Apple Announces M2 Pro and M2 Max-Powered MacBook Pros and Mac Minis

Dan Moren has a good summary of today’s announcements at Six Colors:

As expected, Apple on Tuesday took the wraps off updates to its MacBook Pro and Mac mini lines, featuring as their centerpiece the new M2 Pro and M2 Max processors.

The MacBook Pro update is basically a speed bump: the base level $1999 14-inch model moves to a M2 Pro 10-core CPU/16-core GPU configuration, with build to configure options for M2 Pro 12-core with a 19-core GPU, or to M2 Max with 12 cores and either 30 or 38 cores of GPU. Options at $2499 and $3099 come with the higher M2 Pro and the M2 Max, respectively. Meanwhile, the 16-inch model’s base configuration, at $2499, starts with a 12-core CPU/19-core GPU M2 Pro, while the $2699 and $3499 models feature the 12-core/19-core M2 Pro and 12-core/38-core M2 Max options.[...]

On the Mac mini side, Apple has finally axed the Intel Mac model and now offers three configurations of mini, starting with the same 8-core CPU/10-core GPU M2 configuration in the MacBook Air at $599 — $100 less than its M1-powered predecessor. While a $799 model features more storage with the same chip configuration, there’s also for the first time an option for Apple’s more powerful M2 Pro chip, in a $1299 10-core CPU/16-core GPU option, with a build to order configuration also offering a bump to a 12-core/19-core GPU M2 Pro. The M2 Pro configuration also offers four Thunderbolt 4 ports on the back, up over just two on the M2 configurations.

Announcements from Apple’s Newsroom:

Apple released a 20-minute video announcing these products, hosted by John Ternus. It’s linked from Apple’s home page, but isn’t listed on their Events page, so I’m not sure if the URL is a permalink. (I wouldn’t read too much into it, but I did notice that the URL for the video has “/2022/” in the path, which makes me wonder if this was all originally intended to be announced a month ago.)

One purely cosmetic surprise to me: the Mac Mini is still only available in silver, no space gray. I would have bet (and lost) that the regular M2 models would remain silver, but the M2 Pro and Max models would have been space gray. That’s how the lower-end and higher-end Intel Mac Mini models were colored.

★ Tuesday, 17 January 2023