The new MacBook Pro is a boon for creatives

with l The latest batch of MacBook ProApple gave its most demanding fans everything they could want: lots of ports, lots of power, and really nice screens. As usual, the company is following up this major redesign with a live chip update, featuring the new M2 Pro and M2 Max. It’s faster, as you’d expect, but it also offers some features power users might appreciate, like 8K video output and WiFi 6E support.

Once Apple does a redesign, they usually don’t mess with a good thing (except for total disasters like the Mac Pro trashcan). So it’s not surprising to see that this year Macbook Pro 14 It doesn’t look different from the 2021 model. It still features a gorgeous 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display with ProMotion support and a prominent notch that houses a 1080p webcam. It has all the ports you really want, including a MagSafe power connection, three Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, HDMI, a headphone jack, and a full-size SD card slot. And the overall shape of the computer remains relatively flat, an evolution of the long-life MacBook Pro’s unibody design.

Under the hood, the MacBook Pro 14 has been significantly upgraded. It can be equipped with Apple’s new M2 Pro chip, which offers up to 12 CPU cores and a 19-core GPU, or the M2 Max, which squeezes in a 12-core CPU and 38 GPU cores. Apple relies on a range of core speeds for its CPUs, as do Intel’s new hybrid processors, as do Qualcomm’s mobile chips (12-core chips, for example, have eight performance cores and four efficiency cores). The previous M1 Pro and M1 Max topped out with 10 CPU cores and 16 or 32 GPU cores, respectively.

Apple claims that the M2 Pro is about 20 percent faster than its predecessor in CPU speeds, and up to 30 percent faster when it comes to graphics. Meanwhile, the M2 Max is up to 30 percent faster than the M1 Max in terms of graphics. We tested the fully upgraded $3,299 MacBook Pro, which was equipped with an M2 Max chip with 38 GPU cores and 64GB of RAM. It scored about 2,600 points (19 percent) faster in the GeekBench 5 multitasking CPU benchmark, compared to the MacBook Pro 16-equipped M1 Max. It was also 18 percent faster in the GPU-powered GeekBench 5 Compute test and 60 percent faster than M1 Max Mac Studio in 3DMark Wildlife Extreme benchmark.

These are exceptional results if you plan to use the MacBook Pro to its full potential. But I’ll admit, during day-to-day use, I didn’t notice any significant performance benefits over previous models. This isn’t really a jab against the new computer, it’s a testament to how right Apple was last time. Unlike PCs, you likely won’t be playing a lot of games with your Mac either, so there’s no reason to chase frequent upgrades. On that note, it’s nice to see some recent games with native Mac support. Resident Evil Village It easily hits 60fps on the MacBook Pro at full resolution, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the same was true of the M1 models.