Apple launches new M2 Pro, M2 Max MacBook Pro and Mac Mini

Apple on Thursday made its first official product announcement for the year 2023. The Cupertino-based company announced M2 Pro and M2 Max, two next-generation SoCs (systems on a chip) and the new Mac Mini.

Apple in a blog said, "M2 Pro scales up the architecture of M2 to deliver an up to 12-core CPU and up to 19-core GPU, together with up to 32GB of fast unified memory. M2 Max builds on the capabilities of M2 Pro, including an up to 38-core GPU, double the unified memory bandwidth, and up to 96GB of unified memory."

Both chips also feature enhanced custom technologies, including a faster 16-core Neural Engine and Apple’s powerful media engine. M2 Pro brings pro performance to Mac mini for the first time, while M2 Pro and M2 Max take the game-changing performance and capabilities of the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro even further, the blog added.

Speaking about the launch, Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies said, "With an even more powerful CPU and GPU, support for a larger unified memory system, and an advanced media engine, M2 Pro and M2 Max represent astonishing advancements in Apple silicon."

M2 Pro
The M2 Pro is built using a second-generation 5-nanometer process technology. It consists of 40 billion transistors, which according to Apple, is nearly 20 percent more than M1 Pro, and double the amount in M2.

It features 200GB/s of unified memory bandwidth — twice that of M2 — and up to 32GB of low-latency unified memory. The next-generation 10- or 12-core CPU consists of up to eight high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores, resulting in multithreaded CPU performance that is up to 20 percent faster than the 10-core CPU in M1 Pro

Apple also said that it believes Adobe Photoshop will run up to 2.5x faster than on the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro.

M2 Max

M2 Max features the same next-generation 12-core CPU as M2 Pro. The GPU is even more powerful with up to 38 cores, and is paired with a larger L2 cache. Graphics speeds climb up to 30 percent faster than M1 Max, the company said.

Along with 96GB of memory, the new MacBook Pro with M2 Max can tackle graphics-intensive projects that competing systems can’t even run, according to Apple.

It comes with 400GB/s of unified memory bandwidth and supports up to 96GB of fast unified memory. It also has 67 billion transistors — 10 billion more than M1 Max.
 

Mac Mini

The Mac Mini is supercharged by M2 and the all-new M2 Pro. Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, Greg Joswiak said, "Bringing even more performance and a lower starting price, Mac mini with M2 is a tremendous value. And for users who need powerful pro performance, Mac mini with M2 Pro is unlike any other desktop in its class.”

Mac mini with M2 features an 8-core CPU with four high-performance and four high-efficiency cores, along with a 10-core GPU. As per Apple, it comes with up to 24GB of unified memory and 100GB/s of bandwidth, making activities like image editing in Adobe Photoshop up to 50 percent faster than the previous generation. M2 also adds ProRes acceleration to Mac mini, so tasks like video editing in Final Cut Pro are more than twice as fast, according to the company.

Meanwhile, Mac Mini with M2 Pro features a 12-core CPU with eight high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores, along with up to a 19-core GPU, M2 Pro has 200GB/s of memory bandwidth. It supports up to 32GB of memory. The next-generation Neural Engine is 40 percent faster than M1, speeding up ML tasks like video analysis and image processing, according to the blog.

M2 Pro offers a powerful media engine, which speeds through the most popular video codecs and can simultaneously play up to five streams of 8K ProRes 422 video at 30 fps, or up to 23 streams of 4K ProRes 422 video at 30 fps. The M2 Pro-powered model is up to 14x faster than the fastest Intel-based Mac mini, Apple claims.

It comes at a starting price of $599 and is available to order immediately but will be available on January 24.