Apple Unveils MacBook Pro Laptops with M2 Pro and M2 Max Processors

[AleksandarK]

Apple today announced the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max, Apple's next-generation pro silicon that brings even more power-efficient performance and battery life to pro users. With M2 Pro and M2 Max—the world's most powerful and efficient chip for a pro laptop—MacBook Pro tackles demanding tasks, like effects rendering, which is up to 6x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro, and color grading, which is up to 2x faster. Building on the unprecedented power efficiency of Apple silicon, battery life on MacBook Pro is now up to 22 hours—the longest battery life ever in a Mac. For enhanced connectivity, the new MacBook Pro supports Wi-Fi 6E, which is up to twice as fast as the previous generation, as well as advanced HDMI, which supports 8K displays for the first time. With up to 96 GB of unified memory in the M2 Max model, creators can work on scenes so large that PC laptops can't even run them. Rounding out the unrivaled features of MacBook Pro are its renowned Liquid Retina XDR display, extensive array of connectivity, 1080p FaceTime HD camera, six-speaker sound system, and studio-quality mics. When combined with macOS Ventura, the MacBook Pro user experience is unrivaled. Customers can order the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro today, with availability beginning Tuesday, January 24.




"MacBook Pro with Apple silicon has been a game changer, empowering pros to push the limits of their workflows while on the go and do things they never thought possible on a laptop," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "Today the MacBook Pro gets even better. With faster performance, enhanced connectivity, and the longest battery life ever in a Mac, along with the best display in a laptop, there's simply nothing else like it."

Unrivaled Power-Efficient Performance with M2 Pro and M2 Max
With M2 Pro and M2 Max, MacBook Pro is capable of transforming pro workflows across a wide range of disciplines, from art to science to app development. Users looking to upgrade from Intel-based Mac models will experience even more dramatic improvements in performance, battery life, connectivity, and overall productivity. MacBook Pro also maintains performance whether users are plugged in or on battery.

MacBook Pro with M2 Pro features a 10- or 12-core CPU with up to eight high-performance and four high-efficiency cores for up to 20 percent greater performance over M1 Pro. With 200 GB/s of unified memory bandwidth—double the amount in M2—and up to 32 GB of unified memory, users can tackle large projects and run multiple pro apps with blazing speed. A next-generation GPU with up to 19 cores delivers up to 30 percent more graphics performance, and the Neural Engine is 40 percent faster, speeding up machine learning tasks like video analysis and image processing. The powerful media engine in M2 Pro also tears through the most popular video codecs, dramatically accelerating video playback and encoding while using very little power.

With M2 Pro on MacBook Pro:

• Rendering titles and animations in Motion is up to 80 percent faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro and up to 20 percent faster than the previous generation.
• Compiling in Xcode is up to 2.5x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro and nearly 25 percent faster than the previous generation.
• Image processing in Adobe Photoshop is up to 80 percent faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro and up to 40 percent faster than the previous generation.

MacBook Pro with M2 Max pushes workflows to the extreme with a much larger GPU featuring up to 38 cores and delivering up to 30 percent greater graphics performance over M1 Max, and also includes 400 GB/s of unified memory bandwidth—twice that of M2 Pro. With up to 96 GB of unified memory, MacBook Pro once again pushes the limits of graphics memory in a laptop to enable intensive graphics workloads, such as creating scenes with extreme 3D geometry and textures, or merging massive photographic panoramas. M2 Max has a next-gen 12-core CPU with up to eight high-performance and four high-efficiency cores that delivers up to 20 percent greater performance over M1 Max, and a more powerful media engine than M2 Pro, with twice the ProRes acceleration to dramatically speed up media playback and transcoding.

With M2 Max on MacBook Pro:

• Effects rendering in Cinema 4D is up to 6x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro and up to 30 percent faster than the previous generation.
• Color grading in DaVinci Resolve is up to 2x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro and up to 30 percent faster than the previous generation.

Enhanced Connectivity
MacBook Pro now features Wi-Fi 6E for faster wireless connectivity, as well as more advanced HDMI, to support 8K displays up to 60 Hz and 4K displays up to 240 Hz. These new capabilities build on the versatile connectivity options already in MacBook Pro, including three Thunderbolt 4 ports for high-speed connection to peripherals, an SDXC card slot, and MagSafe 3 charging.

macOS Ventura
With macOS Ventura, MacBook Pro delivers even more performance and productivity. Powerful updates like Continuity Camera bring videoconferencing features to any Mac, including Desk View, Center Stage, Studio Light, and more. Handoff in FaceTime allows users to start a FaceTime call on their iPhone or iPad and fluidly pass it over to their Mac, or vice versa. And tools like Stage Manager automatically organize apps and windows, so users can concentrate on the task at hand and still see everything in a single glance.

Messages and Mail are better than ever, while Safari—the world's fastest browser on Mac—ushers in a passwordless future with passkeys. With iCloud Shared Photo Library, users can now create and share a separate photo library among up to six family members, and the new Freeform app provides a flexible canvas that helps users be more productive and expressive, whether they are planning or brainstorming on their own, or together with others. With the power and popularity of Apple silicon, and new developer tools in Metal 3, gaming on Mac has never been better.

MacBook Pro and the Environment
MacBook Pro is designed to minimize its impact on the environment, including 100 percent of the following recycled materials: aluminium in the enclosure, rare earth elements in all magnets, tin in the solder of the main logic board, and gold in the plating of multiple printed circuit boards. It also features 35 percent or more recycled plastic in multiple components, and meets Apple's high standards for energy efficiency. MacBook Pro is free of numerous harmful substances, and 97 percent of the packaging is fiber based, bringing Apple closer to its goal of completely removing plastic from its packaging by 2025.
Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations, and by 2030, plans to be 100 percent carbon neutral across the entire manufacturing supply chain and all product life cycles. This means that every Apple device sold, from component manufacturing, assembly, transport, customer use, charging, all the way to recycling and material recovery, will have net-zero climate impact.

Pricing and Availability

• The new MacBook Pro models with M2 Pro and M2 Max are available to order today, January 17, on apple.com/store and in the Apple Store app in 27 countries and regions, including the US. They will begin arriving to customers and will be in Apple Store locations and Apple Authorized Resellers starting Tuesday, January 24.
• MacBook Pro with M2 Pro and M2 Max will be available in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, New Zealand, and Singapore beginning Friday, February 3.
• The new 14-inch MacBook Pro with M2 Pro starts at $1,999 (US), and $1,849 (US) for education; and the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M2 Pro starts at $2,499 (US), and $2,299 (US) for education. Additional technical specifications, configure-to-order options, and accessories are available at apple.com/mac.
• Every customer who buys a Mac from Apple can enjoy a free Online Personal Session with an Apple Specialist, get their product set up in select stores including help with data transfer, and receive guidance on how to make their new Mac work the way they want.
• With Apple Trade In, customers can trade in their current computer and get credit toward a new Mac. Customers can visit apple.com/shop/trade-in to see what their device is worth.
• AppleCare+ for Mac provides expert technical support and additional hardware coverage from Apple, including up to two incidents of accidental damage protection every 12 months, each subject to a fee.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[PenguinBelly]

Mackbook Air (M2) is discounted at Amazon. Just FYI.

Edit: Never mind. Looks like OOS.

 

[playerlorenzo]

Benchmarks of the M2 Max iGPU would be interesting to see, especially with those claims Apple makes about performance.

 

[Fouquin]

Here, have a benchmark from a PVT that I ran back in July. The machine this was run on was part of the PVT0 run made in November 2021. Yes, it took them 14 months to get these laptops to market. Look at how cut down M2 Pro is to see why; serious fab issues.



The version of Ventura I had on this machine was not capable of really using the G14X GPU, so R23 is all you get. The chip is technically M2 Max (8P+4E+38 FSTP) but was not yet up to speed on DRAM so it only got 64GB enabled out of 96GB. Curse of early silicon.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Benchmarks of the M2 Max iGPU would be interesting to see, especially with those claims Apple makes about performance.

The M2 max should have been put in the mini. Apple's bizzare love hate relationship with that little box will never cease to amaze me.

 

[cvaldes]

The M2 max should have been put in the mini. Apple's bizzare love hate relationship with that little box will never cease to amaze me.

Product segmentation. Apple wants to drive people interested in the M2 Max to the Mac Studio. It's likely they will release Mac Studio with the Max SoC at some point.

Remember that notebooks comprise >85% of Macs sold and they sell more of the entry-level iMacs than the other desktops. Apple doesn't really need to proliferate a bajillion Mac mini and Mac Studio SKUs. That's not really their style anyhow (if you haven't been paying attention).

Likely there are prototype M2 Max Mac minis somewhere in a lab in Cupertino. For whatever combination of reasons (probably not just one), Apple decided not to take it to market.

The Mac Studio has a more robust thermal solution than the Mac mini so side by side, an M2 Pro Mac Studio would outperform the M2 Pro Mac mini from an acoustic comparison. This was probably well noted in lab tests.

It would have been a niche item in already what is a niche product family, probably less than one percent of total Mac unit sales. Especially for their desktop Macs, they don't need to have a lot of product overlap.

With the transition to their own chips, Apple is at least showing more attention to the Mac mini family with more frequent updates. That's a good sign compared to their infrequent updates when the product line was still using Intel CPUs and reliant on Intel's ability (or lack thereof to be more accurate) to stick to a product roadmap in a timely manner.

 

[Minus Infinity]

Apple still using an ancient 3 gen old Intel cpu as a benchmark I see.

 

[Chaitanya]

CrApple tax on upgrades at the time of purchase(given those are forced at the time of purchase with CrApple soldering everything) is stupidly high. $400 for 64GB of Ram(from 32GB), $400 for 2TB SSD(from 1TB)(for 8TB drive its $2200 extra), $200 for upgraded GPU(30C to 38C). Fully decked out 14" MacBook Pro is $6300 compared to $3100(even that is a rip-off).

 

[Scrizz]

Apple still using an ancient 3 gen old Intel cpu as a benchmark I see.

this

 

[Rakhmaninov3]

Just bought the M1 Pro 14" this past weekend for $1599 from Best Buy/they and Amazon were having a deal on them. Really is a nice computer for the $1599 price, I was very hesitant to drop $2k on it. I don't do any sort video editing or anything very compute intensive but I do love the build quality and the screen looks great. OS has some sort of magic witchery going on that makes it fun to use. And the touchpad is nice as well.