The M4 MacBook Pro leak circus just got even wilder

Now someone is trying to sell the leaked laptop on the open market

News By Alex Blake published 10 October 2024

In recent days, the as-yet-unannounced M4 MacBook Pro has appeared all over the internet, with the media engaging in a feeding frenzy as pictures and videos of Apple’s next flagship laptop continually surface. But as if that wasn’t bad enough for Apple, it now looks like some people are selling the device before it’s even been officially unveiled.

As spotted by @aaplpro on X (formerly Twitter) and reported by MacRumors, a listing has appeared on the Russian classifieds website Avito. According to the information in the post, the model in question has the same configuration of all the previously leaked models: Apple’s M4 chip, 16GB of memory, and 512GB of storage, indicating a common source for each of the leaked laptops.

On Avito, the M4 MacBook Pro was being sold for roughly $7,500 – obviously a very high price to pay 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 for interested buyers to check before purchasing.

The depicted post has already been taken down, as Avito prohibits sales of “non-existent” products. While that presumably refers to the fact that the M4 MacBook Pro has not been announced yet, it also raises an interesting point: we don’t actually know if the person who created this listing really had an M4 MacBook Pro at all. It’s possible that they simply used a picture from one of the unboxing videos or printed their own box and took a picture of that, hoping for a quick cash grab while the speculation and media furore swirls.

Whatever the case, selling a leaked product like this might not be a particularly clever idea – Apple is well known for hunting down leakers and threatening them with legal action, with several receiving actual prison time for their actions. Selling an unannounced product sold by a company of Apple’s tenacity could be a quick way to unmask yourself and suffer the consequences

So far, it’s been impossible to know whether any of the leaked M4 MacBook Pros are genuine. There are some clues that they could well be: the sheer number of units getting into people’s hands suggests that if these laptops are merely older models that have been patched or tweaked to appear like the M4 MacBook Pro, we’re looking at a highly sophisticated faking operation that hasn’t simply done a quick one-off and called it a day. This isn’t just a two-bit process with someone putting together a crude fake – these laptops look convincing.

On the other hand, some aspects of the leaks raise eyebrows. They suggest that Apple is using the same wallpaper for the M4 MacBook Pro as it did for the previous M3 model – something the company has almost certainly never done before. And despite benchmarks indicating that these laptops could contain a new M4 chip, it’s certainly not impossible to fake results like that.

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