Apple has announced two new high-performance chip systems with which the group intends to accelerate its move away from Intel processors.

The M1 Pro and M1 Max, which were presented in a video stream on Monday, are greatly improved versions of the M1 chip that Apple introduced a year ago.

In future, they will form the heart of the new MacBook Pro models.

The first edition of the M1 served Apple to replace the microprocessors of the chip giant Intel in the entry-level and middle-class segment of Macintosh computers.

Now the iPhone manufacturer is also targeting the market for high-performance laptops with its own systems.

This means that users with high hardware requirements - such as developers, programmers, graphic designers and filmmakers - should no longer have to rely on MacBooks with Intel chips.

Revised two design decisions

The original M1 chip had already received extremely positive reviews in test reports. However, the area of ​​application was still limited. With the M1 Pro, Apple promises a 70 percent better processor performance (CPU), twice as high graphics performance compared to the M1. Like the Pro version, the M1 Max, which is even more powerful than the M1 Pro, has ten processing cores (eight performance and two efficiency cores). With a doubled memory bandwidth and other improvements, it has four times the graphics performance of the original M1.

At the online event, Apple boss Tim Cook also presented two completely redesigned MacBooks in which the high-performance systems are to be used: two MacBook Pros (14-inch and 16-inch screen sizes).

With the new notebooks, Apple is revising design decisions that were made in the era of design chief Jony Ive, who left Apple two years ago.

The keyboard no longer has the touch-sensitive control element touchbar, but rather conventional function keys.

In addition, the MagSafe power supply connection returns, a quick-release, magnetic plug-in connection that should prevent accidents from falling.

Furthermore, the two new models again had numerous ports for connecting peripheral devices and memory cards, which had been systematically abolished under Ive.

Cook also unveiled a new generation of its AirPods wireless headphones at Apple's second fall event this year, which now come with most of the features of the expensive AirPods Pro.

Only the suppression of ambient noise is reserved for the Pro models.

At the same time, the company launched an attack on the streaming market leader Spotify with a new Apple Music tariff for 4.99 euros per month, which only works via Siri.

That's half the price of a standard subscription.

While the standard subscription can be used on all conceivable devices, the Siri version can only be used with Apple hardware such as the iPhone, iPad or the HomePod mini.