Apple refreshed the MacBook Pro with M5 chips in late 2025, and the rumor mill has already moved on to what's next.
Reports point to an M6 generation arriving later this year, possibly with a thinner chassis and an OLED display that finally replaces the mini-LED panel.
If you bought a MacBook Pro in the last eighteen months, that timeline should sting a little.
Apple has spent a decade training buyers to expect a meaningful jump every single cycle, and the gaps are shrinking.
They also look almost identical to the M4 models, which looked almost identical to the M3 models.
The only thing that changes reliably is the number on the spec sheet and the amount of money leaving your account.
Meanwhile, the price of entry has crept past two thousand dollars for a mid-tier configuration.
Add memory or storage and you are financing a used car.
Apple knows that most people do not need this much machine, and it sells them one anyway, because the alternative is a Windows laptop with a fan that sounds like a hair dryer during a video call.
We have accepted that a three-year-old laptop is "old," that a battery at eighty percent health is a crisis, and that opening a device is a repair crime.
Kids growing up right now think a thousand-dollar purchase has a two-year lifespan.
That is a values problem dressed up in aluminum.
Apple will happily take your perfectly functional M3 MacBook Pro and hand you a few hundred dollars in credit, then resell it at a markup or strip it for parts.
Everyone wins except the person who paid full price eighteen months ago.
If you own an M1 or M2 Pro and it still handles your work, wait.
The OLED refresh, whenever it lands, is the one worth jumping for.
If you own an M3 or M4, you have zero reason to move, no matter what the keynote says.
And if you are buying your first MacBook Pro, buy last year's model refurbished.
It will do everything the new one does, and you can put the difference toward something that actually appreciates.
The upgrade cycle is a story we keep agreeing to believe.
Every refresh asks you to feel a little poorer for no real reason, and every year we say yes.
Final Thoughts
At some point the smarter move is to stop watching the keynote and start noticing that the laptop on your desk still works fine.