Confirmed Leaks On M4 MacBook Pro

Followers of Apple products have already seen a lot of leaks showing off what appeared to be the upcoming M4 MacBook Pro. From photos of retail boxes to full-blown unboxing videos, the online videos has been awash with the next MacBook Pro, despite the fact that Apple hasn’t even announced it yet.

With all of these hype and media attention, there have been consistent doubts about the leaks — for some, they just had a few too many question marks to be trusted. However, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman has just dropped a bombshell by throwing his weight behind the leaks, writing in his latest Power On newsletter: "I can confirm that these are indeed Apple’s upcoming M4 MacBook Pros."

For those who are not familiar on who Gurman is, the reporter one of the most accurate and consistent Apple leakers in the business and claims to have sources deep inside the company. So, when he says something is genuine, there is a high pssibility that he’s right.

According to Gurman, there are a few reasons to vouch for the devices shown online. For one thing, "the specifications — as well as the internal model numbers for the device — all align with what I’ve been reporting for weeks," Gurman says. Presumably, Gurman has been able to confirm the leaks' veracity with his sources inside Apple, leading him to be confident in his conclusions.

If Gurman is right and these are the actual M4 MacBook Pro laptops that will be released to the market soon, then there are some major implications from this whole affair, for consumers and for Apple as a company.

If consumers interested in getting a new MacBook Pro, the confirmed leaks come with a healthy dose of good news. For instance, Gurman believes that the leaked photos and videos depicted the base configuration of the new MacBook Pro, rather than a higher-end option with upgraded parts.

If that’s so, then the entry-level MacBook Pro should be getting some tasty upgrades. The models shown in all the leaks bore the same internal configuration: M4 chip, 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage. The difference here when compared to the M3 MacBook Pro is that Apple appears to be doubling the memory in the entry-level MacBook Pro, up from 8GB to 16GB. That should provide a welcome boost to multitasking and any memory-intensive workloads, while also fixing a problem that Apple has been denying for close to a year.

As well as that, the leaked MacBook Pro models are equipped with three Thunderbolt 4 ports. That's a serious upgrade on the two Thunderbolt 3 slots the current MacBook Pro gets, both in terms of quantity and capability. For those who are interested in Apple’s SpaceBlack colorway, it looks like that will no longer be restricted to high-end MacBook Pro models, with the base M4 version sporting this color as well.

However, while the implications of the leaked MacBooks are pretty encouraging for us consumers, they’re far less so for Apple. That’s because a breach of this scale and audacity has never happened to the company before. Sure, the iPhone 4 leaked in 2010, but that was just a single unit. This time we’ve got 200 units of the M4 MacBook Pro apparently up for sale, as well as multiple hands-on videos by Russian YouTubers and photos revealing all of the product’s internal specs. When it comes to the M4 MacBook Pro, it seems that nothing is secret or unknown anymore.

As for how the Russian YouTubers got the laptops despite Apple enforcing a trade embargo with Russia, Gurman says, "I believe these [laptops] were stolen elsewhere in Europe before being sent to the country." Without access to Gurman’s connections, none of us can confirm this for ourselves, but it certainly seems plausible.