Apple’s new M4-based MacBook Pro line-up: signs of a rapid evolution

Apple’s big week of Mac news continued with the arrival today of the new M4-based MacBook Pro family, including a powerful new M4 Max processor and a bump to standard memory in the MacBook Air.

“MacBook Pro is an incredibly powerful tool that millions of people use to do their life’s best work, and today we’re making it even better,” said John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, announcing the new machines.

Apple’s latest notebooks follow the introduction of the mighty Mac mini and iMac — also powered by M4 processors – and promise to deliver the kind of power and performance for even the toughest professional workflows. Of course, the energy benefits are also apparent in the 24-hour battery life Apple promises. 

Apple Intelligence is visible throughout all the new Macs. But perhaps another facet of Apple’s intelligence is that by introducing a new Mac each day this week, it has grabbed a huge chunk of the news cycle. Apple also quietly beefed up the MacBook Air (the world’s most popular laptop), bestowing M2 and M3 models with 16GB of unified memory as standard, at no additional cost — pretty much confirming that, in the age of AI, 16GB is the new 8GB.

The new MacBook Pro

There’s a lot to like in the new laptops, which can be ordered with an M4, M4 Pro, or an all-new M4 Max chip.  Compared to an Intel-based MacBook Pro, the new model provides nearly 10 times faster performance for AI-based workloads and 20 times faster performance for graphics-intensive tasks, Apple said.

In other words, the chips unleash huge leaps forward in computational power similar to what a supercomputer cluster would have given you not so long ago – with estimated battery life that’s the longest we’ve ever had in a Mac. You can also support two high-resolution external displays as well as the built-in display.

All models, both 14-in. and 16-in. configurations, feature a Liquid Retina XDR screen with a nano-texture display option and up to 1,000 nits of brightness (1,600 nits of peak brightness). Equipped with a six-speaker sound system, they offer a 12-megapixel Center Stage camera, Thunderbolt 5 on M4 Pro and M4 Max models, an 8K HDMI port, MagSafe 3, headphone jack, SDXC card slot, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. Available in space black and silver, all can be pre-ordered today; shipments begin Nov. 8. 

But what’s different is all about the processor.

Apple

Speed demons

“Apple silicon has taken the Mac to unprecedented heights, and the rapid pace of innovation continues with M4 Pro and M4 Max,” Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technologies, said in a statement. “With the world’s fastest CPU core, immensely more powerful GPUs, and the fastest Neural Engine ever, the power-efficient performance and capabilities of the M4 family extend its lead as the most advanced lineup of chips in the industry.”

Built using second-generation 3-nanometer technology, the M4 family of chips boasts the world’s fastest CPU core, along with outstanding multithreaded CPU performance. The chips also support increased memory bandwidth, which is water in the desert for large language models (LLMs) you might want to run.

That 24-hour battery life hasn’t made for any compromise in terms of performance. Apple claims the new M4 MacBook Pro will run 1.8 times faster than the M1 MacBook Pro, with some tasks running even faster than that. The Neural Engine is also three times more powerful, which — in combination with the increased 120Gbps memory bandwidth and 16GB installed unified memory — means the computer will be incredibly capable of running and creating new AI.

Apple cherry-picked some illustrations of how this performance equates to getting work done faster, promising image processing in Affinity Photo will be seven times faster than it was with the Intel Core i7 MacBook Pro (13-in.) or 1.8 times faster than in the M1 MacBook Pro. Blender users can expect 3D rendering to be more than 10 times faster than on Intel.

But even those comparisons are thoroughly trashed by the performance you can expect from the M4 Pro Macs. Apple claims that a MacBook Pro with M4 Pro will enjoy a massive 75% increase in memory bandwidth over the prior generation — double that of any AI PC chip. These things really do promise massive enhancements in complex professional workflows in fields like structural engineering or data modeling. Those performance boosts are essential to some industries. 

Apple

King of the Hill – the M4 Max

It’s hard to miss just how much performance Apple promises with the M4 Max MacBook Pro: 3.5 times the performance of the M1 Max MacBook Pro. (That’s pretty impressive on its own, given that particular Mac still blows people’s socks off.)

What this means is that the heaviest creative, scientific, or data modelling tasks will be absolutely devoured by this machine. Want to run DNA sequences in Oxford Nanopore? Now you can — an astonishing 23.8 times faster than you could before.

The LLMs we use tomorrow will be built in these Macs, because they can handle the workload it takes to manage nearly 200 billion parameters. It doesn’t stop there, the M4 Max holds a Media Engine with two ProRes accelerators, so media handling (at least on apps that support ProRes) will fly.

Consider this: Apple claims a MacBook Pro with an M4 Max can compile code in Xcode 4.6 times faster than the 16‑in. MacBook Pro with Intel Core i9.

If you recall, I looked at that particular Mac in 2019 and called it the most capable Apple notebook I’d ever used. To deliver a near five-fold performance increase in under five years since then really shows the extent to which the move to Apple Silicon has unleashed evolution on the Mac. This is also more than twice as fast as the 16‑in. MacBook Pro with M1 Max (“a major step forward,” reviewers said).

Apple

The details about the chips

M4

Up to 10-core CPU. (four performance, six efficiency cores). 1.8x faster than M1.

10-core GPU. Two times faster than M1.

16-core Neural Engine

16GB of unified memory at 120GBps, with support for up to 32GB.

M4 Pro 

Up to 14-core CPU. (10 performance, four efficiency cores). 1.9 times faster than M1 Pro.

20-core GPU. Apple says this is twice as fast as the M4 (which means it’s probably four times faster than the M1).

16-core Neural Engine.

16GB of unified memory at 120GBps, with support for up to 64GB at an astonishing 275GBps (the latter can be configured for up to 546GBps).

M4 Max

Up to 16-core CPU. (12 performance, four efficiency cores). 2.2 times faster than M1 Max.

40-core GPU, 1.9 times faster than the M1 Max.

16-core Neural Engine

Up to 128GB unified memory. Over half a terabyte per second (546GBps) of unified memory bandwidth.

Media Engine that includes two video encode engines and two ProRes accelerators.

There are a variety of build-to-order options that can further increase performance.

Apple

How much do they cost?

The 14-in. MacBook Pro with M4 starts at $1,599, and with M4 Pro, $1,999; the 16‑in. MacBook Pro starts at $2,499. I ran a quick build-to-order calculation to find that a 16-in. MacBook Pro with a 16-core M4 Max chip, nano-texture display, 64GB memory, and 1TB SSD will cost you $4,349. Completely maxxed out (bar software) you’re looking at $7,349.

Weirdly, in light of the performance you can expect, I imagine that for some users in some industries even the very highest end system will seem to be a bargain, though most of us don’t need that much power.

Better for the Environment

Apple really is pressing hard on its goal to becoming carbon neutral by 2030. These new Macs are created from a custom alloy that uses 100% recycled aluminum in the enclosure. You’ll also find 100% recycled rare earth elements in all magnets, and 100% recycled tin soldering, gold plating, and copper in multiple printed circuit boards. The packaging has no plastic included.

One more thing

Stop everything for a moment, zoom out, and take another look at Apple’s news this week. You might then recognize that from the $599 Mac mini all the way to the cream of the MacBook Pro crop, Apple now offers systems more than capable of handling any task; even the Mac mini can handle heavy workloads, just a little slower.

Not only this, but with Apple Intelligence, Apple has the foundations for a Mac/iPhone/iPad AI ecosystem no one else can touch. That’s all fine and impressive on its own — but these new pro Mac notebooks add another arrow to Apple’s bow. 

Look at it another way: MacBook Pro is already incredibly popular among data scientists and AI researchers. What that means, of course, is that even if Apple doesn’t prevail in the AI race (I wouldn’t bet against it), there’s still a very, very big chance that whatever AI does gain dominance will be something that was, itself, made on a Mac.

And that’s an accomplishment no one else can match. Time to upgrade?

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