New 15-Inch MacBook Air, Mac Studio and Mac Pro

Apple announced three new Macs at this year's WWDC. In addition to an anticipated larger-screen MacBook Air and an update to the Mac Studio, they also have a high-end expensive and expandable Mac Pro that uses Apple's home-grown chips.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at the new Macs that Apple announced at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference. 
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So at the Keynote event for the this Worldwide Developers Conference Apple had a lot of announcements. Among those were three new Macs. A new MacBook Air, an update to the Mac Studio, and a brand new MacPro. 
So let's start by taking a look at the new MacBook Air. The changes is this is a 15 inch screen. So the previous MacBook Air was a 13 inch screen. Technically 13.6 inches and the new is 15.3. But the larger screen is something a lot of people really wanted. These two MacBook Airs now exist side-by-side for purchase and they have the exact same M2 processor in them. You can see they have the same number of cores, the same GPU and everything. Memory and Storage options are also the same. What's different, of course, is the screen. So you can see the larger 15.3 inch screen has 2880 pixels across versus 2560 and 1864 vertically versus 1664. So larger screen, more pixels. The thickness of it is basically identical. But the width and depth, of course, change to accommodate the larger screen and there's also a little more weight to it since it is larger. 
Now the larger chassis gives more room for some speakers. So the 15 inch model has this 6 speaker array instead of a 4 speaker array and force-cancelling woofers. Another  change is the battery with the 15 inch model there is more space for more battery which is good because the screen is going to use more power. So you end up with about the same amount of battery life for a day but you have a larger battery and it comes with a slightly larger charger to accommodate it. 
If you want the 15 inch model it is going to cost you $200 more than the 13 inch model. Of course you're probably not going to want to get the $1299 model. The $1299 model comes with too small of a drive, 256GB. So the larger drive one for $200 more makes sense. If you want to double the memory that's going to cost you $200 and doubling the storage to one 1 TB is going to cost you another $200. So you can have a 16GB, 1TB machine for just under $2000. 
So now Apple actually has 3 MacBook Air models. The 13 inch M1 model that's the older design and the 13 inch M2 and 15 inch M2 with the newer design and colors that are available. You can order these now and they deliver starting June 13. 
Now Apple has updated the Mac Studio with the new M2 chips. So before you had the choice between the M1 Macs and M1 Ultra Chip in the Mac Studio. Now you have the M2 Macs or M2 Ultra. So if you're looking at the Max chips basically you've got 12-core instead of 10, 38 GPU cores instead of 32. This will give you basically 25% better performance, that's if you got the Max Chip. Now if you go with the Ultra Chip instead then it is 24 versus 20 cores for CPU and 76 versus 64 GPU cores. Apple says this will give you about 20% better performance. 
So for someone like me that has a Mac Studio with the M1 Ultra I'm certainly not going to go and spend the money to get this new version. But if I didn't have the Mac Studio and I was waiting then this is probably the time to jump on one. 
Now the new processors also mean that you can go higher in memory. So when you buy one, because remember you can't upgrade the memory later, you can now go all the way to 192GB of memory. The extra GPU's mean you can also have more screen. So before you could only have 4 Pro XDR displays. Now you can have 6 of them. Or if you want you can do 3- 8K displays. The new machine also upgrades the WiFi and Bluetooth slightly to newer versions. 
The price is the same. In fact there is no more M1 Mac Studio. The M2 is now just the current model at the same price as before. So anybody buying now as opposed to last month is just going to get a slightly better machine.
Then, of course, Apple also introduced the new MacPro. So this is a major change because the previous MacPro was an Intel based machine. Apple's last Intel based machine. Apple now only has Apple silicon Macs. No more Intel Macs unless you want to buy a refurbished one. You can now get the MacPro, which looks similar to the previous version, but it has the M1 Ultra Chip in it. So let's compare it to the Mac Studio which has the same M2 Ultra Chip in it. So these two machines have the same chip but what are the differences? Obviously, the tower is much bigger and heavier machine. What you get is expandability. For instance, you can actually swap out the solid state drive for a new one. Apple already sells the 1, 2, 4, and 8 TB SSD's. So the difference really isn't expandability. So we're got 8 Thunderbolt 4 ports in the MacPro versus the Mac Studio. We've got two HDMI ports on the MacPro. They are both 8K ports. We've got dual ethernet. But the big one is the fact that we have Seven PCI Express expansion slots. So you could actually use these to insert PCI Express Cards. Audio cards and Video cards, whatever is compatible with this new MacPro. That's the real big difference. Being able to expand with these PCI Express Cards.
For that you're going to pay big time. It's $7000 for the base model. Nobody getting the MacPro is going to get the base model. You're at least going to expand the memory quite a bit and probably get a larger drive. There's also rack mount model for $500 more. Now this MacPro is probably not for you. It's definitely not for me. It's basically a Mac Studio with more expansion and you pay a lot more for that. It's really for production houses or companies that can basically afford any machine. It can save their employees just a little bit of time having those expansion slots and whatever cards that they are using then they're going to spend the money to do that. A production house making a feature film may get these without even thinking about it. They can actually fill a room with them. Spending $4000 more for a MacPro is not going to be a big deal when you're looking at multimillion dollar budgets. Apple actually has done a great job providing for pros like me by having the Mac Studio for a pretty reasonable price. I can get  something that has the same power as a MacPro but without the expandability which I don't really need. Anything I'm going to add to it, I'm just going to use one of the Thunderbolt 4 ports. I don't need to have PCI Express Cards. Anybody that really needs those cards probably has the budget that can support getting a machine that is this expensive. 
So if you're looking at the MacPro and thinking wow it's expansive, why does it make sense to get that instead of a Mac Studio, well then it doesn't for you. Just like for me the Mac Studio is the machine for us. 
So this is the latest Mac hardware from Apple. We probably won't see any other new Macs until this Fall at the earliest. Of course Apple also announced the new macOS called Sonoma. That will be available this Fall. I'll be doing videos on the new features in Sonoma over the next days and weeks. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 3 Responses to “New 15-Inch MacBook Air, Mac Studio and Mac Pro”

Rick Isaacs

11 months ago

I wish to upgrade my mid-2015 MacBook Pro (16GB/1TB). While it is in a good condition with a weaker battery, the macOS Is no longer the latest version and has less integration in the Apple ecosystem. It is still receiving security updates. Since the notebook is used for both general usage and some software development, I am considering the new 15” MacBook Air and the 16” MacBook Pro. I would be interested to hear your ideas on upgrading to a newer MacBook.

Gary Rosenzweig

Rick: There are so many factors it is hard to advise based on just a few pieces of information. One thing to consider if you are doing software developer is that most IDEs (like Xcode) really need as much screen space as you can get. So the larger the screen the better.

Don Shrib

Love and appreciate videos! Replacing late 2013 MacBook Pro 15"!!! (still working but a bit slow). And would like good strong Under $3K model. (no gaming; light video editing; and someone who keeps "everything" open at once. Want to stay with 15/16". I connect to Thunderbolt when home. Suggestions welcomed!!! appreciate wonderful and singular videos which help people at every level, DS in Maryland

New 15-Inch MacBook Air, Mac Studio and Mac Pro

Comments: 3 Responses to “New 15-Inch MacBook Air, Mac Studio and Mac Pro”

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