Once again, the base MacBook Pro takes a step forward with better performance. The machine is actually nearly identical to the newer A3113 (13″ ‘Air), except it looks like an A2992 (14″ ‘Pro). Essentially, a MacBook Air in the shape of a MacBook Pro. As of Late 2024, this was the final Apple Silicon-based MacBook Pro to ship with a base-level chip.

Hardware Accelerated Ray Tracing

The M3 chip introduces Hardware Accelerated Ray Tracing. It is a technique used in computer graphics to create highly realistic lighting and shadows by simulating the way light interacts with objects in a scene. Unlike traditional rasterization, which processes polygons and textures to render images, ray tracing follows the path of rays of light as they travel through a scene. The idea is to create realistic shadows, detailed reflections, and make gaming more life-like without as much of a performance hit.

Closed Lid Mode: All ‘Books support “lid closed” (or clamshell) mode, which leaves the built-in display off and dedicates all video RAM to an external display. To used closed lid mode, your ‘Book must be plugged into the AC adapter and connected to an external display and a USB or Bluetooth mouse and keyboard (you might also want to consider external speakers). Power up your ‘Book until the desktop appears on the external display and then close the lid. Your ‘Book will go to sleep, but you can wake it by moving the mouse or using the keyboard. The built-in display will remain off, and the external monitor will become your only display.

To resume use of the internal display, you need to disconnect the external display, put the computer to sleep, and then open the lid. This will wake up your ‘Book and restore use of the built-in display.

Battery life is claimed to be 15 hours of wireless productivity, 22 hours Apple TV App movie playback.

Details

• Announced 2023.10.30
  • Discontinued 2024.10.30
• Model: A2918 (EMC 8304)
• Order Numbers:
  • MTL73LL/A (Space Gray)
  • MR7J3LL/A (Silver)
• Mac15,3

Mac OS

• Requires macOS Sonoma 14.1 (Build 23B2073) or later

Core System

Legend: L1i = L1 Instruction Cache, L1d = L1 Data cache, SLC = System Level Cache

• CPU ($1599): 8 Cores, 4x 4.05 GHz “M3” High Performance Cores: 768K L1i, 512K L1d, 64MB L2, 8MB System Level Cache
  • 4x 2.75 GHz “M3” energy efficient cores: 512K L1i, 256k L1d, 16MB L2, 8 MB SLC
• 16-Core Neural Engine
• 8/16/24 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR5-6400 SDRAM
  • 100 GB/s Memory Bandwidth

Video

• Integrated Apple M3 with 10-Core Metal 3 Hardware Accelerated GPU
• Internal Display: 14.2″ 3024 x 1964 Liquid Retina XDR, TFT IPS LED-Backlit LCD @254ppi
  • P3 Color
  • True Tone
  • Support for 1 Billion colors
• Simultaneous support for: internal display @native resolution and:
  • a single 6K60 display, or 1x 4K240 via HDMI
• Simultaneous support for 2 external displays if you use the ‘Book in clamshell mode
  • Close the MacBook Pro
  • 1x 6K60 + 1x 5K60 simultaneously

Drives

• Drive Bus: 512GB PCIe SSD ~3.3 GB/s, 2x 256GB NANDs in Parallel
• Configurable to: 1 TB , and 2 TB

Expansion

• Wifi 6E
• Bluetooth 5.3
• Two USB-C style Thunderbolt 4 Ports
  • Support for: USB 4 (up to 40 Gb/s), USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gb/s)
• Magsafe 3
• HDMI 2
• SDXC card slot
• 3.5mm headphone jack

Misc.

• 6-Speaker High-Fidelity sound system with force cancelling woofers
• Force Touch Trackpad
• Ambient Light Sensor
• Touch ID on Power button
•  1080p Facetime Camera
  • Advanced image signal processor with computational video

Battery

• 22H Video / 15H Web

Included Peripherals

• MacBook Pro
• 70W Power Brick + Cord
  • Configure to order: 96W Power Brick + Cord
• 70 W/h Li-Ion battery

Physical

• Size:H/W/D 0.61 x 12.31 x 8.71 in/1.55 x 31.26 x 22.12 cm
• Weight: 3.4 lb./1.55 kg