Did Apple’s New CEO Just Tease a ‘MacBook Studio’ for Today?

Ahead of an “all-day product launch experience” that’s expected to kick off at 1 p.m. ET today, Apple’s newly minted CEO John Ternus has just shared a very brief teaser video on X that’s kicked off some new eleventh-hour speculation on what the company may have in store for us this afternoon.

The video itself runs a scant five seconds and shows only a spotlight quickly moving up the side of a flat surface, ultimately resolving itself to an Apple logo like you’d see on the cover of a MacBook Pro.

The surface is nondescript and could be the wall of a building or a screen, depending on how you look at it — but it sparked the notion that Ternus might be teasing the new laptop as the “MacBook Studio.”

That’s the theory being espoused by Joe Rossignol over at MacRumors, and it’s not hard to see how he might have a point. The connection goes a bit deeper, as Rossignol points out that the wall could be a movie studio shown against a skyline — and the event is basically being held in Hollywood’s backyard.

For the past six months, the rumor mill has pointed to “MacBook Ultra” as a name for the new touchscreen laptop, but there were several reasons to be skeptical of that moniker, and when the so-called “iPhone Ultra” materialized as the iPhone Duo, the buzz around the new MacBook using that name had died down.

In fact, in recent weeks, most of the pundits have accepted that this may simply be a new model of the higher-end MacBook Pro. That certainly seemed logical based on how Apple typically rolls, but it’s also fair to say that it could be preparing to write a new chapter in its old playbook — especially with a new CEO at the helm.

Aside from a brief experiment with the 12-inch MacBook (sans suffix) and the budget-friendly MacBook Neo that showed up earlier this year, Apple has maintained two obvious tiers of MacBook for most of the past decade: the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air. However, the MacBook Pro effectively hid a third tier, as it was frequently divided into two different classes.

That became obvious in the Apple silicon era, when Apple released redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models in late 2021 to house the more powerful M1 Pro and M1 Max chips while leaving the base M1 model behind on the old 13-inch design. This continued into the M2 generation, with Apple finally unifying the designs in late 2023 with the M3 MacBook Pro lineup.

However, the distinction actually goes back to the Intel days. When the Touch Bar debuted in 2016 (ten years ago this week), it was exclusive to the more expensive MacBook Pro models, which also frequently had noticeably more capable chips inside. The entry-level MacBook Pro finally got the Touch Bar in 2019, ironically only two years before Apple nixed it in the redesign of the new 14-inch and 16-inch models.

Yesterday, Apple debuted an M6 MacBook Pro that looks in every way identical to its M5 predecessor. In fact, the only specs that have changed are the chips inside — the M6 itself and Apple’s new N1 wireless chip — but nobody was really expecting anything more.

It would be completely on-brand for Apple to bring the touchscreen to a pair of higher-end, redesigned MacBook Pro models in the same way the Touch Bar arrived ten years ago. It would also be 2021 all over again, when the base model was left behind with an older design while the flagship models moved ahead.

But just because that’s what Apple’s done in the past doesn’t mean it has to keep doing things that way.

The MacBook Studio?

The notion of a “MacBook Studio” makes a lot of sense, not in the form of creating a tier above the full MacBook Pro lineup, but in the sense of “promoting” the higher-end MacBooks into a visibly different class.

After all, they’ve always been separate from the base model — sometimes even visibly so — so giving them a distinct name would make that far clearer. The first couple of years of this decade were awkward with a 13-inch MacBook Pro that was barely more powerful than a MacBook Air sitting alongside two completely redesigned powerhouses that bore the same name.

Meanwhile, Apple has the “Mac Studio” as its highest-end desktop-class machine that effectively sidelined the Mac Pro four years ago — and officially forced it into retirement earlier this year. With that tower having finally fallen, “Pro” no longer represents the best that Apple has to offer in the Mac space.

A MacBook Studio to match the Mac Studio would make a lot of sense. Of course, that leaves the MacBook Pro in a weird spot, since the closest corresponding desktop would be the iMac or the Mac mini, but it’s also fair to say the “Pro” name has been with us for far too long for Apple to let go of it too easily.

That’s also why the idea of a “MacBook Studio” is pure speculation. Rossignol’s theory seems extremely plausible, but he fully admits it’s “just some last-minute speculation for fun.”

He also offers a bonus theory that this might simply be a hint at the glowing Apple logo returning to the MacBook’s lid. That would be absolutely delightful in its own right, and it’s not hard to see how a switch to an OLED panel might encourage Apple to go that route.

Again, though, this is all pure “tea-leaf-reading” speculation at this point, but the good news is we won’t have to wait long to find out. Apple is expected to unveil its new MacBook in less than three hours, so we’ll have some answers soon.

[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]