We've been expecting a 13-inch MacBook Pro running on ARM-based Apple Silicon to arrive this year, but new rumors indicate that Apple may have bigger things in mind.

Taiwan-based tech publication DigiTimes reports that "industry sources" say Apple plans to release another MacBook at the same time. And that makes us wonder how Apple intends to differentiate its laptops.

To quote the report, "Apple is likely to release a 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air with Apple Silicon by the end of the year." How will the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air be differentiated once they move away from Intel's U- and Y-series chips?

Nothing in this report explains it, but this all reminds me of the informed speculation I reported last week, in which analyst J. Glenn Künzler claimed that Apple would not make many variations on its laptop chips .

Instead, Künzler suggested that the 13-inch MacBook Air and Pro would be combined into a laptop known simply as "The New MacBook," or "MacBook."

The 16-inch MacBook Pro would have multiple Apple chips The 16-inch MacBook Pro will be a laptop with multiple Apple chips, making it a more powerful edition.

But if Apple plans to release two 13-inch ARM-based laptops this winter, one wonders how they will differ if Künzler is right and Apple is limiting the number of chips. the Air will be even more than the 2018 edition. Will it be significantly redesigned, or will it be ultra-ultra-portable like the 12" MacBook was supposed to be?

As long as the MacBook Air is just a slightly tapered version of the wedge-shaped MacBook Pro, Apple faces an engineering decision: will the Pro just last longer because the Air has less internal battery space by default? Or will Apple increase the number of A-series chips in the Pro so that the battery life of the two laptops will be similar and the Pro will be faster?