UPDATE ON MALAYSIAN PRICING: The 14-inch MacBook Pro will start at RM8,799, and RM8,199 for education; the 16-inch model will start at RM10,799, or RM9,999 for education.
The new MacBook Pros have been launched and they’re everything we’ve been speculating.
There are two sizes to choose from – 14.2-inches, and 16.2-inches. Both models use a Liquid Retina XDR display that supports up to 120Hz refresh rate with Pro Motion. The former pushes a resolution of 3024×1964; while the latter can do 3456 x 2234 pixels.
The most striking addition to the new laptops is the inclusion of a camera notch; this is Apple’s attempt at reducing the bezel size to maximise screen real estate. The top bezel is 60% thinner than before, and the tool bar has been optimised to wrap around the notch.
The webcam that sits inside this notch offers 1080p video recording, and features a sensor that offers better low-light performance.
Moving on to the keyboard, Apple has removed the Touch Bar and has replaced it with physical function keys – a feature that the company says is preferred by professional creators.
Under the hood, Apple has introduced two new additions to the M1 family to power these laptops. You can now opt to get either MacBook Pro model with an M1 Pro or M1 Max chipset.
Both are 10-core CPUs that come with 8 high-performance cores, and 2 power-efficient cores. The M1 Pro is 70% faster than the regular M1 as it packs double the amount of transistors, and a 16-core GPU that benefits from 32GB unified memory.
The M1 Max is a whole other beast as it supports up to 64GB of unified memory, and has a 32-core GPU. It has 4x faster GPU speeds compared to the M1 and is 70% faster than the M1 Pro.
With that said, Apple claims that the MacBook Pro will still be more power efficient than the most powerful Windows laptop in the market. The 14-inch version offers up to 17 hours of battery life, while the 16-inch variant can offer 21 hours of use. There’s fast charging support and the laptops now return to MagSafe.
The 14-inch MacBook Pro is priced from $1,999 (about RM8,338) while the 16-inch model will cost $2,999 (about RM12,510). There’s no word on their local availability and pricing yet, but watch this space for more updates.