In brief: Apple lifted the lid on its long-rumored MacBook Pros on Monday, confirming the powerful M1 Pro and M1 Max SoCs. What we've seen so far looks very enticing, but how much would someone pay if they wanted the absolute top-spec option? An eye-watering $6,099.
Apple has rightly never been known as a budget-friendly company. Its new MacBook Pros start at $1,999 for the 14-inch version and $2,499 for the 16-inch model. But buyers can spec them to a price much higher.
Getting the most expensive option requires picking the 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chip, which offers the same 10 core CPU as the M1 Pro SoC but ups the GPU core count from 16 cores to 32. By increasing the unified memory from 32GB to 64GB and moving from a standard 1TB of SSD storage to 8TB, that price becomes a dollar shy of $6,100. Add in Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, and you'll be paying $6,598.
The top-specced 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Max, meanwhile, reaches $5,899---without the extra software.
This isn't new territory for Apple. The Intel-powered 16-inch MacBook Pro from 2019 also cost $6,099 for a maxed-out configuration at launch, and the Mac Pro unveiled during the same year reached $45,000, or over $50,000 with the Pro monitor and stand.
The new MacBook Pros do look like compelling buys for Apple fans and professionals. They offer higher resolution Retina XDR displays, more ports, a row of Function keys instead of a Touch Bar, and screens with 120Hz refresh rates---though the notch isn't to everyone's taste.
In addition to revealing all the new features in the redesigned MacBook Pros, Apple showed off its latest in-house SoCs: the M1 Pro and M1 Max. They offer a slew of improvements over their M1 predecessor, which itself has won countless praise for its combination of power and performance.