Apple introduced an updated MacBook Pro with even more powerful chips. The company announced that the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros will receive processors from the M4 series, namely the M4 Pro and M4 Max. The smaller laptop will also be available in the most affordable version with an M4 chip and minor external upgrades: it will have one more USB-C port (Thunderbolt 4) and will be available in black. Naturally, Apple Intelligence's AI features will also be available.
Like previous models, Apple laptops powered by the M4 Pro processor will start at $1,999 for the 14-inch model and $2,499 for the 16-inch model. In addition to the new chips, the new products also get more RAM - 24 GB instead of the previous 18 GB in the base configurations. Meanwhile, the 14-inch MacBook Pro with a regular M4 chip will offer 16GB of RAM and retail for $1,599.
Apple M4 Pro is available in configurations with 12 or 14 processor cores and 16 or 20 graphics cores, respectively. In turn, the new M4 Max offers 14 or 16 processor cores, which are complemented by 32- and 40-core graphics accelerators, respectively. In all cases, the chip carries a 16-core neural "engine". The new items offer up to 128 GB of RAM and SSDs with capacities from 512 GB to 8 TB.
Apple claims that all M4 series chips feature “the fastest processing core in the world” and “industry-leading single-threaded performance”. Single-core performance is a strong point of Apple's M1-generation Mac chips, and the M4 chips promise “significantly higher multi-threaded performance”.
The M4 Pro and Max also have faster GPU cores, and the ray tracing system is twice as fast. The Neural Engine is also twice as fast as the M3, enabling improved performance with machine learning and artificial intelligence.
In addition to improved chips and RAM, the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M4 Pro and M4 Max chips became Apple's first laptops with Thunderbolt 5 ports. In addition, the new products are equipped with an SD card slot, HDMI output and MagSafe. All three MacBook Pros feature new 12-megapixel webcams with wider viewing angles and desktop capture capabilities. Apple claims the new products will have 24 hours of battery life with video playback.
Each new product also offers as an option a new Liquid Retina XDR display with a nanotextured coating, which is capable of providing a brightness of up to 1000 cd/m2 when displaying ordinary content and up to 1600 cd/m2 in HDR. Screen resolution is 3456 × 2234 pixels for the 16.2-inch model and 3024 × 1964 pixels for the 14.2-inch laptop.