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New MacBook Pros With M2 Pro and M2 Max Chips Now 'Well Into Development'
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I am pretty sure they wanted to boost the new Macbook Air sales which has an all new design. It is not because they wanted to put out the M2 as soon as they can. If that would be the case they would have updated the Mac Mini as well.
I wouldnt wonder that when they released the M1 Pro / Max Macbooks they already had the M1 Max / Ultra Studio ready but wanted to boost Macbook Pro sales first with the all new product and then put out another all new product (-> M1 Ultra). So after all all new products (new Macbook Pro's, new Mac Studio / Ultra chip, new Macbook Air) came with a bang.
Now IMO it is time to update them all to the M2's (if it they are ready) without any bang and at the same time. The Studio doesnt make the M2 Max better as the Macbook Pro 14 or 16 does.
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That suggests channel clearing to me. (Sell out the old model with the expectation of a new model by the end of the year).
This. The MacBook Air:
- is likely Apple's biggest-selling Mac
- will potentially be a big seller during the US Q3 "Back to School" season
- sells to a "fashion conscious" market in which looks and having the latest model are quite important
The M1 Air was already 18 months old - and its case & screen design were even older. It was clearly the highest priority for an update.
The 14/16" MBPs aren't even a year old yet, and got a complete makeover, new screens, new old ports etc. last year. They're selling into a higher-end market which probably isn't so seasonal, with pro/business buyers likely to be on something like a 3 year replacement cycle or lease. I think it's only Mac Rumors pundits that are going to lose their wigs if they don't get am annual update.
And, yeah, Apple probably want to let the Mac Studio have its time in the sun before they upgrade the Mini - even a M2 Mini (offering a 24GB RAM option & some of the media features from the Pro/Max) would leech some sales from the lower-end Studio. Anyway, the Mini probably isn't in the same sales league as the MB Air, and this wouldn't be the first time that the Mini has been passed over for upgrades...
I'd speculate on why the 13" MBP got a M2 upgrade if I knew why the M1 13" MBP - or even it's Intel predecessors (the "2 port" and "non-touchbar" MBPs) - existed in the first place. There's clearly a market for these that I just don't get (yes, they hit the sweet spot for some people - but it's a very narrow niche between the Air and the 'proper' MBP) - possibly some big corporate/government/education contract/approval requires it to exist.
That’s probably why they said M1 Ultra was the last of the M1 family. Personally, I am hoping for a W* series. We don’t need more M* processors. What would it be? M2 Extreme and M2 Extreme Pro Max for the top tier one? Making it W* will cut ties with power efficiency M* series and realign the naming for a configurable tower. We might see double the processors we currently have just for the Mac Pro. I’d hope we won’t just see one new processor but a few we can choose.
With the M1 series Apple has pretty much maxed out performance for general-purpose computing. I've been around for a long time, and the performance of the M1 series is really insane.
I with the M1 was available for embedded solutions, because it would be a real game changer in the embedded space; there are things that are possible with the M1 that are difficult/impossible to do with, say, a snapdragon, like realtime multi-stream video encoding. Moving that stuff away from the cloud would mean less latency/better performance, and would be total win. All that in a form factor like a NUC or smaller would be crazy.
I with the M1 was available for embedded solutions, because it would be a real game changer in the embedded space; there are things that are possible with the M1 that are difficult/impossible to do with, say, a snapdragon, like realtime multi-stream video encoding. Moving that stuff away from the cloud would mean less latency/better performance, and would be total win. All that in a form factor like a NUC or smaller would be crazy.
You disingenuously misapply my words. I have always considered the M1 MBPs to be excellent boxes including right now and have never said otherwise. The quotes you repeat above apply to timing of the M2 upgrade to M1 in 14"/16" MBPs and I stand by all of them.
The M2 updates are substantive and are worth having, and M2 14"/16" MBPs are due 2022 (note that due does not mean they will necessarily be announced). But today M1 remains currently best choice for 14"/16" MBPs and will probably be current in Studios for quite a while.
My enterprise-critical 2016 MBP is showing its age, so I regularly revisit contingency planning for "what if it fails?" Shipping delays change, and affect different BTO boxes differently, but usually my contingency solutions end up including at least one M1 box in the mix. As of yesterday if the 2016 box fails I would buy 2 boxes: an M2 13" MBP for immediate pickup, plus order an M1 Studio (and I might still choose that combo after seeing M2 14"/16" MBPs).
The M1 14"/16" MBP is not included as a contingency choice because of shipping delays. If my 2016 MBP fails I will not have the luxury of waiting for an M1 14"/16" MBP or waiting to see what M2 14"/16" MBPs bring. Note too that after M2 14"/16" MBPs are on the street I still might buy an M1 14"/16" MBP if huge savings present. I saved more than $1k buying a maxed-out 2016 MBP in 2017.
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No not really. I really miss a 4th Thunderbolt port. HDMI and SD card reader? Never used them once.
Something is either "not good enough" or not. You're clearly making the case that they're not good enough any more.
Based on what? The single-core boost is barely worth it.
The M2 non-Pro update is mainly worth it for the improved e-cores and GPU. Maybe they'll sell it based on the GPU.
You're way overthinking this. If a Studio is an option, so is a 14-inch MBP.
Thanks for correcting me (seriously). Yes, what upsets me that the SD port and HDMI robbed us of a fourth TB4 port.
No, an immediate walk-in-and-buy-it solution would be needed. And yesterday I could get a 13" M2 MBP with 24 GB RAM off the shelf; totally adequate for a month or two until a loaded M1 Studio would get delivered giving better desktop competence, including more TB ports. And the M2 13" MBP (my partner has one) is plenty strong enough for (my) mobile long term. YMMV
That 2-box desktop plus laptop solution is what I did before Thunderbolt came to Mac laptops in 2011. It has pros and cons and may again be optimal for my work, but ideally I would like to evaluate the M2 16" MBPs first.
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Yes, or multi-port dongles/docks. In desktop mode all 4 TB ports are always full.
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Multiple times I have noted that supply or whatever may postpone things. However given M2 MBAs at the low end are out and 13" M2 MBPs another step up are out and excellent (my partner has one), IMO M2 14"/16" MBPs are due in 2022, and my guess is that we will see them in October.
I mean… there’s a decent chance there will be an M2 Pro MBP soon, so this isn’t a great time to buy. But if that happens, it’s even less likely to be available walking into a store.
There is no M1 Studio. There are M1 Max and M1 Ultra versions of the Studio and they are much faster than the M2 in many operations. The only place where the M2 is faster than those M1 variants is in single core performance. Buyers of the Studio are likely buying them for multi-core and GPU performance.
If someone were to buy the M2 Mini over the M1 Max Studio because of the M2, it is either because they know that they only need single core performance or because they think that 2 is better than 1. In both cases their needs are likely met just fine by the M2. Anyone with true performance needs will understand the difference between the processors.
Yep. I’m tired of being locked in to a display with the 27” iMac. Mac mini was too slow for me. 2013 Mac Pro was way out of date in 2017 and in 2019 the Mac Pro was way too expensive. Thus I had to go with the iMac.
Agreed Mac Pros will need something different than the M1 Ultra. The ultra is a kludge; an elegant kludge for sure, but still a kludge.
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Correct. If I need to buy immediately it will be a 13" M2 MBP. Waiting A) to see M2 16" MBPs and B) for delivery of a loaded M2 16" MBP is a luxury that only applies as long as the 2016 box keeps working well.
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Clearly we disagree. I think that ~20% performance improvement and the thousands of lines of evolutionary code changes engineers make over the year since v1 make waiting to see M2 wise. And we may also see WiFi, Bluetooth, display, etc. upgrades. Buying into last year's tech means buying a box forever a year behind; savings must be enough to justify that and we need to see M2 MBPs to have any idea how far behind the M1 MBPs are.
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First MBA: Jan 2008
2nd MBA: Oct 2008
3rd MBA: June 2009
And that was when Apple sold a lot fewer MBAs in any given time period...
No they haven't! I could give you a long list of micro-architectural improvements that could double the IPC of an M1.
Why hasn't Apple implemented them yet? Well
(a) things take time
(b) many improvement require more transistors, so you wait till N3, or N2, depending on just how many additional transistors you need.
I’m assuming Apple had enough on chip bandwidth to have another TB4 port, but not being an engineer, it’s possible they didn’t. Although one would think that the HDMI 2.0 port needed bandwidth being 18.0 GBPs and the SDXC being less than that, that Apple simply made the decision to acquiesce to the more single use ports crowd than listen to the dongle fussers.