What will Apple launch in January 2023?

Usually, January and February are very slow months for Apple releases. The company strives to get new hardware out in time for the holiday season at the end of the year, leaving the first few months pretty dry until new products are introduced at the inevitable spring event around March.

This year is a little different. First, Apple continues to pump out new Services content, so Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade releases can still be expected, even though there are fewer than in months past.

But more importantly, there’s the prospect of new Macs that are likely to arrive in the first quarter. We didn’t get an update to the Macbook Pro with M2 Pro/Max chips at the end of 2022 as was expected, nor did the overdue M2 Mac mini arrive. And we’re still waiting on the introduction of the Apple Silicon Mac Pro. At least some of these are rumored to be released early in 2023–perhaps at a March event.

With all the excitement and rumors about the Apple mixed reality headset potentially being introduced in the spring, the relatively tame processor updates to the Mac line could land in a straight-to-web release in January or February. Here’s what we expect from Apple this month.

Rumored new hardware

Apple ended 2022 on a very quiet note. We expected some new Macs by the end of the year—an updated Mac mini, MacBook Pros with M2 Pro and Max chips, and the Mac Pro with Apple silicon—but the final months of the year came and went without any new Macs, breaking a 21-year streak of launching or announcing a Mac in the fourth quarter.

We would typically expect these new Macs to make an appearance at a spring event, like last year when the Mac Studio made its debut and in 2021 when we got the 24-inch iMac. But wait! The latest intel about the long-rumored mixed-reality headset suggests Apple plans to unveil the device at an event this spring, so Apple may want to clear its slate so smaller announcements don’t take away any of the buzz.

Since most of the rumored Macs are just processor upgrades without other major design features, they could pop up on Apple.com at any point via press release, much like the iPad Pro and 10th-gen iPad last October. However ever…