Apple this week expanded its lineup of Apple silicon chips with the new M2 Pro and M2 Max processors, building on the M2 chip announced in June. The new lineup of M2 chips represents the second generation of Apple silicon that can now now be found in the latest Macs.
The M2 Pro and M2 Max are noteworthy upgrades over the M1 Pro and M1 Max, bringing more performance, battery life, and capabilities to professional users. Below, we've listed five of the most important details you need to know about Apple's latest Mac chips.
A Lot of Memory Bandwidth: The new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips feature the same memory bandwidth as their respective predecessor, which is some of the highest in the industry. Like the M1 Pro, the M2 Pro chip supports up to 200GB/s of memory bandwidth, while the M2 Max supports 400GB/s of memory bandwidth like the M1 Max.
Even Longer Battery Life: The M1 Pro and M1 Max have two high-efficiency cores, whereas the M2 Pro and M2 Max both feature four efficiency cores, allowing the new Macs to tackle heavy workloads using less energy, thereby conserving battery life.
Tons More Transistors: Thanks to the use of second-generation 5nm process technology, the M2 Pro has 40 billion transistors, which is 20% more than the M1 Pro. With M2 Max, the jump is even bigger – its 67 billion transistors is 10 billion more than the number used in the M1 Max.
Highest Unified Memory Yet in a MacBook Pro: 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros configured with the high-end M2 Max processor now support up to 96GB of unified memory. The 96GB of memory option is an additional $800, on top of the $200 extra for the higher-end variant of the M2 Max chip.
Connect Even More Displays: 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros and Mac mini models configured with M2 Pro support up to two external displays. M2 Pro supports two 6K displays over Thunderbolt, or one 6K display at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one 4K display at 144Hz over HDMI. MacBook Pro models with M2 Max support up to four displays: three displays with 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one more 4K display at 144Hz over HDMI. M2 Max also supports two 6K displays at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, and one 8K display at 60Hz or one 4K display at 240Hz over HDMI.
The new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro can be configured with both M2 Pro and M2 Max, while the updated Mac mini can be configured with either M2 or M2 Pro. Both the new MacBook Pro and Mac mini are available for pre-order on Apple's website and will begin arriving to customers on Tuesday, January 24.
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices.
Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of March 2025:
Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
Apple is expected to release iOS 18.4 to the general public as soon as next week, following more than a month of beta testing.
Apple's website says some iOS 18.4 features will be released in "early April," so the update should be out as early as Tuesday, April 1.
Apple this week seeded the iOS 18.4 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, barring the discovery of any...
Tuesday March 25, 2025 11:52 am PDT by Juli Clover
Leaker Jon Prosser today shared a mockup of what he says the Messages app will look like in iOS 19, demoing an interface with rounded, translucent bubble-shaped navigation buttons at the top and softer, rounder corners for the keyboard and word suggestions.
Jon Prosser's Messages app mockup
The return button, a button for going back to the Messages list, and the FaceTime button have a deeper...
Thursday March 20, 2025 12:01 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
If you pay for iCloud storage on your iPhone, Apple has a new perk for you, at no additional cost.
The new perk is the ability to create invitations in the Apple Invites app for the iPhone, which launched in the App Store last month.
In the Apple Invites app, iCloud+ subscribers can create invitations for any occasion, such as birthday parties, graduations, baby showers, and more. Anyone ...
Apple today announced that AirPods Max with a USB-C port will be gaining support for lossless audio and ultra-low latency audio with a firmware update next month, alongside the release of iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, and macOS 15.4.
For context, audio files are typically compressed to keep file sizes smaller. There are lossy compression standards like MP3 and AAC (Advanced Audio Codec), which...
The iOS 19 mockup images that leaker Jon Prosser shared today are not representative of the actual iOS 19 design, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said on social media.
According to Gurman, the images that are "floating around" are based on "very old builds" or "vague descriptions," and are lacking key features. Gurman says that we can "expect more from Apple in June."
Gurman made the same comment ...
Wednesday March 26, 2025 12:19 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple is going all out with promotions for the popular Severance Apple TV+ show today, and as of right now, you'll find a new "Lumon Terminal Pro" listed on Apple's Mac site.
The Lumon Terminal Pro is designed to look similar to the machines that Severance employees like Mark S. and Helly R. use for macrodata refinement. The Terminal features a blue keyboard, a small display with wide...
Leaker Jon Prosser today shared a "first look" at Apple's upcoming iOS 19 update, providing mockups of what different apps and features will supposedly look like. Prosser claims the mockups are based on "the real deal" version of iOS 19 that he has seen, but says he is sharing replica images in order to prevent his sources from getting into trouble.
Confusingly, Prosser's video features some ...
The expanded display support throws up an interesting conundrum - it seems that the 8k60 (or 4k240) is only supported by the HDMI port and that the Thunderbolt interface is limited to 6k60. This means that to get the highest performance video output you can't have a one-cable solution (USB-C) and none of Apple's displays accept HDMI in (and don't seem to support >60 Hz)... Even a new Apple XDR display that supported 120 Hz would still need an HDMI cable. Does this imply that the ports are still DisplayPort 1.4? (the PC market is moving to DisplayPort 2.1 and plant of GPUs and monitors with support were announced at CES)
On battery life, does this mean maxing out the CPU will give less battery life than M1 Pro/Max as it seems that the increased battery life advertised arises from the low power cores being able to do a bigger proportion of low-mid level tasks?
HDMI 2.1 offers 48Gbps whereas Thunderbolt 4 is limited to 40 Gbps. You need 43 Gbps for 8K, 60Hz in 4.2.0. This means that the MacBook Pro's support for 8K is limited to 4.2.0 chroma subsampling: fine for watching movies, unsuitable for grading movies, OK for gaming but downright awful for displaying text at 1x the resolution, but probably alright at 2x retina. https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/chroma-subsampling
My guess is that next year's laptops will offer Thunderbolt 5, which offers 80Gbps and will allow full 4.4.4 chroma subsampling, and the next XDR display will be 8K and require Thunderbolt 5. Or maybe, Apple will put two Thunderbolt ports on that future XDR and allow 2022 MacBook Pros to output 4.4.4 to it using 2x Thunderbolt 4 connections. Similar to how the Dell UP3218K uses two Displayport connections (this monitor seems incompatible with the 2022 MacBook Pro and I've only read about one person using it with a Mac, using a Mac Pro 7.1, two PCIe graphics cards and a fair amount of hacking).
The expanded display support throws up an interesting conundrum - it seems that the 8k60 (or 4k240) is only supported by the HDMI port and that the Thunderbolt interface is limited to 6k60. This means that to get the highest performance video output you can't have a one-cable solution (USB-C) and none of Apple's displays accept HDMI in (and don't seem to support >60 Hz)... Even a new Apple XDR display that supported 120 Hz would still need an HDMI cable. Does this imply that the ports are still DisplayPort 1.4? (the PC market is moving to DisplayPort 2.1 and plant of GPUs and monitors with support were announced at CES)
On battery life, does this mean maxing out the CPU will give less battery life than M1 Pro/Max as it seems that the increased battery life advertised arises from the low power cores being able to do a bigger proportion of low-mid level tasks?
Can we expect a MacBook Pro redesign in 2024? I'm really not a fan of the bulky design and the all black keyboard. ?
I'm a fan of it. I think the design is great. I'm pretty sure it's ”bulky” (I think it's heavy, but not bulky) for a reason. If you want slim there's MacBook Air.
Another thing: Every upgrade extra is ridiculous expensive. You can upgrade your M2 chip with $1000's worth of extra cores, graphical cores of unified memory.
While benchmarks will be interesting to see compared to the M1 Pro & M1 Max, I've still got no regrets buying my 14" MBP with the M1 Pro back in July and not waiting for the M2-series.
Battery life already lasts longer than I need it to and I don't use high-refresh rate displays. And the machine is currently faster than I need anyway. So the M2 Pro isn't bringing anything else to the table.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy they're out, but Apple hardware is so good currently, I no longer need to upgrade constantly.
