These M4 MacBook Pro leaks are a goldmine of secret information

Apple is known for keeping its secrets under wraps. But not in the last few weeks.

The company hasn’t even announced the M4 MacBook Pro yet, but thanks to a series of alleged public leaks and unboxing videos showing off all sides of the device, we’ve apparently learned just about everything there is to know about the upcoming laptop gives angle. For a company as security-conscious as Apple, having the MacBook Pro damaged in this way is almost catastrophic.

But for people like you and me? It was pretty enlightening. If these leaks prove accurate, they will give us a glimpse of what we can expect from the M4 MacBook Pro. And that look is quite tempting.

First, let’s recap the leaks. It all started at the end of September, when the leaker ShrimpApplePro published a photo that supposedly showed the packaging of the M4 MacBook Pro. Shortly after, two different Russian YouTubers claimed to have received actual units of the laptop, which they unboxed and analyzed in videos on their channels. And not long after, rumors spread that the M4 MacBook Pro was actually being sold on Facebook and a Russian classifieds website, with 200 units reportedly up for grabs.

That’s a big departure from most Apple launch cycles. Sure, we get a few details revealed in advance every year, which means there’s always some level of familiarity with what Apple reveals that day. But full unboxing videos? This is almost unheard of. The last time Apple suffered such a catastrophic security breach was when an employee accidentally left the then-secret iPhone 4 at a bar in California and the device ended up in the hands of the press. That was almost 15 years ago, and this latest incident undoubtedly brings back some painful memories among Apple’s senior leadership.

What the leaks reveal

If these are authentic M4 MacBook Pro laptops and were somehow removed from Apple’s supply chain, this may be one of the worst security breaches in Apple’s history. And it also reveals a lot about what we might see in Apple’s next flagship laptop.

For one thing, every instance of the supposedly leaked M4 MacBook Pro has the same specs: M4 chip, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. Currently, the base version of the M3 MacBook Pro has 512 GB of storage, but only 8 GB of RAM. Could this be an indication that the entry-level M4 MacBook Pro will get twice as much RAM as its M3 equivalent? Hopefully.

It’s entirely possible, and sources like Mark Gurman have been claiming for some time that this will happen. It could also simply be that the leaked MacBooks are a stripped-down configuration. Ultimately, it can’t really be said whether this is the cheapest model or not.

However, there are still other clues that we can glean from the leaks. They suggest the M4 MacBook Pro will be available in Space Black, a color currently limited to laptops with Apple’s M3 Pro and M3 Max chips. The boxes shown in the leaked photos and videos also suggest that the MacBooks in question have three Thunderbolt 4 ports. This is a double upgrade as the M3 MacBook Pro currently only has two Thunderbolt ports and both ports are lower spec Thunderbolt 3. If you want to connect peripherals to your MacBook Pro, this is a welcome upgrade.

Then there’s the improved performance we can expect from the M4 chip. We already know a little about it, as the M4 is in the current iPad Pro, but Wylsacom – one of the leakers who posted video footage of the M4 MacBook Pro – has claimed to have tested the new chip in Apple’s laptop.

On Geekbench, Wylsacom’s testing shows that the M4 chip offers about 27% better single-core performance and about 31% better multi-core performance compared to the M3. Elsewhere, M4 benchmarks for Apple’s Metal API have also surfaced, indicating that the M4’s GPU offers around a 20% improvement over the M3. If that’s true, it’s certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Apple’s leaky supply chain

There’s something else we can learn from this whole situation: Apple’s security may not be as robust as we once thought. The company is known for going after people who post images and videos of preview products. Some leakers are fined or even jailed for their efforts. But that apparently didn’t prevent a security breach of this magnitude.

Since the first images of the M4 MacBook Pro surfaced online, more and more outlandish rumors have been circulating, with claims that up to 200 units of the laptop have been put up for private sale. Apple has remained silent on the entire matter, but there is no doubt that the company is aggressively investigating the incident and trying to determine whether it is a genuine leak or a highly convincing fake.

And that also raises some interesting questions for us as viewers. Most importantly: Should we trust these leaks? On the surface, they seem convincing. We’re not dealing with a small operation here – several people have purchased fully functional Apple laptops that appear to contain unreleased chips and new features. This isn’t easy to pull off.

But there’s nothing there conclusive proves that these laptops are something different than all their predecessors, albeit cleverly disguised. The About This Mac page in macOS, which shows the laptop’s internal chip, may be fake, as may the Geekbench scores. We don’t know for sure whether these devices are simply a series of M3 Pro MacBook Pros with some software tricks obscuring the specifications of their internal chip. After all, these devices have three Thunderbolt 4 ports, 512 GB of storage and a Space Black finish.

I’m not saying that definitively Are Counterfeits – there are many reasons to believe they could be authentic. All I’m saying is that we can’t know for sure right now. The whole thing is unclear and unclear, and it doesn’t get any clearer. The authenticity of the laptops is the only thing that has been leaked not confirmed for us.

The only way this matter can be settled is for Apple to discuss the M4 MacBook Pro at its rumored October launch event in the coming weeks. If the laptop unveiled at the show is the same as the one we’ve seen all over the internet, we’ll know the extent of Apple’s containment failure.