What’s new with the MacBook Pro and Mac mini
The first Apple product releases of 2023 are here, and they’re Macs!
Apple on Tuesday morning released new Macs directly to the Apple website without the fanfare of an event. I spoke to a few people today who were confused on that point, but it’s not surprising. Apple reserves its full, pre-recorded events for major product announcements. Today’s updates to the MacBook Pro and Mac mini lines represent what we might call “speed bump” updates. The essential form factors haven’t changed, but there are important internal improvements to these machines.
We’d had the M2 chip since last summer’s release of the redesigned MacBook Air and the updated 13-inch MacBook Pro. Now we have the higher end versions of those chips: M2 Pro and M2 Max. (Presumably at some point there will also be an M2 Ultra in the Mac Studio line.) Like the M2 before it, these new chips are manufactured using TSMC’s 5nm process. Some had speculated that Apple might be able to introduce high end M2 chips on TSMC’s upcoming 3nm process, but that proved not to be the case. (It never made sense to me that Apple would introduce 3nm chips in the middle of a processor family anyway.) If “5nm” and “3nm” are unfamiliar terms, it speaks to how many transistors can be built into the chip and what power efficiency gains are possible. When Apple does eventually ship 3nm chips (likely with the M3 family of chips), they should represent a significant improvement in performance. The M2 Pro and M2 Max represent more modest power improvements over their M1 Pro and M1 Max predecessors. But they do provide up to 20% faster CPU performance and up to 30% faster GPU performance. They’re also good for an extra hour of battery life.
Spec bump updates aren’t as sexy as big leaps in performance, but it’s still encouraging to see Apple deliver them. One of the issues Apple routinely struggled with toward the end of its relationship with Intel was that Intel often couldn’t deliver the chips that matched Apple’s needs, so spec bump updates were sometimes few and far between.
The story’s actually a little more interesting with the new Mac mini. While the M1-based Mac mini was one of the first Macs Apple brought its Apple silicon chips to in 2020, the Mac mini never got a higher end M1 series chip. So Apple had to keep an Intel Mac mini in the lineup for users who needed the extra ports and external display support offered by the higher end Mac mini SKUs. As of today that Intel model is officially out of the lineup as you can now buy a Mac mini with an M2 Pro chip that supports up to three external displays and comes packed with four Thunderbolt ports. And the entry level Mac mini with an M2 processor now starts at $599, a drop in price of $100 from its predecessor. (And down as low as $499 for education customers.)
My big takeaway from today’s announcements is that Apple keeps driving its Mac lineup forward, though even more exciting Mac hardware awaits in the future. If you’re ready to buy a new Mac mini or MacBook Pro, don’t hesitate! My guess is we’re not going to see M3 MacBook Pros on the new 3nm process until at least mid-2024, and possibly not until the Fall of 2024. We could get an M3-based Mac later this year though, and there’s surely some interesting Macs left to be unveiled in the M2 family of chips as well.
What’s new with the MacBook Pro and Mac mini
John, thanks for this. I’ve been waiting for the MacBook Pros to get the M2 chips before considering an upgrade. Now I just need to sell a kidney. I’m wondering if there are any comparisons to the 2019 MBP in terms of speed and battery life. Apple did a very good job of telling me how they compare to the M1 chips, but I don’t think I’ve seen a comparison to the prior generation -- which still has some shelf life. Or maybe I missed it. Hard to tell.