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      Apple declares last MacBook Pro with an optical drive obsolete

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 31 January - 22:46

    A bulky-looking older Apple laptop

    Enlarge / The 13-inch MacBook Pro from 2012.

    Sometimes, it's worth taking a moment to note the end of an era, even when that ending might have happened a long time ago. Today, Apple announced that it considers the mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Pro obsolete. It was the last MacBook Pro to include an optical drive for playing CDs or DVDs.

    This means that any MacBook Pro with an optical drive is no longer supported.

    Regarding products deemed obsolete, Apple's support page on the topic says:

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      Apple’s cheaper 14-inch MacBook Pro is killing the old 13-inch version

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 31 October - 00:30 · 1 minute

    Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro, gone but not forgotten.

    Enlarge / Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro, gone but not forgotten. (credit: Apple)

    NEW YORK—Apple refreshed its MacBook Pro lineup earlier today, and there was one surprise that the rumor mill hadn't anticipated: a new base model of the 14-inch MacBook Pro with a plain-old M3 chip in it, starting at $1,599. That new 14-inch MacBook Pro is totally replacing the old 13-inch MacBook Pro in Apple's lineup.

    The 13-inch MacBook Pro still used the same basic design that Apple had been using since 2016, when Apple redesigned the MacBook Pros to make them thinner and lighter and to replace all of their ports with Thunderbolt. The 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros backtracked on several of those design decisions, but the 13-inch model stayed as it was, complete with the regular notchless display and the Touch Bar.

    This effectively means that the MacBook Pro is getting a price increase from $1,299 to $1,599. But the $1,599 Pro includes many features that were never included in the 13-inch Pro, including the larger high-refresh-rate ProMotion display, the contrast-boosting and bloom-reducing mini LED screen technology, the MagSafe connector, the 1080p camera, and the return of the HDMI port. Apple also now sells a 15-inch MacBook Air at that $1,299 starting point, giving people another option in between the mainstream 13-inch Air and the Pro lineup.

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      After a sharp sales slump, report details some of Apple’s future Mac lineup

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 14 April, 2023 - 22:20 · 1 minute

    An Apple laptop with the lid closed

    Enlarge / The 2022 13-inch MacBook Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon)

    A new report by Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman identifies several new Macs coming to Apple's lineup over the next several months, mostly strengthening previous reports from analysts and leakers, as well as Gurman's prior reporting. Gurman credits developer logs of third-party applications that contain evidence of Apple engineers or testers using the new Macs to verify that they work with popular software before release.

    The most clearly discernible of the Macs within these logs is a 15-inch MacBook Air, which has long been rumored. It's labeled "Mac 15,3" and it has the same display resolution as the 14-inch MacBook Pro (3024×1964). The laptop appears to have 8GB of RAM and a chip with eight CPU cores and 10 GPU cores—just the same as many M2 Macs already on the market.

    Gurman also reports that Apple is readying an M3 chip to debut in the near future—hardly a surprise, of course. He claims that the M3 will transition to a new 3-nanometer production process (it was 5 nm for the M2), just like the chip coming to the 2023 flagship iPhones. Although he doesn't specify which ones may come with the M3 and which might ship with the current M2, he writes that Apple is also working on updates for the 13-inch MacBook Air, the 24-inch iMac, and—surprisingly—the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

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      M2 MacBook Pro’s 256GB SSD is only about half as fast as the M1 version’s

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 27 June, 2022 - 17:08 · 1 minute

    An Apple laptop with the lid closed

    Enlarge / This is the 2022 13-inch MacBook Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon)

    The use of the M2 chip is the new 13-inch MacBook Pro's biggest change compared to the M1 version Apple launched in 2020, but it's apparently not the only one. YouTubers on the Max Tech and Created Tech channels (via MacRumors ) have run speed tests on the 256GB version of the M2 MacBook Pro and discovered that the SSD's read and write speeds are as much as 50 percent slower than the 256GB SSD in the M1 MacBook Pro.

    Sustained disk read speeds run by Max Tech using the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test showed a drop from about 2,900MB/s in the M1 MacBook Pro to 1,446MB/s in the M2 MacBook Pro. Write speeds dropped from 2,215MB/s in the M1 Pro to 1,463MB/s in the M2 Pro, a smaller but still significant drop.

    The culprit appears to be the NAND flash configuration. Both YouTubers took the bottom off of the new MacBook Pro and discovered that the 256GB versions use just one 256GB NAND flash chip, whereas the M1 MacBook Pro uses a pair of 128GB flash chips. On drives with more physical NAND chips, SSD controllers use a process called interleaving to read data from and write data to multiple physical chips at once. Use fewer chips, and you can limit your peak performance.

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      13-inch MacBook Pro review: Apple’s M2 is a worthy follow-up to the M1

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 23 June, 2022 - 11:30

    Apple's new 13-inch MacBook Pro is a little tough to recommend given the options in Apple's lineup, but that doesn't change the key takeaway: The new, second-generation M2 chip doesn't disappoint.

    While Apple calls the 13-inch MacBook Pro its “most portable Pro laptop,” there’s nothing that’s particularly “Pro” about it. It has too few ports for power users, and it can't touch the 14-inch MacBook Pro in performance—yet it offers little to draw would-be buyers away from the similarly specced and soon-to-be-launched MacBook Air redesign .

    That said, the real story is that this is the first laptop Apple released with its second-generation ARM-based processors for Macs. The M2 is an exciting follow-up to the already impressive M1 and a promising herald of what's to come to future Macs that deserve the Pro moniker.

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      Hello, M2: You can now order the new 13-inch MacBook Pro

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 17 June, 2022 - 15:54

    The first machine with Apple's second-generation M2 system-on-a-chip is now available to order. Though it won't arrive until June 24, you can buy the new 13-inch MacBook Pro today. Apple is also now selling its new dual-port USB-C charger through its online store.

    The 2022 refresh of the 13-inch MacBook Pro uses the same design and has all the same features as its 2020 predecessor, which used the M1 chip. The only significant difference is the inclusion of the M2, which Apple says can be up to 40 percent faster at some tasks than the M1.

    The laptop starts at $1,299 for a configuration with 256GB of solid-state storage, and there's also a $1,499 configuration with 512GB. Beyond those base configs, you can further customize the 13-inch MacBook Pro with 8GB, 16GB, or 24GB of memory, and you can upgrade to 1TB or 2TB of storage. You cannot upgrade later, so those choices have to be made at the time of purchase.

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      Apple’s least-interesting M2-powered MacBook will be available on June 24

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 14 June, 2022 - 15:38 · 1 minute

    The 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro.

    Enlarge / The 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro. (credit: Apple)

    Apple's all-new MacBook Air design got most of the attention at WWDC last week, but you won't be able to buy one until next month. In the meantime, Apple's other, less-interesting M2-equipped laptop, the 13-inch MacBook Pro , will be available for preorder starting on Friday, June 17, the company announced today . The laptop will begin arriving (and will show up in Apple's stores) on June 24.

    The laptop's main improvement is the M2 chip , which, according to Apple, features 18 percent faster CPU performance and up to 35 percent faster GPU performance than the M1 (in the version with the 10-core GPU). The M2 also features improved video encoding and decoding capabilities, with a ProRes video engine and decoding support for multiple 4K and 8K video streams.

    The M2 also supports up to 24GB of memory, up from a maximum of 16GB for the M1. But like the M1, the M2 chip only supports a maximum of two displays—the laptop's internal screen and one external monitor at up to 6K. If you need to attach multiple monitors to your Mac, you'll need the M1 Pro and Max chips in the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros.

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      Apple refreshes 13-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 chip, but the design stays the same

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 6 June, 2022 - 18:13

    The "new" 13-inch MacBook Pro.

    Enlarge / The "new" 13-inch MacBook Pro. (credit: Apple)

    The new MacBook Air is the most interesting laptop that Apple announced at WWDC today, but the 13-inch entry-level MacBook Pro got a less-noticeable refresh. The new laptop features better performance than the old model thanks to the presence of the M2 chip , but its design is staying exactly the same as the previous model.

    That means we're looking at the same basic MacBook Pro design we've had since 2016, with a pair of Thunderbolt ports, a Touch Bar, and a 13-inch screen. There's no MagSafe, and no redesigned keyboard or chassis.

    Apple claims that the new M2-powered MacBook Pro will deliver "39 percent faster" boosts to "processing" and "gaming" performance, though it has not yet clarified what its testing parameters are for those claims—or whether those tests leverage a new MacBook Pro maximum of 24GB unified memory.

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