This week, three new products have arrived in stores, each showcasing the annual upgrades featuring Apple’s latest processor, the M5 Apple Silicon.
Designed with artificial intelligence at its core, the new M5 chip boasts a 10-core GPU architecture, where each core is equipped with its own Neural Accelerator. This advancement allows the chip to execute AI tasks with greater speed and efficiency.
In addition to its AI capabilities, the chip offers improved graphics and faster memory bandwidth, ensuring exceptionally smooth and instantaneous processing on any device powered by the M5.
When Apple introduces a new chip, it often follows with new products to highlight its capabilities. Surprisingly, the Apple Vision Pro received an unexpected upgrade.
Approximately 18 months after its Australian debut and two years after its U.S. launch, the $5,999 immersive augmented reality headset was initially seen by some as a setback for Apple. However, with a redesigned headband and more powerful processor, Apple is clearly committed to its development efforts.
The Vision Pro now features a Dual-Knit headband that includes an additional comfort band across the top, significantly enhancing wearability. The improved comfort isn’t just due to the new top strap; the rear head strap also features tungsten inserts to better balance the headset’s weight.
In typical Apple style the adjustment dial for the straps is innovative and slick with a simple pop out and twist to adjust the top strap or push in and twist for the rear – it was totally intuitive and while simple – it’s peak Apple design.
Using the Vision Pro I don’t think I really noticed the extra 20Hz frame rate (now up to 120Hz), or the extra 10 per cent pixel rendering. This isn’t 10 per cent more pixels, it’s about how much of the display directly in your focus zone the device renders to give an experience even closer to reality.
Packing the M5 into Apple Vision Pro is a huge leap forward from the M2 it originally shipped with, and does make responsiveness overall better, however the real story of this upgrade is that Apple is not letting go of this future vision.
“Spatial computing” as they call it is also a name for what we might see in the decade ahead with something as simple as glasses providing this style of content interaction – Meta is doing it with their Ray Ban Meta Display glasses, it makes sense that Apple too is heading that way, they’re just taking a different path.
The new M5 processor is also now available in the MacBook Pro 14 inch. A powerful portable Pro level laptop.
Having used a thinner and lighter MacBook Air for some time recently, the upgrade to Pro with M5 has been more about the inputs and outputs of Pro (HDMI and SD Card slot) than actual performance.
For me rendering video is noticeably faster on the M5, while day-to-day performance has been excellent.
That a MacBook Pro like this can run a graphically intensive game like Cyberpunk 2077 is a testament to the power of the processor. Playing this with the anti-glare Nano-texture display was sensational.
Stunning graphics, with beautiful effects like reflections and glare all rendered in real-time – exceptional.
Rounding out Apple’s week is the new iPad Pro with M5, and while its improvements year-on-year are barely worth noting, this device is aimed at those who do love to work with iPad in both tablet and keyboard format, but own a device that might be four or more years old.
When compared to iPad Pro with M1 processor, the M5 is a dramatic improvement in almost every way.
I was most impressed to remind myself just how thin this device is for something so powerful – about the same thickness as iPhone Air, and the screen is bright thanks to the MiniLED display and no task is too much for it.
Editing video on Davinci Resolve, the Aussie app by Blackmagic felt as smooth as it does on any good PC level edit station. To have this pro level performance in a tablet is still remarkable to me.
iPad OS’ new windowing feature is nifty and slick on the new iPad Pro, but I didn’t find myself really wanting to use it, with a screen this big you can split the screen or just swipe between apps just as well, I think that feature is aimed at new to iPad owners who miss the Windows experience.
Overall, all three devices launching this week from Apple are very much incremental upgrades, but that’s part of the game, not because Apple expects or markets these products to owners of last year’s model, but because those with older devices will always find limitations in the demands of the most modern and processor intensive apps – especially those with AI tasks.
iPad Pro with M5 starts at $1699 for the 11 inch, and $2199 for the 13 inch. MacBook Pro with M5 starts at $2499 while Apple Vision Pro with M5 is still $5999.
All three go on sale today.
