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I’m really curious to see exactly what Apple did under the hood for these new MacBook Pro models. How closely related are they to the A15 in the new iPhones? Are they descendants from the A15 or did they branch off earlier and become their own thing? Also, is there enough headroom to ship a Mac Pro or iMac Pro in the spring or is that going to happen in the fall, as a result of development work around the A16?
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We’ll be talking about this tomorrow, but my initial take on these is that they’re much more distinct from the iPhone/iPad SoCs than we thought they’d be.
On paper they’re dramatically overpowered. Apple seems to have hit a home run and primed the pump for a stream of updates to come. It’s mind-boggling.
I’ve ordered a 14" base model MBP with the M1 Max which arrives 10/26. And a maxed out 16" MBP with the M1 Pro which arrives 11/5. We’ll be testing them out as soon as they arrive.
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I am looking forward to your discussion of this. I wonder how laptops can even be overpowered these days. These are supposed to be top of the line machines.
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In this case, overpowered is not a bad thing! I suspect the Pro Max will be faster than the Intel Mac Pro. I can only imagine what next year’s desktops will run like.
iPhone and iPad has been overpowered for some years, by which I mean they have much more power than all but a very few apps need. That’s not usually the case with MacOS - until now.
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Yup, room to grow on, for years to come! I sure hope so, anyway. I’m waiting for one of those next year models.
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2k for the base configuration is LUNACY. My mid 2014 MBP is at my local mac shop getting diagnosed to see if my SSD or logic board took a dump. If its logic board I’m probably not going to proceed with fixing it but the new Surface laptop studio is very tempting and at a reasonable price. Not to mention the SSD is user replaceable where as on the Macbok pro it isn’t. The $1799 SLS config is where i’m leaning
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I’m actually really glad I bought an M1 MacBook Air a few months ago; cause if these new Pros were available when I was buying a laptop I would be spending a TON more money than I need too 
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It depends, the Surface Laptop Studio with the same RAM and SSD size is $100 more than the MBP, but “only” has a quad core processor. And probably doesn’t have the raw performance (we’ll have to wait and see how the benchmarks for both pan out). But, if you want a pro Mac, that is the price you have to pay.
We are back to the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, where you can’t really compare Macs and Windows PCs, because they use different processors. You have to first look at your workflow and the software you use, then make a decision on what operating system, and therefore what hardware, you need to use. Or where you already have your software investment, although with cloud based subscriptions these days for things like Microsoft Office and Adobe Suite, the choice is much easier, you can easily switch to the platform you are more comfortable with and where the auxiliary applications are.
I have given up on Microsoft, at home, for now. I’ve switched to Linux on my home machine, although I still need Windows at work for most things - I could switch to Linux (or macOS) there and use the Terminal Server for the applications that are Windows only.
But premium laptops from most Windows OEMs have similar or higher price tags for high spec versions. It is just that there are more options at the lower end than there are with macOS. The entry level Macbooks are still around the 1000€ range, whereas with Linux and Windows, you can pick up a plastic-fanstastic laptop for under 400€ that is still usable.
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Yes, I was hoping for a Mac mini with the new chips, but in reality, the existing Mac mini would probably serve me more than well enough.
My main reason for changing will be to save power - electricity prices are sky rocketing at the moment and I don’t really use the full potential of my Ryzen 1700 at the moment, so an energy saving machine with similar levels of performance (faster disk and memory, probably a little lower on processing power, but I rarely push all 8 cores these days anyway).
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I think they want to keep their limited supply for the higher margin Macbooks for now… probably post pandemic these chips will be in a Mini Pro or something.
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I finally managed to order an iPhone 13 for my wife this morning. Been trying since Friday, but everywhere out of stock, finally managed to get it on Amazon this morning (Product Red). The high end ones were available, but she wants the cheapest model, because they are all too expensive anyway…
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The one thing that seems to be missing is 10gb Ethernet.
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Meh, this is what Apple does— they significantly improve something and then charge more for it. They try to ratchet up the average selling price by removing lower-spec options. I am a Surface fan, but I would ding Microsoft for often going the opposite route. Last year they were promoting a relatively low $749 entry price for Surface Pro 7. But of course that was a weak i3/4GB/128GB version that lacked keyboard and pen. By the time you got a reasonable configuration with accessories you were now looking at $1100 or more. They did the same thing with Surface Go; you had to spend 40%-50% more than the “entry-level” price to get something actually decent. Apple chose to start with a much higher basic configuration on top of its other improvements, and charge accordingly. I think most pro’s will be happy with what they get for the money, and the device will pay for itself.
p.s. Apple still offers the M1-based 13” MBP with a lower base configuration starting at $1299.