Apple wrapped up a half-week of Mac announcements Wednesday by announcing the latest in its M-series chips. A day after announcing the M4 Pro along with the smaller new Mac Mini, the company is showcasing the M4 Max, which joins the MacBook Pro series.
Like other members of the M4 line, the Max is built on a second-generation 3-nanometer architecture. This is also Apple's second chip (after the M4 Pro) to support Thunderbolt 5 transfer speeds. These are just over twice as many as Thunderbolt 4. The company also claims that the new Neural Engine makes the M3 twice as fast.
The current M4 line is divided into:
M4:
Up to 10 cores of CPU: up to 4 performance cores and up to 6 efficiency cores Up to 10 cores of GPU 16 cores of Neural Engine
M4 Pro:
Up to 14-core CPU: Up to 10 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores Up to 20-core GPU 16-core Neural Engine 273GB/s unified memory bandwidth
M4 maximum:
Up to 16-core CPU: Up to 12 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores Up to 40-core GPU 16-core Neural Engine Up to 546GB/s unified memory bandwidth
Pre-orders for the new MacBook Pro with M4 Max will begin on Wednesday. Shipping will start from November 8th.