MacBook Pro M4: Apple upgrades its 14 and 16-inch laptops for AI
The MacBook Pro M4 looks the same as last year's Apple laptop, but the internals got an AI-focused boost today
💻 The MacBook Pro 14- and 16-inch laptops come with Apple’s M4 chip
🧠 Launches alongside Apple Intelligence and the new iMac M4
⚙️ 16GB of RAM base (up from 8GB) with options for up to 128GB of RAM
👀 There’s an anti-reflective nano-textured glass option for $150 more
📆 Pre-order now for the November 8 release date
💰 Starts at $1,599 again, but configurable to $7,199
Apple just announced the new MacBook Pro M4, which features an AI-focused chip upgrade and more memory to better power those RAM-intensive Apple Intelligence tasks.
Following this week’s iMac M4 and Mac Mini M4 news, we can finally say goodbye to the memory-constrained 8GB MacBook Pro in 2024. The new MacBook Pro M4 14-inch increases the RAM to 16GB and keeps the same $1,599 starting price. It’s up for preorder now, with deliveries starting on November 8. The Shortcut ordered a MacBook Pro M4 Max for review with a pick-up on November 8 (stay tuned).
Also gone are the 8-core CPU configurations. You’ll still be able to upgrade from the now-standard 10-core CPU and GPU M4 to even more cores and faster speeds with the M4 Pro and M4 Max chips. The MacBook Pro M4 Max maxes out at 10-core CPU, 40-core GPU, 128GB of RAM, and 8TB of storage for $7,199 (that’s before adding an extra $150 for the new nano-textured glass display).
Same design, but ports and colors tweaked
You won’t find many design and display spec changes this year. Apple is offering the same 14.2-inch or 16.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display as its M3 laptop and similar ports: MagSafe, three USB-C ports, an HDMI port, an SD card slot, and that hanging-on-for-dear-life 3.5mm headphone jack.
One minor but important change to those three USB-C ports: the base M4 chip of the MacBook Pro comes with three Thunderbolt 4 ports for up to 40Gb/s data transfer speeds, while the higher-end M4 Pro and M4 Pro configurations offer three USB-C Thunderbolt 5 ports for up to 120Gb/s transfer speeds.
There aren’t more MacBook M4 colors, but you can get Space Black with the regular M4 chip without having to upgrade to the M4 Pro or M4 Max configurations. Before, Apple’s base-level M3 chip was limited to Space Gray, while the Pro and Max chips got the deeper Space Black colors. Space Gray isn’t even an option this time.
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