Apple’s M1 Pro/Max MacBook’s priced from R36,300

MacBooks rarely ever receive the redesign treatment — Apple’s just one of those brands that like things the way they are. If it works, it works, right? This year, however, the MacBook Pro will look a little different, complete with more ports, new Apple Silicon and a… notch?

In 2019, the company revealed its very own chips based on ARM architecture named the M1 SoC (system-on-chip). This year, it’s bringing more power to those chips, and these beefier chips are named the M1 Pro and M1 Max. The redesigned Pro devices will sport these new chips. 

And South Africans can finally find out how much they’ll need to save up to purchase one of these new Apple-labelled notebooks. 

The MacBook’s evolutions

Pricing starts from R36,300 for the smaller 14in Pro MacBook, but we’re not convinced it’s fitted with the M1 Pro chipset. On the iStore South Africa e-commerce store, this notebook size features two power configurations, the smaller of which features an 8-core CPU and a 14-core GPU — those are very similar to the base M1 processor’s specs. 

In addition to that, the 14in MacBook Pro can be fitted with what we believe to be the proper M1 Pro chip that features a 10-core CPU and a 16-core GPU, along with a 1TB SSD. This one goes for R45,300 — which we reckon is the actual starting price for the M1 Pro notebooks. 

On to the larger ones — the 16in MacBook Pro M1 Pro-powered, 512GB storage-having option goes for R45,300, while the fully-specced M1 Max-powered, 1TB storage-having option costs R63,500.