Apple's new 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, unveiled on Tuesday, didn't include a processor upgrade due to Broadwell delays, but it did get a Force Touch trackpad and one other major improvement -- new PCIe-based flash storage that Apple says is 2.5 times faster than the flash storage in previous-generation machines, with throughput up to 2GB/s.
In benchmark testing conducted by French site MacGeneration [Google Translate], the entry-level 2.2GHz 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM and 256GB of storage lived up to Apple's claims, demonstrating impressive read/write speeds that topped out at 2GB/s and 1.25GB/s, respectively, in QuickBench 4.0.
Those read/write speeds far exceed the read/write speeds achieved by the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Air, which also received faster flash storage that doubles the speeds available in previous-generation 13-inch MacBook Air machines. The 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro's performance is similar to the 13-inch MacBook Air.
At speeds that reach 2GB/s throughput, the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro has the fastest storage of any of Apple's notebooks. It took 14 seconds to transfer an 8.76GB file to the machine, compared to 32 seconds for the slower Retina MacBook. With small files, read/write speeds exceed a gigabyte per second.
Like the 2015 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro and 13-inch MacBook Air, the revamped 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro uses a solid state drive manufactured by Samsung. As noted by MacGeneration, it does not use the faster NVM Express SSD protocol that the 13-inch model was updated to, suggesting future machines could see even greater performance improvements with a swap to the next-generation protocol and with continued leaps in SSD technology.
Apple's 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro is available from the online Apple Store at prices that start at $1,999. The notebooks continue to use Haswell processors, but should see performance boosts due to the faster solid state drives.
Monday September 22, 2025 12:44 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple released the first beta of iOS 26.1 today, just a week after launching iOS 26. iOS 26.1 mainly adds new languages to Apple Intelligence, but there are a few other features that are worth knowing about.
New Apple Intelligence Languages
Apple Intelligence is now available in Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese (Portugal), Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (Traditional), and Vietnamese.
AirPo...
Monday September 22, 2025 10:00 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
The next Apple TV is expected to be released later this year, and a handful of new features and changes have been rumored for the device.
Below, we recap what to expect from the next Apple TV, according to rumors.
Likely Features
N1 Chip With Wi-Fi 7
Last year, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the next Apple TV would be equipped with Apple's own combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, which is...
Monday September 22, 2025 11:15 am PDT by Juli Clover
With iOS 26.1, Apple Intelligence is gaining support for additional languages, including Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese (Portugal), Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (Traditional), and Vietnamese.
Apple announced plans to expand the languages that can be used with Apple Intelligence last year, and now the added language support is here. Apple Intelligence is now available in the following...
Monday September 22, 2025 7:29 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
The website ChargerLAB has tested the iPhone 17 Pro Max's USB-C charging speeds with a variety of Apple's chargers, from 18W to 140W.
The device reached a peak charging speed of around 36W with the following Apple chargers:40W Dynamic Power Adapter with 60W Max
61W USB-C Power Adapter
67W USB-C Power Adapter
70W USB-C Power Adapter
96W USB-C Power Adapter
140W USB-C Power AdapterFor...
Monday September 22, 2025 8:44 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple's latest iPhone models launched on Friday, and some early adopters of the devices are experiencing intermittent Wi-Fi issues.
Affected customers say Wi-Fi connectivity periodically cuts out on the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air, with hundreds of comments about the issue posted across the MacRumors Forums, Reddit, and the Apple Support Community over the...
Monday September 22, 2025 2:16 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Next year's rumored foldable iPhone will showcase an ultra-thin design resembling "two titanium iPhone Airs side-by-side," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Writing in the Q&A section of his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman says Apple's first foldable device will be "super thin and a design achievement," combining Apple's thinnest iPhone form factor with cutting-edge folding...
Tuesday September 23, 2025 8:55 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
While the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are still a year away, there are already a few rumors about the devices that offer an early look ahead.
Below, we have recapped some of the early iPhone 18 Pro rumors so far. This story was published previously, and it has been updated to reflect the latest rumors.
Many early rumors prove to be true, but nothing is confirmed yet, and Apple's...
Wednesday September 24, 2025 10:22 am PDT by Juli Clover
The marks on the iPhone 17 Pro models that people have noticed at Apple retail stores are caused by the chargers that Apple uses, Apple confirmed today.
Apple told 9to5Mac that worn MagSafe charging stands in stores are causing marks on the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max. Apple says that the marks are not scratches, and are instead material transfer from the stand to the phone. The...
Tuesday September 23, 2025 1:06 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Digital ID, the iOS 26 feature that lets U.S. passport holders add their passports to the Wallet app, is coming later in 2025, Apple confirmed today.
Apple updated the release timing wording of Digital ID on its iOS 26 features page. "Digital ID will be coming later this year with US passports only," it reads.
Prior to today, the footnote for the feature said "Digital ID will be available ...
Tuesday September 23, 2025 2:18 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Early reports have suggested that the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air are more vulnerable to scratches and scuffs, primarily due to damage spotted at Apple Stores.
Apple customers have discovered that the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro models Apple has out for display at its retail locations have scratching in the area of the MagSafe charger. Those devices are handled by hundreds to thousands of...
:eek::eek: 2000MB/s read, thats utter insanity?! There isn't a M.2 SSD on the market that i've seen do that and Apple haven't even barely uttered a word about it!
A lot of my work involves copying files from one Mac to another, this is reason enough for me to get the 1TB version, it'll more than saturate the Thunderbolt 2 connection which just about reaches 1400MB/s
If only they'd popped this into the Retina iMacs at the same time. I'm more interested in SSD speed than processor increases to be honest, day to day speed is far more affected by drive reading and write - it makes me laugh how people on here only consider "faster" to be a more powerful CPU, they probably barely do anything that totally saturates the CPU very often unless they really are doing video encoding.
I would rather have half that speed and twice the storage. I currently have a sdd with 1/4 of the speed, there has never been a time where it thought "I wish this was faster".
That's probably because you do very basic tasks. I need all the speed I can get. I do a ton of movie editing and a fast CPU and fast storage is extremely important.
