M5 power comes to Mac & iPad
APPLE CORE
The latest news & rumours from Cupertino and beyond
ON TEST
See the MacBook Pro 14in review on p84
The new MacBook Pro is a small upgrade, with a bigger change expected to come with the M6 version in 2026.
HOT TOPIC!
New products packed with M5 chips
Latest Apple silicon appears in MacBook Pro, iPad Pro and Vision Pro
Apple’s M5 chip is finally here, and with it comes a new MacBook Pro, a fresh iPad Pro, and an upgraded Vision Pro headset.
We’ll start with the M5 chip that powers these devices. Here, Apple put the emphasis firmly on the chip’s artificial intelligence (AI) performance. For instance, Apple said that the M5 enables ‘GPU-based AI workloads to run dramatically faster’, with over four times the peak GPU compute performance compared to M4, thanks in part to the addition of a Neural Accelerator in each graphics chip core. Apple says you’ll be able to transform images into spatial photos much faster and handle larger AI models than before.
The M5 isn’t just about AI, though. Apple also highlighted its improved 10-core GPU, which offers 30% faster graphics performance and 45% improved ray tracing output compared to the M4. There’s also a 10-core CPU that can deliver 15% faster multi-threaded performance than the previous chip.