[wlesieutre]

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.

[varenc]

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

To summarize: M1 Max > M1 Pro > M2 > M1

pretty confusing

[wlesieutre]

At least with M2s coming out we'll get away from the problem where "M1 Max" sounds identical to "M1 Macs"

[tedunangst]

When has it not been the case that the top spec CPU of the previous generation is faster than the lowest spec next generation?

Are you also totally confused by the fact that a threadripper 3990x is faster than a ryzen 5500?

[varenc]

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.