In the test: what can the new Macbook Pro do? – Business

The notch, really now? When the critics of a new piece of technology work on a really minor detail, it usually shows that there is little else to complain about. In Apple’s new Macbook Pro series of laptops, it is the recess at the top of the screen that houses the camera, among other things. Yes, it’s true, beautiful is different, but Apple has done a lot right with its new professional series. While the design often dominated over practicality, the new ones fulfill many wishes that Macbook users have had for a long time.

Above all, Apple serves one wish – that for ever more computing power. After all, anyone who needs a lot of power (or wants to brag about it) buys a professional laptop. The Californians, who have put a lot of development work into chips for a relatively long time, are now reaping more and more fruits of these efforts with their computers after their success with smartphones, where they are the undisputed leader in the field in terms of chip performance.

Apple’s team combines a main processor with ten computing cores, eight of which are powerful and two of which are economical, one fast graphics unit and various other computing aids on a chip that is huge in comparison. They help, for example, to master high-resolution video streams, to carry out AI calculations or to connect peripheral devices. The particularly fast cache is large and the connection to the main memory (RAM) is fast. Since the rather clever concept is also manufactured using five-nanometer technology, the chips run with tolerable energy consumption.

The M1 Pro and especially the M1 Max are as low as their predecessor, the M1, but it is no longer. This shows that Apple has managed to drastically increase the performance compared to its predecessor, supported by the fast connection to the memory, not through improvements to the computing cores themselves, but mainly through increasing them.

If you are familiar with the previous generation of Macbooks, you will probably hardly miss two things: on the one hand, the rather strange touch-sensitive bar above the keyboard, called the Touch Bar could type with your finger. It never caught on.

The days of adapters are over

Secondly, Apple is now using a conventional keyboard again, after a space-saving, but repair-prone variant, developed in-house, caused a lot of trouble for Apple. The short-throw “butterfly” mechanism was not only loud, it also quickly became dirty and then no longer worked properly. For many Macbook owners, it had to be replaced.

The new additions, on the other hand, will surely be welcomed by most users: There are connections for headphones / microphone, HDMI, three USB-Cs and a slot for memory cards in SD format. And even the Magsafe connector that many have missed is back, i.e. the magnetically adhesive connector for charging the laptop. Gone are the days when, due to the flawless design, there was only one USB-C port available, for which you then needed an adapter – which did not particularly benefit the look on the desk.

Apple shouldn’t be particularly celebrated for these innovations – after all, the competition from the Windows camp has long been able to accommodate connections that are often needed in narrow laptops. It was more, if you will, a surrender to the user’s wishes, who are fed up with fiddling with adapters. Nevertheless, one can hardly say that the still very nice design of the Macbooks Pro would take a lot of damage.

The Macbooks Pro are available with 14.2-inch and 16.2-inch screen diagonals (36 and 41 centimeters), they display 3024 by 1964 and 3456 by 2234 pixels. The screens reflect, but compensate for the shortcoming with a large reserve of brightness. The keyboard is pleasant to type and does not sag anywhere.

The question remains who needs the new Macbooks Pro. Basically, they are optimized for target groups that are already Apple users: filmmakers who want to do the rough cut on the spot can now do it much faster, and musicians are also happy about more tracks they make in their projects – everyone who really needs a lot of computing power. The rest does not have to spend that much money, it starts at 2250 euros, the maximum configuration costs almost 7000 (!) Euros.

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