It’s been a busy week for Apple thus far, and it just got a little busier. Yesterday, the Fruit Company debuted a spate of new MacBooks, led by the MacBook Pro. There are technically two of those — each one repping one of the new M5 Pro and M5 Max chipsets, also dropped yesterday. Getting your hands on those won’t be easy, at least at first, seeing as they’re tied to the new hardware for the foreseeable future. And it won’t be cheap. When is it?
The announcements didn’t end there. The Fruit Company also tried to slip the new M5-powered MacBook Air past everyone amidst all the MacBook Pro chaos. That’s probably for the best. The new MacBook Air comes in the same 13- and 15in variations, with Apple doubling the base storage to 512GB. A speedier SSD allegedly sits inside, as does Apple’s N1 wireless chip, enabling Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 connectivity. You already know the rest.
M5 Max takes the spotlight
As usual, you can pick up the new MacBook Pro in 14- and 16in variations, with a choice of the M5 Pro or M5 Max chipset to drive it. Opting for the 14in MacBook Pro (with an M5 Pro) will net a new laptop packing a CPU with 15 or 18 cores and 16 or 20 GPU cores. Pick up an M5 Max, and it’ll deliver 18 CPU cores with 32 or 40 GPU cores to boot. Finally, buyers have a choice of either 24GB or 48GB of RAM, depending on the size of their wallets.
The 16in MacBook Pro (with an M5 Pro) doesn’t do much to stand out. It’s got 18 CPU and 20 GPU cores. Even more so for the M5 Max model, which shares its configurations with the 14in MacBook Pro. Buyers aren’t just forking over cash for a chipset boost — they’re also shelling out for 1 or 2TB of storage, depending on the model. Both M5 Max variations start at 2TB of storage and 36GB of RAM.
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The rest is mostly unchanged from previous generations. If you were hoping for a proper MacBook refresh, you’ll have to wait for the M6 MacBook Pro, which reportedly trades in the Liquid Retina XDR display we’ve seen time and again for a touchscreen OLED. That’s still a few months out, meaning you’ll have to make do with the basic upgrades here. The new N1 wireless chip pretty much encompasses that.
Pre-orders open today, 4 March, in the US — with shipments expected to arrive by 11 March. Apple won’t let its best and brightest go without its customers coughing up some serious change. The 14in MacBook Pro with M5 Pro now starts at $2,200 (∼R36,300), while the 16in starts at $2,700 (∼R44,500). The M5 Max, on the other hand, starts at $3,600 (∼R59,400) for the 14in model, while the 16in demands $3,900 (∼R64,400).
It remains to be seen whether South Africa can keep up with Apple’s fast-paced pre-order system, though previous Apple releases tell us that the company’s local distributor has got it under control. What those prices will look like by the time they land locally, however, scares us just a little bit.
