Apple appears to be gearing up to announce some product news this week, according to separate pieces of information Supercharged has obtained from two sources.
Retail teams have been told they will conduct an in-store refresh this week. The refresh, which is scheduled to occur late in the week, can span from changing internal decoration and marketing banners to swapping out old demo products for new ones. Separately, Supercharged has learned that Apple this week has scheduled briefings with select members of the media.
At this point, the content surrounding the briefing and the in-store refresh are unknown. The retail overhaul is set to take place overnight on Thursday, March 7, following media briefings and expected product announcements earlier in the week. While the media briefings alone could point to updates that may not necessarily be related to new products, the presence and scope of the in-store refresh adds credence to thinking that new hardware is indeed on the horizon.
Apple is strongly rumored to reveal new iPad and Mac models this month, keeping up with past precedents of updates around March. The long-awaited OLED iPad Pro could finally see the light of day this month, alongside a refresh to the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models that will include an upgrade to the M3 chip.
In January, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman reported that mass production for the new iPad Pro and MacBook Air was already underway in preparation for a launch by late March. Other planned products comprise an iPad Air refresh that will include a new 12.9-inch size for the first time, as well as overhauls for the Apple Pencil and the iPad Pro’s Magic Keyboard.
Despite the apparent lack of a full-scale March event this year, Apple could opt to release an event-style short video on its YouTube channel in a similar fashion to the announcement of the tenth-generation iPad and M2 iPad Pro. The 10-minute video resembled the production of a typical Apple Event with presentations from the company’s executives but in a more concise manner. Apple adopted the same approach last year with the release of the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips and consequent MacBook Pro and Mac mini updates.
In October, Supercharged exclusively reported that Apple was planning similar media briefings for new iPad models. While the briefings did materialize as we first reported, they were not related to new iPad devices and were instead limited to an Apple Pencil refresh with a USB-C port.
