The newly refreshed 13" Retina MacBook Pro announced on Monday is seeing comparable performance to the mid-2014 model, according to the latest Geekbench benchmark. The early 2015 model with an Intel Core i5 processor clocked at 2.7GHz achieved a single-core score of 3043 and a multi-core score of 6448, a minor variance from last year's low-end 13" Retina MacBook Pro single-core score of 3056 and multi-core score of 6554.
The latest 11" MacBook Air, with an Intel Core i5 processor clocked at 1.6GHz, also performed comparably to its predecessor in Geekbench benchmarks, with its single-core score of 2753 and multi-core score of 5486 marginally higher than the mid-2014 model's scores of 2430 and 5291 respectively. Meanwhile, the new 13" MacBook Air had modestly lower scores, although more benchmarks will need to be averaged before results are conclusive.
John Poole of Primate Labs, the makers of Geekbench, claims that the latest MacBook Pro and Air may see slight performance improvements after OS X Yosemite gets through first-boot housekeeping, so further benchmarks results will be needed for those models as well to determine accurate performance. Nevertheless, it is clear that this year's refreshed MacBooks deliver only negligible improvements over the year-ago models.
The results are largely unsurprising given Intel's focus on improving battery life versus performance with its latest Broadwell processors. The new MacBook Air and Pro lineups also have faster graphics and flash storage, two areas where improvements should be more noticeable over last year's models. The refreshed 13" Retina MacBook Pro in particular is up to 40% faster than the previous model with Intel Iris graphics.
Apple refreshed the MacBook Air lineup yesterday with Intel Broadwell processors, Thunderbolt 2 and Intel HD Graphics 6000. It also refreshed the 13" MacBook Pro with similar improvements, including Intel Broadwell processors, Intel HD Graphics 6100 and all-day battery life. The latest MacBook Pros also gained a trackpad with built-in Force Touch technology that detects a small tap versus a deep press and performs a different action accordingly.
Thursday November 27, 2025 1:01 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
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We've been focusing on deals on physical products over the past few weeks, but Black Friday is also a great time of year to purchase a streaming membership. Some of the biggest services have great discounts for new and select returning members this week, including Disney+, Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock, and more.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a...
We've been focusing on deals on physical products over the past few weeks, but Black Friday is also a great time of year to purchase a streaming membership. Some of the biggest services have great discounts for new and select returning members this week, including Apple TV, Disney+, Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock, and more.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When...
Black Friday is in full swing, and as always this is the best time of the year to shop for great deals, including popular Apple products like AirPods, iPad, Apple Watch, and more. In this article, the majority of the discounts will be found on Amazon.
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Singapore has ordered Apple to block or filter messages on iMessage that impersonate government agencies, requiring the company to implement new anti-spoofing protections by December as part of efforts to curb rising online scams, the Straits Times reports.
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Apple's disappointing iPhone Air sales are causing major Chinese mobile vendors to scrap or freeze their own ultra-thin phone projects, according to reports coming out of Asia.
Since the iPhone Air launched in September, there have been reports of poor sales and manufacturing cuts, while Apple's supply chain has scaled back shipments and production.
Apple supplier Foxconn has...
So this is apparently what it's like to be in the Mac ecosystem now. Hoping that performance on this year's models will not be worse than last year's models, and that Apple doesn't take away more in terms of features than it adds.
...which were the same as the 2013 models. Good job Intel! (not really Apple's fault)
To be fair, the goal for that refresh was power consumption, and they really delivered on increased battery life. Also Broadwell is just a die shrinkage so none of this is unexpected.
