T3 - UK (2021-12)

(Antfer) #1

10 T3 DECEMBER 2021


Horizon


INHERITED TECH
The MacBook
Pro’s Liquid
Retina XDR
display picks up
Apple’s ProMotion
tech, scaling back
its refresh rate
to 10Hz when
it’s not busy, and
bumping it as far
as 120Hz when
you need that
slickness.

The best new tech heading your way


“Not just the best


MacBook ever – maybe


the best laptop ever”
Josh Russell, Editor

TECH-O-METER


MACBOOK


PRO (2021)


From £1,899, apple.com

The novelty of Apple first designing and then
building its own processors has worn off. It’s
not simply a novelty any more: it’s a full-blown
revolution. The MacBook Pro now firmly
removes Macs from the ‘buy if you prefer
macOS to Windows’ category and places them
firmly in the ‘just plain better’ camp. The stats
don’t lie. The chip at its heart – either the
10-CPU core, 16-GPU core M1 Pro or the 10/
Max, depending on your spec – makes for a
truly superior processor, firmly outclassing the
already superb M1 and (though we can’t exactly
compare apples-to-apples any more) seemingly
flattening both AMD and Intel’s latest offerings.
It’s not all about the guts, though. Apple has
marked the occasion of its silicon takeover with
a seriously cool redesign of the MacBook Pro,
which drops in some much needed quality-of-
life features (the return of magsafe charging,
for example, and proper ports like HDMI and an
SD reader) and kicks out some others. If you
were attached to the Touch Bar, best get
unattached, because it’s gone in place of
full-size function keys. And if you’re not keen
on Apple’s slight obsession with notches, the
chunky chap jutting in to the top of the screen
here won’t please you. But even that is justified,
housing an upgraded 1080p webcam, and it
hides itself quite effectively.
Everything here is an upgrade. It seems like
Apple has been listening to every mote of
feedback from the community in order to
create the ultimate MacBook – and it may well
have pulled it off.

Free download pdf