Apple Unveils 16-inch MacBook Pro with New M1 Pro, M1 Max

Olufemi Adeyemi 

Apple has introduced its new 16-inch MacBook Pro, promising an upgrade in both design and performance. Models will be available in silver and space gray next week, with a starting price of $2,499.

Available in 14 and 16″, the new MacBook Pro features Apple’s all-new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips. Like the original M1 chip, the new Apple silicon promises to deliver dramatically improved performance and power efficiency, ensuring the new MacBook Pro is the most powerful MacBook ever made.

The biggest news about the MacBook Pro is that it will feature Apple’s all-new “pro chips,” the insanely powerful M1 Pro and M1 Max.

What does “insanely powerful” mean? According to Apple, by scaling up the original M1′s architecture, the M1 Pro delivers dramatically increased performance speed, battery life, and power efficiency. And the M1 Max takes those improved capabilities even further. Look here.

Compared to a high-end configuration of last year’s 13″ MacBook Pro with M1 Chip, a new 14-inch MacBook Pro can:

• Render 4K video up to 9.2x faster in Final Cut Pro with M1 Pro and up to 13.4x faster with M1 Max
• Render effects up to 3.6x faster in Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve Studio with M1 Pro, and up to 5x faster with M1 Max
• Track objects up to 8.7x faster in Final Cut Pro with M1 Pro and up to 11.5x faster with M1 Max. 

The new MacBook Pro is available in two sizes – 14” and 16”. They both have a 120Hz ProMotion mini-LED display a.k.a. Liquid Retina XDR display with slimmer bezels and a notch for a 1080p camera. But Face ID isn’t coming to MacBooks, at least not this year. The 14” version has a 14.2” screen with a 3024 x 1964 resolution while the 16” version has a 16.2” screen with a 3456 x 2234 resolution.

While Apple has added a notch, it has removed the touchbar and replaced it with physical keys. There is a MagSafe three-port but you can also charge the computers through one of the Thunderbolt 4 ports. There is also an HDMI port, headphone jack, and an SDXC card slot. The new MacBooks pack six speakers (four force-canceling woofers and two high-performance tweeters) with spatial audio.

The MacBook Pro 14” starts at $1999 for the base model with an M1 Pro chipset that has an 8-core CPU and a 14-core GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of SSD storage. The 10-core CPU version with the same RAM, 1TB SSD, and a 96W USB-C Power Adapter is priced at $2499.

The 16” model starts at $2499 for the base configuration with a 10-core M1 Pro processor, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD storage, a 140W USB-C power adapter. An extra $200 gets you 1TB of storage while an additional $1000 gets you the M1 Max with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD. There are multiple configurations to choose from and you can choose a model with up to 64GB of RAM.

Both laptops are available in Silver and Space Gray. Pre-orders are open today and they will be available next week.

October 19, 2021