Apple’s lineup includes Macs, iPhones, and more
Code within Apple’s last macOS Sequoia beta has revealed identifiers for a bunch of new Apple hardware, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the company is working on a lot of new iPhones, iPads, and Macs.
Each model of the forthcoming iPhone 16 range is known within Apple by its code or Stock Keeping Unit (SKU).Newly-discovered code with the latest macOS developer beta lists future ones such as “iPhone17,1” and “iPhone18,1,” referring to an 2024 iPhone 16 and 2025 iPhone 17.
The same developer on Twitter who discovered these has also posted that there are code references to new Macs and new iPads. There are no dates, and only that iPhones come out annually really suggests the year these models will be released.
It would be a seismic shift if Apple were to switch to biannual iPhone releases, or to stop doing the iPhone at all. So it’s reasonable to infer when these new phones will come out — and it’s potentially significant that for both 2024 and 2025, there are four models of iPhone.
If rumors of an iPhone Slim for 2025 are true, that new model will replace an existing one in the range. That has already been predicted, however, and it’s likely that it’s the Plus model that will be replaced.
For the Mac, the code numbers reveal eight models, with six having SKUs such as “Mac16,3,” and two being prefixed “Mac17.” Based on how, for instance, the M3 14-inch MacBook Pro is known internally as “Mac15,3,” it’s likely that the new Macs will have an M4 or M5 processor.
Similarly, the list of forthcoming iPads prefixed “iPad17,” will use M5 compared to the “iPad16” models with M4.
What the new model numbers tell us is that Apple is continuing to develop iPhones, Macs, and iPads. More specifically, it’s developing ones that macOS Sequoia is going to have to support, as that’s where this code was found.
So sometimes Apple leaks deliberately, sometimes it leaks inadvertently, but sometimes it just has no reason to care because it’s no news that more devices are coming.
The next iPhones are due to be announced in September. Beyond that, there is no certainty, but there are very many devices that Apple can reasonably be predicted to release before the end of 2024.
