Apple ’s known for engage down its closed book under lock and samara . But not these past few calendar week .

The company has n’t even declare theM4 MacBook Pro , yet we ’ve plainly learned pretty much everything there is to know about the upcoming laptop computer thanks to a series of purported high - visibility leaks andunboxing videosthat have shown off the machine from every angle . For a business firm as security conscious as Apple , having the MacBook Pro botch in this way is close to catastrophic .

But for the great unwashed like you and me ? It ’s been somewhat enlightening . If these leaks prove to be accurate , they ’ve devote us a glimpse into what we can gestate from the M4 MacBook Pro . And that glimpse is pretty alluring .

First , permit ’s recap the leakage . Things kicked off in late September when leakerShrimpAppleProposted a photo purporting to show the publicity of the M4 MacBook Pro . Shortly after , two separate Russian YouTubers claimed to have obtained real units of the laptop , which they unboxed and analyzed in TV on their channels . And not long after that , rumors started spreading that hoi polloi were in reality selling the M4 MacBook Pro on Facebook and on a Russian classifieds website , with200 units reportedly up for snap .

That ’s a major going from most Apple launching cycles . surely , every year we get a few details post in advance of time , intend there ’s always an element of familiarity with what Apple reveals on the day . But full - waste unbox videos ? That ’s almost unheard of . The last time Apple suffer a security relapse this fatal was when an employee accidentally provide the then - secret iPhone 4 in a California bar , with the social unit eventually finding its mode into the hand of the press . That was closely 15 years ago , and this belated incident is no doubt bringing back some dreadful memories for Apple ’s top brass .

What the leaks reveal

If these are veritable M4 MacBook Pro laptops and they ’ve somehow been swiped from Apple ’s supplying mountain chain , it potentially represents one of the worst protection breaches in Apple ’s history . And it also bring out a draw about what we might see in Apple ’s next flagship laptop computer .

For one thing , every illustration of the purportedly leaked M4 MacBook Pro read the same eyeglasses : M4 buffalo chip , 16 GB of retention , and 512 GB of depot . Right now , the Qaeda - levelM3 MacBook Procomes with 512 GB of entrepot but only 8 GB of memory . Could this be a hint that the entry - degree M4 MacBook Pro will get double the RAM of its M3 equivalent ? Hopefully .

It ’s certainly possible , and sources likeMark Gurmanhave contended for a while that this will happen . It could also simply be that the leak out MacBooks are a stepped - up configuration . in the end , there ’s not really any way of knowing whether they are the most low-priced model or not .

Still , there are other clues we can glean from the leaks . They intimate that the M4 MacBook Pro will issue forth in Space Black , a color that is currently set to laptop bear Apple ’s M3 Pro and M3 Max microchip . The boxes shown in the leak photos and videos also show that the MacBooks in interrogative do with threeThunderbolt 4ports . This is a duple rise , since the M3 MacBook Pro currently only has two Thunderbolt ports , and both of those ports are the lower - spec Thunderbolt 3 . If you like to connect peripherals to your MacBook Pro , this will be a welcome ascent .

Then there ’s the improved carrying out we can carry to see from the M4 chip . We already know a little about this since the M4 is in the currentiPad Pro , but Wylsacom — one of the leaker who posted picture footage of the M4 MacBook Pro — has claimed to have benchmarked the raw crisp in Apple ’s laptop computer .

OnGeekbench , Wylsacom ’s examination shows the M4 microchip provide roughly 27 % higher single - core performance and about 31 % better multi - core public presentation compared to the M3 . Elsewhere , M4 benchmarks for Apple ’s Metal APIhave also appeared , and these indicate that the M4 ’s GPU offer an melioration of around 20 % over the M3 . If true , that ’s certainly nothing to scoff at .

Apple’s leaky supply chain

There ’s another thing we can learn from this whole situation : Apple ’s security may not be as robust as we once thought it was . The company is well - known for coming after people who post pictures and videos of pre - release product , with some leakers being fin and even serving prison time for their elbow grease . Yet that apparently has n’t stopped a security breach of this magnitude from bring position .

Ever since the first image of the M4 MacBook Pro broke onto the internet , more outlandish rumors have been swirling , with claims surface that up to 200 units of the laptop have beenprivately listed for sale . Apple has stayed silent on the entire matter , but there ’s no doubt the company is furiously investigating the incident and attempt to see to it whether it ’s share with a genuine news leak or a highly convincing forgery .

And that raises some interesting question for us as viewers , too . Most pertinently : should we bank these leaks ? On the open , they look persuasive . We ’re not looking at some small - sentence operation here — multiple multitude have obtained in full functioning Apple laptops that appear to contain unreleased chip and raw lineament . That ’s not gentle to pull off .

But there ’s nothing thatconclusivelyproves that these laptops are something dissimilar from what ’s hail before , albeit cleverly disguised . The About This Mac page inmacOSthat depict the laptop ’s inner chip can be faked , as can Geekbench results . We do n’t love for sure that these devices are n’t only a set of M3 Pro MacBook Pros with some computer software legerdemain obscuring their national chip ’s specs . Those devices fall with three Thunderbolt 4 ports , 512 GB of memory and a Space Black refinement , after all .

I ’m not tell that these definitelyarefakes — there are plenty of reasons to conceive that they could be authentic . I ’m just saying that we ca n’t have sex for indisputable either way right now . The whole thing is murky and muddy , and it ’s not get any clear . The laptops ’ veracity is the one thing that these leakshaven’tconfirmed for us .

The only way that this matter will be finalise is seeing Apple discuss the M4 MacBook Pro at its rumoredOctober launch eventin the coming weeks . If the laptop computer revealed at the show is the same as the one we ’ve seen plastered all over the internet , we ’ll know the vaporous shell of Apple ’s containment unsuccessful person .