The new Apple Silicon-based MacBook Pros are here, and Apple's presentation on the M1 Pro and M1 Max made both chips look like a dramatic improvement over the Intel processors and Intel and AMD GPUs they'll be replacing.
The 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,999, and the 16-inch model starts at $2,499. Both of those configurations get you an M1 Pro processor, 16GB of memory, and 512GB of storage, and both represent only minor price increases from the MacBook Pros they're replacing. But things quickly get complicated from there.
Even though Apple technically only announced two new chips today, both the M1 Pro and M1 Max come in an array of different configurations with different numbers of CPU and GPU cores (just like the M1). This is common in chipmaking—if you make an M1 Pro with one or two defective GPU cores, then selling it as a lower-end model is a sensible alternative to just throwing the chip out entirely. But this decision does complicate Apple's high-level performance numbers slightly, and it means that you'll still need to choose between multiple processor options when you're shopping for a new MacBook Pro.
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