Quick Thoughts on Apple’s M4 MacBook Pro

Apple’s reveal of M4 Macs shifts to laptop land with the M4 MacBook Pro range — and naturally, I have thoughts.

Apple started out with the reveal of the M4 iMac lineup. Then we had M4 Mac Minis, and it didn’t take much crystal ball gazing to suggest that today’s Mac reveal would be for a refresh of the MacBook Pro line… and that’s just what Apple has done.

This one is the spec bump

Outside the existence of the M4 Max lineup — which was kind of predictable in itself — the reality here is that of all of Apple’s announcements this week, the MacBook Pro one is much more of your classic speed specification bump upgrade than anything else.

There’s not much to say about the physical design of the new MacBook Pro models, because pretty much all of the action is taking place underneath the hood. That’s not just the range of M4 options, but also features like the upgraded camera, brighter displays and Thunderbolt 5 on selected models.

Which is mostly fine for the target market that wants a MacBook Pro, to be clear. Apple’s under some pretty heavy pressure in terms of performance, so even the pricier M4 Max MacBook Pros have a lot to live up to.

Not that they’re… inexpensive

“I spent all my money on the M4 MacBook Pro, so I cannot afford lighting.”

I made the comment yesterday that Apple doesn’t believe in the existence of the word “cheap”, and that’s absolutely true for the MacBook Pro line, especially at the top tier. The cheapest M4 MacBook Pro will run you $2,499 with an M4 processor, 14 inch display, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

Want a pumped up M4 Max MacBook Pro 16 inch with all the trimmings?

You’ll need $11,529 just hanging around in your bank account to do so. To be fair, those kinds of machines are often purchased by businesses where the productivity gains might make them worth it very rapidly indeed.

16GB as standard on the MacBook Air is nice too

Total aside, but this is perhaps the most staged promotional photo I’ve ever seen.
Ever spent any time on a farm? They’re NEVER this clean. NEVER.

If I was the cynical type (say it ain’t so!) I might suspect that Apple’s silicon factory partners (or Apple) decided it was just more cost-effective to include 16GB of RAM into the SoC for all Apple processors shifting forwards, rather than have separate 8GB lines to deal with. In any case, the rather quieter news that the new MacBook Air models — they’re still M2/M3 lines, no sign of an M4 MacBook Air yet — will now ship with 16GB as the baseline is quite welcome.

Where does this leave the Mac Studio and Mac Pro?

“Mr Cook? Hello? Do we get upgrades too?”

The full spec M4 Max MacBook Pro looks to be a fearsome beast, but notably absent so far from Apple’s big hardware refresh week is anything about the Mac Studio or Mac Pro lines.

They’re both still working from M2 Max/Ultra processors, two full processor generations behind but without any substantial price drops to make them more compelling machines.

Hmm. Maybe Apple has “one more thing” tomorrow… and maybe that’s where they’ll also unveil the M4 Apple Pippin as well!

Hey, I can live in hope…

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