Apple has launched updated versions of its MacBook Pro laptop and Mac Mini desktop with its new M2 and M2 Max chips included.
The Cupertino-based company said that the new chips will bring some significant performance benefits to its computers.
The new MacBook Pro will come in 14- and 16-inch versions and will render effects six times faster than the existing Intel-based MacBook Pro, while colour grading will be up to twice as quick. The battery life has now jumped to a max of 22 hours — the longest ever for any MacBook.
Pertinently, rendering tiles and animations in Motion is up to 80 per cent fast than Intel-based MacBook Pros and 20 per cent faster than the previous M1-powered MacBook Pros. Compiling in Xcode is up to two-and-a-half times faster than Intel units and 25 per cent faster than M1 units. Image processing in Photoshop is also up to 80 per cent and 40 per cent quicker than Intel MacBook Pros and M1 units, respectively.
The MacBook Pro also supports Wi-Fi 6E — twice as fast as the previous generation — and 8K displays.
Prices (and we hope you’re sitting down) start from $3,199 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro and $3,999 for the 16-inch.
The Mac Mini, meanwhile, starts from $999 and gets support for two displays on the base model and three displays on the M2 Pro model.
The big performance benefits include up to 22 times faster machine learning image upscaling performance in Pixelmator Pro and is more than nine times faster at rendering complex timelines in Final Cut Pro, when compared to the Mac Mini with an Intel Core i7 processor.
Compared with the M1-powered Mac Mini, the new version will transcode ProRes almost two-and-a-half times faster in Final Cut Pro and Photoshop will be almost 50 per cent faster.
The M2 Pro-powered is up to 50 per cent faster in Photoshop than the 27-inch iMac with an Intel Core i7 and Radeon Pro 5500 XT and up to five-and-a-half times faster in Lightroom Classic. Object tracking in Final Cut Pro is more than four times as fast.
Compared to the previous M1 Mac Mini, the M2 Pro offers up to 2.5x faster graphics performance in Affinity Photo and up to 4.2x faster ProRes transcode in Final Cut Pro.
