This week, Apple dropped the big news revealing its first new 2023 products of its high-end MacBook Pro notebooks and Mac mini desktops on Tuesday which are running their latest M2 chips.
Despite them looking similar to the previous 2021 generation, the new 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro models feature the more powerful M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, replacing the M1 Pro and M1 Max processors which are reported to be faster and more powerful.
The base Mac Mini is also getting an upgrade too, sporting more RAM, storage and processor power too with the option for buyers to even tweak it more according to their desired specifications – making it a worthy small-factor desktop PC for nearly any user.
“Only Apple is building SoCs like M2 Pro and M2 Max. They deliver incredible pro performance along with industry-leading power efficiency,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies. “With an even more powerful CPU and GPU, support for a larger unified memory system, and an advanced media engine, M2 Pro and M2 Max represent astonishing advancements in Apple silicon.”
Having generated $40.2 billion in revenue last year, which is more than 10% of the tech giant’s revenue. Apple is definitely taking advantage of the product line which has brought them a lot of success. Past Mac releases have often been press releases but Apple took a different approach this time around by releasing a full 19-minute announcement video giving us a detailed look at the latest Mac products.
What’s the big deal about Apple’s 2023 MacBook Pro and Mac Mini product lineup?
Well, to try and break things down in a simple way. The new product lineup comes with faster and better-performing chipsets allowing users to upgrade to even higher specifications when it comes to things like RAM and storage than ever before.
According to Apple, the MacBook laptops are getting a higher boost in memory up to 96 gigabytes of RAM in models that come with the most powerful M2 Max chip, which is more than what the previous models allowed which had a limit of 32 gigabytes for both models.
The storage capacity is still 8 terabytes (which is awesome) and the battery life is reported to have increased slightly from 17 hours to 18 hours on the 14-inch model and from 21 hours to 22 hours on the 16-inch variant.
Aside from the new M2 and M2 Pro chip options available to the notebooks, the baseline M2 Mac mini is also getting some love with it sporting an M2 chip (8-core CPU, 10-core GPU), 8GB unified memory with 100GB/s memory bandwidth and a 256GB SSD. However, the model only supports two displays while the M2 Pro chip version can handle up to three monitors and is configurable with up to a 10-core CPU and 16-core GPU with up to 24GB LPDDR5 unified memory and 8TB of storage.
Apple also says that the next-generation 10 or 12-core CPU consists of up to eight high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores, resulting in multithreaded CPU performance that is up to 20% faster than the previous 10-core CPU in M1 Pro allowing users to run heavy workloads on apps like Adobe Photoshop – up to 2.5x faster than on the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro.
The GPU in M2 Pro can be configured with up to 19 cores, three more than the GPU in M1 Pro and includes a larger L2 cache. Graphics speeds are also up to 30% faster than that of M1 Pro said Apple, resulting in huge increases in image processing performance and enabling console-quality gaming.
MacBook Pro and Mac mini 2023 announcement video
The updated 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,999, and the 16-inch version is still priced at $2,499. The Mac mini is priced at $599, which is $100 less than the previous version. According to Apple, all new Macs will start shipping on Jan. 24 and it also plans to use this year as its opportunity to release a mixed-reality headset.
Apple is also working on an iPhone 15 line, a new HomePod speaker and Apple Watches with upgraded processors plus a lineup of new touchscreens that will be introduced in the MacBook Pro starting in 2025. This is indeed an exciting year for the tech giant.
Also, read: Exciting Tech Trends To Watch Out for in 2023
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