Could new MacBook Pros really have a notch? Fresh rumors suggest they might

Could new MacBook Pros really get a notch? Fresh rumors intimate they power

Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (M1, 2020) opened up on a desk

(Image credit: Future)

Orchard apple tree's new MacBook Pro 14-column inch and 16-column inch laptops are rumored to follow launching identical soon, with increasing speculation roughly the devices having an iPhone-style notch.

Piece that seems unlikely – we made our feelings on the possibility clear enough, specially with this rumor coming out of nowhere – it's not unfathomable, and more evidence has now emerged to hint that it just might be the case.

MacRumors has been keeping its ear firmly to the Apple ground and has flagged up these new reports, one of which is improved close to a patent filed back in 2022. In it, Apple floats the idea of a display with an 'extended active area' in a higher place it, meaning a main test with an extended region betwixt that display and the bezel, on opposing sides of the central webcam.

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Notch or non?

Put differently, exactly the scheme of things we delineated in the beginning, whereby the camera is in a snick, and there's a rattling small black strip either side – separate from the actual 16:10 video display to a lower place. The patent puts forward the idea that the "outstretched regions showing icons on a black background", so these regions could contain info like the time, battery level etc., as we antecedently theorized.

The fact that Apple has considered this idea in the past tense is understandably newsworthy, then, but doesn't mean much by itself. It is, however, hardbacked up by other fresh rumors, which let in a blurry photo of a purported MacBook Favoring expose with a notch shared via Chinese platform Weibo (highlighted by leaker DuanRui on Chirrup, who shared the original notch rumor).

On top of that, we've seen a further leak from China, good manners of a forum post by leaker 'Ty98' (an unknown source), again highlighted away MacRumors. In a post actually from August, which flew under the leak radio detection and ranging until now, Ty98 claims that they've seen marketing materials from Apple, and that in them, the new MacBooks use a wallpaper which purportedly tries to conceal, or minimize the visual impact, of the notch design.

The leaker states: "Today, I saw the packaging shell. Certainly, it was the kind of wallpaper with a dark top. If you preceptor't look carefully, you can't see the [mountain pass] at all."

Huge pinches of salt with each this release, course. Ty98 likewise mirrors the other claims from the weekend about the notch, and the television camera non having Face Idaho tech. They further assert that the Tactile sensation Cake has been ditched (and the MacBook logo on the fundament bezel is gone, overly), both of which have been antecedently rumored, along with some stranger claims.

The latter includes the nugget that the unexampled MacBook Pro models will be thicker and heavier, which again echoes the leakage at the weekend, but as we said about that at the time, it seems highly counterintuitive that the sunrise models would comprise for some reason bulkier. It's realistic that the translation could birth gone awry present, in approximately respects – information technology would surely look like a poor show, for example, for the new MacBook Pro 16-edge in to be getting Apple silicon and end up thicker in the figure for it.

Psychoanalysis: Rumor mill is notching things up – only stay disbelieving

All of this speculation around the notch unmoving seems very unsafe, and the sources are far from big hitters likewise, so even though on that point is more than a piffling grounds now, we still remain highly skeptical.

That said, the evident is particularly interesting to see, though. However, if this was passing to happen, and status icons were to be shifted into that small screen area atop the main display, either side of the camera, you'd have thought some kind of clues would have been spotted in macOS as to the menu bar being redeployed in this way. And obviously there have been no such sightings.

What could be the case is that this is something Apple has considered in the past, but just hasn't moved onwards with.

The bang-up thing is we'll know sure as shootin approximately the snick very before long, arsenic Apple is expected to reveal these very much-anticipated new MacBook Pro models later today. Naturally, we'll be available to cover the proceedings at Apple's Unleashed event in overfull.

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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) crosswise a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various else hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has graphic about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his free time (his entry novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).