David Gewirtz
for DIY-IT
| October 19, 2021
| Topic: Apple
Image: Apple
Apple’s second big event in just about as many months was broadcast yesterday. Compared to many Apple events, it was relatively low key. Apple’s getting into the groove of doing virtual events. The first few were relatively high on showmanship. This one seemed a bit more pedestrian, but it was also more focused.
The star of the show was the announcement of two scaled up M1 processors, the M1 Pro and M1 Max. Both have the same number of compute cores (eight performance cores, and two low-power cores). The Pro supports 32GB RAM, the Max supports 64GB. The Pro has a 16 core GPU, and the Max has a 32 core GPU. The Pro’s memory bandwidth is 200GB/sec, the Max has a whopping 400GB/sec.
Make no mistake about it. While the original M1 is a shockingly capable processor (albeit with limited RAM and Thunderbolt capacity), the M1 Pro and M1 Max are beasts. When I start thinking about what an M2 might be capable of, it makes my head spin.
What a difference this is from back in 2018, where we legitimately asked if Apple had abandoned its pro and extreme pro users. The M1 Pro and Max processors, paired with the new MacBook Pros just announced, have extreme pro written all over them.
Can we just take a minute to breathe a sigh of relief? The new MacBook Pros finally — finally — have some ports. There are three Thunderbolt 3 ports (four would have been even better, but okay), an SD card slot, a full-sized HDMI port, and, yes, MagSafe (in the form of MagSafe 3) is back.
As it turns out, if you want to wrap those ports in a lot of power (and spend a painful amount of money), you can.
When Apple showed the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros based on the M1 Pro and M1 Max processors, they put up a slide with $1,999 and $2,499 respectively. What they didn’t do is go into just how much a fully-equipped machine would be.
Also: Migrating to M1 Macs: How I’m upgrading my small fleet of older Apple desktops and laptops
Now, to be fair, even I don’t need a fully equipped machine. I don’t need 8TB of internal storage, for example. The price jump from 2TB to 8TB is $1,600. It’s a lot.
David Gewirtz
for DIY-IT
| October 19, 2021
| Topic: Apple