Apple is set to update a number of Mac machines at next week’s Worldwide Developer Conference. The details have been reported by French site Consmac, and relate to regulatory filings made in a Russian-language regulatory filing. Five model numbers for personal computers carrying the Apple trademark are listed.
The model numbers registered in this filing are A1289 A1347, A1418, A1419, and A1481. The expectation is that these model numbers represent updates to a number of existing Mac machines rather than Apple recycling the model numbers; A1289 is the older boxlike Mac Pro, A1347 is the Mac mini, A1418 is the iMac, A1419 iMac, and A1481 is the cylindrical Mac Pro
The inclusion of significantly older machines like the Mac Pro and the Mac mini clouds the issue of what exactly is being refreshed, but the obvious answer is that some of the Mac machines are going to join the MacBook line-up with an update to use Intel’s Kaby Lake chip architecture.
There are already major signals that the three MacBook Pro machines announced in October 2016 will pick up the seventh-generation Intel chipsets. As previously discussed on Forbes, Apple’s decision to release one final iteration of MacBooks in 2016 with the sixth-generation Intel chips has meant the Windows 10 competition captured a lead in terms of specifications over the last six months. Apple has decided to risk upsetting the early adopters with a switch to Kaby Lake very early in this production cycle.
The filing also has a new number – A1843 – listed as a wireless input device and handily referred to as a ‘keyboard’). There’s been less talk of a new Magic Keyboard from Apple, but a recently published patent shows a wireless keyboard with an adaptive input row that matches the design and implementation of the Touch bar, but on a standalone peripheral.
For developers to make best use of the Touch Bar it needs to become a primary control area, something that cannot happen with legacy hardware. This new peripheral offers Apple a way to retrofit the Touch Bar to older Mac machines.
The WWDC keynote starts at 10am Pacific this Sunday, the 5th of June. Any new or updated hardware should be announced during the expected two-hour long presentation. Keep watching Forbes’ Technology channel for all the news and analysis.