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Gearing Up for “Peek Performance”

Ming-Chi Kuo Expects 5G iPhone SE3 as Part of Apple’s “Peek Performance”

More signs of a 5G iPhone SE3 during Tuesday’s “Peek Performance” event. Apple sent out announcements mid-week last week, confirming a long-rumored product event for Tuesday 8 March. Products anticipated/expected include something new for the Mac line, an updated iPad Air, and the aforementioned iPhone SE update. Now, TF International analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is fanning the flame on that last one. MacRumors had Young MC hitting Twitter on Friday. Offering “Some predictions for the coming new iPhone SE,” the Tweet calls for:

1. Mass production in Mar'22.

2. Estimated shipments of 25-30 mn units in 2022.

3. Storage: 64/128/256GB.

4. A15 & 5G support (mmW & Sub-6 GHz).

5. Casing: white, black, and red.

6. Similar form factor design to current SE.

The 256GB option would be new, according to MacRumors, as would 5G support (obviously). The piece points out that “camera upgrades are noticeably absent from Kuo's expectations.” Then again, just because he didn’t say something doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

Mark Gurman Floats New Display and M2 Possibilities During Apple’s “Peek Performance"

Speaking of maybes, how about a new one for the Mac side. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has one from his Power On newsletter. Well… he hints that there might be one. Citing a secret so-and-so, Gurman says he’s heard:

…that Apple has been testing multiple Macs with a new chip in recent weeks that includes an eight-core CPU (four efficiency cores and four high-performance cores) and 10 GPU cores. Those are exactly the specifications of the M2 chip I detailed last year.

Apple has been testing this new chip on machines running macOS 12.3 (which should be released in the next week or two and run on the new Macs) and a future macOS 12.4… 

He’s not saying there will be an M2 processor announced tomorrow, but he does seem to be leaving the door open. If you’re hung up on the event announcement’s play on words, Gurman has thoughts on that, too. Featured prominently on the announcement are the words “Peek performance.” While that term spoken would sound like speaking of the height of performance, the spelling “P-E-E-K” implies getting a short look or first look at something we haven’t seen before. The way Gurman sees it, that could refer to “a preview of the long-in-the-works iMac Pro or Mac Pro with variations of the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips…” It could also refer to a “next-generation external display” that he’s heard Apple actually wrapped work on “months ago.”

One More Sleep

Apple’s first big event of the year is only a day away. The Cupertino-crew goes into “Peek performance” on Tuesday 8 March at 10 AM Pacific/1 PM Eastern. The event will be streamed on Apple’s events site. It’ll also be streamed on YouTube. It should be made available as a podcast later in the day. We’ll do highlights and reaction right here on Wednesday. 

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