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By Jason Snell

M5 Pro MacBook Pro review: Fast, familiar friend

Two square chips on a black background. Left chip: 'M5 PRO' with Apple logo. Right chip: 'M5 MAX' with Apple logo. Both chips have a gradient blue to purple glow.

These days, Apple is approaching its Mac releases a little bit like how a car company approaches its model years: Every once in a while, it does a complete redesign, and there’s a whole new generation of devices. In the intervening years, the devices don’t change much, other than some of the internals. In Apple’s case, the regular release of new generations of Apple silicon drives the changes.

So when I say that the M5 Pro MacBook Pro, released this week, is very much the same pro laptop we’ve seen from Apple for the last few years, I’m not trying to be insulting. It’s the familiar, definitive MacBook Pro that was introduced with the M1 Pro and Max in 2021 and updated with new processors for the M2, M3, and M4 generations.

The display still rocks. It’s a 120-hertz ProMotion display with a wide color gamut, backlit by mini-LED display technology that allows it to run bright and peak even brighter, while also maintaining black levels that contribute to a remarkably extended level of dynamic range. The design, with flat sides and top and curved corners, defined what a 2020s Apple laptop looks like.

Some reports suggest that this fifth iteration of this design will be the end of the line, and that a new generation awaits later this year or in early 2027. That may be, but if you need a new Mac laptop now, or prefer to buy your Macs at the end of a design cycle after all the theoretical bugs have been shaken out, you will not find a finer Mac laptop available today than the M5 MacBook Pro with M5 Pro or Max processors.

Apple sent me the M5 Pro model, with 18 CPU cores and 20 GPU cores. It was like welcoming an old friend into my house, especially since I switched to an M4 Max MacBook Pro a year ago. This is a familiar, solid laptop, but the new generation of high-end M5 chips changes the game a bit.

In the end, it’s all about those chips. So here are the numbers in handy chart form:

benchmark chart

To summarize, the M5 CPU core is about 15% faster than the M4 generation, and the Pro and Max 15- or 18-core CPU configurations are going to blow my 10-core M4 Max out of the water. My review unit is 23% faster than my M4 Max laptop.

As you might expect, GPU performance on the Pro laptops really depends on which chip class you buy. The Max versions have way more GPU cores and will generate much better performance. That said, my M4 Max’s Metal score was only about 14 percent ahead of the M5 Pro’s, despite my M4 Max having 32 GPU cores instead of the M5 Pro’s 20. It’s pretty impressive, and the M5 Max is there if you really want a ridiculous number of GPU cores to apply to your GPU-intensive workflows.

Of course, I need to mention that Apple has renamed its CPU cores as a part of the upgrade to M5 Pro and M5 Max. The top-speed cores, previously called performance cores, have been redubbed “super cores.” Meanwhile, the new lower-speed/higher-efficiency cores in the M5 Max and M5 Pro have been confusingly rebranded as “performance cores.”

The bottom line is still the same: In normal use, you’ll see the lower-tier cores grinding away on tasks efficiently, while the more power-consuming tasks will leap into action when there is CPU heavy lifting to be done. On my 18-core review unit, there are 6 super cores and 12 performance cores, while those who choose the lower-end 15-core configuration will get 5 super cores and 10 performance cores.

The pace of Apple silicon progress is breathtaking, not just at the base level that powers the MacBook Air and iPad Pro, but up here at the level of bespoke chips designed for Apple’s most powerful systems. The M5 Pro and M5 Max both look like major steps above the M4 equivalents, let alone against older chip generations.

In the end, the question for upgraders coming from older Apple silicon MacBook Pros will be: Is it worth it to get a more powerful chip to do whatever it is you’re doing? And, secondarily: Are you willing to wait to see what Apple might have up its sleeve with the first iteration of an entirely new design, if that’s indeed what’s coming?

These are questions I can’t answer for you. But I will say that the M5 Pro chip seems really impressive. Even if the laptops look the same on the outside as they did in 2021, the stuff inside just keeps getting better.


by Jason Snell

Marcin Wichary on Apple’s confusing Globe key

Marcin Wichary, the author of the excellent Shift Happens and one of the best new blogs out there in 2026, Unsung, has written a lengthy essay about the history of modifier keys that’s keyed (eh?) off of Apple’s introduction of its Globe shortcut key:

Suddenly, the globe key on the iPad and the hybrid globe/Fn key on the Mac were equipped with a million Windows-like tasks: Globe-C to activate Control Center, Globe-A to show the dock, Globe-N for Notification Center, and so on. There was also Globe-left arrow and Globe-right arrow to jump between apps (even though Command-Tab also did that), Globe-H to go to the home screen (same as Command-H), Globe-F for fullscreen (also available via Command-Control-F), and a bunch of other window management functions. You could even press Globe-D for dictation, even though by now F5 was promoted to serve the same purpose.

The most frustrating thing about the Globe key, as Wichary points out, it that it’s basically a repurposed Fn key that’s been broken so that it’s not compatible with most (but not all!) non-Apple keyboards.


By Glenn Fleishman

How to view edits in Notes

Glenn Fleishman, art by Shafer Brown

The Notes app is a handy way to share material with other people. My family—particularly my spouse and I—has about 15 to 20 shared notes that let us collaboratively update various household, financial, college-related, and other details. We even use it with meal planning.

However, once you start adding a shared note, you get alerts about modifications. Notes let you see the editing history and highlight changes. But the stapled-on interface for this makes it harder to figure out what to choose and what you’re seeing than, say, the version history in Google Docs.

All the options to see what’s changed over time can be reached via the Shared Note menu, by clicking or tapping the profile icon with either a generic head and shoulders with a checkmark in it or a tiny profile pic from your contacts for the shared person:

  • Show All Activity: This displays a pane revealing the editing history, as well as when people accepted the invitation.
  • Show Highlights: You can get a clearer idea of what changes were made when and by whom.
  • Show Updates: If you haven’t clicked or tapped the Shared Note menu, you may see a button that reveals changes since your last visit. This status doesn’t appear synced: although I had already viewed a note on my Mac months ago, when I opened it on my iPhone, it still displayed “Show Updates.”

Screenshots side by side: left, sharing pane in Notes for Mac; right, Activity pane in Notes for Mac
Use the Shared Notes menu to reveal highlights and activity (left). The Activity pane details edits from newest to oldest.

You can use activity and highlights in a couple of different ways.

First, you can use the Activity pane (Profile Pic: Show All Activity) to find previous revisions, listed from the top, oldest to newest, with a profile pic and name next to each. Click or tap the revision, and the note shows additions and changes; deletions don’t appear to be marked, and I don’t see any way to roll back to earlier versions. (If you need version history for shared documents, you can turn to Google Docs or Pages, among many apps.)

Second, when you choose Show Highlights, you see changes in the margin reflecting all edits across the history of the document tagged with the editor’s name and the date. If there are too many edits to fit, you will see +1 next to the name—click or tap it to reveal all names and dates associated with the dit, and that highlight is isolated from the rest of the document.

Third, you can combine Activity and Show Highlights: with a revision selected, choose Show Highlights, and you see just the edits in the margin associated with that set of changes.

Screenshot of Notes fo Mac showing highlights for a note that's been revised by one of the shared participants
Select a revision in the Activity pane with Show Highlights active, and the editor and date is called out in the left margin.

For further reading

Take a gander at my revision of Take Control of Notes, which tells everything you need to know about Apple’s Notes app for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and the web, from basic features like formatting text and creating lists to advanced features like scanning documents, protecting notes with passwords, making sketches, and managing attachments.

[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]

[Glenn Fleishman is a printing and comics historian, Jeopardy champion, and serial Kickstarterer. His latest books are Six Centuries of Type & Printing (Aperiodical LLC) and How Comics Are Made (Andrews McMeel Publishing).]


We break down the aftermath of the Warner Bros. Discovery sale, including positives for Netflix and questions for Paramount Skydance.


By John Moltz

This Week in Apple: She comes in (soft) colors

John Moltz and his conspiracy board. Art by Shafer Brown.

All hail the MacBook Neo! All hail John Ternus! Also, there were some other things, I guess.

The MacBook Neotbook

Apple astounded this week by announcing the cheapest Mac laptop… EVAH!

“Apple introduces colorful MacBook Neo at $599”

Pretty exciting, right?

You’d think. But a lot of comments from Apple fans were oddly reminiscent of the first comments about the iPod: “No MagSafe. One port is USB 2. [ableist pejorative redacted].”

It was never going to be cheap and have all the features of the MacBook Air. How could you think that? Probably for the same reason you keep trying coconut water and thinking maybe this time you’ll like it. You’re not going to like it, Jeff! It’s objectively terrible! Give it up!

Remember netbooks? Sure you do. The year was 2009. The hit song was “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga, “Fantastic Mr. Fox” proved that Wes Anderson can make even stop motion characters annoyingly twee, and netbooks could be had three for a penny.…

This is a post limited to Six Colors members.


By Jason Snell for The Wall Street Journal

‘Apple’ Review: Reinvention Incorporated

Tech empires rise and fall so quickly that the mind can hardly conceive of one lasting half a century, but it’s true: In 1976, two 20-somethings named Steve (Jobs and Wozniak) asked their 41-year-old mentor, Ron Wayne, to file the paperwork that created Apple Computer.

Like most people who reach midlife, Apple has a complicated history. The path from a bunch of young people assembling computers in a Silicon Valley garage to the international titan it is today was far from linear. Early successes in helping define and popularize the personal computer were followed by a troubled adolescence that almost proved fatal. That crisis moment created the opportunity for a storied rebirth, setting Apple on the trajectory that has made it one of this century’s most profitable and valuable companies, currently valued near $4 trillion.

“Apple: The First 50 Years” tells the stories that lie behind dozens of Apple’s tech creations. David Pogue has seen many of those years up close, having written for Macworld magazine before becoming a columnist for the New York Times and a correspondent for PBS’s “Nova” and “CBS Sunday Morning.” Apple’s successes are famous, but Mr. Pogue doesn’t steer away from discussing the dead-end products and corporate malfunctions. While tech media tends to focus on hot new products and strong personalities, Mr. Pogue’s book is resolutely a biography of Apple Inc. itself—one of the most distinctive characters in American business history.

Continue reading via Apple News…

Continue reading on The Wall Street Journal ↦


By Dan Moren

In defense of the “new” Studio Display

When Apple announced the “revision” to its Studio Display last week, I—among others—did a bit of a Spock eyebrow raise. That new tag was doing a lot of heavy lifting: aside from a revamped camera and the addition of Thunderbolt 51, the display is the same as the 2022 model, right down to the $1599 price tag and tilt-only stand.

Is this disappointing? From one point of view, sure. After all, it’s almost four years since the last model; are we to believe that the state of the art hasn’t changed at all? That point is, of course, somewhat belied by the addition of the Studio Display XDR to the lineup, though it has many of the same specs, such as size and resolution.

The argument to the contrary—and one that shouldn’t shock longtime Apple watchers, since it’s often their modus operandi—is that if it ain’t broke, why fix it? Compare a newly released M5 MacBook Air to the M2 model, also from 2022, and guess what: those displays didn’t change either. Honestly, you’re probably going to find more similarities between those models than differences.

Now, I concede this could all just be cognitive dissonance reduction doing its work. I’ve been using a 2022 Studio Display since around the time of its release, paired first with my MacBook, and later with an M2 Pro Mac mini.

Frankly, it’s great. Perhaps I’m basic, but I didn’t even shop around for displays: I was a longtime 27-inch iMac user before making the switch, and the panel on the Studio Display being essentially the same as in the iMac eased my transition. Granted, I don’t consider myself particularly exacting when it comes to the visual, and I’m certainly not doing any professional graphics or video work that relies on perfect reproduction. To wit, I definitely do not know the difference between sRGB and P3. But for everything I do, the Studio Display is, in the manner of Apple’s best technology, completely transparent.2 I was honestly surprised to see Nick Heer’s comment about sketchy firmware issues—I cannot remember the last time I touched anything on my Studio Display. Again, as per Apple’s most famous maxim: it just works.

So, as a happy owner of a Studio Display, I applaud Apple for not changing it3—I consider this a boon to my wallet and my mental health, since there’s no reason for me to crave an update I don’t need. I can remain confident that my Studio Display is just as good as this one, which Apple will probably keep selling for several years—because they are essentially the same. And I can continue to amortize the not inconsiderable cost I paid back in 2022 over the foreseeable future, making it an even better investment. Even if this Mac mini gets shuffled off my desk in the next couple years, the Studio Display will keep on trucking.

So, I’m okay with all of it: after all I’ve saved myself $1599. And, honestly, I’m going to need that—and probably then some—when that folding iPhone comes around this fall.


  1. And, though Apple does not explicitly say, an A19 chip to drive it, replacing the old model’s A13 Bionic. 
  2. And not in an illegibility way. 
  3. The one thing I will ding them for? Not making the height-adjustable stand the default: I don’t feel like ergonomics should come at a premium. That said, I opted for a VESA mount model exactly because of this. 

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]


By Jason Snell for Macworld

18 years later, Apple ships a $599 computer

Person holding a purple Apple laptop on a wooden table.

In late 2008, Steve Jobs hopped on the company’s quarterly phone call with analysts and, besieged by questions about Apple being threatened by low-cost PC laptops called “netbooks,” he explained how Apple approached its product decision.

“We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk,” he said.

It took Apple nearly 18 years to figure it out, but here we are. The announcement of the $599 MacBook neo ($499 for education buyers!) is the low-cost laptop Mac users have been wondering about for years. But there are plenty of reasons it took this long.

Continue reading on Macworld ↦


By Dan Moren

Apple makes a Trojan horse play for the education market

A classroom with students using laptops. A woman in a green sweater works on a yellow laptop. A teacher leans over a student's desk. Other students are seated at desks with laptops.

Apple’s history with education is a long and twisty one. Like many folks my age, my earliest school experience with computers were an Apple IIs, carted in to a classroom, on which you could wait your turn to play Number Munchers. Later on, it was labs full of newer models where we cleverly wrote infinite BASIC loops to print “DAN IS AWESOME” all up and down the rows.

By the time I got to college, though, Macs were already in the minority. Even then, the year that the iMac debuted, I was one of just a few folks in my dorm that had an Apple computer at all.1

In more recent years, Apple’s found itself squeezed out of the K12 education market by the advent of cheap Chromebooks, which often cost just a couple hundred bucks for a unit—a price point that Apple couldn’t (or chose not) to meet with either the Mac or iPad. Couple that with Google’s dominance in courseware, and some big splashy Apple deals ended up evaporating—or worse—and it hasn’t been the best time for the company in education.

A couple recent moves by Apple, however, have me wondering if Cupertino hasn’t decided to take a different tack when approaching education—one that plays more to its strengths.

Continue reading “Apple makes a Trojan horse play for the education market”…


Checking in with “The Sims,” whether hardware colors sway our buying choices, Apple’s new pricing strategy with the iPhone 17e and MacBook Neo, and whether the Studio Display XDR is a bad deal.


By Jason Snell

Apple introduces colorful MacBook Neo at $599

MacBook Neo.

The rumors are true: Apple has announced a new, low-price MacBook based on an A-series processor. It’s the MacBook Neo and it starts at $599, the lowest price ever for a new Mac laptop.

This product is the result of Apple’s manufacturing ability and the rise of Apple silicon. With Intel processors, the MacBook Air has basically occupied the bottom limit of what Apple would consider acceptable performance for a Mac. But even the original M1 MacBook Air still offers solid performance, and the A series chips primarily used in iPhones have kept getting better alongside them. The MacBook Neo is the outcome: Apple can now sell a capable laptop below the MacBook Air, powered by the same A18 Pro processor found in the iPhone 16 Pro.

For $599—keep in mind, the cheapest standard price for any new Mac was $499 for a Mac mini—you get a complete 13-inch laptop that shares a family resemblance (right down to the rounded corners) with the rest of the MacBook product line. (The education price is $499!) The base model doesn’t offer Touch ID and only has 256GB of storage, but there’s also a $699 model with 512GB storage and Touch ID.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the colors: Apple has dropped its longstanding moratorium on bright colors on Mac laptops. The Neo comes in silver, yes, but also blush, indigo, and citrus. I’ve seen them all in person, so let me translate: Blush is pink enough that even I, a person who has a hard time seeing pinks, can tell that it’s pink. Indigo is sort of like the MacBook Air’s Midnight color lightened up a few notches. And citrus is a bright yellow-gold that nobody is going to mistake for some other Apple laptop.

No $599 Mac laptop is going to exist without compromises, but they’re surprisingly minimal, in my opinion. (And I’ll point out that if they’re too much for a potential buyer, the MacBook Air is right there.) There’s no MagSafe charging or Thunderbolt, but there are two USB-C ports and a headphone jack. One USB-C port is capable of driving 4K external video at 60 frames per second. Both models offer only 8GB of RAM, which is enough to run Apple Intelligence but is shy of the MacBook Air’s 16GB base.

If you’re wondering if an iPhone processor can really drive a Mac, let me reprint this chart that I posted last year:

A bar chart compares Geekbench 6 scores for Apple devices.

In short, that A18 CPU core is fast. That will carry the day for the MacBook Neo, and I’d call multi-core and GPU performance “good enough,” certainly for a $599 laptop. (Of course, we’ll see how the MacBook Neo actually performs once we get our hands on one for extended testing and review.)

A man in a gray shirt stands on a stage in front of a large screen displaying a colorful Apple logo.
John Ternus introduces the MacBook Neo.

In introducing the MacBook Neo at an Apple event in New York City, Apple VP of Hardware John Ternus emphasized that nearly half of all Macs Apple sells are to people new to the Mac. If you look at the MacBook Neo product page you’ll see that Apple is well aware that a $599 laptop allows it to address a market that may have never really considered buying a Mac before. In addition to establishing that it’s a bona fide, full-featured Mac, there’s a prominent “Switch from PC to Mac” element.

It’s also clear that Apple’s attempts to use the iPad as a way into that part of the market, most notably education, have been limited. The MacBook Neo gives Apple a traditional computer (complete with display, keyboard, and pointing device) to sell into that market. That $499 education price is really aggressive. Apple’s never going to win on price alone in any market—it’s not the game they play—but this puts them in the mix more than an iPad-keyboard combo or an education-priced MacBook Air.

The last few years, Apple has been selling an M1 MacBook Air at Walmart for very low prices. It was a curious choice and Apple hasn’t really talked much about it, but it sure seemed like the company was testing the viability of selling laptops into a never-before-seen price point. Was that all a test of viability for the MacBook Neo? Either way, this new laptop may very well bring the Mac to an entirely new set of users who would have never considered buying a Mac before. That’s very exciting.


By Jason Snell

Apple gives in to temptation and renames its CPU cores

Two Apple M5 chips, Pro and Max, on a black background.

One of the most surprising parts of Apple’s announcement on Tuesday of new M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro models was its decision to change how it describes the two different types of CPU cores in its processors.

What’s in a name? It’s really a marketing decision, more than anything else. And most people will not care, or even notice. But those of us who pay close attention to this stuff will notice, and you may be hearing about it from us for some time to come.

Here’s what happened:

  • Apple renamed its most powerful CPU cores, which had previously been called performance cores. As of the M5 Pro and Max, those cores are now called “super cores.”
  • Surprise! Since those cores also shipped in the M5 MacBook Pro, M5 iPad Pro, and M5 Vision Pro, they have all been retroactively renamed as super cores. I am writing this very story on a device that sports four super cores, but I didn’t even know that until I heard the news early Tuesday morning.
  • The M5 Pro and M5 Max chips also feature the debut of a brand-new core design derived from the super core design. (I assume the efficiency cores in the base M5 were probably the same cores that Apple used in the M4.) This new core design is still power efficient, but it can offer high performance in multithreaded tasks. In the past, the second-tier core was referred to as an efficiency core, but Apple has decided that these new ones are better described as performance cores. In other words, Batman has become Superman and Robin (or is it Supergirl?) has become Batman.

Here’s the backstory: With every new generation of Apple’s Mac-series processors, I’ve gotten the impression from Apple execs that they’ve been a little frustrated with the perception that their “lesser” efficiency cores were weak sauce. I’ve lost count of the number of briefings and conversations I’ve had where they’ve had to go out of their way to point out that, actually, the lesser cores on an M-series chip are quite fast on their own, in addition to being very good at saving power!

Clearly they’ve had enough of that, so they’re changing how Apple’s second-tier cores are marketed to emphasize their performance, rather than their efficiency. Which is fine on its face, but by re-using an existing term of art, it’s going to be a bit confusing when it comes time to explain what’s going on. I wonder if Apple should’ve come up with two different names for these cores, rather than recycling one of them.

Leaving the naming aside, a new secondary core design is actually great news. Apple doesn’t iterate every aspect of its chips every time, but chooses different bits to upgrade—and the power-efficient cores got the big update with the high-end M5 generation. The “super” cores really are meant to be used for peak workloads, and a huge amount of the everyday life of a Mac doesn’t need to tap that power. Also, presumably these new cores will also crop up on the base M6 chips next year, making them appreciably better than the base M5.

In the end, I suspect this is entirely a marketing issue: Apple didn’t think the lesser of the two core types was getting its due, and I understand why. In a few years maybe none of us will flinch when we read about a chip with so many super cores and so many performance cores. Not today, though.

One last, tangential observation: Apple announced its new Fusion Architecture today as well, which allows the company to mix and match different “chiplets” in a single package. This is another esoteric chip thing (is there any other kind?) but it has real ramifications for the future of Apple’s chip designs. It means that Apple can be a bit more modular with its designs, building a standard CPU set (for the M5 Max and Pro) while offering two different GPU variants with 20 (Pro) and 40 (Max) cores. I’m also curious what this means for a future Ultra chip, assuming there will be one whenever the M5 Mac Studio is announced.


We forgot to get Dan a 20th anniversary present, Lex misses interrupting things and Moltz claims he doesn’t print all the phasers.


By Jason Snell

New M5 MacBook Air arrives with raised specs, price

(Apple)

On Tuesday Apple updated the MacBook Air, its most popular Mac laptop, by adding the M5 chip it introduced last fall.

Beyond the new chip, the M5 MacBook Air is very much the same as last year’s M4 MacBook Air. It does get Apple’s new N1 chip, with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and improved memory bandwidth of 153GB/s. But the primary changes are in two areas: price and storage.

The base-model M5 Air starts at 512GB of storage, twice what the base-model M4 Air offered. But in true Apple fashion, that generous spec bump comes at a price. Literally. The M5 Air’s starting price is $1099 ($999 for education), $100 more than the M4 Air’s $999 base price.

When Apple raises base prices, this is generally how it does it. Just last year, it raised the base price of the iPhone 17 Pro by $100 but also doubled the onboard storage. So you get more, but you don’t have an option to pay less and get less.

It’s a little disappointing, since Apple had finally gotten back to that magic sub-$1000 non-education price for the MacBook Air. Perhaps, as rumors suggest, Apple has another low-cost laptop on the way that provides it some cover to increase the base price of the MacBook Air. We’ll see.


By Dan Moren

Apple announces a pair of new Studio Displays

Two monitors display abstract art with vibrant colors and 3D geometric shapes on stands.

Pairing with the newly announced MacBook is a new pair of external displays that Apple has also unveiled: the Studio Display and the Studio Display XDR.

The 27-inch Studio Display is largely unchanged from its predecessor, introduced in 2022: it’s a 5K Retina display with a 5120-by-2880 resolution at 218 pixels per inch, 600 nits of brightness, a 60Hz refresh rate, and an optional nano-texture glass coating.

The XDR model, which seems to replace the old Pro Display XDR, is a souped up version of the Studio Display, but it’s also a 27-inch 5K Retina display with the same resolution. However, it offers a Mini-LED backlight with 2304 dimming zones, up to 1000 nits of brightness in SDR and 2000 nits of peak brightness with HDR. It also has a 120Hz refresh rate and Adaptive Sync technology that adjusts frame rates on the fly to suit the content being shown, such as video or games.

Both models offer a 12MP Center Stage camera, which Apple says offers “improved image quality”, a sore spot for some on the previous Studio Display—how true that is remains to be seen. Like the 2022 Studio Display, both models have six speakers with Spatial Audio and a three-microphone array. About the only major difference in the base level Studio Display is the addition of Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, with one upstream port and one downstream port. There remain two USB-C ports.

By default, the Studio Display still comes with a tilt-adjustable stand, though there are options for both a height-adjustable stand or a VESA mount. The Studio Display XDR gets the height-adjustable stand by default, and can also be configured with a VESA mount.

The pricing is, as always, a big question: the Studio Display starts at the same $1599 price point as its predecessor, with the nano-texture option jacking that up to $1899, and the height-adjustable stand adding an additional $400. (The VESA mount version starts at the same base $1599.)

The XDR is a pricey one: it starts at $3299, with the same $300 premium for nano-texture though, hey, at least you get that height-adjustable stand by default. That’s cheaper, at least, than its predecessor, the Pro Display XDR, which started at $4999, with an additional $999 for the stand.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]


By Dan Moren

Apple debuts MacBook Pros with M5 Pro, M5 Max chips

Screenshot of Capture One software displaying a person in a purple jacket against a colorful background. The left panel shows histogram and color balance adjustments.

Day two of March’s Apple product extravaganza, uh, marches on with the announcement of MacBook Pro models bearing new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, updated wireless capabilities, and both more and faster storage.

These models join the base level M5 MacBook Pro, released last fall, but offer more power, starting with a 15-core CPU and 16-core GPU on the M5 Pro model, 24GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage. The M5 Max-equipped MacBook, meanwhile, starts at 18-core CPU, 32-core GPU, and 36GB of RAM, with 2TB of storage. That’s double the storage for both models over their counterparts for last year, and Apple says the SSDs are twice as fast as well.

But the M5 Pro and Max are undoubtedly the stars of the show. Like the M5 chips we’ve seen so far, they feature a next-generation GPU with a Neural Accelerator. But Apple says they also use an all new Fusion Architecture, which connects two three-nanometer dies on a single system on a chip that bundles CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, and more.

In their base configurations, they both feature what Apple is now branding super cores, alongside “all-new” performance cores. This is perhaps a bit of nominative legerdemain—Apple says the super core is the rebranded name for the performance core that already existed on the base M5 chip. The new performance cores aren’t the same as the M5’s efficiency cores—they’re a new design that is intended to balance multithreaded performance and power efficiency.

Wirelessly, the new models are powered by Apple’s N1 chip, bringing support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 across the line, like the new M4 iPad Air and iPhone 17e introduced earlier this week.

There are a handful of other improvements: the microphones add Voice Isolation and Wide Spectrum modes, and the M5 Pro MacBook Pro is now configurable with up to 64GB of memory. The 16-inch M5 Max gets slightly better battery life—up to 16 hours of wireless web browsing, compared to 14 hours on its M4 predecessor, and 22 hours of video streaming, compared to 21 hours. The 14-inch M5 Max ekes out two additional hours of video streaming, up to 20 hours.

The 14-inch M5 Pro starts at $2199, while the 16-inch starts at $2699; the 14-inch M5 Max model starts at $3599, with its 16-inch counterpart at $3899. All models will be available for pre-order on March 4, and will start shipping on March 11.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]


Jason and Myke try to predict what Apple will be announcing this week, except for the stuff that was announced Monday. But they discuss the new iPad Air and iPhone 17e too! Also: Apple’s F1 plans and some Report Card follow-up.


By Glenn Fleishman

Universal Control can hide the iPad menu bar

Glenn Fleishman, art by Shafer Brown

A reader of my book Take Control of iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 had a perplexing problem. I had written of the menus available in iPadOS 26’s Windowed Apps and Stage Manager modes in Settings: Multitasking & Gestures:

With a mouse or trackpad, pushing the pointer to the top edge above the status bar reveals the menu bar.

Yet, for this reader, they were unable to use a pointing device to get the menu to appear in that fashion. The cursor sometimes disappeared, and clicking didn’t help. They had to swipe, like some kind of animal, to have the menus appear. This is less than ideal when you’re using an input device and a keyboard on an iPad, as you typically position it differently than when you’re using it with touch input.

Screenshot of Advanced dialog from macOS Displays system settings showing Link to Mac or iPad Universal Control options.
Universal Control settings let you push a pointer through between an iPad and a Mac or two Macs.

We went through some troubleshooting steps, but then it occurred to me that the culprit might be their Mac. That’s right—Universal Control could be the issue! Universal Control is Apple’s name for using a keyboard and mouse or other input devices on a Mac with one or two nearby Macs or iPads. (Follow that link to see the minimum system and hardware requirements.)1

You configure Universal Control on your Mac in System Settings: Displays. Click Advanced, and three Link to Mac or iPad options appear if the feature is available:

  • Allow your pointer and keyboard to move between any nearby Mac or iPad
  • Push through the edge of a display to connect a nearby Mac or iPad
  • Automatically reconnect to any nearby Mac or iPad

With the first setting enabled, the second is the key issue: Push through. I asked my email correspondent if they had this feature enabled and, more crucially, when they clicked the Arrange button at the bottom of the Displays setting, did they see their iPad below their Mac (see figure).

Screenshot of Display Arrange showing two Mac displays side by side and iPad beneath the left-hand display. There's an arrow that indicates moving the iPad to the left side of the left-hand display.
In this configuration, you can push through from an iPad to a Mac without displaying iPad menus. As shown by the arrow, re-arrange your iPad’s display relative to your Mac’s.

The answer was yes. Which is why they couldn’t move their pointer to the top of the iPad and have menus appear: when they did this, they slid through to the bottom of their Mac. I was able to reproduce this, and with some fine motor control, could sometimes get the menu to appear before I slid onto my Mac display.

They moved the iPad to one side of their Mac in Arrange, and the problem went away.

[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]


  1. Universal Control is distinct from Sidecar, which lets you use an iPad as an additional Mac monitor, rather than displaying iPadOS. 

[Glenn Fleishman is a printing and comics historian, Jeopardy champion, and serial Kickstarterer. His latest books are Six Centuries of Type & Printing (Aperiodical LLC) and How Comics Are Made (Andrews McMeel Publishing).]



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