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It’s the Apple Week of Mac announcements as the company announced updates for its MacBook Pro laptops powered by the M4 family of processors, with the M4 Pro chip, announced yesterday for the Mac mini, and the more powerful and new M4 Max chip.
Aside from debuting the new processors on the machines, the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros with the M4 Pro or M4 Max chips also marks the first Apple laptops with Thunderbolt 5 ports. The M4 models, only available on the 14-inch MacBook Pro will come with Thunderbolt 4. The successor to Thunderbolt 4, ThunderBolt 5 ports are designed to offer more than faster data transfer speeds, with up to 8K external monitor support, potential support for external GPU and external AI (artificial intelligence) accelerators, and speedier charging.
All models come with a new 12MP Centre Stage camera, offer up to 24 hours of battery life, and will also come with an upgradable nano-texture display option that Apple says reduces glare and distractions from reflections. With this display, the new MacBook Pro machines can show SDR content at up to 1000 nits and display HDR content at up to 1600 nits of peak brightness.
The new models will come with an HDMI port that supports up to 8K resolution, an SDXC card slot, MagSafe 3 port for charging, and a headphone jack. Wireless connectivity support includes Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, and all will be available in the space black colour option that was reintroduced last October with the M3-powered laptops. The entry-level 14-inch model also gets a small upgrade with an additional USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 port.
Along with the new chips, the biggest performance upgrade is that all models will now come with 16GB of RAM. With the M4 Pro, owners can choose up to 14-core CPU, consisting of 10 performance cores and four efficiency cores, which makes it 1.9 times faster than the M1 Pro equivalent. The GPU goes up to 20-core, which is twice that of the 10-core M4 chip.
Meanwhile, the new M4 Max offers up to 16-core CPU, with 12 performance cores and four efficiency cores. This makes it up to 2.2 times faster than the CPU in the M1 Max, while the GPU offers up to 40 cores, offering graphical performance that is up to 1.9 times faster than the M1 Max equivalent.
Prices for the new M4 family of machines start from S$2,199 for the entry-level M4 MacBook Pro 14, which comes with a 10-Core CPU, 10-Core GPU, 16GB of Unified Memory and 512GB of storage; S$2,749 for the entry-level M4 Pro MacBook Pro 14 with a 12-Core CPU, 16-Core GPU, 24GB of Unified Memory and 512GB of storage. Lastly, the lone M4 Max MacBook Pro 14 with 14-Core CPU, 32-Core GPU, 36GB Unified Memory and 1TB of storage is priced at S$4,549.
The entry-level M4 Pro MacBook Pro 16, with a 14-Core CPU, 20-Core GPU, 24GB of Unified Memory and 512GB of storage starts from S$3,499, while the entry-level M4 Max version, with a 14-Core CPU, 20-Core GPU, 48GB of Unified Memory and 512GB of storage, starts from S$4,099.
Together with the new iMac and Mac mini, which were announced earlier this week, Apple’s latest wave of computers are designed for Apple Intelligence, the company’s response to the growing trend of generative software designed to improve the user experience on a computing machine. This includes Writing Tools, which helps users improve their written text with recommendations, and a more powerful virtual assistant with Siri.
First announced at this year’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference, portions of the new Apple Intelligence have rolled out on iPhones with iOS 18.1, and iPads with iPadOS 18.1. Additional Apple Intelligence features, including Image Playground, which allows users to create fun original images, and Genmoji, which allows for the creation of custom emojis in seconds, will be introduced in coming months.
Pre-orders for the new family of M4 MacBook Pro machines start from Friday, 1 November, and will be available in stores from Friday, 8 November.
Hsals needs more space in his house, and more money in his bank account to pay for all the toys, collectibles and other geek related items that companies are churning out. Free-time? Girlfriend? Who’s got time for those?
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