Enlarge / A 14-inch MacBook Pro with Apple's M3 Pro inside. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

When Apple announced the first three chips in its M3 processor family, the M3 Pro immediately stood out. Not because it was a huge leap over the prior generation, but because it was the first time we had seen Apple reduce key specs like transistor count, CPU and GPU core count, and memory bandwidth from one generation to the next.

Transistor count is an imperfect proxy for performance, but adding transistors is one of the primary ways to improve a chip's performance (ramping clock speeds up is another, which we'll revisit shortly). Both the M3 and M3 Max feature substantial transistor count boosts compared to their M2 counterparts—from 20 billion to 25 billion for the M3, and from 67 billion to 92 billion with the M3 Max. The M3 Pro has 37 billion, down from 40 billion in the M2 Pro.

That didn't tell us much by itself, but it did set us up to expect an M3 Pro that was a modest-at-best improvement over the M2 Pro. Now that we've been able to test one in a 14-inch MacBook Pro, we can confirm that this is the case. The M3 Pro is still decidedly faster than the regular M3, and building a chip with fewer transistors on a newer 3 nm manufacturing process has other benefits. But there's a wider performance gap between the M3 Pro and M3 Max than there was in the M2 generation, and you'll need to wait for the M4 generation before you see substantially faster Pro chips.

Enlarge / Apple's new Mac Studio offers the M2 Ultra chip, which, like its M1 counterpart, provides vastly greater computing power. (credit: Apple)

CUPERTINO, Calif.—The Mac Studio will be refreshed this summer with chips based on the M2, including the M2 Max and new M2 Ultra, the "most powerful chip" ever released "for a personal computer."

The M2 Pro and M2 Max have previously been seen in MacBook Pro models released late last year , but the M2 Ultra will be a first. In the M1 line, the Ultra was the top-of-the-line chip with substantially better performance than the Pro or Max—particularly in graphically intensive tasks. M2 Ultra will support 192 GB of unified memory, 800 GB/s memory bandwith, and a 24-core CPU and up to 76 cores of GPU. Apple claims the M2 Ultra will work 30% faster than the M1 Ultra, and that a single system with the Ultra can work machine learning datasets that would choke systems with discrete GPUs.

The M2 Max is "up to 50 percent faster" than the prior Max-based Studio, according to Apple, and features a 12-core CPU, 38-core GPU, and up to 96 GB unified memory, with 400 GB/s memory bandwidth.

Enlarge / Apple's Mac Studio desktop. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

As Apple rumors go, the long-rumored 15-inch MacBook Air sounds almost certain to be announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference next week. But as Apple’s plans take shape, it also seems possible that we’ll see new Mac desktops featuring high-end M2 Max and M2 Ultra chips.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman believes that these new chips are most likely to power an updated range of Mac Studio desktops, a little over a year after the first Studios were initially introduced . As recently as a few months ago, Gurman speculated that the M2 generation would skip over the Mac Studio entirely and that Apple would instead opt to use the newer chips as a selling point for a new Apple Silicon Mac Pro.

But that version of reality may not come to pass. Gurman says these new Mac models have Mac14,3 and Mac14,4 model identifiers, while the Mac Pro that Apple is testing internally is identified as Mac14,8. (We initially thought these no-adjective model identifiers were a throwback to the PowerPC days , but the reality is more boring; Apple just isn’t using unique Mac names in model identifiers anymore, possibly to combat leaks and the speculation that arises when new IDs break cover.)

• 

  The top of a 16-inch MacBook Pro sitting on a table, with the Apple logo visible [credit: Samuel Axon ]

One of the interesting side effects of Apple's move toward using its own silicon in the Mac is that the Mac update cycle now looks a lot more like the iPhone's: mostly predictable, regular updates that offer modest generation-to-generation boosts to performance and maybe a few additional refinements or new features.

That's very much the case with the 2023 MacBook Pro. For most intents and purposes, it is the 2021 MacBook Pro. The only difference is the inclusion of the new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips for boosted CPU, graphics, and machine learning performance over 2021's M1 Pro and M2 Max, plus some connectivity upgrades that directly address some of our very minor quibbles with the otherwise excellent 2021 models.

That said, the 2021 MacBook Pro was far from a disappointment when it launched, and the market hasn't changed enough in the past two years to make the mostly similar 2023 models any less attractive. These are still the best laptops you can buy for many use cases—provided you don't mind spending a small fortune, that is.

Enlarge / Apple's M2-powered MacBook Pros. You could—theoretically, according to Apple, running certain apps, etc.—sit in front of one of these devices for up to 22 consecutive hours. Bring coffee. (credit: Apple)

Apple has unveiled new systems based on its M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, giving the MacBook Pro and Mac mini line 8K video output, Wi-Fi 6E, up to 96 GB of unified memory on the highest-spec machine, and what Apple claims is the longest-ever Mac battery life.

The latest M2 systems on a chip (SoC) that power the systems are the biggest change since those in the last set of Pros and minis ; the hardware for both looks broadly similar to their prior releases. You can buy an M2 Pro with up to 12 CPU and 19 GPU cores and 32GB of memory. The M2 Max is something else: You get an upper limit of 38 GPU cores, double the memory bandwidth of the Pro (from 200 to 400GB/s), and up to 96GB of unified memory.

• 

  Apple's M2 Pro SoC has 40 billion transistors, 200GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, and up to 32GB of memory (in the 16-inch MacBook Pro). [credit: Apple ]

Apple clocks the M2 Pro in a new 16-inch MacBook Pro at up to 40 percent faster than its own M1 Pro MacBook Pro at the broadly defined "image processing in Photoshop" metric and 80 percent faster than an Intel-based Core i9 MacBook Pro. For Xcode compiling, Apple cites a 25 percent gain over the M1 Pro and a 250 percent leap over the Core i9.

Enlarge / The 2021 16-inch MacBook Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon)

It looks like the first benchmarks of Apple's upcoming M2 Max chip have leaked in Geekbench's database.

When users run the over-the-shelf version of the Geekbench 5 benchmarking tool, the scores are logged to a public database of results and are tied to entries for specific hardware. In this case, the result (which was discovered by a Twitter user ) is listed under a product labeled "Mac14,6" running the as-yet-unreleased operating system "macOS 13.2 (Build 22D21)." The entry also noted that the chip had 12 cores.

The chip in question is likely destined for MacBook Pro and Mac Studio models that will launch sometime next year. As for the results: The overall single-core score is 1,853, and the multicore score is 13,855. The more granular scores like crypto, integer, and floating point generally track along the same lines when compared to this chip's predecessor, the M1 Max.

Enlarge / The 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro from 2021. (credit: Samuel Axon)

For months, there have been rumors that Apple would launch new, M2-based Macs—specifically MacBook Pro and Mac mini models with new M2 Pro or M2 Max chips—sometime before the end of this year. But now two usually reliable insiders and Apple CEO Tim Cook are signaling that those new computers will arrive sometime in early March instead.

During a recent call with investors last week, Cook began a sentence with "as we approach the holiday season, with our product lineup set," suggesting that there will be no new hardware announcements from Apple in 2022.

Further, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo tweeted several weeks back that he expects the new MacBook Pro models in early 2023.

• 

  The 16-inch MacBook Pro with its lid closed. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

Second-generation refreshes of the current 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro design could arrive as soon as this fall, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The updated laptops will feature more powerful chips based on Apple's M2, he claims.

In his weekly Power On newsletter, the journalist—who has accurately reported on upcoming Apple products before—wrote that the overall design of the MacBook Pro is "likely to stay roughly the same," with no major new visual changes or features beyond what comes with the M2 generation of system-on-a-chip.

Gurman predicts that, unsurprisingly, the two new MacBook Pro models will offer buyers a choice between an M2 Pro and an M2 Max chip. These chips will be much faster and more oriented toward heavy-duty workflows than the M2 that shipped over the past couple of months in the 2022 refreshes of the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Enlarge / An Apple-made image of the 13.6-inch MacBook Air that was revealed earlier this week. (credit: Apple)

Apple is working on a 15-inch MacBook Air and a new 12-inch MacBook, according to Bloomberg , citing sources familiar with Apple's plans. The sources also revealed details about the M2-family chips coming to Apple's high-performance MacBook Pro computers.

The 15-inch Air will use the same overall design as the 13.6-inch MacBook Air revealed at the company's WWDC keynote on Monday. That means an ultra-thin design with no tapered edges, plus a screen notch and a keyboard with function keys and Touch ID. The laptop is expected to use the same M2 processor as the one found in its smaller sibling.

The new laptop could arrive as soon as spring of 2023, the sources say. They also say Apple is working on a 12-inch MacBook that could arrive in late 2023 or early 2024—but that one is far enough out that Apple could still abandon its plans.