As Apple's March event kicks off, this week is going to be a very big week for Apple and its fans. Not only is the company expected to launch a huge range of new products, but Apple is also apparently expecting a big rush at its retail stores in the aftermath. That shows how confident it must be about everything due to be unveiled over the course of this week.
Sources speaking to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg claim that the stores' prelaunch planning is "on par with what happens before the debut of new iPhones." That includes pre-warning employees the may be working longer hours, and preparation to upgrade entire tables with new products — which is something that doesn't happen for incremental upgrades.
It isn't clear what dates the stores are preparing for, but we do know that Apple is expected to announced at least 5 new Apple products today, Tuesday and Wednesay.
That suggests Apple knows there's a lot of demand for these new products, in particular the low-cost MacBook powered by an A18 Pro chip. Apparently, Apple believes the new MacBook is "incredible value" and will help drive large numbers of people away from Windows laptops and Chromebooks. Especially those iPhone users who have yet to buy their first Mac.
But there's going to be more than a cheap MacBook and the lower-cost iPhone 17e. We've also heard about an M5-powered MacBook Air, new MacBook Pros with the M5 Pro and M5 Ma chips, an iPad Air with M4 chip and the lower-cost iPad 12.
It's also been suggested we may see a new Mac Studio with a second-generation Studio Display, though due to the cost of those two products, they're not likely to be big immediate sellers.
We shouldn't expect to see the rumored touchscreen MacBook, though. Apparently, that's going to arrive towards the end of the year. However, rumors suggest it won't be the true Mac/iPad hybrid that some people had been hoping for.
You can keep up to date with all the week's launches over in our Apple March Event live blog.
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