Today’s Apple "Unleashed" event coincides with two major Apple product anniversaries this week, including the 20th anniversary of the original iPod being announced and the 30th anniversary of the original PowerBook's introduction.

On October 23rd 2001 Steve Jobs unveiled the original iPad in front of the press at Apple’s old Infinite Loop headquarters. You may remember that Steve presented the iPod as offering "1,000 songs in your pocket" and compared it’s "ultra-portable" size to a pack of cards, which was unique at the time.

With the launch of the new Apple MacBook Pro 14” and 16” laptops today, this week is also the 30th anniversary of the original PowerBook models revealed on October 21st 1991. These PowerBook models were Apple's first proper laptops using a hinged screen form factor still very much in use today.

The First Pro Chip Designed For The Mac - The M1 Pro

With the new Apple Silicon M1 Pro, the CPU part is the same on both chips, with a 10-core processor made up of eight high-performance cores and two energy-efficient cores. The difference is in the GPU part of the SoC. The new 2nd-gen chip has 16 graphics cores. This compares to 8 CPU cores, four high-performance cores and four energy-efficient cores and only 8 graphics cores with 32GB of RAM.

It can support up to 2 external displays as well as the built in screen.

The Second Pro Chip Designed For The Mac - The M1 Max

The second chip is the M1 Max, the CPU part is the same on both chips, with a 10-core processor made up of eight high-performance cores and two energy-efficient cores. The difference is in the GPU part of the SoC. The new 2nd-gen chip has 32 graphics cores. This compares to 8 CPU cores, four high-performance cores and four energy-efficient cores and only 8 graphics cores with 64GB of RAM.

The M1 Max has 7x faster than PC integrated graphics at same power. Similar performance to discrete graphics but with 70% less power. It can support up to 4 external displays as well as the built in screen.

Comparing to fastest PC laptop Apple could find, the M1 Max uses 100W less power with similar performance with Machine Learning tasks between 3 and 20 times faster than before.

New MacBook Pro

MagSafe Is Back
As expected MagSafe makes a welcome return to Apple’s laptops, following it making its iPhone debut with the iPhone 12 release last year. 

Also there has been a boost to the charging speed too as the system sees the MagSafe connection as part of the Apple Ecosystem.

Keeping it Cool and Quiet
The internal design offers about 50% more air through the laptops to keep them cool quietly and thanks to the efficiency of Apple silicon, it’s more than likely that the fans may never turn on for many tasks you do every day.

Screen Sizes And Graphics Performance
Both new models will come with new high resolution miniLED displays, which we understand were one of the reasons for the delays in announcing these new 2nd Gen Apple Silicon laptops

The 14-inch model has a screen resolution of 3024 x 1964 pixels with the larger 16-inch model having a resolution of 3456 x 2234 pixels.

The screen is a ‘Liquid Retina XDR, which Apple says is “the best display ever in a notebook features Extreme Dynamic Range and a million to one contrast ratio. HDR content comes to life in photos, video, and games — with refined specular highlights, incredible detail in shadows, and vibrant, true-to-life colors. Each display is factory calibrated and features pro reference modes for HDR color grading, photography, design, and print production.

ProMotion comes to Mac for the first time, making everything from scrolling through a web page to gaming super fluid and responsive — while also reducing power consumption. With refresh rates of up to 120Hz, the adaptive technology automatically adjusts to match the movement of the content. ProMotion video editors can also choose a fixed refresh rate that precisely aligns with their footage.”

The graphics performance M1 Pro chip in a 16-inch MacBook Pro is 2.5 times better than the Intel Powered 16” MacBook Pro with the Radeon 5600M graphics card, whereas the 16” MacBook Pro with the M1 Max SoC with double the graphics cores is 4 times faster than the Intel MBP with the Radeon graphics card.

The M1 Max can drive up to 75 million pixels across the internal screen and four external displays.

No Touch Bar
Again as expected Apple has dropped the unloved Touch Bar and the old-fashioned function keys are back.

For the first time, the Magic Keyboard on the new MacBook Pro brings a full‑height function key row with the tactile feel of mechanical keys that pros prefer. It includes new keyboard shortcuts for Spotlight, Siri, Dictation, and Do Not Disturb. And Touch ID has a new, tactile ring that guides your finger for a fast, easy, secure way to unlock your Mac.

More Ports
We are glad to see that Apple has reversed its policy of minimal ports, which forced us to use a raft of port extenders and adaptors. Back are an HDMI port, making it much easier to plug in another screen or projector and a much missed SD card slot.

There are three Thunderbolt 4 ports, 2 on the left and 1 on the right side

Dynamic refresh rate up to 120Hz and video users can lock the refresh rate to the appropriate refresh rate for the frame rate of the video they are using.

Camera
The new MacBook Pro has a notched camera with 1080p, double the resolution and twice the low light performance.

Pro Sound
The new MacBook Pros have 60% quieter mics, with six speakers with four noise cancelling subwoofers, that go ½ an octave lower than before and fill the room with up to 80 percent more bass and the high‑performance tweeters project clearer, fuller vocals.

The 3.5mm headphone jack now offers support for high-impedance headphones. This will be welcomed by professionals who may want to use professional high-impedance headphones that will offer better sound quality on the MacBook Pro models.

The six‑speaker system and advanced algorithms in the new MacBook Pro support spatial audio when playing music or video with Dolby Atmos and are designed to create a sophisticated, three‑dimensional soundstage.

Pro Apps

There are over 10,000 apps now run natively on Apple Silicon. With the new professional MacBook Pro laptops come improvements to the Apple Pro Apps.

Final Cut Pro 10.6 is available today as a free update for existing users, and for $299.99 for new users on the Mac App Store.

Motion 5.6 and Compressor 4.6 are also available today as free updates for existing users, and for $49.99 each for new users on the ‌Mac App Store‌.

Logic Pro 10.7 is also available today as a free update for all existing users, and for $199.99 for new users on the ‌Mac App Store‌. Free trials of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro are also available.

Final Cut Pro

In Final Cut Pro, you can now manipulate millions of polygons in Cinema 4D, edit up to seven streams of 8K ProRes video in Final Cut Pro, or grade color in HDR on 8K 4x4 ProRes video — all miles away from the edit bay.

The update also includes a new Object Tracker that uses machine learning to automatically detect faces and objects, and match their movement to create cinema-quality titles and effects on any Mac. Object tracking analysis is up to 5x faster on the new 16-inch MacBook Pro, and takes advantage of the Neural Engine's machine learning capabilities to accelerate the detection of faces and objects in video.

Motion And Compressor

Final Cut Pro companion apps Motion and Compressor also received updates today. With Motion on the new MacBook Pro, a complex project renders up to twice as fast and can play two streams of 8K video at five times the frame rate. Meanwhile, graphic artists can now combine object tracking with masks, shapes, 3D objects, behaviors, and filters. And a new Neon filter adds an eye-catching glow to images, shapes, text, and more.

On the new MacBook Pro, Compressor can transcode HEVC video up to twice as fast and transcode ProRes video up to 10 times faster. Compressor can also transcode Canon Cinema RAW Light video files to other professional formats like ProRes and H.264 for the first time, and Watch Folders can automatically encode content placed in a selected folder in the file system.

Logic Pro X

Logic Pro, Apple's pro music creation software, now comes with a full set of tools for authoring spatial audio music, allowing users to to mix and export songs in Dolby Atmos for Apple Music. Musicians can also use up to three times as many plug-ins for recording on the all-new MacBook Pro with ‌M1‌ Max.

In addition, Logic Pro 10.7 includes 13 plug-ins within Logic Pro, including Space Designer, Limiter, Loudness Meter, and Tremolo, which all have also been updated to take advantage of spatial audio.

Logic Pro now also comes with all the new Producer Packs introduced in GarageBand this summer. Musicians can use beats, loops, and samples created by the likes of Boys Noize, Mark Lettieri, Mark Ronson, Oak Felder, Soulection, Take A Daytrip, Tom Misch, and TRAKGIRL.

Logic users also now have royalty-free access to 2,800 new loops, 50 new kits, and 120 new patches they can use in their own songs.

Specification
The 14-inch MacBook Pro is also available with the M1Max as well as M1 Pro. This means you can have 64GB of Unified memory (RAM) on the 14-inch MacBook Pro.

The SSDs on the new MacBook Pro have a 7.4GB per second read speed. which is twice as fat as the previous generation. Apple say that this means you can open 8K videos instantly or store hundreds of thousands of RAW photos at once.

Fast charge comes to the new MacBook Pro with up to 50% charge in just 30 minutes.

They new MacBook Pros have up to 21 hours of battery life.

On the 14-inch MBP you get up to 17 hours video playback or up to 11 hours wireless web browsing. On the 16-inch model you get up to 21 hours video playback or up to 14 hours wireless web browsing.

Pricing

The base package for the 14-inch MacBook Pro is…

• Apple M1 Pro with 8-core CPU, 14-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine

• 16GB unified memory

• 512GB SSD storage

• 67W USB-C Power Adapter

• 14-inch Liquid Retina XDR display

• Three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI port, SDXC card slot, MagSafe 3 port

• Backlit Magic Keyboard with Touch ID - US English

• Price $1999.00

The base package for the 16-inch MacBook Pro is…

• Apple M1 Pro with 10-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine

• 16GB unified memory

• 512GB SSD storage

• 16-inch Liquid Retina XDR display

• Three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI port, SDXC card slot, MagSafe 3 port

• 140W USB-C Power Adapter

• Backlit Magic Keyboard with Touch ID - US English

• Price $2499.00

Here are the details of the optional extras that you can add into that…

macOS Monterey Coming October 25th 2021

iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, and tvOS 15 all launched in September and today Apple has announced macOS Monterey will be available from October 25th 2021.

Apple has had to admit defeat on the Safari design changes that have been there all the way from the beta programme from the announcement at WWDC in June 2021, with the release candidate that was provided to developers today reverting to the old style that was available prior to Safari 15.

This means macOS Monterey‌ now features a standard Big Sur tab design that does have the tabs with spaces in between them, which Mac users who were unhappy with the design update will be pleased to hear.

The standard tab design is enabled by default and is labeled ‘Separate’ in the Safari preferences, but for those who preferred the original Monterey Safari design, there's also a ‘Compact’ option that merges the URL bar with the tab bar. There are, however, still new Safari features like Tab Groups.

Please be warned that we do not recommend you use macOS Monterey on your studio computers unless you are running Apple’s Logic Pro X with just the stock plugins as no other DAW brands or 3rd party plugin vendors support Monterey yet.