2nd Bombshell ? Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR also Released Today
World’s best Professional Notebook? Probably not even close
Right up front let’s state the obvious: sometimes bigger is better. This might be one of those times. 16 inches for a screen can help enormously to allow pro users to untether themselves from those huge multi-screen arrays with massive desktop functionality when traveling or just when that locked in feeling creeps up and creativity needs new scenery.
This idea is not to replace your upcoming new massive Mac Pro / Pro Display XDR combo (interestingly slated as of today for December availability) but to give you at least the feeling that you do not need to curtail the most power hungry activities while away from your main rig. And, if the specs herein are any indication, it will clearly enable you to do just that in all but the most demand situations. And with a max internal storage capacity of 8TB (yes, you are reading that right), for many, it could indeed replace an entire desktop workstation.
Here it is: The New Magic Keyboard
Billed as a “new scissor mechanism” but more importantly with a “rubber dome” that all of us hope will do away with the “dead” feeling of the now infamous “butterfly” keyboard. Headline is “comfortable and quiet”, but I think many would be satisfied if it is at least as nice as the “old” pre-butterfly model that was a durable dream to use. They put back the escape key (good job!) and, as this is the most expensive and fully decked out MacBook Pro ever, with the Touch Bar features and upgraded (fixed) keyboard we should be ready to rock.
More Power Demands a more Advanced Thermal Design
As processors get more and more powerful (here we have the 8‑core Intel Core i9) heat always becomes a potential issue and problem. As can be seen in the animated image above there has been a lot of effort put into dealing with this in an effective, elegant way. The improvements to the cooling capacity will allow the MacBook Pro 16″ to handle up to 12 more watts, while intensive workloads are present, compared with the previous MacBook Pro iteration.
100Wh Battery for 11 hours Browsing and an AMD Radeon Pro 5000M series GPU
For the largest screen and fastest processor, naturally, a bigger better battery is needed. The monster in question is a 100Wh (largest yet in a MacBook) and is said to add an extra hour of life, in spite of all the muscle under the hood.
With video and other intensive graphic workflows becoming more and more important (and software allowing more complex actions and higher video resolutions) a fast, powerful GPU is extremely crucial. It will be fantastic to see how far we can push the AMD Radeon Pro 5000M series graphics card which apple says is the first 7nm mobile discrete GPUs for pro users. External GPUs have been all the rage, perhaps the new 16 inch MacBook pro can dispense with the need via this AMD upgrade?
An 80% improvement in performance is claimed in comparison to the previous fastest-ever 8-core 15-inch MacBook Pro when equipped with the highest graphics options:
Video editors using DaVinci Resolve will see up to 1.8 times faster effects rendering when color grading.
Gamers will enjoy smoother gameplay with up to 1.6 times faster performance in games like Fortnite.
In Unity, developers will experience 1.4 times faster fly-through performance during game development.
And, yes, as you would expect, there are More Powerful Processors and Faster Memory
Again, the new MacBook Pro 16 inch (not coincidentally, released on the day that the Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR December release is also on the agenda) is all about computationally intensive tasks such as code rendering, graphics processing, up to 8k (!) video and so forth. In keeping with this goal, processors are beefed up 6- and 8-core 9th-generation with Turbo Boost speeds up to 5.0 GHz. Apple claims speeds up to 2.1 times faster performance than the quad-core 15-inch MacBook Pro. It’s possible to load this beast with up to 64GB and, also factoring in the result of the improved thermal design mentioned above, this could allow us all to blast through heretofore impossible tasks, if not with ease, at least with some fluency. According to Apple, when compared to the fastest quad-core 15-inch MacBook Pro:
Music producers can play back massive multi-track projects with up to 2.1 times more Amp Designer plug-ins in Logic Pro X.
Scientists and researchers will benefit from 2.1 times faster simulation of dynamical systems in MATLAB.
Developers using Xcode can compile code up to 1.8 times faster.
Photographers can apply complex edits to photographs 1.7 times faster in Photoshop.
Processor:
Configurable to 2.4GHz 8‑core Intel Core i9, Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz, with 16MB shared L3 cache
Retina display
16″ Display:
16‑inch (diagonal) LED‑backlit display with IPS technology; 3072‑by‑1920 native resolution at 226 pixels per inch with support for millions of colors