While the main iPhone line has its launch date fixed to early September, the Mac portfolio, especially the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops, has been adrift in the calendar for many years. Thankfully, Apple is settling into a steady rhythm of new releases across its hardware portfolio, bringing some stability to the Mac announcements.

For many, that means regular updates to the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops.

Apple has indicated that it now prefers annual updates on software and hardware. The recent move to unify the various operating systems to a single number pointing to the year where it will be dominant only works with annual refreshes on the cardinal number and the associated software.

The key hardware upgrade is the Apple Silicon chipset. Over the last five years, Apple has rolled out five major versions of the M-Series chipsets. Through these, Tim Cook and his team have worked to bring the chaotic laptop releases under some control. It now looks like the patterns set in 2024 will continue in 2025 and 2026, which lets us start putting some dates into the calendar.

And it’s the Apple Silicon M-Series that highlights Apple’s consistent upgrade path.

The current MacBook Pro was launched in late October 2024, five months after the Apple Silicon M4 chipset debuted with the iPad Pro M4. That happened one month before Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference. That iPad captured the love and ‘new car smell’ of the Apple Silicon M4 away from the Mac family.