Last night’s Apple launch event was the shortest in history, but it was short but full of material, starting with a colorful version of HomoPod mini and AirPods 3 as appetizers, followed by two truly explosive dishes, M1 Pro and M1 Max, on a large MacBook Pro plate.
With ProMotion and a wider variety of interfaces on the plate, the MacBook Pro was a real treat for those who stayed up late last night, but after the excitement died down and we returned to our senses, we’ve found some details about the MacBook Pro that weren’t discussed in detail at the event.
The two SoCs are undoubtedly the stars of the show, and it’s their powerful cores that give the MacBook Pro its Pro suffix.
These two SoCs replicate the naming strategy of the iPhone family, one called M1 Pro and the other M1 Max, to indicate their professional positioning and to continue the family genes, still using the 5nm process.
First, the M1 Pro comes in three versions, with two versions of both the CPU (central processing unit) and GPU (graphics processor) available for Apple to arrange and combine, resulting in the following three configurations.
8-core CPU (Performance Core x 6 + Energy Core x 2) and 14-core GPU.
10-core CPU (performance cores x 8 + energy efficient cores x 2) and a 14-core GPU.
10-core CPU (performance cores x 8 + energy efficient cores x 2) and 16-core GPU.
All three versions are equipped with the same number of NPUs (neural network engines), i.e. 16 cores. The M1 Pro has 33.7 billion transistors in its package, more than twice the number of the M1, and runs at up to 70% faster than the M1, with a 3x improvement in the GPU.
The unified memory starts at 16GB and goes up to 32GB, with a memory bandwidth of up to 200GB/s.
If you are not so sensitive to these data, or the reference object is not very valuable, Apple also officially pulled MSI MSI GP66 Leopard 11UG to have a match, the latter is equipped with an Intel i7-11800H octa-core processor.
The results I can only say that Intel will weep when they look at it. From this Apple chart, we can see that the M1 Pro’s CPU performance is 1.7 times higher than the latter’s at the same power consumption level, while the power consumption required to reach its peak performance level is 70% less.
With this performance, the M1 Pro supports up to two external displays with resolutions up to 6K (60Hz) – in this case, Pro Display XDR.
Stronger than you, and more power efficient, all around.
Apple even felt that the M1 Pro wasn’t enough to unleash its performance, so it brought out the M1 Max.
With 10-core CPU + 24-core GPU and 10-core CPU + 32-core GPU, M1 Max is the largest chip Apple has ever built, integrating 57 billion transistors – 70 percent more than the M1 Pro mentioned earlier – and twice the memory bandwidth of the M1 Pro, at 400GB/s, with up to 64GB of unified memory.
As you can see from the version configuration, M1 Max compared to M1 Pro, the improvement is focused on the number of GPU cores, so Apple once again asked MSI GE76 Raider 11UH to compete on GPU performance, this gaming notebook is equipped with NVIDIA RTX 3080 discrete graphics card, the maximum power consumption of 165W.
The chart below shows that the M1 Max achieves the same performance level as the RTX3080 graphics card with 100W less power consumption, resulting in less heat generation and longer battery life. With the ultimate control over power consumption, Apple promises to keep the chip performing at 100% with or without power, without degradation due to battery-powered performance.
GeekBench 5 scores also illustrate the M1 Max’s performance prowess, running a single-core 1749 and multi-core 11542 based on a 32GB configuration. For reference, the i7-11800H on MSI’s GP66 Leopard 11UH scores 1516 single-core and 9626 multi-core.
So a MacBook Pro with M1 Max can be connected to three Pro Display XDR displays via the three Thunderbolt 4 ports and one 4K (60Hz) resolution display via the HDMI port, for a total of four displays.
We used to say that Apple launches would only compare themselves to themselves, but now Apple is frequently competing with its peers. Apple chose this approach, one is to allow the outside world to have a more intuitive feeling of comparison, the second is quite a newborn calf is not afraid of the tiger meaning.
It’s been more than a year since the M1 series chips were born, and the two-year plan to fully transition the Mac to Apple’s own chips has only reached the halfway point, but Apple has already come up with three SoCs – M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max – that are innovative and deadly, and now they’ve even made up for the shortcomings in GPU performance.
We can’t help but look forward to what Apple will unleash on the iMac Pro and Mac Pro in the future.
The bangs are not very elegant, but they’re a necessity
I never thought I’d see the day when bangs would come to notebooks, and Apple has brought mini-LED display technology to the table this time.
Pictures
Apple gave several numbers: 1000, 1600, 10000, 1000000:1 and 1000000000, so many zeros look dazzling, in fact, they represent the full-screen continuous brightness, peak brightness, the number of mini-LED beads, contrast and the number of colors.
The specifications are similar to the Liquid Retina XDR display on the iPad Pro 2021, but it’s rare for the same data to appear on a large screen like a notebook.
The screen on the new MacBook Pro also features ProMotion technology for up to 120Hz refresh rate, but this high refresh rate isn’t for gaming, it’s for video editing where you can choose the right refresh rate based on the frame rate of the material to achieve a higher level of “what you see is what you get.
On the 14.2-inch MacBook Pro, the screen resolution is 3024×1964, while on the 16.2-inch version, the resolution is 3456×2234, both with a pixel density of 254ppi.
In the new macOS Monterey, when the application enters full-screen mode, the top bar will become completely black, which must be to match the bangs in the show.
The reason why Apple is doing the bangs on the laptop is to stuff the lens with a larger aperture in the limited space, the light sensor is also increased accordingly, how to achieve this hardware demand without increasing the top bezel, the bangs screen is on the scene, it is not very elegant and helpless. The actual perception of how it is, we have to wait to give feedback after hands-on personal experience.
Putting the bangs aside, the upgrades on the new MacBook Pro screen are all satisfactory. Now we only hope that the white shadows on the screen can be better controlled in extremely low light conditions.
Apple has a thoughtful answer: a polishing cloth worth $145, or if you happen to be well-off and already have a Pro Display XDR display at home, you can use this lint cloth to wipe down its Nano-texture nano-textured glass panel.
All the usual interfaces are back
In our previous predictions article, we mentioned that MagSafe, SD card slot, and HDMI ports were all expected to return to the new MacBook Pro, and there were a lot of comments saying that wasn’t possible.
In fact, even we were half-hearted about it. This time, Apple has listened to the voices of its users and has arranged all kinds of interfaces on it.
On the left side of the device are the MagSafe 3 port, two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The new headphone jack supports high-resistance headphones and automatically adjusts the volume; on the right side of the device are the SDXC card slot, a Thunderbolt 4 port and an HDMI port.
Apple did not write down the specifications of each interface on the detail page, and we found out afterwards that some of the interfaces do not use the latest protocols, such as the HDMI 2.0 protocol on this device, so this interface only supports up to 4K (60Hz), not 4K (120Hz) as supported by HDMI 2.1.
The newly upgraded MagSafe 3 interface on the 16-inch MacBook Pro can support up to 140W power supply and 50% full charge in half an hour, and the other three Thunderbolt 4 interfaces also support charging at up to 40Gb/s transfer rate.
For years, the MacBook Pro has had its share of complaints about the Touch Bar on top of the keyboard, and even though Apple has continued to add new scenarios for it to be used, it’s not very practical.
So with this generation of MacBook Pro, we can finally say goodbye to the Touch Bar. The original touch bar is now replaced by physical shortcut keys, the keyboard notch is double anodized and blackened, the ESC keycap is enlarged, and the Touch ID on button in the upper right corner makes it visually like a whole keyboard with a wonderful control on the C side.
The keyboard is flanked by a six-speaker system that supports spatial audio, further improving sound quality over the previous generation 16-inch MacBook Pro. And with the new Liquid Retina XDR screen, watching and editing movies is a pleasure.
Thinking about buying? What to choose
Even if you’ve read this far and think you know everything there is to know about the new MacBook Pro, you may still be dizzy from the wide range of options when you click through to the purchase screen, so as usual, we’ll give you some advice on what to choose.
Based on the positioning of the MacBook Pro series, which is geared toward professional users, I’m sure you already know exactly what you need before you buy it, and it depends on whether you value core computing efficiency or graphics power. 16GB of RAM is more than enough for most users.
If your daily work is more about graphics, look to the M1 Max, which has the GPU performance to boost your productivity by leaps and bounds.
Apple has officially compared the M1 Pro (16-core GPU) with the M1 Max (32-core GPU) for Final Cut Pro, Maxon Cinema 4D, Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve Studio, Adobe Photoshop, Affinity Photo, and other graphics software. The comparison between M1 Pro (16-core GPU) and M1 Max (32-core GPU) has been conducted, except for Photoshop, where there is no significant difference, but in other software, M1 Max with 32 cores is clearly superior, and it renders 8K video almost twice as fast on FCPX.
The number of cores plays a big role in the hard work of rendering. So if you’re in post, modeling, color grading, etc., the M1 Max is clearly your first choice.
As for the screen size, memory, storage and other parameters, there’s not much to it, just enough to get by, and both sizes can be optioned with the SoC specs you want.
I don’t know if these two MacBook Pro models have made up for your regrets. Anyway, I think it’s amazing and very exciting.
Apple has brought 2021 to a successful conclusion with two new cores, and we are ready to give you a first-hand experience report.
