January is traditionally a quiet month for Apple, but that could change. While the company hasn’t announced a new product in January in over a decade, a new rumor suggests something is coming this week.
In a cryptic tweet Monday, Apple leaker Jon Prosser, via his FrontPageTech account, said to “keep an eye on Apple’s newsroom tomorrow,” likely meaning something new is coming. Apple occasionally launches new products through press releases, with the most recent being the 10th generation iPad, M2 iPad Pro, and Apple TV 4K in October.
As we wrote last week, January isn’t usually a big month for Apple releases. While Apple once started the year with a wave of new products in the Macworld San Francisco era, like the original iPhone, which arrived 16 years ago this month, the company has moved away from January announcements in recent years.
Since January 2010, when Apple launched the iPad, we’ve seen smaller releases, such as updates to Logic (2018), GarageBand (2017), and Final Cut Pro (2012) in January of the past, and the Mac App Store open its digital doors in 2011. But for the most part, January was the least exciting month of them all.
What could this announcement be? Several Macs are rumored to be released this year, including new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros with M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, an M2 Mac mini, and more expensive Mac mini to replace the Intel model , and a 15-inch MacBook Air, as well as an Apple silicon update to the Mac Pro, though it seems less likely to come via press release. Apple’s plans for an AR/VR headset are also rumored, though it’s likely to get its own spring event. Tuesday’s news seems like the kind of announcement that doesn’t reach the level of an event.
Prosser doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to rumors, but he’s accurately predicted announcements like this in the past. In April 2020 he was right about the launch of the iPhone SE and in December 2020 he predicted the launch of the AirPods Max.
