Everyone's focused on the touchscreen, but I'm seriously impressed how they managed to cut down the weight.
* For the 14-inch: 3.5 lb (1.59 kg) -> 3.0 lb (1.36 kg)
* For the 16-inch: 4.7 lb (2.13 kg) -> 4.0 lb (1.81 kg)
About 15% lighter on both models. Switching from LCD to OLED saves weight because the screen does not need a backlight and has fewer layers. They also made the laptop thinner by nearly 1 mm. But that's not enough to push the weight down by 300 grams. They must have redesigned internal components to cut weight as well.
There must have been a dedicated effort to reduce weight. Kudos to the MacBook Pro team!
They've reduced size in every dimension, here's the 14 inch size from the specs for example:
Oled:
Ye Olde:How do they compare to the 13/15/16” MBPs from 2016-2020 era (Intel CPUs and 4 USB-C ports)?
The 2020 Touch Bar 13" was 1.56cm x 30.4 cm x 21.2cm and 1.4kg, so this is the same weight, and thinner while having a slightly bigger footprint.
I would have loved to get the decrease in weight, but I bought my Macbook Pro 128 GB in March and the equivalent is now 50% more expensive, from 5000 to 7500. The memory price skyrocketing is so bad but I don't know if it will ever get better or if these prices are the best we will ever see again.
Those are completely disjointed things though, and one of them (price of RAM) is currently very-much outside Apple's control.
IF memory prices drop, apple product prices will likely drop. And it will stay lighter.
Apple never drops prices, never. It will go straight into their margin.
I have an M1 Max but I am not paying 50% more than a few months ago to upgrade.
I have bought Apple laptops since 2004 but I can’t justify the current extortionate pricing, so I’ll sit it out (permanently if need be).
The pricing isn’t extortionate. It’s literally just them having to pass on the insane price of RAM (itself priced due to the massive demand and supply shortage).
And you’re right that Apple is hesitant to change prices on models. But that cuts both ways. Apple notably held off of bumping prices across their product line for a considerable amount of time, very plausibly eating the cost of RAM price increases.
It would definitely be atypical but given the unique and extreme nature of the current situation, I wouldn’t be shocked if they cut prices somewhat once the RAM situation relaxes.
Right up to the launch of the Apple Silicon Mac Pro in mid 2023, Apple would still happily charge you early 2019 prices for the 2019 Xeon processors in the previous edition, 2019 prices for memory and flash (I ordered mine with 32 and used OWC to go to 192GB, because for the exact same chips, spec, timings, OWC wanted $1,050 for 192GB, and Apple wanted $3,000 for 160GB, i.e. minus the 32GB already rolled into the price. Similar $1K to $3K margin for 8TB of SSD - I bought a PCIe card with 4x2TB Samsung Pro drives).
> Apple never drops prices, never.
The first gen apple TVs were $300.
The second gen was $99.
The first and second 4k gen were $179.
The third gen was $129.
They might not drop prices on existing models, but they have definitely dropped prices on new versions of product lines.
Ironic that you chose the Apple TV. There's a bit of nuance, and the 3rd gen was $149, not $129 (the latter is Wifi only, when the first two were Wifi+Ethernet).
They then bumped UP the 3rd gen: $249 (+$100) and $199 (+$70).
And the 4th gen has only one option, at $299.
So we've not only "not dropped" prices on the 4K Apple TV, but they've gone up forty per cent.
So what, they still dropped at times. The claim was that they never drop prices.
> Apple never drops prices, never. It will go straight into their margin.
They have dropped the price of the MacBook Air a few years ago and the Mac Mini as well. So your statement is categorically false.
That said, with cpu, ram and storage prices the way they are right now, prices won't be dropping soon. But there is hope long term.
Spoken like someone who’s not tried to buy any computer anywhere in the last year.
All the pricing is bad everywhere.
They do drop prices from time to time, they just don’t do the live market pricing Dell and Lenovo do where it can change day to day.
I hear you though on the cost. The Mac Mini was a killer deal a year ago, especially if you could get it on sale for <$500. Not today though.
Apple knows how much of a premium they can charge vs other manufacturers, if everyone else starts dropping they will as well.
Everyone who still holds on their M1's are now permanent underclass. You will never be able to afford new MacBook.
This makes no sense. What makes the owner of a 6 year old laptop less able to afford a new MacBook than the owner of a 2 or 3 or 4 year old laptop?
If anything, the longer you hold your laptop, the more you amortize the cost, and can more easily afford the next one.
Everyone who profited from AI boom has upgraded their macbooks already. The rest can go back to putting fries in the bag.
Man, I wouldn't upgrade my M1 Air to the latest Air for free, it feels as fast as the day I got it, and upgrading's a huge chore.
My work machine went from an M1 with 32GB to an M4 with 24GB and it definitely wasn't worth the time to upgrade.
You haven’t tried upgrading recently. It is incredibly easy.
I have an M1 Max MBP (16", 64GB, 4TB) and I see no need to upgrade. I got it when the M3 came out so I saved about $2,000.
I'm in that class. My iPhone has more power than my MacBook it seems. But I do love the m1 still for what it can do.
I just bought a portable keyboard for my iPhone - coupled with a SSH client, its quite a useful combo these days.
I had to prove the OP wrong though; my M1 Max's keyboard died this year, and I had to upgrade to the M5 max this season, after the hikes. I kissed 9k EUR goodbye for something not much better functionally than the M1 Max it replaced, bought for 3.4k Canadian dollars in the wonderful 2021 (that was barely over 3200 EUR back then).
Hard to compare since the screen is significantly better and touch-capable.
2019, 13" MacBook only weighed 3.02 lbs
https://support.apple.com/en-us/111945
EDIT:
Yes, 13" ≈ 14"
The form factor of this new 14" PROLED and the old 2019 13" is nearly the same (due to smaller bezels)
It also thermally throttled like hell, was much thinner, and had much reduced IO. What's impressive is keeping the same form factor and IO selection, and still getting that weight reduction.
Assuming you are talking about the 4-port version of the 2019 Intel Pro model, the 2019 had more I/O than the next gen 14-inch, specifically because the 4th port on the 14-inch got turned into a dumb HDMI port that can only do HDMI out, not HDMI/DP/USB/Thunderbolt like an actual Thunderbolt port can. It is absolutely a reduction in total I/O capabilities, changes in abilities from Thunderbolt 3 to 4 notwithstanding.
I would rather have 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports than 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports, an SD card slot I won't use, and 1 HDMI port that can only be used for HDMI instead of whatever the hell I need it to be another Thunderbolt port can be.
I would rather have a Framework 13 Pro where I could choose 4 ports of my choosing and swap them out at will. (That’s my current machine, sold my M2 MacBook Pro for it).
I would rather have a ThinkPad X9 15p Aura Edition, which has 3x thunderbolt, SD Card, HDMI, and USB-A, all at the same time with no dongle.
I love the Framework laptops in every other respect, but I just don't get the "swappable port" concept. Those are still dongles; they're just special dongles that can only be used on one brand of machine and which require allocating internal space away from battery, on a machine whose power-hungry OSes can't spare a single watt-hour.
I don't know what's so hard to understand about it. They're dongles that don't stick out when you use them. That eliminates a lot of the annoyance with dongles.
They also let you customize what ports you want in your laptop. You don't have to customize them. You don't have to pull them out. It's still an advantage.
You can also replace your ports easily if they get physical damage.
They can also be used on any brand of machine or even a smartphone. They're just Thunderbolt/USB-C.
They don't take space away from the battery, the battery on the Framework 13 Pro is almost the exact same size as the one in the MacBook Pro 14, and as of the M5 model the Framework 13 Pro gets better battery life than that Mac.
Welcome to dongleville, population: you.
Exactly. I'm not happy about being in Dongleville. It sucks shit here. I have boxes of dongles. They get tangled on my desk with is stupid messy with dongles. Stupid things. But I am here. And everyone else seems really happy about Dongleville and I can't change the fact that I need dongles, so we might as well just embrace it.
Because the Dongle-heads do have one thing right, one port that can be turned into lots of other kinds of ports with a dongle is more versatile than a port that can only be a video out, especially when the device doesn't have a ton of room for lots of ports.
Theoretically more versatile, but high-quality SDXC and HDMI built-in is much more practical than a 4th(!) Thunderbolt 5 port.
Also MagSafe, which the 2019 didn’t have.
Fujitsu U939 13" is lighter than 1kg, has a charger port, 2 USB-C, 2 USB-3, RJ45 (folded), HDMI, Smartcart, SD card, SIM Card, Pen, Mouspad with real buttons, keyboard with normal cursor buttons and separate PgUp and PgDown buttons.
My t480s is also very light as is the framework 13. I was actually surprised how heavy the m1 pro was when i got it, much heavier than the intel 13 before it, but more like the macbook from 2012.
How big was the battery?
13" != 14"
That is the screen size. I think the 14 inch body is probably close to the same size as the 13 inch. Maybe I am wrong.
Definitely appreciated. The increased weight is the one downside of my M1 laptop over my earlier 2015 Macbook.
Sounds like maybe the Macbook Air could become the original 12 inch Macbook(2015) weight eventually. They might even re-introduce a 12 inch model. Imagine that!
thank god! at work many people intentionally choose the 14" just because of weight. Once you add the charger in, the 16" is very noticeable in a bag and makes you pack a little differently for flights.
Yep. I got a 15" MacBook Air as a replacement because I still wanted portability but reduce the weight. I have 2 M1 Pro MBP (one work, one personal) and the added weight is noticeable at conferences...
Nice, but they're merely fixing a regression ;) Now if they could do the same with the iPhone instead of introducing more Bricky McBrick editions…
To put in a perspective it’s the weight of a new iPhone duo.
That's crazy.
It sounds crazy because it's not true; the Duo weighs 8.96oz, or 254g, a far cry from the MacBook weights.
I think they meant the weight reduction is equivalent to the Duo.
The delta is 300g, which is close(ish) to 254g. But yes, the laptops are heavier than the phones.
the new macbook weights one Iphone Duo less than the old macbooks.
How many bananas is that?
Tried to fold a banana?
13-inch M1 MacBook Air: 2.8 pounds (1.29 kg)
https://support.apple.com/en-us/111883
13-inch M5 MacBook Air: 2.7 pounds (1.23 kg)
https://support.apple.com/en-us/126320
Macbook airs are lighter because they are smaller and lack fans (and maybe for other reasons too) so it is not comparable, but it is one of the reasons I like fanless laptops (whatever cuts a bit the weight for mobility is welcome).
The best thing about OLED is not having disgusting amounts of blooming[0] and purple-pink edge fraying.
It's so bad that the first time I used my M series I thought I needed to RMA it because the display must be broken it it looks this bad, right? Nope.
[0]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/m0zq6aEnGWs/sddefault.jpg
Thats a side effect of the 1000+ dimming zones no? I snagged this ASUS ProArt display that was Professional Grade on eBay and among its many flaws is that its 1000+ dimming zones result in blooming whenever you have bright items on top of a complete black background. Makes it terrible for horror movies. :/
Yes. What I've never understood is why Apple, when they looked at it in prototype, didn't just adapt a color profile that latched black a few values higher (basically the opposite of crushing blacks). It would have meant the display would have had slightly worse blacks, but at least they would have been uniform. If Jobs had seen this display he would have thrown the device, and perhaps the designer, straight out of a window.
I had the same experience but to be fair, you only notice this in complete dark rooms. Which is a fringe scenario.
You know what you also only notice in very dark rooms? Super high contrast ratios. So the feature fails in the one situation in which it could make a positive contribution.
It is visible even in daylight.
In practice you will hardly ever notice this. Especially not during normal use. Maybe only during videos.
They might have changed the internal fan layout. If you look it AR mode, you can look underneath the display , there’s usually two fan exhausts there, this one has only one
But I also only have an m1 16” so it may not be a brand new change
TBH this is one of the things that will be a clear downgrade imo. Weight reductions and thinness are not free. The Pro and Max chip version are already over powered for the cooling system the current macbook pros have. And now they are further cutting into the laptop...
The display change itself likely accounts for some of the thickness and weight reduction. The mini-LED backlight grid on the previous displays wasn't nearly as thin or light as an OLED panel.
I hope so. I just see Apple going down the same dark path they used to before the M series laptops.
I heard that was a result of them designing for certain thermal envelopes ahead of time and Intel then delivering chips that didn't meet the specs they were promised. Not sure is this is what happened though so take with a grain of salt.
If this was the case, one the one hand they should be criticized for releasing such bad laptops on the market but if they had already decided on developing their own silicon then maybe it made sense to just accept that some generations of Macbook were going to have thermal issues and focus all efforts on the future.
That would be excusable for a generation of macbooks. Not over multiple generations.
Correct me if I am wrong but the heat problems were essentially Intel chips in the mid to late 2010s right? They are all essentially the same chip design with small window dressing added each year. The underlying problem is the same. Old design that suffered from Intel's issues in their fabs.
Yes, but there was ample time for Apple to re-design the thermal system of their macbooks. Instead they kept releasing extremely thermally limited devices year after year.
By that time they had clearly made the decision to invest in their own CPUs and platform architecture.
So what you're telling me is that Apple is willing to put multiple generations of devices out to pasture because in the future they intend fix it with a new platform. That does not inspire confidence that they now care about thermals, the opposite actually. What you're saying is that they again might have slipped up and we need to wait for the next redesign for it to improve.
It's a reasonable concern and something to look out for in reviews and user reports. Hopefully they aren't repeating that mistake.
Not sure why this is downvoted but it is a valid concern. I will wait and see some thermal testing as someone mentioned on new cooling design which I can't find on the page just yet.
10oz of battery would have been another 20+ hours. that would have been nice
It looks like it went from a 100 Wh battery to 72.6 Wh battery. That will definitely reduce the weight.
Edit: I was incorrect, I thought I had clicked the 16" spec page but had not. The 16" MacBook is still at 100 Wh.
The 16" still lists 100Wh:
https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/proled-xdr-display/specs/
The 14" went from 72.4Wh to 72.6Wh.
> The 16" still lists 100Wh
For those not aware, the 100Wh limitation is not Apple, but imposed on them by the airline industry (IATA)[1]
Anything over >100Wh && <160Wh requires airline approval at individual passenger level. Anything >160Wh is classified as dangerous goods and must be prepared and packaged correctly and put in the hold.
[1] https://www.iata.org/contentassets/6fea26dd84d24b26a7a1fd578...
It would be cool if they had an add on battery that fit seamlessly. Or imagine a swappable battery? And then ensure you only use the 100wh when flying?
The airline rules are a bit arbitrary. They have allowances for mobility devices but don't seem to take any extra precautions for them when they have bigger batteries. There are still a lot of dangerous gaps in airline safety when it comes to lithium batteries.
> The airline rules are a bit arbitrary. They have allowances for mobility devices but don't seem to take any extra precautions for them when they have bigger batteries. There are still a lot of dangerous gaps in airline safety when it comes to lithium batteries.
They're absolutely arbitrary. From what I've seen, one of the major problems is wild variation in quality. An 80Wh battery from six-random-letters-off-Amazon is going to be more dangerous than a 160Wh battery from a reputable manufacturer.
> An 80Wh battery from six-random-letters-off-Amazon is going to be more dangerous than a 160Wh battery from a reputable manufacturer.
I think the point is more the amount of energy stored in a fully-charged or 80% charged battery.
In that respect it doesn't matter if your 160Wh battery is from a leading manufacturer or some knock-off factory. 160Wh is 160Wh.
Also the airlines have to draw a line about what level can be permitted without specific permission, what level needs authorisation and what level needs dangerous goods handling.
So suspect the numbers feel arbitrary because its the result of various committees having consulted with various different interested parties and then having the unattractive job of needing to write some rules at the end of it.
It is an inevitable part of the process that some numbers will need to be picked which can easily be explained to passengers, and are workable for manufacturers and the airline industry.
Yup. For example they don’t care if you bring two laptops each with a 100Wh battery.
You can take along a battery pack with usb-c and charge the macbook.
> You can take along a battery pack with usb-c and charge the macbook.
Actually not quite. The rules have tightened up significantly on powerbanks.[1]
First the same size rules apply as always, i.e. 100Wh, 100–160Wh with personal individual passenger permission and never above 160Wh.
Second, max two per passenger.
Third, you are prohibited from:
[1] https://www.caa.co.uk/commercial-industry/airlines/dangerous...You're correct, I misclicked on the specs page. Thanks.
ahh that's no bueno...
is the touch part of the display toggle-able? i don't mind a better display but i have no, not a single desire ever to touch it.
I have some excellent news for you: you don’t have to.
Welcome to 2016. Lightweight OLED displays have been in the market since a decade ago, but now we are praising Apple for catching up 10 years later for a laptop with a "pro" moniker? Damn, the Apple ass-kissing here never disappoints.
I am a fan of OLEDs and have enjoyed secondary PC laptops with OLED, however, to be clear:
- Most OLED PCs were not anywhere as bright as the old MBP miniLED display.
- Almost all OLED PCs have terrible blue shift when viewed at an angle.
- Apple miniLED XDR displays are no slouches either. They are not quite OLED, but they implemented the dimming zones very well with uniform backlighting and deep blacks.
I have not seen Apple's on MBP, but I bet it meets or exceeds iPad Pro Tandem OLED which does not have the two problems above.
So no, it is not the same as the decade old PC OLED. And I have ignored all the potential durability issues.
I had a Lenovo thinkpad with OLED before switching to a MacBook Pro (first M1 Max, now M5 max). I don’t really mis the OLED display, it’s not that big of a difference (according to my 55 year old eyes…) the thinkpad also had a touchscreen, never used it, only by mistake. I would not pay extra for a touchscreen or OLED on a laptop. The photos on the apple website are not convincing, playing a keyboard on a vertical screen looks very uncomfortable.
Also don’t understand the iPhone duo, I’d rather have a normal iPhone and an iPad Air. Cheaper, and better for mobile use and for couch media consumption.
This comes as straight out of PC vs Mac commercials. You confuse technology with actual products.
And Apple apologists confuse stale designs, unchanged chassis, and subpar spec sheets for “intentional design” and “holistic products.”
I think some of those folks should face some facts:
- The notch on the MacBook Air and Pro lineups is unnecessarily huge and embarrassing. It’s obvious that Apple intended to implement FaceID and couldn’t get it into the notch by their deadline, then they just left the huge notch there with barely any software consideration for it, like how your menu bar icons and menus can just disappear if there isn’t enough room with no recourse.
- There is no design or cost reason for Apple to be this late on offering a touch screen on their laptops. There is no downside to a customer who buys one and doesn’t want a touch screen, they can just disable it.
- The 60Hz displays on the Air are not necessary for any kind of product quality or cost reason and are simply below-par for what you can get on similarly priced Windows laptops. 100% artificial product line anchoring.
- The idea that there was no such thing an OLED display that was “good enough for a MacBook Pro” before 2026 is absurd.
But Apple laptops are still the best recommended laptops on the market, despite these extra costs and margins passed onto the consumer, why is that?
Because, Macs are the only products and the rest which use OLEDs since 2016 aren't, right?
Do they have the same OLED? Same PPI? Same Tandem OLED? The First Tandem OLED on PC only came in 2022 IRRC, and laptop in 2024 / 2025.
Switching to OLED in 2016 makes zero sense when brightness and burn in issues are not solved.
Single OLED doesn’t count but Tandem OLED does…
> Macs are the only products
The only ones that work as a unified product, yes.
WTF is even a "unified product"?
It's a fucking laptop. All laptops are "unified products". Stop throwing random jargon to cover up for the lack of merit to your argument.
Have you ever used a Mac? It is by and far the best laptop on average, and it keeps getting better.
I have 3 Macs running. I love them, but that doesn't mean I can't criticise them for falling behind.
In what regard are they falling behind? There are lighter laptops, sure. Are there lighter laptops with the same performance, or the same battery, the same ergonomics, the same build quality, or the same screen quality?
Gaming laptops they've never competed at all. Windows laptops offer far more form factors with easily upgradeable hardware. One of the only places Apple has an advantage is their chipsets. However, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips have significantly closed the gap on Apple's ARM based M-chips.
I just got a 16" MacBook Pro with an M5 pro chipset and its total pig compared to my 15.6" HP ZBook Power G8.
The only area I can see where Apple is still holding their own is their UI/UX has always been buttery smooth compared to Windows or Linux. Not a fan the new liquid glass, but its still a very smooth running UI regardless.
In the OLED regard. Other laptops had this for a decade now.
I pretty much daily use a MacBook Air and an arm windows laptop costing about half the price. I use the MacBook Air at home for administrative and basic tasks, but the arm laptop is actually useful and runs software that I need... MacBooks at this point are just like luxury cars they have way more features than they need and are polishing areas that appear good but not necessarily are good for everyday requirements.
What is the battery life of your windows laptop which is half the price? What is the screen quality? What is the single and multi core performance? Does it beat even the macbook neo on even one of these metrics? At the same cost?
Back to similar weight as the 2016 Touch Bar era MBPs (13" 1.37 kg; 15" 1.83 kg), except way better thermals and battery life.
Way better thermals and battery life according to Apple, we do not yet have units in hand to review.
True. But I'm cautiously optimistic based on their track record of not shipping dud MacBooks (on the thermal and battery life front) since the switch to Apple Silicon. The Touch Bar/butterfly keyboard era of MacBooks was a total disaster. The chassis design didn't fit the hot and power hungry 14 nm Intel CPUs + generally poor reliability.
Sure, I certainly don’t expect for the laptop to be a slouch, but Apple is no stranger to exaggeration.