Jiří Filip Although the world didn't expect Apple to introduce any other news during the autumn, except for the usual September batch of iPhones or Apple Watch, it happened after all. At the Night Keynote Scary Fast, which took place on Tuesday, October 31, from 1 am, Apple showed three new Apple Silicon chips, which they immediately installed in MacBook Pro and iMac. And since I recently got my hands on one of these MacBook Pros, it's time to share my first impressions with it. But in good order.
Specifically, I have at my disposal a 14" MacBook Pro with an M3 Max chip in the highest configuration, 128GB of RAM and 8TB of storage. But perhaps more interestingly, the machine arrived in a brand new Space Black, or space black if you will. It looked really dark in the product photos on Apple's website, but in reality this variant is not that extremely dark, in fact, quite the opposite. It is more of a darker gray in the style of Space Gray, although unfortunately it cannot be captured very well in the photos. What is interesting, however, is that, perhaps thanks to a special surface treatment that is supposed to prevent the capture of fingerprints, the machine changes color absolutely extremely under different angles of incident light. So while sometimes the Mac looks silver, other times you'd almost swear it's completely black. But most of the time it will be really dark gray. Whether you like this shade or not is of course up to you.
And how does the special anti-fingerprint surface treatment work? Surprisingly good, I must say. In fact, I was quite worried about how this new product would work, since even my work silver MacBook Air can "muddle" fingerprints solidly, let alone the dark blue MacBook Air M2, which I had the opportunity to test a few months ago. However, Space Black is by no means a magnet for fingerprints, quite the opposite. Sure, some of the prints will catch the surface, but on the one hand, they are not very noticeable, and on the other hand, a lot of them seem to disappear shortly after being printed on the surface of the computer. I admit that this description is quite strange, but this is how the surface of the news really works, and if you don't believe me, go and "touch" it somewhere to get a better idea of what I'm talking about.
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I honestly admit that I still have to "feel" the performance and therefore I will only focus on it in the review I am preparing for the coming weeks. I would not like to write phrases like "MacBook is absolutely lightning fast" here, because it is, but honestly, it was also the M1 MacBook Air, which after all cannot compete with the MacBook Pro M3 Max and 128GB RAM. Please wait for benchmark measurements, rendering tests and the like. However, what I can and actually have to praise now is the display - specifically, its higher brightness. It grew from 500 nits to 600, and I must say that this jump is really noticeable, even now, when you work primarily indoors. As soon as a person can work outside with the sun at his back, the readability of the display thanks to this increase in brightness will undoubtedly be great, or at least better than now.
Apple also deserves praise for the speakers, which he didn't mention as improved, but when I listen, it seems to me that some sort of upgrade has indeed taken place here. The Mac's sound is dense, very natural, and I'm not afraid to say that it can completely replace additional speakers with a price tag of over 10 CZK. I really have no idea how Apple is capable of such miracles in the field of speakers, but I actually enjoy them all the more. In addition, this Mac folder took my breath away several times. The first time I didn't understand the quality of the 000" MacBook Pro with Intel, then I was excited by the speakers of the significantly cheaper MacBook Air M16, and now I really enjoy the 1" MacBook Pro. In short and well, a pleasure to listen to.
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And there isn't much more yet. Well, it's not that the MacBook Pro (late 2023) isn't interesting, but so far I haven't come across anything else that would differentiate it from the previous generation. Of course, the ProMotion display with a cut-out and mini LED backlight is excellent, as is the keyboard, MagSafe or the relatively generous port equipment. But we are talking about things that are not so new to us. But who knows, maybe I'll be able to uncover some hidden improvements during testing.
