Monday, October 18, 2021 6:23 pm7 Comments

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Apple today freed more Mac models from their Intel shackles, announcing significantly more powerful homegrown Apple Silicon chips in a total redesign of its high-end MacBook Pro notebook computers.

M1 Max is the largest chip Apple has ever built: 57 billion transistors and up to 64GB of fast unified memory.

Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:

The new components, called the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, are 70% faster than its M1 predecessors, Apple said. It also unveiled a redesigned MacBook Pro, adding larger screens, MagSafe charging and better resolution.

Apple is aiming squarely at the high-end chips that Intel has provided for the MacBook Pro and other top-end Macs for about 15 years. Last year, Apple started transitioning its low-end Macs to its own M1 Apple Silicon chip. The new chips, however, are a bolder stroke, aiming at far outclassing Intel’s highest-performing products.

The new MacBook Pro features an expansive Liquid Retina XDR display with ProMotion.

Graphics performance with the M1 Max is as much as four times faster than on the earlier M1 chip, while the M1 Pro is twice as fast, Apple said. It’s also 13 times faster than earlier Intel models.

The new chips are at the center of the most significant update to the MacBook Pro since 2016. The new model comes in 14.2-inch and 16.2-inch screen sizes, and — like the latest iPad Pro — the displays use mini-LED panels… Apple is restoring three ports that users missed after they were removed five years ago: the HDMI port, an SD card slot and MagSafe charging…

The Mac has remained a steady seller for Apple. The computer line pulled in almost $30 billion, or about 10% sales, in the last fiscal year. The Mac has also seen its market share grow. It held about 9% of the global personal-computer market in the third quarter, with shipments rising 10% from the period a year earlier, according to data from IDC.

MacDailyNews Take: Begone, ye dog-slow Mac-polluting Intel snails!

BTW, the M1 still runs rings around the Intel Macs they replaced. Even Apple’s “entry-level” M1 is an exceptional SoC!

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