At WWDC in June Apple promised to bring the first Macs with Apple Silicon to the market by the end of the year. With only two and a half months left until New Year’s Eve rumours are suggesting that Apple will hold a third keynote in November at which it will focus on Macs and Apple Silicon.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported in an article 9 October that the 13 October keynote will focus on the iPhone 12, with no mention of the Macs. Instead, Apple will launch its new Macs in November. The report speaks of a “launch” which doesn’t necessarily mean an extra keynote.

“The first Mac laptop with Apple’s own processor, among other products, will emerge at another launch in November,” writes Gruman.

Jon Prosser, on the other hand, thinks a keynote in November is possible (although he is referring to the AirPods Studio in the tweet below). Prosser also suggests it is possible that Apple will just announce the new products by press release.

This leaves it open for announcement during the October 13th iPhone event.

It could also be possible that they’re released via press release at the end of this month.

Or pushed to the November event.

Personally, I don’t know which route they’ll take for sure.

— Jon Prosser (@jon_prosser)
October 7, 2020

Any other year we would dismiss a November keynote from Apple as a completely absurd rumour, but the company has already held two virtual events this year, with the third happening tomorrow. So it seems Apple doesn’t have to invest much effort in holding a virtual keynote.

As for why the Macs won’t make an appearance on 13 October, it’s feasible that the iPhones 12, a smaller HomePod and possibly AirPods Studios could easily take up a whole hour tomorrow evening, leaving little time for a new Mac announcement.

Since this is a more significant upgrade, with the switch to its own chips ushering in a new era of the Mac, it follows that Apple will need time on stage to sell the new product’s benefits.

Indeed, there are more questions to be answered relating to the new Macs than with the iPhone:

• Will the virtualization of Windows programs work on the new Macs and if so, in what way?
• What about native performance?
• Which target group does the new Apple Silicon Macs address?
• How cumbersome or easy will the switch be?
• What will become of third-party accessories?
• How will Apple solve the problem with the graphics cards: Are products from third-party manufacturers still being installed or is Apple also relying on its own development here?

These and other questions would certainly require more than an hour, so a keynote in November seems likely.

Read more about the first Apple Silicon Mac here, we also examine what Apple Silicon will mean to Mac users, and here’s how Silicon will compare to Intel.

This article appeared on Macwelt. Translation by Karen Haslam.