The M5 MacBook Pro has been officially released, but is there something missing? Of course, the M5 MacBook Air is always released later, and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that it will be available in Spring 2026. But that is not what I am talking about. What about the M5 Pro and M5 Max Pros?
You should expect these to arrive early next year, along with new Mac Studios and Mac minis. Let us break it down.
M5 MacBook Air
This is the least unexpected part of Gurman’s analysis because Apple’s behavior is foreseeable. The Pro will be released in the fall, followed by the Air in the spring. Just like the M5 Pro, we don’t expect a big revamp of the design or display technology.(that could come in 2027 with a rumored update to the LCD display).
But this will be a spec hike for the M5, which, given the new architectural improvements to the GPU cores with neural accelerators and the increased memory bandwidth, appears to be an ultraportable monster. I’m looking forward to this (probably) launching in March 2026.
The missing MacBook Pros
As I previously stated, this was the most exciting aspect of Apple’s presentations this week—the Cupertino team is normally swift to deliver basic, Pro, and Max CPUs to market. But this time, we only got the basic one.
The reasons for the delay are detailed in the chip’s technical specifications. Taking a lesson from Intel Panther Lake’s playbook, the M5 Pro and M5 Max might be remade with independent CPU and GPU blocks — a system of chips rather than a system on chip. This would result in further improvements in performance, power efficiency, and heat management, all of which are crucial for power users.
With that in mind, given that these are also scheduled for early 2026 (according to Gurman), I wouldn’t be surprised if they appear with the Air as part of a Spring Mac event.
Moving to desktops
I assume these will not be the only new Macs released at this time. Yes, Gurman confirmed that Apple is creating new versions of the Mac Studio and Mac Mini featuring M5 Pro and/or M5 Max CPUs. Along with this, it has been revealed that two new external displays are in the works, one of which will be the next-generation Studio Display.
However, he has made it clear that there is no news on when these would be released. If I had to bet, I’d say Apple will want to release all of its enhancements in early 2026 so that the team doesn’t detract from the anticipation around M6 models later that year.
In short, it’s been a fantastic week for base model users (of which there are many), but pro users and those already sitting in front of a creative battlestation will have to wait until next spring. That’s my bet, anyway!
