone who built a large digital library through iTunes in the early streaming era.

Still, better late than never. For Apple TV 4K owners, this is a meaningful quality-of-life improvement. And from a strategic standpoint, it’s a smart way to remind customers of the value locked inside their Apple ecosystem — particularly as competitors like Vudu and Amazon Prime Video have offered similar upgrade pathways on their own platforms.

The Foldable iPhone Ultra: A $2,500 Bet on the Premium Market

If there’s one story from this cycle that deserves serious scrutiny, it’s the foldable iPhone. Reports now suggest Apple has placed an order for around 10 million foldable iPhone Ultra units, with a rumored price point of approximately $2,500. That number — both the order volume and the price — tells you a great deal about how Apple is thinking about this product.

Ten million units is a conservative initial run by Apple’s standards. The company typically ships tens of millions of standard iPhone models in a single quarter. A 10-million-unit order signals that Apple sees the foldable as a premium niche play, not a mass-market device. At $2,500, that’s a rational position. Even Samsung, which has been shipping foldable phones since 2019 with its Galaxy Z Fold line, hasn’t managed to turn the form factor into a mainstream category. Apple would be entering well above Samsung’s current foldable price points.

The ‘Ultra’ branding is telling, too. Apple’s Ultra tier — established with the Apple Watch Ultra and extended to the iPhone 16 lineup — signals extreme performance and extreme price. Positioning the foldable under that umbrella suggests Apple isn’t trying to compete with Samsung on price. It’s targeting a buyer who wants the absolute best Apple makes, regardless of cost, and for whom the novel form factor is an added reason to upgrade rather than the primary pitch.

Whether that strategy works is a genuine open question. At $2,500, the addressable market is small. Apple’s brand loyalty is strong enough that it’ll sell out an initial run easily — but growing that category into something meaningful will require either a price drop or a compelling software experience that makes the larger foldable screen genuinely essential for productivity or creativity. That’s a harder bar to clear than simply shipping a beautiful piece of hardware. By contrast, the new iPad Pro already owns that productivity and creativity space in tablet form, which is part of why its upgrade cycle remains so predictable.

Apple’s Radio Chip Switch Is Still Years Away — What the Broadcom Deal Really Means

Apple has been on a long journey to bring more of its chip development in-house, and for most component categories — processors, GPUs, neural engines, even Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips — that strategy has paid off handsomely. But radio chips, specifically the cellular modem and associated wireless connectivity hardware, have proved far more difficult to replace.

The latest reporting suggests the transition away from Broadcom-supplied radio components could take another five years. That’s a significant timeline, and it speaks to just how complex cellular radio technology really is. Apple’s first in-house cellular modem is still in early stages, reportedly a generation behind Qualcomm’s current 5G offerings. Getting to a point where Apple’s own silicon can handle the full complexity of 5G, satellite connectivity, Wi-Fi 7, UWB, and everything else that a modern iPhone needs to do wirelessly — while matching or exceeding the power efficiency of established specialists — is an enormous engineering challenge.

A continued Broadcom deal isn’t a failure. It’s a realistic acknowledgment that even Apple, with its almost unlimited R&D budget, can’t rush radio engineering. Broadcom has decades of specialized expertise in RF components, and Apple’s deal with the company — reportedly worth billions — keeps a critical supply relationship stable while Apple’s own teams catch up. The interesting question is whether five years is a ceiling or a floor. Apple has surprised the industry with faster-than-expected transitions before, most notably with the M1 chip’s debut in 2020, which exceeded virtually every expectation. It could do the same with radio silicon — but betting on it would be unwise.

What This All Adds Up To

Looking at these four stories together, a picture emerges of an Apple that’s pushing hard at the edges of its product portfolio — testing new professional hardware, betting big on a premium foldable form factor, and quietly improving the value of its existing ecosystem — while managing a long, grinding internal transition in the radio chip space that it can’t fully control on its preferred timeline.

The new iPad Pro and MacBook Pro updates are the safest bets here — evolutionary hardware refreshes that Apple executes better than almost anyone in the industry. The foldable iPhone Ultra is the wildcard. If Apple gets the software experience right and delivers the kind of hinge durability that Samsung has struggled with for years, it could reframe what a flagship smartphone looks like by 2027. If the radio chip transition completes closer to the five-year mark, expect Apple’s silicon story to look very different by the end of the decade — and Qualcomm’s and Broadcom’s balance sheets to reflect it.

Source: 9to5Mac

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