Even in analog time, five years is an incredibly long span. When Apple last presented a new MacBook Pro generation, it was in 2016, Corona was a beer brand, Hamburger SV was a Bundesliga club and Donald Trump was a TV clown. By Silicon Valley standards, five years in the past are roughly in the Pleistocene, which is forever. The marketing of the group with targeted distribution of information crumbs to selected experts works perfectly as always, so everyone who is interested in Apple already knew before the presentation on Monday: A new computer was coming.
In fact, there is a new generation of MacBook Pro, in 14-inch and 16-inch formats. The company calls the two devices “beasts” that it will let off the leash, they are also the US company’s high-end notebooks. But this Monday wasn’t just about the chips that bring these computers to life. Apple now apparently wants to be perceived as a company that listens to its customers. In the case of the MacBook Pros, this means: Away with the unloved touch-sensitive control element called the touchbar, instead there are now conventional function keys again. In addition, the MagSafe power supply connection returns, a quick-release, magnetic plug-in connection. Furthermore, the two new models now again have numerous ports for connecting peripheral devices and memory cards.
In addition, an improved camera for the video conference times, in which we have been living for a year and a half, but not in 4K resolution as is now common in the PC world, but only with 1080 pixels. At least there is an improved sound system with six speakers. The 14-inch version is said to cost $ 2,000, the big brother $ 2,500; both are to be delivered from next week.
The real stars of the show should be the two processors M1 Pro and M1 MaxHowever, there is always one thing with expectations: if you keep them too low, not enough people should be interested in them in the end. If you scale it too high, as Apple did when it presented the new iPhone generation in September, for example, observers are disappointed – and that always leads to the question: Are the days of crazy hype about Apple products over? ? Is this group still innovative enough? Where is the product that justifies the hype?
Well, on Monday, Apple employees seemed pretty sure during the presentation that they were presenting something really big; the descriptions ranged from “super, super, super, super fast” to “life changing”, there was nothing below that. Only: The people in front of the cameras rushed so driven by numbers and graphics that you could think that your own employer had implanted such chips in them.
Therefore: take a deep breath, step back, slowly. Almost a year ago, Apple presented its first own chip, the M1. The company wants to make itself more independent of the previous chip manufacturer Intel, but the M1 was only found in models for private customers. The generation of chips designed by Apple itself, presented this Monday, is supposed to be faster and is aimed primarily at graphic designers, game developers and programmers. Apple promises to improve the CPU performance of the M1 Pro is 70 percent more powerful than that of the M1, that of the graphics chip (GPU) is even twice as high. The GPU performance of the M1 Max is four times as high as that of the M1 – which should please all those who work with 3D graphics: you can connect up to four external screens to a MacBook Pro.
But the company only provided these internal comparisons, otherwise there were a few rather confusing graphics. So: The performance of the M1 was drawn as a fairly steep curve and high mountain, the new generation of chips as Mount Everest and the PC chips as a flat hill below. This is supposed to indicate that the Apple chip either does a lot more or it uses a lot less energy. Looks great. However: how much more power or how much less energy exactly? I couldn’t see it. How dangerous these monsters really are that the company will let off the leash can only be clearly stated after delivery.