Tuesday evening saw the announcement of new 14- and 16in MacBook Pro and Mac Mini M2 models. Not much has changed for the newer Pro models design-wise unless you consider the addition of an extra Thunderbolt 4 port a ‘design change’. Everything else is internal. Apple is hoping that the new M2 Pro and Max chips and prolonged battery life are enough to convince you that it’s worth the obscene prices they’ve decided upon.
Pre-orders are now open for any South Africans looking to set a Guinness World Record for spending money. The products ship next week on Friday, 27 January.
Just relax and
Let’s start off with the smaller 14in MacBook Pro. Pricing starts at R43,000 for the M2 Pro model, which includes 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD storage. If you need more, turn your head towards the 14in MacBook Pro with an M2 Max chipset. That’ll set you back R65,600 – but at least you’re getting 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD along with it. That’s worth the extra R22,000, right?
Next up are the 16in Pro models. We’ve been told that two inches is massive, so it makes sense that the extra two inches of screen size will fetch a higher price. The base model here houses Apple’s 12-core CPU and 19-core GPU M2 chip, 512GB SSD, and 16GB of RAM. All that for R53,000.
If you want the best of the best, the new M2 Max chip for the 16in model includes 12 CPU cores and 38 GPU cores. Throw in 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD and you’re staring at the ludicrous price of R74,000 – the most expensive device on this list.
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Take a deep breath
If a desktop computer is what you need, then a Mac Mini it shall be. Pre-orders have begun for the new models too, with the choice of either the standard M2 chip or the M2 Pro chip. The M2 Max chips have been reserved for the MacBooks; we guess.
The cheapest Mac Mini available for pre-order will only set your account back R12,700. That’s if you take the model with 8 CPU cores and 10 GPU cores, 256GB SSD and 8GB of RAM, and a standard M2 chip. But you don’t want that. You’re looking for something with a little more oomph. Like the M2 Pro chip (10-CPU cores and 16-GPU cores) with 512GB SSD storage and 16GB of RAM for R27,500. Okay, maybe not that much oomph.
When Apple first announced these new models, it said that M2 Max chips would be capable of supporting up to 96GB of RAM. So far, models past the 32GB range have not yet appeared, though that doesn’t mean that they never will. Should they ever turn up, we estimate that a fully specced-up 16in MacBook Pro could cost at least R115,000 but it’ll probably be even higher than that.