The M4 MacBook Pro leak circus just got even wilder
Over the past few days, the unannounced M4 MacBook Pro has been all over the internet, sending the media into a frenzy as photos and videos of Apple’s next flagship laptop continue to surface. But if that’s not bad enough for Apple, it now appears that some people are already selling the device before it’s officially unveiled.
As noted by @aaplpro on X (formerly Twitter) and reported by MacRumorsa mention has appeared on the Russian advertising site Avito. According to the information in the message, the model in question has the same configuration as all previously leaked models: Apple’s M4 chip, 16 GB of memory and 512 GB of storage, indicating a common source for each of the leaked laptops.
At Avito, the M4 MacBook Pro sold for around $7,500 – obviously a very high price considering the base M3 MacBook Pro costs $1,599. Additionally, @aaplpro noted that there were originally several laptops for sale on Avito, each with an attached note indicating that the price of the device changes every day and that interested buyers should check before purchasing.
The featured message has already been removed because Avito prohibits the sale of “non-existent” products. While that presumably refers to the fact that the M4 MacBook Pro hasn’t been announced yet, it also raises an interesting point: we don’t actually know if the person who made this list even had an M4 MacBook Pro. It’s possible they simply used a photo from one of the unboxing videos or printed their own box and took a photo of it, hoping for a quick cash grab while the speculation and media fuss swirled.
Be that as it may, selling such a leaked product may not be a particularly bright idea; Apple is known for tracking down leaking products and threatening them with legal action, with some actually receiving prison sentences for their actions. Selling an unannounced product sold by a company with Apple’s tenacity can be a quick way to expose yourself and suffer the consequences
Until now, it has been impossible to know if the leaked M4 MacBook Pros are real. There are some indications that this may well be the case: the sheer number of devices getting into people’s hands suggests that if these laptops are just older models that have been patched or tweaked to look like the M4 MacBook Pro, we dealing with a very sophisticated counterfeiting operation that didn’t just do a quick one-off and call it a day. This isn’t just some process where someone puts together a crude knockoff – these laptops look convincing.
On the other hand, some aspects of the leaks are raising eyebrows. They suggest that Apple is using the same wallpaper for the M4 MacBook Pro as the previous M3 model – something the company has almost certainly never done before. And while benchmarks indicate that these laptops could feature a new M4 chip, it’s certainly not impossible to falsify such results.
Either way, we won’t know for sure if these leaks are real until Apple announces the M4 MacBook Pro at an event later this month. But one thing’s for sure: Apple is far from in control here, and it doesn’t look like the leaks will slow down anytime soon.