16-inch MacBook Pro reveal likely this week as Apple appears to be holding private press briefings

Where is the rumored 16-inch MacBook Pro? Apple hasn’t officially announced the larger entry in the notebook lineup, but there’s growing evidence that we could finally be on the cusp of an unveil as soon as this week.

This is the MacBook Pro that’s expected to be the first to replace the failure plagued butterfly switch keyboard with more reliable scissor switch keys. The rumored MacBook Pro update also appears to have slightly slimmer bezels around the sides of the larger display and changes to the Touch Bar layout.

Apple already held its major fall event in September where it debuted the iPhone 11 and Apple Watch Series 5.

The company has held a second fall event in previous years with a focus on Mac and iPad hardware, but Apple spent October premiering Apple TV+ shows for entertainment press before the video service launched on November 2.

What appears to be happening instead of a dedicated hardware event from Apple this year is another play the company has been known to use for revealing announcements.

Apple has a dedicated location in New York City where it occasionally holds private briefings with members of the press to give presentations and offer hands-on demonstration time.

This week appears to be one of those occasions based both on what 9to5Mac is hearing privately and suggestions by multiple public disclosures. If Apple is holding private press meetings at the start of this week, that suggests we could see the subject of those meetings announced publicly by the middle of the week.

But what suggests this could be about the unreleased 16-inch MacBook Pro? That’s an educated guess (and I haven’t personally been holding my breath over previous release rumors).

Apple does have other hardware on the horizon including the publicly announced yet unreleased 2019 Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR, both set for release before the end of the year, and there are rumored hardware tracker tags first discovered by 9to5Mac this summer that could show up any time.

But evidence that Apple has been readying a 16-inch MacBook Pro for a while now has only continued to pile up. From supply chain reports from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo to Apple shipping multiple previews of what the machine will look like, the 16-inch MacBook Pro has 2019 written all over it if Apple is prepared to start shipping hardware.

Apple has refreshed or spec-bumped models of the 13-inch MacBook Air and MacBook Pro and 15-inch MacBook Pro so far this year, although each machine has a keyboard included in Apple’s keyboard service program over reliability issues.

We should know how this turns out in a few days so stay tuned. Learn more about what we expect from the rumored 16-inch MacBook Pro here.