With Apple’s announcement that the Mac platform has finally left Intel behind, many consumers will look again at the platform to ask if now is the time to upgrade their MacBook. The current MacBook Air continues to offer an attractive consumer platform, while the MacBook Pro models can offer significant performance.
Yet now is not the time to be buying. It is late in the MacBook product cycle, and Apple is already testing the new MacBook Pro models. Now is not the time to be buying a macOS laptop.
CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 05: Apple CEO Tim Cook holds the new 15-inch MacBook Air during the … [+] Apple Worldwide Developers Conference on June 05, 2023 in Cupertino, California. Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off the annual WWDC23 developer conference with the announcement of the new Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Apple looks set to continue with a consumer variant of the MacBook Pro. The first 13-inch model launched with the M1 chip alongside the M1 MacBook Air in 2020; the M2 MacBook Pro launched alongside the M2 Air in 2022; and the M3 variant of both the Pro and the Air are expected in the next few months.
In the days of Intel (which Apple is proudly reminding everyone are over) there was a clear difference in specs between even the largest MacBook Air and the smallest MacBook Pro. If you needed power at home, the choice was simple. Yet as Tim Cook and his teams continue to innovate on Apple Silicon, the need for consumers to buy more power on their laptops diminishes as the base models provide an excess of potential across the board.
The expected difference between the upcoming MacBook Air M3 and MacBook Pro M3 may be around ten to fifteen per cent, but if the MacBook Air is already delivering more than you will ever need for a bit of home video editing, podcast creation, or competent app development, the same M3 in the MacBook Pro will not be a huge step up.
The majority of consumers will be satisfied with the performance of the MacBook Air. It’s unlikely that anyone looking for more power will be satisfied with the slight increase found in the awkward 13-inch MacBook Pro models. The real power lies further up the portfolio.
Apple is already testing the chipset destined for the next generation of MacBook Pro laptops. Third-party developers examining the log files sent through their apps have discovered the M3 Max chipset being used – presumably by Apple engineers testing apps on pre-release hardware. Along with 48 GB of RAM, the M3 Max being tested sports 12 high-performance cores and 4 efficiency cores; 4 more high performance and 2 more efficiency cores compared to the M2 chipset found in the current 13-inch MacBook Pro.
The M2 Max is already outperforming the consumer MacBooks, and the M3 Max will bring even more to the table. If you need power from your MacBook Pro, that’s where you should look.
