Tis' the season of product recalibration at Apple, with its labyrinthine supply chain now leaking the kind of atypical product specifications that would have attracted a serious flak at any other time.
Such is the upheaval currently permeating through the entire global consumer electronics industry, however, that Apple's growing litany of compromises now barely raises any eyebrows.
Apple's so-called MacBook Ultra won't launch with a brand-new silicon
We reported recently that Apple has significantly revamped its silicon-related plans, settling on the launch of the M5 Ultra and the base M6 later this year, and then jumping straight to the base M7, the M7 Pro, and M7 Max chips in 2027, while reserving the M7 Ultra for 2028.
This revamp has now disrupted Apple's plans for the upcoming touch-enabled OLED MacBook Pro, with some tidbits suggesting that the tech giant would call this device the MacBook Ultra to denote its premium specs.
We already know that this so-called MacBook Ultra will have a hybrid OLED architecture that combines oxide TFT (thin-film transistor) and tandem OLED layers, resulting in enhanced brightness and improved power efficiency.
What's more, the MacBook Ultra will have a touch-sensitive display, a hole-punch camera that is housed within a Dynamic Island-enabling pill-shaped cutout, and a thin and sleek chassis.
Now, however, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has revealed that the touch-enabled MacBook will be powered by Apple's existing M5 Pro and M5 Max chips instead of the M6-series ones, with the 2027-launching variant slated to get the M7 Pro and M7 Max chips. Also, Apple might launch a refresh of its entry-level MacBook Pro later this year, replete with the all-new M6 chip.
There are two theories as to why Apple is adopting such an unusual strategy for its touch-enabled MacBook. Firstly, the base M7 chip reportedly come with a much higher unified memory bandwidth, to the tune of 240GB/s vs. the base M5's 153GB/s. This positions the M7-series chips as vastly superior to their M5 counterparts for edge AI use-cases, and so Apple presumably wants to transition to its M7 architecture much faster, and is apparently willing to sacrifice the intermediary M6 Pro, Max, and Ultra chips in the process.
Secondly, TSMC's choked 2nm lines might also be a contributing factor. As such, we already know that Apple intends to manufacture at least some of its M7 chips on Intel's 18A-P process. By accelerating the launch timelines of its M7-series chips, Apple might be trying to evade TSMC's chock-full production lines.
Apple's base iPhone 18 would miss out on advanced AI features, courtesy of its 9GB RAM
Meanwhile, the famous Apple-centric analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo, is out with yet another scoop today, detailing that the base iPhone 18 might only launch with a 9GB RAM in the spring of 2027.
As we detailed in a dedicated post, the all-new Siri AI and Apple Intelligence is powered by 3 cloud-based models, with the AFM 3 Cloud Pro reportedly distilled from a 1.2-trillion-parameter Google Gemini model, and two on-device models, called AFM 3 Core Advanced and AFM 3 Core, respectively.
While the AFM 3 Core has just 3 billion parameters, the AFM 3 Core Advanced takes the parameter count to 20 billion, but only activates between 1 and 4 billion parameters at a time, depending on the task at hand. Critically, it is this model that unlocks a revamped dictation function and more expressive Siri AI voices.
Even though Apple's AFM 3 Core Advanced model only loads between 1 and 4 billion parameters into the DRAM at any given time, it still requires a RAM size of at least 12GB, which seemingly eliminates the base iPhone 18 as a viable vector for this model, given today's disclosure of a 9GB RAM.
As to why Apple is doing this, the answer is simple: cost. After undergoing a 3x increase since Q1 2025, LPDDR5X 12GB contract prices were hovering at around $120 towards the tail-end of Q1 and into Q2 2026, and have increased by $68.8 since the start of the year to hit $145 per unit recently, with flash costs adding additional pressures.
About the author: Writing is my one incontrovertible passion. Over the past six years, he has authored over 2,200 distinct articles on financial and tech-related topics, spanning nearly 1 million words. And he has been a member of Wcctech mobile team since 2025. As an alumnus of the University of Toronto, Rotman Commerce Program, I bring nuance, in-depth knowledge, and a unique perspective to every topic that I cover. When I'm not writing, I'm traveling the world, exploring hidden confectionaries and restaurants as an aspiring food connoisseur.
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