Apple Just Announced Five New Mac Products.
Apple continues to announce new products ahead of its big event on March 4th. Yesterday, the iPhone 17e and iPad Air M4 were unveiled. Today, we’ll be focusing on the Mac. Apple made a number of announcements: the new MacBook Air M5, MacBook Pro M5 Pro and M5 Max, as well as new Studio Display options for those looking for external monitors at a great price. All of these new products will be available for pre-order tomorrow and will go on sale on March 11th.
MacBook Air M5
The first announcement isn’t particularly exciting, but it makes perfect sense for Apple. The company is now shipping the MacBook Air with the M5 chip, following the M5-equipped MacBook Pro released in October . This doesn’t mean any significant changes in design or functionality: essentially, these are the same 13- and 15-inch MacBook Airs that you can buy with the M4. However, you get Apple’s latest chip, which delivers improved performance.
The M5 processor features a 10-core CPU, four “super” cores, and six efficiency cores, a GPU with up to 10 cores, a 16-core NPU for AI processing, and 153 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Apple claims the M5 can process AI tasks up to four times faster than the M4 and has 28% greater memory bandwidth. While this is a direct comparison with the M4, many of Apple’s statistics in the press release compare the M5 to the M1, likely for two reasons. The year-over-year performance gains between the chips are small, which is why people tend to stick with M-series Macs for a long time. Apple is likely trying to attract MacBook Air users with the M1 processor who may be starting to consider an upgrade.
The most significant change, aside from the M5 processor, is the starting storage capacity: the base model MacBook Air with the M5 processor now comes with 512GB of storage, eliminating the 256GB option. This is good news, as the 256GB capacity can run out quickly, but it does mean the MacBook Air now starts at $1,099, up from $999. If needed, the new Air can be configured with up to 4TB of storage, though any storage capacity will be higher than previous MacBook Airs. Apple claims the new SSDs are 2x faster in both read and write speeds.
The M5 chip also supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, an improvement over the M4 chip’s Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 support. Apple ships the new Air with a 40-watt “dynamic power adapter” that can charge devices at up to 60 watts.
MacBook Pro M5 Pro and M5 Max
If you’re looking for the fastest MacBook money can buy, consider the MacBook Pro. This is more significant news than the MacBook Air, as Apple has already released products with the M5 chip. Now, the company is introducing the M5 Pro and M5 Max for the first time in the new MacBook Pros—though, again, these chips are the only thing that really changed in these machines.
Still, this is a significant achievement, if you take Apple at its word. The company claims the M5 Pro and M5 Max feature the world’s fastest CPU core (“using data from competitive systems and select industry-standard benchmarks”) and are built on Apple’s new “Fusion Architecture.” This means these chips combine two dies on a single chip: a CPU with up to 18 cores and a GPU with up to 20 (M5 Pro) or 40 (M5 Max) cores. The M5 Pro can be configured with up to 64 GB of RAM and up to 4 TB of storage, while the M5 Max can be configured with up to 128 GB of RAM and up to 8 TB of storage.
For Apple, AI processing is key here. The company claims that the M5 Pro generates AI-powered images 3.7 times faster than the M4 Pro and processes LLM queries 3.9 times faster. Meanwhile, the M5 Max generates AI-powered images 3.8 times faster than the M4 Max and processes LLM queries four times faster. Of course, the performance gains are even greater compared to the M1 Pro and M1 Max, which Apple emphasizes for the same reasons it did with the M5-based MacBook Air: owners of the M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros continue to use their laptops.
As with the MacBook Air M5, Apple is doubling the read/write speeds of the SSDs in these MacBook Pros. The base model MacBook Pro M5 now comes with a 1TB SSD, while the M5 Max comes with a 2TB SSD. It also supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. However, these improvements come at a cost: the 14-inch MacBook Pro M5 Pro now starts at $2,199, while the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro starts at $2,699, a $200 increase.
Studio Display and Studio Display XDR
Apple also announced updates to its external displays—the Studio Display and Studio Display XDR. The Studio Display’s update is fairly minor: it now features a 12-megapixel Center Stage camera, some image enhancements, and support for Desk View, Apple’s feature that lets you share your desktop using a webcam. The microphones and speakers have also been improved, and Thunderbolt 5 support has been added. However, the display itself remains largely unchanged from the previous model and still starts at $1,599.
If you’re looking for features like a high 120Hz refresh rate, you should consider the Studio Display XDR. This display boasts Apple’s “pro” features: it features a 27-inch 5K display with a mini-LED backlight and can reach 1000 nits of brightness (2000 nits in HDR mode). However, these features come at a price: $3,299, to be exact.