Apple this week expanded its lineup of Apple silicon chips with the new M2 Pro and M2 Max processors, building on the M2 chip announced in June. The new lineup of M2 chips represents the second generation of Apple silicon that can now now be found in the latest Macs.
The M2 Pro and M2 Max are noteworthy upgrades over the M1 Pro and M1 Max, bringing more performance, battery life, and capabilities to professional users. Below, we've listed five of the most important details you need to know about Apple's latest Mac chips.
A Lot of Memory Bandwidth: The new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips feature the same memory bandwidth as their respective predecessor, which is some of the highest in the industry. Like the M1 Pro, the M2 Pro chip supports up to 200GB/s of memory bandwidth, while the M2 Max supports 400GB/s of memory bandwidth like the M1 Max.
Even Longer Battery Life: The M1 Pro and M1 Max have two high-efficiency cores, whereas the M2 Pro and M2 Max both feature four efficiency cores, allowing the new Macs to tackle heavy workloads using less energy, thereby conserving battery life.
Tons More Transistors: Thanks to the use of second-generation 5nm process technology, the M2 Pro has 40 billion transistors, which is 20% more than the M1 Pro. With M2 Max, the jump is even bigger – its 67 billion transistors is 10 billion more than the number used in the M1 Max.
Highest Unified Memory Yet in a MacBook Pro: 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros configured with the high-end M2 Max processor now support up to 96GB of unified memory. The 96GB of memory option is an additional $800, on top of the $200 extra for the higher-end variant of the M2 Max chip.
Connect Even More Displays: 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros and Mac mini models configured with M2 Pro support up to two external displays. M2 Pro supports two 6K displays over Thunderbolt, or one 6K display at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one 4K display at 144Hz over HDMI. MacBook Pro models with M2 Max support up to four displays: three displays with 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one more 4K display at 144Hz over HDMI. M2 Max also supports two 6K displays at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, and one 8K display at 60Hz or one 4K display at 240Hz over HDMI.
The new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro can be configured with both M2 Pro and M2 Max, while the updated Mac mini can be configured with either M2 or M2 Pro. Both the new MacBook Pro and Mac mini are available for pre-order on Apple's website and will begin arriving to customers on Tuesday, January 24.
The expanded display support throws up an interesting conundrum - it seems that the 8k60 (or 4k240) is only supported by the HDMI port and that the Thunderbolt interface is limited to 6k60. This means that to get the highest performance video output you can't have a one-cable solution (USB-C) and none of Apple's displays accept HDMI in (and don't seem to support >60 Hz)... Even a new Apple XDR display that supported 120 Hz would still need an HDMI cable. Does this imply that the ports are still DisplayPort 1.4? (the PC market is moving to DisplayPort 2.1 and plant of GPUs and monitors with support were announced at CES)
On battery life, does this mean maxing out the CPU will give less battery life than M1 Pro/Max as it seems that the increased battery life advertised arises from the low power cores being able to do a bigger proportion of low-mid level tasks?
HDMI 2.1 offers 48Gbps whereas Thunderbolt 4 is limited to 40 Gbps. You need 43 Gbps for 8K, 60Hz in 4.2.0. This means that the MacBook Pro's support for 8K is limited to 4.2.0 chroma subsampling: fine for watching movies, unsuitable for grading movies, OK for gaming but downright awful for displaying text at 1x the resolution, but probably alright at 2x retina. https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/chroma-subsampling
My guess is that next year's laptops will offer Thunderbolt 5, which offers 80Gbps and will allow full 4.4.4 chroma subsampling, and the next XDR display will be 8K and require Thunderbolt 5. Or maybe, Apple will put two Thunderbolt ports on that future XDR and allow 2022 MacBook Pros to output 4.4.4 to it using 2x Thunderbolt 4 connections. Similar to how the Dell UP3218K uses two Displayport connections (this monitor seems incompatible with the 2022 MacBook Pro and I've only read about one person using it with a Mac, using a Mac Pro 7.1, two PCIe graphics cards and a fair amount of hacking).
The expanded display support throws up an interesting conundrum - it seems that the 8k60 (or 4k240) is only supported by the HDMI port and that the Thunderbolt interface is limited to 6k60. This means that to get the highest performance video output you can't have a one-cable solution (USB-C) and none of Apple's displays accept HDMI in (and don't seem to support >60 Hz)... Even a new Apple XDR display that supported 120 Hz would still need an HDMI cable. Does this imply that the ports are still DisplayPort 1.4? (the PC market is moving to DisplayPort 2.1 and plant of GPUs and monitors with support were announced at CES)
On battery life, does this mean maxing out the CPU will give less battery life than M1 Pro/Max as it seems that the increased battery life advertised arises from the low power cores being able to do a bigger proportion of low-mid level tasks?
Can we expect a MacBook Pro redesign in 2024? I'm really not a fan of the bulky design and the all black keyboard. ?
I'm a fan of it. I think the design is great. I'm pretty sure it's ”bulky” (I think it's heavy, but not bulky) for a reason. If you want slim there's MacBook Air.
Another thing: Every upgrade extra is ridiculous expensive. You can upgrade your M2 chip with $1000's worth of extra cores, graphical cores of unified memory.
While benchmarks will be interesting to see compared to the M1 Pro & M1 Max, I've still got no regrets buying my 14" MBP with the M1 Pro back in July and not waiting for the M2-series.
Battery life already lasts longer than I need it to and I don't use high-refresh rate displays. And the machine is currently faster than I need anyway. So the M2 Pro isn't bringing anything else to the table.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy they're out, but Apple hardware is so good currently, I no longer need to upgrade constantly.
Wednesday January 25, 2023 9:40 am PST by Joe Rossignol
After announcing new Mac and HomePod models last week, Apple adjusted its trade-in values for select devices in the United States.
iPhone trade-in values decreased by up to $80, and most Android smartphones also went down. Mac trade-in values remained unchanged or increased by up to $40 depending on the model, while some Apple Watch models increased in value and others decreased. Trade-in...
Tuesday January 24, 2023 4:53 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple's next-generation iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max are expected to be announced in September as usual. Already, rumors suggest the devices will have at least seven exclusive features not available on the standard iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus.
An overview of the seven features rumored to be exclusive to iPhone 15 Pro models:A17 chip: iPhone 15 Pro models will be equipped with an A17...
Tuesday January 24, 2023 1:11 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
While the new Mac mini with the M2 chip has a lower $599 starting price, the base model with 256GB of storage has slower SSD read and write speeds compared to the previous-generation model with the M1 chip and 256GB of storage.
A teardown of the new Mac mini shared by YouTube channel Brandon Geekabit reveals that the 256GB model is equipped with only a single 256GB storage chip, while the...
Tuesday January 24, 2023 10:10 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple today released tvOS 16.3, the third major point update to the tvOS 16 operating system that originally came out in September. Available for the Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD, tvOS 16.3 comes six weeks after tvOS 16.2, an update that added Apple Music Sing.
The tvOS 16.3 update can be downloaded over the air through the Settings app on the Apple TV by going to System > Software...
Monday January 23, 2023 10:06 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple today released watchOS 9.3, the third major update to the watchOS 9 operating system that first launched in September. watchOS 9.3 comes over a month after watchOS 9.2, an update that added new Workout functionality and Crash Detection optimizations.
watchOS 9.3 can be downloaded for free through the Apple Watch app on the iPhone by opening it up and going to General > Software Update. ...
Friday January 20, 2023 11:43 am PST by Joe Rossignol
In a recent press release, Apple confirmed that iOS 16.3 will be released to the public next week. The software update will be available for the iPhone 8 and newer and includes a handful of new features, changes, and bug fixes.
Below, we've recapped bigger features in iOS 16.3, including support for physical security keys as a two-factor authentication option for Apple ID accounts, worldwide ...
Tuesday January 24, 2023 1:45 pm PST by Juli Clover
The new M2-series MacBook Pro and Mac mini models launched today, marking the debut of the first M2 Pro and M2 Max chips. We have the M2 Pro Mac mini on hand, and thought we'd take a look at the machine and do a series of benchmarks to see how it fits into Apple's lineup.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. Base model Mac mini machines come with either an M2 or M2 Pro...
Monday January 23, 2023 10:09 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple today released macOS Ventura 13.2, the second major update to the macOS Ventura operating system initially released in October. macOS Ventura 13.2 comes more than a month after macOS Ventura 13.1, an update that added the Freeform app and other changes.
The macOS Ventura 13.2 update can be downloaded for free on all eligible Macs using the Software Update section of System...
Apple on January 23 released iOS 16.3, delivering support for Security Keys for Apple IDs, changes to Emergency SOS functionality, support for the second-generation HomePod, and more.
Top Rated Comments
This means that the MacBook Pro's support for 8K is limited to 4.2.0 chroma subsampling: fine for watching movies, unsuitable for grading movies, OK for gaming but downright awful for displaying text at 1x the resolution, but probably alright at 2x retina. https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/chroma-subsampling
My guess is that next year's laptops will offer Thunderbolt 5, which offers 80Gbps and will allow full 4.4.4 chroma subsampling, and the next XDR display will be 8K and require Thunderbolt 5. Or maybe, Apple will put two Thunderbolt ports on that future XDR and allow 2022 MacBook Pros to output 4.4.4 to it using 2x Thunderbolt 4 connections. Similar to how the Dell UP3218K uses two Displayport connections (this monitor seems incompatible with the 2022 MacBook Pro and I've only read about one person using it with a Mac, using a Mac Pro 7.1, two PCIe graphics cards and a fair amount of hacking).
On battery life, does this mean maxing out the CPU will give less battery life than M1 Pro/Max as it seems that the increased battery life advertised arises from the low power cores being able to do a bigger proportion of low-mid level tasks?
Every upgrade extra is ridiculous expensive.
You can upgrade your M2 chip with $1000's worth of extra cores, graphical cores of unified memory.
Battery life already lasts longer than I need it to and I don't use high-refresh rate displays. And the machine is currently faster than I need anyway. So the M2 Pro isn't bringing anything else to the table.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy they're out, but Apple hardware is so good currently, I no longer need to upgrade constantly.