This Week's Sponsor:

Winterfest 2024

The Festival of Artisanal Software


Apple’s October 18, 2021 Keynote: By the Numbers

As usual, Apple sprinkled facts, figures, and statistics throughout the keynote today. Here are highlights of some of those metrics from the event, which was held online from Apple Park in Cupertino, California.

AirPods 3

  • Features the H1 chip
  • IPX4 water resistance
  • Up to 6 hours of listening time (30 hours with the case) or 4 hours of talk time (20 hours with the case) on 1 charge
  • 5 minutes in the case provides 1 hour of charge

M1 Pro and M1 Max

  • The M1 Pro has up to 200GB/s of memory bandwidth, while the M1 Max has 400GB/s
  • The M1 Pro supports up to 32GB of unified memory and has a 256-bit LPDDR5 interface
  • The M1 Max supports up to 64GB of unified memory and has a 512-bit LPDDR5 interface
  • The CPUs of the M1 Pro and M1 Max are built with a 5-nanometer process and have 8 high-performance cores with a 192KB instruction cache, 128KB data cache, 24MB L2 cache, and and 2 high-efficiency cores with a 128KB instruction cache, 64KB data cache, and 4MB L2 cache
  • The CPU of the M1 Pro and M1 Max is 70% faster than the M1
  • There are 33.7 billion transistors on the M1 Pro and 57 billion on the M1 Max CPUs
  • The M1 Pro’s GPU has 16 cores with 2048 execution units, up to 49,512 concurrent threads, 5.2 teraflops, 164 gigatexels/second, and 82 gigapixels/second
  • The M1 Max’s GPU is 4x faster than the M1 and has 32 cores with 4096 execution units, up to 98,304 concurrent threads, 10.4 teraflops, 327 gigatexels/second, and 164 gigapixels/second
  • There are 10,000 Universal apps available on the App Store

MacBook Pro

  • The 16” MacBook Pro has a screen that is 16.2” diagonally, weighs 4.7 pounds, and is 16.8 mm thick
  • The 14” MacBook Pro has a screen that is 14.2” diagonally, weighs 3.5 pounds, and is 15.5 mm thick
  • The MacBook Pros have 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports, 1 HDMI port, 1 SDXC card slot, and 1 3.5 mm headphone jack
  • The bezel around the MacBook Pro’s screen is 3.5 mm thin, which is 24% thinner on the sides and 60% thinner on the top
  • The 16” MacBook Pro has 7.7 million pixels and the 14” MacBook Pro has 5.9 million
  • Both screens refresh at up to 120Hz, have a sustained brightness of 1,000 nits, and a peak brightness of 1,600 nits
  • The screen of both models has a 1 million to 1 contrast ratio and can display 1 billion colors
  • The FaceTime HD camera has a 1080p resolution, 4-element lens, and ƒ/2.0 aperture that enables a 2x improvement in low-light performance
  • The new MacBook Pros have 3 microphones with a 60% lower noise floor and 6 speakers with 80% more bass
  • The MacBook Pro’s SSDs write at up to 7.4GB/s and are available in up to 8TB configurations
  • The 14” MacBook Pro gets 17 hours of video playback, which is 7 hours more than before or 11 hours of web browsing on a full battery charge, while the 16” model gets 21 hours of video playback for an improvement of 10 hours or up to 14 hours of web browsing
  • The batteries can be fast charged to 50% in 30 minutes

You can follow all of our October Apple event coverage through our October 2021 event hub, or subscribe to the dedicated RSS feed.

Access Extra Content and Perks

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for nearly a decade.

What started with weekly and monthly email newsletters has blossomed into a family of memberships designed every MacStories fan.

Learn more here and from our Club FAQs.

Club MacStories: Weekly and monthly newsletters via email and the web that are brimming with apps, tips, automation workflows, longform writing, early access to the MacStories Unwind podcast, periodic giveaways, and more;

Club MacStories+: Everything that Club MacStories offers, plus an active Discord community, advanced search and custom RSS features for exploring the Club’s entire back catalog, bonus columns, and dozens of app discounts;

Club Premier: All of the above and AppStories+, an extended version of our flagship podcast that’s delivered early, ad-free, and in high-bitrate audio.