MacBook Pro 2023
Introducing the new MacBook Pro and Mac mini supercharged by the next generation of Apple silicon.
Apple (Hacker News, MacRumors):
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.
[…]
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 96GB of unified memory in the M2 Max model, creators can work on scenes so large that PC laptops can’t even run them.
[…]
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.
Still the huge trackpad and three Thunderbolt ports, unfortunately, despite four on the new Mac mini.
Previously on the 2021 MacBook Pro models, the HDMI 2.0 port only supports a single 4K display with a refresh rate of up to 60Hz.
But the more advanced HDMI port on the new MacBook Pro models with M2 Pro and M2 Max chips means they now provide support for 8K displays up to 60Hz and 4K displays up to 240Hz.
Previously:
Update (2023-01-25): Jason Snell:
If you’re someone with an M1 MacBook Pro, you shouldn’t feel particularly envious of these new models. Unless you’ve been feeling buyer’s remorse about not spending enough on that laptop to make it more powerful, I can’t see why you’d upgrade from an M1 MacBook Pro to an M2 model. On the outside, these computers are essentially identical.
[…]
If you’re upgrading from an Intel laptop, you’re going to love the new MacBook Pro. However, you may notice that upgrading from the base configurations is more expensive than you might have expected. Due to the integrated nature of Apple’s processors, memory is not upgradeable after the fact—so you’ll need to choose your memory up front, and choosing a larger configuration will cost. Likewise, storage is tightly integrated, and Apple’s storage options rapidly rise in price.
Like the base level M2 MacBook Air, the base level of the latest 14″ MacBook Pro seems to feature fewer NAND chips – at a higher capacity – than the last generation. This results in SSD read and write performance that’s dramatically lower than the previous generation.
See also: MacRumors.
Update (2023-01-27): Dominic Feira:
The really annoying thing is that none of these differences show up in the specs. If they were just up front about it, it would suck, but it would be at least somewhat defensible.
The fact that we have to wait for 3rd parties to determine the differences is just stupid.
The thing is, the two YouTube reviews of the M2 Pro (14" & 16") that I watched, ended with something along the lines of “Buy a refurb M1 Pro 14" or 16" as that’s better value for money”.
Apple really isn’t helping their reputation with stunts like these.
Update (2023-01-30): Om Malik:
I connected the new laptop to this network and saw my connected speeds go from 350 Mbps down and 400 Mbps up to over 800 Mbps down and 800 Mbps+ on the uplink. My network provider — Google’s Webpass can only provide 1 Gbps, so this is as fast as what I am getting on my Wired Ethernet connection.
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Yeah, I wonder about the fourth Thunderbolt port too. There is seemingly enough bandwidth since the M2 Pro Mac mini has enough for four Thunderbolt Ports and HDMI 2.1. Maybe it’s space constrained?
I think last year I would’ve argued that the HDMI port was strictly worse than a fourth Thunderbolt port, since they were simply using a DisplayPort to HDMI converter chip internally (per iFixit teardown). But now that it uses HDMI 2.1, I think the space used by the SD slot would be better served by a fourth Thunderbolt port. Any word on whether the slot is still limited to UHS-I? I’m also curious to see how the HDMI port is wired up, since I assume they’re no longer using DisplayPort internally.
Correction: I got my SD card standards mixed up. The 2021 MBPs support UHS-II, not UHS-I, although MacRumors reports the 2021 MBP is limited to 250 MB/s, rather than the 312 MB/s theoretical peak.
The next step up from UHS-II would be UHS-III, but there’s also the significantly faster SD Express. Unfortunately, despite both being developed by the SD Association, UHS-II+ and SD Express are not compatible with each other, because they both make use of a second row of (incompatible) pins. At least both formats can fallback to UHS-I.
Apple’s KB article for the SD card readers hasn’t been updated since March, so it’s unclear what’s on the new MBP. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204384
