Anyone else feel that Apple has completely screwed the pooch on the marketing here? I feel this is just going to end up in a mess of confusion of M1/M2/M3 with superfluous adjectives.
I think it doesn't help that the computers are called Pro as well, so you could have a MacBook Pro with M1 Max, etc.
I mean there was another comment on this thread that had to clarify that when they said "M2 Pro" they had meant the "MacBook Pro with M2" not a future "M2 Pro" chip.
The marketing seems pretty straightforward? M1/M2/M3 (and their sub-variants) and fan/no-fan are the two performance aspects, and then you just decide whether you want a 13"/14"/16".
The 13" is substantially different from the 14"/16" though. It's a carryover of the previous design (bigger bezels, no notch) and has the lower tier processor with 4+4 performance and efficiency CPU core split. The 14" and 16" have a 8+2 CPU cores instead.
EDIT: other differences include mini-LED backlight, 120 hz refresh rate, 2x the base RAM, 4x the maximum RAM, function keys (instead of touch bar), support for 3 external displays (instead of 1), HDMI, SD card slot, magsafe, and faster charging
Much more of a choice to make than "do I want a fan or not" if you include the 14" and 16". That's pretty accurate between the Air and 13" Pro though.
I think the grandparent commenter is illustrating how confusing this is. To break it down, here are the chips and laptop models:
- M1 Macbook Air (old)
- M1 Macbook Pro 13" (old)
- M1 Pro Macbook Pro 14" (or M1 Max)
- M1 Pro Macbook Pro 16" (or M1 Max)
- M2 Macbook Air
- M2 Macbook Pro 13"
Note that the "Pro" modifier can be applied to both the laptop and to the chip. An M1 Pro or M1 Max is significantly more powerful than an M1 and still more powerful than an M2. An M2 Pro or M2 Max _chip_ doesn't yet exist, though the linked article's title confusingly implies it does. The thermal pad mod just makes the M2 Macbook Air perform as well as the M2 Macbook Pro 13", but it doesn't make it perform as well as the M1 Pro/Max Macbook Pro 14"/16". Benchmarks: https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks
I'm not confused.. but as demonstrated in this thread, confusion exists amongst users.
Also your example sort of made my point. The names "threadripper 3990x" and "ryzen 5500" are pretty meaningless by themselves and from those names alone there's no implied relationship about which one is newer/faster. This is a good thing! However, "M2 Macbook Pro" vs "M1 Pro Macbook Pro" could be naively interpreted incorrectly.
I think the issue is that there is some overlap in performance between a fanless M2 and a fanned (is that a word?) M1.
Also, Apple doesn't exactly advertise the fan status of each laptop. Currently, only the MBPs have fans, but in the past MBAs had fans also. But most people don't know the fan status of Apple's lineup, so this isn't really part of their marketing messaging.
It's not straightforward to me personally. Look at the photos on the Apple store, I don't even know what these laptops look like, let alone which one to pick.
Add in the SSD issues and the info-sparse spec list and I really can't tell and the whole S/Pro/Plus/Max/?? situation. I wish they were clearer
> Look at the photos on the Apple store, I don't even know what these laptops look like
Browsing on my phone, apple.com > store > Mac[1], I see a carousel showing the front of each Mac model (oddly showing the older MacBook Air first, I’d guess because it’s the least expensive?). Tapping each model, a view for that model shows up with a carousel showing additional angles/perspectives. Granted this isn’t the most obvious navigation from the home page, and the individual products’ landing/marketing pages too frequently bury useful images.
> Add in the SSD issues and the info-sparse spec list and I really can't tell and the whole S/Pro/Plus/Max/?? situation. I wish they were clearer
If I go to Compare Mac Models[2], the spec comparisons don’t seem especially sparse. Below the fold details get more specific about the chips. Granted they’re mostly differentiated by core counts (and, oddly, memory bandwidth). The page also enumerates all configuration options for each model.
I do agree they should be more upfront about SSD performance by configuration.
Oh wow, I didn't even find the first page when on the apple site. Thanks for this! I was navigating Apple > Mac > Buy.
I was looking at the pages for the specific laptops (which, as far as I can tell, only have the front-facing photos.) The spec situation is still confusing (took me awhile to figure out the $1200 MBAs and the $1500 MBAs were two configs of the same model; "Select" essentially takes you to the same place, which was very confusing.)
I had a black 13" MacBook back when those came out. I loved that machine, it was the perfect size and looked so cool. Then someone broke into my car after work and stole it. I'm still bitter about that.
Looks pretty straightforward to me: higher number - better processor. Now between M1 Pro, Max and Ultra how can you tell which one is supposed to be better ? :)
M1: (base), Pro, Max, Ultra, <maybe Mac Pro chip?>
M2: (base), Pro, <one would assume we will ge Max/Ultra as well>
Compared to the competition (or rather, other chip makers since Apple doesn't sell it's chips) this seems way easier.