Apple May Have Just Accidentally Leaked Details About Its Next MacBook

Apple made the switch to its in-house silicon for Macs in 2020, and the company has been on a roll since. Not only has the MacBook become the benchmark for battery life among laptops, but the kind of performance that these M-series chips deliver consistently rivals, or even surpasses, Windows laptops that are priced much higher. We saw the launch of the MacBook Pro M5 in October 2025 and currently await the higher-tier variants that usually follow.

Traditionally, most of the leaks we see about Apple products come courtesy of supply chain analysts or third-parties, but the latest scoop appears to have originated from within this time. Nicolás Alvarez shared with MacRumors references to what seem to be Apple's upcoming chips — the M5 Max and M5 Ultra SoCs. Information pointing to these chips was found in the iOS 26.3 Release Candidate build.

The beta release lists two identifiers that match Apple's usual naming convention for its chips. The SoCs are referenced as T6051 and T6052 and have the H17C and H17D platform names, respectively. Typically, we would have already seen the M5 Pro and M5 Max variants of the MacBook Pro by late 2025, but rumors suggest that Apple is implementing a new chip design for these SoCs. Regardless, the MacBook Pro with beefier silicon is likely to launch soon and will once again feature measurable leaps in performance.

To understand the conclusions drawn from the leak, let's first take a quick look at how Apple internally labels its chips, as highlighted by MacRumors. The M1 Max, M2 Max, M3 Max, and M4 Max chips carried the codenames H13C, H14C, H15C/M, and H16C, respectively. Meanwhile, the M1 Ultra, M2 Ultra, and M3 Ultra SoCs were internally labeled as H13D, H14D, and H15D.

It can be noted that Apple uses the letter "C" to refer to its Max chips and the letter "D" for its Ultra chips. This points to the H17C and H17D identifiers discovered in the iOS 26.3 RC build aligning just right with the M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips we're expecting soon. However, with only two references found in the code, it raises an important question — what about the M5 Pro?

Apple typically uses the "S" suffix to point to its Pro chips, and we've consistently seen the M1 Pro, M2 Pro, M3 Pro, and M4 Pro SoCs launch every year. It could just mean that the iOS 26.3 RC code is missing a reference to the upcoming chip, since we would be very surprised if Apple altogether skips this tier, given it finds a great balance of performance and affordability for users shopping for a MacBook Pro. The M5 Pro might launch alongside the M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips or could be delayed slightly.