Throughout the past year, the rumor mill has been spinning at a frantic pace, loaded with expectations about Apple’s long-awaited foldable phone, which is widely expected to be announced alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max this fall. At the same time, another set of exciting rumors points to a redesigned MacBook Pro that might finally get a touchscreen. However, while there is every reason to believe these products are indeed in Apple’s future plans, there is one key detail in these rumors that is nothing more than a guess based on flimsy assumptions: the name!
The naming mystery and how Apple fools everyone
Apple product names are one of the few cards the company still manages to keep very close to its chest and highly secret. The reason for this is simple: supply chain partners can manufacture almost any product with high efficiency without having the slightest idea what it will be marketed as. With rare exceptions, Apple does not put a specific product name on internal hardware components, and in recent years, it has become even more cautious about printing names on external packaging.
Of course, the names still exist, but packaging is usually not printed until a very late stage in the production cycle. This is why we sometimes get last-minute leaks about product names, though these cases remain very rare. For example, while the budget MacBook was an open secret nine months before its debut, no one ever expected it to be called the “MacBook Neo.” The only leak we received was less than 24 hours before the official announcement, and that was due to a mistake by Apple itself when it hastily published a regulatory document; no leaker had ever pointed to this name.
We saw the same thing three years ago with the Apple Vision Pro. In the weeks leading up to its unveiling at the 2023 Worldwide Developers Conference, the consensus in the tech world was that it would be named “Reality Pro.” When Mike Rockwell took the stage to announce it, the name “Vision Pro” seemed to come out of nowhere and shocked everyone.
Apple’s naming game and repeating the “iPhone Ultra” lie
Therefore, we advise you to take all reports assuming that the upcoming foldable phone this year will be called “iPhone Ultra” with a grain of salt. This does not necessarily mean that Apple won’t choose this name, but the truth is that no one outside Apple’s walls really knows what it will be called at this stage. It is noteworthy that reliable sources of internal information, such as Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, have completely avoided calling it anything other than the “foldable iPhone.” Anything else is pure speculation.
Let us also not forget that the rumor mills were absolutely confident that we would see an “iPhone 15 Ultra” in 2023, and no one at the time agreed on its specifications; reports oscillated between it being a new name for the Pro Max version or a super-product that exceeds Apple’s most expensive phones. When that turned out to be untrue, leakers repeated the same record, saying that Apple had delayed its plans and we would see an “iPhone 16 Ultra” in 2024, which also did not happen. It seems the name “Ultra” has become a ready-made stamp that leakers place on any high-end phone Apple is working on.
Furthermore, Samsung has already been using the “Ultra” name for its flagship phones for years. Resorting to the same naming for Apple’s foldable phone might seem like an inappropriate imitation for the company. Even other companies like OnePlus chose an innovative name like “OnePlus Open.” As for leakers on the Chinese platform Weibo, they rarely guess product names correctly, and reports trying to confirm the “Ultra” label are often based on a single source that cannot be fully relied upon.
MacBook Ultra… a mathematically illogical idea!
So far, Apple has used the word “Ultra” for only two products: the Apple Watch Ultra, to denote a rugged sports watch, and its ultra-powerful “Ultra” class processors used in the Mac Studio (and previously the Mac Pro). This shows that the company doesn’t mind using the name for different purposes, just like the “Air” suffix, which can mean whatever Apple wants it to mean on any given day. The original MacBook Air was thin and expensive, then it later shifted to represent the budget category, and for the iPad, the name has fluctuated between thinness and the mid-range category.
But the idea of a “MacBook Ultra” seems illogical due to the composition of Apple Silicon processors. Reports indicate that Apple might skip the M6 Pro and Max processors to go directly to the M7. However, the new touchscreen MacBook will likely feature Pro and Max chips, while the true Ultra chips remain exclusive to desktop devices like the Mac Studio. So how could a laptop carry the name “Ultra” while the more powerful processor bearing the same name is in a desktop device? This would create confusing friction for users.
Apple is always keen to keep its product lines as simple as possible through the “Good, Better, Best” formula. It has never introduced a vague fourth category that surpasses the Pro in an incomprehensible way. Of course, with John Ternus approaching the position of Apple’s new CEO, no one knows what innovative marketing ideas young minds might bring, and we must be prepared for all possibilities.
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