According to an anonymous report, six new Mac placeholder SKUs have appeared in Future Shop's inventory system. While we've been unable to independently verify this at this time, the placement of early "placeholder" part numbers is consistent with inventory practices of some major retailers.
In February, we saw MacBook Pro part numbers in Best Buy's systems about 3 weeks before the release of the new MacBook Pros. Future Shop is a Canadian subsidiary of Best Buy.
Apple has been rumored to be planning new releases for their laptops (and maybe iMacs) before the holidays. The last rumored date pinpointed October 14th for the launch.
Update: According to one BestBuy poster, these SKUs were set up without any knowledge from Apple with only the circulating expectations that Apple would be releasing notebooks in the near future. As a result, there can be no conclusions drawn from this inventory change, except what we already know, that Apple is expected to release new notebooks in the near future.
Sunday August 23, 2026 11:36 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple is readying new iMac models with an upgraded chip and new color options, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Writing in his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman says the new version is likely to be an updated 24-inch model with an M6 chip, replacing the existing M4 model that arrived in October 2024.
New colors are also said to be on the menu, though Gurman does not say what they...
Tuesday August 25, 2026 5:31 pm PDT by Juli Clover
BenQ today announced the launch of the iScreenBar, which it says is the first monitor light bar built for the iMac.
The iScreenBar is meant to look like an extension of the iMac, offering desk lighting that does not clash with the iMac's design or block the camera or microphone. It's made from aluminum and lights an area of 33.5 by 19.7 inches at 500 lux. A glass touch panel is available for ...
Thursday September 10, 2026 3:58 pm PDT by Juli Clover
T-Mobile will charge customers $5 per month to use iPhone Handoff, an e-SIM feature that allows the same phone number to be used on two separate iPhones.
iPhone Handoff requires carrier support, and at launch, only T-Mobile users in the U.S. and Deutsche Telekom users in Germany will be able to use it.
T-Mobile says customers can use their number across two compatible iPhone models and...
I helped set these skus up. They were set up with no information or assistance from Apple. These were set up as the same time as a long list of placeholders for iPods for the "Let's Rock" event - we weren't sure if there were computers coming at the same time (as you can see in the thread in the Future Shop forums).
So to recap:
* We setup a bunch of skus.
* We did so without input from Apple.
* We did it to be prepared for when new product launches because we find out at exactly the same time you do. Sometimes we get a "you'll see X number of new laptops" but that's the extent of it.
* We also did it because we wanted to make sure that we weren't setting skus up in the same time frame that they were going to launch because inevitably someone with a camera phone is going to see them in the system and be a little overzealous and fire off a cropped, poorly compressed photo of our inventory system to engadget/gizmodo/macrumors/appleinsider and we figured if we set them up in advance we can avoid tipping Apple's hand in the future. Yes, we're that considerate of our partners. Phew.
