It is the third day of the week, and another set of important Mac-centric announcements from Apple. The MacBook Pro in 14-inch and 16-inch models get the M4 chips. In case you noticed how I mentioned “M4 chips”, you are right. The M4 chip family now gets extended, with the M4 Pro and M4 Max joining in, to service requirements for users who’d need even more powerful Macs. This also follows the trend from previous Apple silicon generations, with the baseline chip options, along with a more powerful ‘Pro’ iteration, followed by the most powerful ‘Max’ chip for highest spec configurations.
Before talking about the new chips and the refreshed MacBook Pro line, there is also confirmation that the MacBook Air 13-inch and the MacBook Air 15-inch, which are presently on sale with the previous generation M2 and M3 chips, will now get 16GB as the baseline memory spec, up from 8GB before. Prices also do not change, with tags from ₹99,900 onwards. Could this spec tweak mean that there is no broader MacBook Air refresh on the agenda, till early next year? Likely.
Important to detail the M4 chip family first. The M4 chip that we’ve already seen as part of the iPad Pro devices, as well as the iMac and the Mac mini announced in previous days, can be used in iterations with up to a 10-core CPU, a 10-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine. The M4 Pro, also 3-nanometer, builds on that with up to 14 CPU cores, which is further subdivided into 10 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, along with a 20-core GPU. Apple says this is up to 1.9x faster than the CPU of M1 Pro, and up to 2.1x faster than the latest AI PC chip, their comparison being the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V.
Also Read: Apple’s colourful iMac ushers in the M4 chip, and Apple Intelligence era
“Apple silicon has taken the Mac to unprecedented heights, and the rapid pace of innovation continues with M4 Pro and M4 Max. With the world’s fastest CPU core, immensely more powerful GPUs, and the fastest Neural Engine ever, the power-efficient performance and capabilities of the M4 family extend its lead as the most advanced lineup of chips in the industry,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies. The company is, of course, making a strong case for Apple Intelligence, the artificial intelligence (AI) suite, which is now available with the macOS Sequoia update.
The M4 Max, as in previous generations, will set the performance benchmarks for intensive use cases such as 3D art, music composition and data science. The 16-core CPU has 12 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, with a 40-core GPU. Apple says the CPU performance is up to 2.2x faster than the M1 Max and up to 2.5x faster than the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V. The GPU too, they say, is up to 1.9x faster than the M1 Max and up to an astounding 4x faster than the Core Ultra 7 258V for Windows 11 AI PCs. The M4 Max is also built on the 3-nanometer architecture.
Apple says M4 Max supports up to 128GB of fast unified memory and up to 546GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is 4x the bandwidth of the latest Intel Core Ultra 7 258V chip. This allows developers to implement up to 200 billion parameter large language models. There is the enhanced Media Engine too, which now includes two video encode engines and two ProRes accelerators, which would be relevant for video professionals
For now, the M1 Pro and M1 Max are available on the refreshed MacBook Pro models, and not the colourful iMac and the Mac mini, announced earlier this week.
The new, more powerful MacBook Pro
Apple has updated the MacBook Pro, in both 14-inch and 16-inch models, with the choice of the M4, M4 Pro and M4 Max chips. You’ll be paying top money, as is often the case, for cutting-edge Pro moniker MacBooks. The former comes with six default spec options to choose from, with prices starting ₹1,69,900. The larger MacBook Pro has four standard specs to build with, and prices start ₹2,49,900. Besides the important chip upgrades, the minimum memory for the 14-inch MacBook Pro is now 16GB and 24GB depending on spec, and the pairing of 24GB, 36GB and 48GB for the MacBook Pro 16-inch.
“MacBook Pro is an incredibly powerful tool that millions of people use to do their life’s best work, and today we’re making it even better. With the powerful M4 family of chips, and packed with pro features like Thunderbolt 5, an advanced 12MP Center Stage camera, an all-new nano-texture display option, and Apple Intelligence, the new MacBook Pro continues to be, by far, the world’s best pro laptop,” said John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering.
Also Read: Apple’s redesigned the Mac mini, and it is incredibly compact
Not much has changed in terms of the design or colour options. The changes are under the hood, with Apple claiming that the new MacBook Pro are up to 3.4 times faster than the MacBook Pro variants with the M1 chip, 3 times faster than the M1 Pro and 3.5 times faster than an M1 Max. Power per watt optimisations, something Apple has focused on extensively since the first generation of Apple Silicon, means that they are claiming as much as 24 hours of battery life for the M4 and M4 Pro chip-powered versions.
The entire refreshed MacBook Pro line-up for 2024 features the Liquid Retina XDR display, with up to 1000 nits of brightness, and also gets the optional nano-texture coating that is available for the colourful iMac as well as the Studio Display. Other upgrades include a new 12-megapixel Center Stage camera, Thunderbolt 4 ports (or Thunderbolt 5 if you’ve picked the M4 Pro or M4 Max chips), an HDMI port that supports up to 8K resolution, a SDXC card slot, and a MagSafe 3 port for charging.