After a stellar series of calendar-spanning corporate events like Lobsterfest and Shark Week, Apple tried something new this year with what’s informally known as Mac Week. (Luckily for Apple, it coincides with its earnings call on Thursday!) The company’s three-day product rollout for desktop hardware is centered around the M4 chip, which is built for Apple Intelligence.
We recap everything Apple introduced this week, including a new iMac, Mac mini, MacBook Pro, and other cool stuff like the official arrival of Apple Intelligence on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.
The M4-powered iMac has the same design (except for a few new colors) but more horsepower inside. Apple says the all-in-one desktop is 1.7 times faster for daily productivity and 2.1 times faster for more demanding tasks like gaming or photo editing. Like all the new Macs announced this week, it doesn’t have the mere 8GB of RAM seen before in the cheapest Mac, which has 16GB as a baseline. (Wow!)
The new iMac still has a 24-inch 4.5K Retina display in an aluminum unibody design. However, it has a new nano-textured glass screen option for reduced glare and a 12MP Center Stage camera that supports Apple’s Desk View.
Mac mini (M4, M4 Pro)
Apple’s smaller Mac that may live up to its “mini” branding more than ever. The 2024 Mac mini is just a five-inch by five-inch box, measuring two inches tall. (That’s only slightly larger than the Apple TV 4K!)
The new Mac mini is available in M4 and M4 Pro configurations. Apple says the M4 variant is 1.8 times faster than the M1 model from four years ago. Its graphics are 2.2 times faster. It should also be a huge upgrade for Apple intelligence: It supports 38 TOPS (tera operations per second) of AI processing power. That dwarfs the 18 TOPS of the (only a year old) M3 chip. It also has 16GB of RAM.
For the first time, the machine doesn’t have legacy USB ports. It has two USB-C ports on the front and three Thunderbolt USB-C ports (along with HDMI and Ethernet) on the back.
MacBook Pro (M4, M4 Pro, M4 Max)
Most of Apple’s MacBook sales are in the MacBook lineup, which makes sense. Not only can you use them on the go, but you can also grab a Thunderbolt cable and connect them to your monitor of choice to use them as a desktop. So, the climax of Mac Week was the new M4-powered MacBook Pro.
The only new Mac with three chip tiers, the MacBook Pro comes in M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max options. Apple says the M4 Pro is up to three times faster than the M1 Pro, and the M4 Max is up to 3.5 times faster than the M1 Max.
The M4 variant is up to 1.8 times faster than the M1-powered 13-inch MacBook Pro for photo editing. It’s up to 3.4 times faster for demanding tasks like rendering scenes in Blender.
Its Neural Engine for Apple intelligence (and other AI) is three times more powerful than the M1. There’s the same 16GB of RAM as a baseline to help on the AI front (and for all-around performance).
The laptop offers the same nano-texture display options as the iMac and up to 1,000 nits of brightness for SDR content. It also adopts a 12MP center stage camera for better built-in video call capabilities. The device has three Thunderbolt 4 ports and an estimated 24 hours of battery life – as Apple says, this is the longest battery life ever in a Mac.
The new MacBook Pro is available in 14-inch and 16-inch models. The smaller model with the M4 chip starts at $1,599, the M4 Pro variant starts at $1,999, and the ultra-high-end M4 Max will set you back at least $3,199. The 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M4 Pro chip starts at $2,499, while the M4 Max flavors cost $3,499 and up.