Apple (Hacker News, MacRumors):
With M4, MacBook Pro is up to 1.8x faster than the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 for tasks like editing gigapixel photos, and even more demanding workloads like rendering complex scenes in Blender are up to 3.4x faster. With a Neural Engine that’s over 3x more powerful than in M1, it’s great for features in Apple Intelligence and other AI workloads. The M4 model also supports two high-resolution external displays in addition to the built-in display, and now features three Thunderbolt 4 ports so users can connect all their peripherals.
[…]
The new MacBook Pro with M4 Pro is up to 3x faster than models with M1 Pro, speeding up workflows like geo mapping, structural engineering, and data modeling.
[…]
With M4 Max, MacBook Pro delivers up to 3.5x the performance of M1 Max, ripping through heavy creative workloads like visual effects, 3D animation, and film scoring.
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The new MacBook Pro introduces an all-new nano-texture display option that dramatically reduces glare and distractions from reflections.
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MacBook Pro includes a new 12MP Center Stage camera that delivers enhanced video quality in challenging lighting conditions.
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MacBook Pro with M4 Pro and M4 Max features Thunderbolt 5 ports that more than double transfer speeds up to 120 Gb/s, enabling faster external storage, expansion chassis, and powerful docking and hub solutions.
The nano-texture display and its non-crazy price are my favorite news here. There are still only 3 Thunderbolt ports, whereas the Intel MacBook Pros had 4. If more Thunderbolt 5 ports are not possible, I wish they would add some USB-C ports, like with the Mac mini. I’d also still like to see a smaller trackpad.
I’m still quite happy with my M1 Pro MacBook Pro, except for when a Lightroom import destroys it. However, this is a tempting upgrade; I’m mainly put off by the RAM and SSD prices. I would probably get it if I used the internal display more.
Jason Snell:
Unlike last year, where only more expensive configurations gained access to the Space Black shade, this year all MacBook Pro models come in just Silver and Space Black, even the base M4 model.
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All three chip levels get a major webcam upgrade to the 12MP Center stage camera, which is the first Mac laptop webcam upgrade in quite a while. And Apple is claiming that all models can get up to 24 hours of battery life, which seems like a bit of a major milestone, even though (as always) battery life is not a simple thing to measure, and can vary widely based on how you use the computer in question.
Jonathan Deutsch:
The battery characteristics on the M4 vs M4 Pro vs M4 Max are interesting.
If you were hoping for a battery life upgrade like me from the M1 Pro, going for the M4 Max would not do very much.
Previously:
Apple Hardware Announcement Apple M4 Apple M4 Max Apple M4 Pro Hardware Mac MacBook Pro macOS 15 Sequoia
Apple (Hacker News, MacRumors):
All three chips are built using industry-leading, second-generation 3-nanometer technology, which improves performance and power efficiency. The CPUs across the M4 family feature the world’s fastest CPU core, delivering the industry’s best single-threaded performance, and dramatically faster multithreaded performance. The GPUs build on the breakthrough graphics architecture introduced in the previous generation, with faster cores and a 2x faster ray-tracing engine. M4 Pro and M4 Max enable Thunderbolt 5 for the Mac for the first time, and unified memory bandwidth is greatly increased — up to 75 percent. Combined with a Neural Engine that’s up to 2x faster than the previous generation and enhanced machine learning (ML) accelerators in the CPUs, the M4 family of chips brings incredible performance for pro and AI workloads.
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M4 Pro features an up to 14-core CPU consisting of up to 10 performance cores and four efficiency cores. It’s up to 1.9x faster than the CPU of M1 Pro, and up to 2.1x faster than the latest AI PC chip. The GPU features up to 20 cores for graphics performance that is 2x that of M4, and up to 2.4x faster than the latest AI PC chip. […] M4 Pro supports up to 64GB of fast unified memory and 273GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is a massive 75 percent increase over M3 Pro and 2x the bandwidth of any AI PC chip.
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M4 Max is the ultimate choice for data scientists, 3D artists, and composers who push pro workflows to the limit. It has an up to 16-core CPU, with up to 12 performance cores and four efficiency cores. It’s up to 2.2x faster than the CPU in M1 Max and up to 2.5x faster than the latest AI PC chip. The GPU has up to 40 cores for performance that is up to 1.9x faster than M1 Max and up to an astounding 4x faster than the latest AI PC chip. […] 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 AI PC chip.
The RAM ceiling for the Pro chip has increased from 36 GB to 64 GB, but for the Max it’s unchanged at 128 GB.
Here’s a summary of the cores situation:
| Regular | Pro | Max |
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| M1 | 4p/4e | 8p/2e | 8p/2e |
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| M2 | 4p/4e | 8p/4e | 8p/4e |
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| M3 | 4p/4e | 6p/6e | 12p/4e |
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| M4 | 4p/6e | 10p/4e | 12p/4e |
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So this seems like a bit of a return to form, where the Pro is closer to the Max, and the Max is mostly attractive for GPU performance and RAM capacity, rather than the CPU. (And you need a $900 BTO option to get those extra 2 cores on the M4 Max.)
Previously:
Apple Hardware Announcement Apple M4 Max Apple M4 Pro Mac Processors
Jason Snell:
I got up and running in no time because I keep a USB drive permanently attached to my Mac Studio, and make sure it’s a complete clone of my drive. When I reinstalled macOS Sequoia, I was able to use Migration Assistant to restore from my cloned backup drive, and it returned me to more or less the same state I had been in when the computer died.
[…]
Yes, I also do a Time Machine backup—because it’s nice to have redundancy and it can be helpful in grabbing a file that’s changed in the past. It used to be that Time Machine was a must-have because your cloned disk wasn’t really a backup, since it only contained the most recent view of your disk, and if a file was deleted a few days earlier, it would not be retrievable.
But with the advent of Apple’s APFS filesystem, tools like Carbon Copy Cloner use the APFS snapshot feature to fill up all the excess space on your backup drive—remember, I bought a 2TB drive for a 1TB disk—with previous versions of your disk. So there are some extra layers of protection, though I’m still running Time Machine and Backblaze too. You can never have enough data protection.
It’s nice that Migration Assistant makes it so easy to restore. The downside is that it can be slow, even if the clone is on an SSD. Back in the day you could just boot directly from the clone and be up and running almost immediately. It helps to keep the bulk of your data files on separate drives or partition so that restoring the home folder doesn’t take as long.
Howard Oakley:
Over the last few weeks I’ve had several questions from those trying to use TM in more demanding circumstances. This article explains how you can design volume layout and backup exclusions for the most efficient backups in such cases.
Previously:
Apple File System (APFS) Backup Carbon Copy Cloner Mac macOS 15 Sequoia Migration Assistant SuperDuper Time Machine
