The rumors were true! Officially Apple this Tuesday announced new hardware. A CPU refresh of the Macbook Pro notebook in both 14- and 16-inch versions.
The computers are equipped with the new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips (modest improvements according to rumors) and come with up to 96 GB of working memory. The computers are updated to current HDMI 2.1 standards.
A new version of the Mac Mini also showed up. It is now available with either the M2 or M2 Pro chip.
M2 Pro is expected to be 10-15% faster than the M1 Pro on CPU tasks. The M2 Max is expected to be 15-20% faster than the M1 Max. CPU specs and performance seem in line with leaked benchmarks and look unimpressive compared to the latest AMD and Intel CPU beasts.
The modest enhancements over M1 are attributed to Apple not being able to move production to 3nm on these chips… The decision is likely to order more 3nm designs from TSMC production for future M3 versions.
A list of enhancements:
- Improved M2 Pro and Max CPUs
- Wifi 6E support
- Improved video encoding/decoding hw.
- Version with 96GB RAM
These models are available as of now.
Pricing for a base model with 32GB RAM and 8-performance +4-efficiency cores capable of 12 threads in total (still no hyperthreading from Apple) and 1TB SSD is $3.500 in the US, £3,749.00 in the UK and 4.149,00 € in Europe.