The other shoe has finally dropped with Apple releasing the more powerful half of its M2 lineup this week.
For MacBook Pro or Mac Mini customers waiting to see what the second generation of Apple silicon would bring, Apple has delivered in spades for them with the release of the M2 Pro and Max chips.
According to Apple the M2 Pro MacBooks will come with a 12-core CPU, up to 19-core GPU, and start off with 32GB of shared memory. Apple’s M2 Max powered devices will sport 38 cores of GPU and up to 96GB of shared memory.
In a 19-minute-long YouTube video that stands in as Apple’s preferred announcement platform these days, M-series silicon engineers and developers cover the chipsets upgrades which include double the number of transistors (if that’s of any concern to you), the bandwidth support for 200GB/s and 400GB/s use of unified memory for the Pro and Max variants respectively, 20% performance increase from last year’s models, and a 40% faster Neural Engine, among other callouts.
Apple spent much of its time discussing its M2 Pro and Max prowess in lieu of a hardware showcase for their housings as the 14 and 16-inch MacBook’s powered by the chips are identical to their previous M1 designs. The 2023 upgrades for the devices come by way of support for HDMI 2.1, Wi-Fi 6E and up to 22 hours of battery life per change.
A MacBook powered by an M2 Pro chip will start at $1,999 for the 14-inch and $2,499 for a 16-inch, and customers can head to Apple stores on January 24, 2023 to pick one up in person or get a pre-order claim as soon as today.
Apple also showed off its Mac Mini running its lates M2 chips this week and similar to the MacBook Pro’s, the company is touting generational improvements such as Wi-Fi 6E support and Bluetooth 4.3 connectivity. However, unlike the more portable MacBooks, the Mac Mini will start out with a paltry 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. For $1,299 customers can move up to 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of SSD storage. For a $400 bump in price, customers can additionally configure their Mini’s with 32GB of more memory and for another $300 customers can gain more CPU and GPU cores from 10-core CPU / 16-core GPU to 12-core CPU / 19-core GPU.
The Mini’s hardware is the same as its previous model with an HDMI port, gigabit ethernet, audio jack, two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 support, and two USB-A ports.
Mac Mini’s with the upgraded M2 Pro chip can support three displays or two displays at 6K/ 60Hz via Thunderbolt or a single 8K monitor.
Mac Mini customers can grab their desktop computers in store on January 24, 2023 or pre-order it starting today.