Some readers may be old enough to remember when desktop PCs had a physical turbo button, now Apple has added an automatic turbo button to its 16-inch MacBook Pro.
As MacRumors reports, references to a "High Power Mode" were discovered this week in the macOS Monterey beta. Apple has since confirmed that High Power Mode is indeed a real feature that will offer an extra burst of performance on certain configurations of the new MacBook Pro during intensive tasks.
More specifically, the 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chip will be the only laptop to feature this new mode. It will be triggered automatically during very intensive tasks, for example, video rendering, and users will notice the fans inside their MBP get noticeably louder as they spin faster to cope with the additional heat generated from the intensive workload.
This will come as welcome news to anyone who relies on a MacBook Pro for graphical work, but will also tempt developers who regularly carry out code compilation. However, it's unclear exactly which tasks will trigger High Power Mode and what classes as intensive at Apple. These details will surely appear soon after the new laptops start shipping.
It will also be interesting to see what this mode does to performance comparisons with laptops running Intel and AMD processors. Apple is already making bold claims regarding what the updated M1 chips are capable of. Was Apple already including the High Power Mode in those claims, or is this on top of that? We'll find out next month.