Apple's new 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, unveiled on Tuesday, didn't include a processor upgrade due to Broadwell delays, but it did get a Force Touch trackpad and one other major improvement -- new PCIe-based flash storage that Apple says is 2.5 times faster than the flash storage in previous-generation machines, with throughput up to 2GB/s.
In benchmark testing conducted by French site MacGeneration [Google Translate], the entry-level 2.2GHz 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM and 256GB of storage lived up to Apple's claims, demonstrating impressive read/write speeds that topped out at 2GB/s and 1.25GB/s, respectively, in QuickBench 4.0.
Those read/write speeds far exceed the read/write speeds achieved by the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Air, which also received faster flash storage that doubles the speeds available in previous-generation 13-inch MacBook Air machines. The 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro's performance is similar to the 13-inch MacBook Air.
At speeds that reach 2GB/s throughput, the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro has the fastest storage of any of Apple's notebooks. It took 14 seconds to transfer an 8.76GB file to the machine, compared to 32 seconds for the slower Retina MacBook. With small files, read/write speeds exceed a gigabyte per second.
Like the 2015 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro and 13-inch MacBook Air, the revamped 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro uses a solid state drive manufactured by Samsung. As noted by MacGeneration, it does not use the faster NVM Express SSD protocol that the 13-inch model was updated to, suggesting future machines could see even greater performance improvements with a swap to the next-generation protocol and with continued leaps in SSD technology.
Apple's 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro is available from the online Apple Store at prices that start at $1,999. The notebooks continue to use Haswell processors, but should see performance boosts due to the faster solid state drives.
Wednesday February 19, 2025 8:02 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple today introduced the iPhone 16e, its newest entry-level smartphone. The device succeeds the third-generation iPhone SE, which has now been discontinued.
The iPhone 16e features a larger 6.1-inch OLED display, up from a 4.7-inch LCD on the iPhone SE. The display has a notch for Face ID, and this means that Apple no longer sells any iPhones with a Touch ID fingerprint button, marking the ...
Tuesday February 18, 2025 12:02 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Over the years, Apple has switched from an aluminum frame to a stainless steel frame to a titanium frame for its highest-end iPhones. And now, it has been rumored that Apple will go back to using aluminum for three out of four iPhone 17 models.
In an investor note with research firm GF Securities, obtained by MacRumors this week, Apple supply chain analyst Jeff Pu said the iPhone 17, iPhone...
Thursday February 20, 2025 5:06 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Now that Apple has announced its new more affordable iPhone 16e, our thoughts turn to what else we are expecting from the company this spring.
There are three product categories that we are definitely expecting to get upgraded before spring has ended. Keep reading to learn what they are. If we're lucky, Apple might make a surprise announcement about a completely new product category.
M4...
Wednesday February 19, 2025 11:38 am PST by Juli Clover
Following the launch of the iPhone 16e, Apple updated its iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia pages to give a narrower timeline on when the next updates are set to launch.
All three pages now state that new Apple Intelligence features and languages will launch in early April, an update from the more broader April timeframe that Apple provided before. The next major point updates will be iOS ...
Thursday February 13, 2025 8:07 am PST by Joe Rossignol
In a social media post today, Apple CEO Tim Cook teased an upcoming "launch" of some kind scheduled for Wednesday, February 19.
"Get ready to meet the newest member of the family," he said, with an #AppleLaunch hashtag.
The post includes a short video with an animated Apple logo inside a circle.
Cook did not provide an exact time for the launch, or share any other specific details, so...
Friday February 21, 2025 1:08 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple finally released the first beta of iOS 18.4 to developers for testing purposes, and while the beta is lacking some of the Apple Intelligence features we were hoping for, there are some notable new additions.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
Priority Notifications - Apple Intelligence
There is a new Priority Notifications feature that can show you your most...
Apple today announced its first custom cellular modem with the name "C1," debuting in the all-new iPhone 16e.
The new modem contributes to the iPhone 16e's power efficiency, giving it the longest battery life of any iPhone with a 6.1-inch display, such as the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16.
Expanding the benefits of Apple silicon, C1 is the first modem designed by Apple and the most...
Friday February 21, 2025 8:01 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple has confirmed that its custom-designed C1 modem in the iPhone 16e has nothing to do with the device's lack of MagSafe support, according to Macworld.
Following the launch of the iPhone 16e, there was some speculation online about how MagSafe magnets might have interfered with the C1 modem's cellular connectivity performance, and this was considered to be a potential reason for the...
:eek::eek: 2000MB/s read, thats utter insanity?! There isn't a M.2 SSD on the market that i've seen do that and Apple haven't even barely uttered a word about it!
A lot of my work involves copying files from one Mac to another, this is reason enough for me to get the 1TB version, it'll more than saturate the Thunderbolt 2 connection which just about reaches 1400MB/s
If only they'd popped this into the Retina iMacs at the same time. I'm more interested in SSD speed than processor increases to be honest, day to day speed is far more affected by drive reading and write - it makes me laugh how people on here only consider "faster" to be a more powerful CPU, they probably barely do anything that totally saturates the CPU very often unless they really are doing video encoding.
I would rather have half that speed and twice the storage. I currently have a sdd with 1/4 of the speed, there has never been a time where it thought "I wish this was faster".
That's probably because you do very basic tasks. I need all the speed I can get. I do a ton of movie editing and a fast CPU and fast storage is extremely important.
