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The brand new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Professional fashions have formally arrived. I paid a go to to my native Apple Retailer this morning to choose up a 14-inch mannequin, plus a few Apple Sharpening Cloths (don’t ask me why). Head beneath for some fast first impressions after unboxing Apple’s newest and biggest MacBook Professional, which is a return to kind in some ways.
My configuration
Whereas I’ve used (and drastically loved) the 16-inch MacBook Professional kind issue launched in 2019, I downsized this 12 months to the brand new 14-inch mannequin in silver. The 16-inch MacBook Professional kind issue can get unwieldy fairly rapidly, so this 12 months I opted for the 14-inch, which must be much more manageable for issues like journey.
Listed below are the specs of the machine I bought:
- 10-Core M1 Professional CPU
- 16-Core GPU
- 16GB Unified Reminiscence
- 1TB SSD Storage
If I had been doing it over once more, I’d most likely have opted for 32GB of RAM somewhat than the 1TB of SSD storage (which is a bit overkill for my wants). Nonetheless, that is the configuration I used to be capable of get for day one choose up, and I’m fairly proud of it.
What notch?
I didn’t imagine the notch rumors, so I used to be amazed once they turned out to be true and barely dissatisfied on the notion of getting a notch with out the additional advantage of Face ID. After a couple of hours with the brand new 14-inch MacBook Professional, I nonetheless want Apple would carry Face ID to the Mac, however I’m not bothered by the notch in any respect.
The notch on the brand new MacBook Professional exists nearly fully contained in the macOS menu bar that has been a staple for years. The best way it really works is that you’ve a 16:10 show beneath the notch and menu bar space. So a technique to have a look at issues is that the menu bar and notch space is pure bonus display actual property.
Ports (and MagSafe) are again
The brand new MacBook Professional options three Thunderbolt ports, an HDMI port, an SD card slot, and MagSafe for charging. Feels so much like 2015, proper?
I’ll nearly actually by no means use the SD card slot on the facet of my new MacBook Professional. I’ll use the HDMI port on occasion, reminiscent of for connecting to a TV in a lodge room. However MagSafe? I’m thrilled to have MagSafe again on the Mac. Plus, I’m very completely satisfied to have the added versatility of with the ability to cost with both MagSafe or a USB-C port.
Only a observe when you’re struggling to decide on between silver and house grey: the MagSafe connector is not color-matched to your machine. As a substitute, you’ll get a silver MagSafe connector no matter whether or not you select the silver or house grey MacBook Professional shade. Having a color-matched MagSafe connector was sufficient to push me in the direction of shopping for a silver MacBook Professional.
Show
The show on the brand new MacBooks is solely beautiful. The mix of the upper decision show, the mini-LED backlighting, and the ProMotion refresh fee makes for the one greatest year-over-year bounce in MacBook Professional show high quality that I can keep in mind.
One of many causes I opted for the 14-inch mannequin as a substitute of the 16-inch is due to this higher-resolution show. The 14-inch MacBook Professional has a decision of three,024 by 1,964 pixels. This makes for 254 pixels per inch, which suggests the brand new MacBook Professional ships at a local 2x Retina decision by default.
With most of my earlier MacBook Professional fashions, I opted for the “Extra House” show decision possibility in System Preferences. With the 14-inch MacBook Professional, I’ll be sticking with the default. It’s simply so good. The 14-inch show actually does really feel just like the “candy spot” between 13-inches and 16-inches, explicit on this compact and edge-to-edge kind issue.
The mix of the ProMotion show and M1 Professional processor signifies that the efficiency of the MacBook Professional is clean in each manner possible. The ProMotion show signifies that animations, scrolling by way of webpages, and extra are extremely fluid – similar to on the iPad Professional and iPhone 13 Professional. One factor to notice, nevertheless, is that there’s nonetheless some work to be performed on the software program facet of issues, as Apple and third-party builders each proceed to replace their apps to benefit from the upper refresh fee tech.
The brand new side ratio will even take a while to be accommodated for by third-party apps.
Design

Lastly, when it comes to design, the brand new MacBook Professional fashions do one thing that Apple hasn’t performed in years: they prioritize operate over kind. That’s to not say the brand new machines aren’t spectacular from a design standpoint, however somewhat they do a a lot better job at placing the steadiness between design and performance.
The brand new 14-inch MacBook Professional is identical thickness because the 13-inch M1 MacBook Professional launched final 12 months, nevertheless it actually appears to be like thicker. That is as a result of flatter design across the edges, a change that Apple has stated permits it to suit extra internally. It’s also noticeably heavier, at 3.5 kilos (1.6kg) versus 3.0 kilos (1.4kg).
Different design tidbits:
- The “MacBook Professional” branding is gone from beneath the show, nevertheless it’s now engraved on the underside
- The Apple brand on the again is far bigger than earlier than (nevertheless it nonetheless doesn’t gentle up)
- The ft are greater however not essentially in a nasty manner
- The fan vents are curiously positioned alongside the underside edges
- The braided MagSafe cable could be very good
Wrap up
That’s all for now. I’ll have extra ideas on the brand new 14-inch MacBook Professional over the approaching days and weeks, however I simply needed to get these preliminary impressions out of my system. Have any questions for me? Let me know down within the feedback!
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