It’s not been a good few days for Apple. Last week, photos emerged on X (formerly Twitter) of what was claimed to be the unreleased M4 MacBook Pro, with the poster claiming it was for sale on Facebook. Then over the weekend, Russian YouTuber Wylsacom did a full hands-on unboxing of what they claimed was the same line of MacBook Pro. And now, things have gotten even worse for Apple.
That’s because a second person has claimed to be in possession of the M4 MacBook Pro, and has posted a video as proof. The poster is another Russian citizen, perhaps suggesting a link to the earlier leak. The one-minute video clip shows Russian YouTuber Romancev768 unboxing the laptop and sharing their first impressions of it. Although far less detailed than Wylsacom’s video, the MacBook Pro seen in this latest video shares a lot of similarities with the laptops featured in the previous leaks.
The big question is whether these leaks depict genuine Apple laptops or cleverly disguised fakes – and there are some convincing elements to what’s shown in Romancev768’s video. For one thing, the YouTuber shows the About This Mac screen in macOS, which lists the device as being launched in November 2024 – the same time as Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman expects the M4 MacBook Pro to go on sale.
The MacBook Pro in Romancev768’s video has the exact same model number and packaging as in previous leaks, while the device’s specs also seem to be a match. That suggests that all of the leaked laptops could have been taken from the same batch. Whether that’s a real batch from an Apple warehouse, or a batch of fake laptops created by a very enterprising fraudster, isn’t clear.
Interestingly, the boxes in both leaks come with a QR code and text reading ‘Scan for more information about your MacBook Pro.’ Unfortunately, it seems that this QR code is slightly too blurry to successfully scan, but where that code takes you would likely give us an idea as to whether these products are authentic or not.
Benchmarks leak out
And it’s not just videos that have supposedly revealed the new MacBook Pro – benchmarks have surfaced too. On Geekbench, a new Mac – labeled Mac16,1 – has appeared, and the scores correspond with tests Wylsacom conducts in his video, with both showing a single-core score of 3864 and a multi-core result of 15288. Compared to the M3 chip with 8-core CPU and 10-GPU that you’ll find in last year’s MacBook Pro, the single-core result is about 26.7% higher, while the multi-core score is 30.6% higher.
The chip featured in these tests is noted as being an Apple M4 with a 10-core CPU comprising four cores in one cluster and six cores in another (this likely corresponds to the division between performance and efficiency cores). The base clock of the chip is 4.41GHz, and it comes with 16GB of memory, which matches the leaked MacBook Pro’s box.
Moreover, benchmarks for Apple’s Metal graphics API have also emerged. These show that the chip’s GPU is roughly on par with the M4 found in the latest iPad Pro, with the newest result hitting a score of 57603. The iPad Pro, meanwhile, scored 53374, giving the MacBook Pro’s M4 an increase of just under 8%. The gap is bigger when compared to the MacBook Pro’s M3 chip, though, which has a Metal score of 47414 – a difference of about 20%.
Benchmarks will vary from machine to machine, so these should just be taken as rough scores. But regardless, they still give a useful indication of the sort of performance we could expect to see in the M4 MacBook Pro.
Potentially the biggest leak in Apple’s history
All that being said, there are elements that point to these leaked devices being fake. They use exactly the same image on the front of the box as the M3 MacBook Pro, which is something Apple has never done before (the company always adds a new wallpaper to its MacBook packaging). As well as that, the layout of the information sticker on the back of the box – that is, the one that lists the laptop’s specs – is completely different to previous MacBook Pro boxes. That doesn’t prove that it’s fake, but it raises questions. Furthermore, the About This Mac box that Romancev768 demonstrated can be falsified. Again, that doesn’t mean it is bogus in this video, but the possibility remains.
If this is indeed a counterfeit MacBook Pro, the most likely candidate is the current 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 Pro chip and space black color. This matches many of the specs of the allegedly leaked MacBook Pro, including its 512GB of storage and three Thunderbolt ports. However, it would require some software fakery to obscure a few things – this existing MacBook Pro has 18GB of memory and Thunderbolt 3 slots, whereas the leak apparently comes with 16GB of memory and upgraded Thunderbolt 4 ports.
There’s also the question of how exactly the Russian YouTubers got these laptops. The packaging language and model numbers indicate that the MacBooks were intended for the U.S., and Apple products are currently restricted from being sold in Russia. While Russian citizens can get hold of Apple devices through back-channel means, the idea of not one but several Macs being swiped from a highly security-conscious company like Apple and then also finding their way into an embargoed country feels like a stretch.
All that said, if these products are fake, they’ve clearly been produced to a pretty high standard and are quite convincing to the naked eye. Ultimately, we’ll find out if they’re genuine or not when Apple announces the M4 MacBook Pro at an upcoming October launch event. If they do prove to be the real deal, it will almost certainly represent the biggest product leak in Apple’s 50-year history.
