16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max has a special high-power mode Apple hasn't talked about, but it has now confirmed

Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips have been garnering a lot of well-deserved praise and attention. With the new models only days away from reaching the hands of customers, Geekbench results have started appearing online showing that they both deliver exceptional performance. However, the 16-inch models fitted with the M1 Max has an additional trick up its sleeve.

Code previously uncovered by Macrumors' writer Steve Moser in the macOS Monterey beta referenced a High Power Mode, and now Macrumors has been able to confirm that this feature will make it through to the public release of Monterey expected on Monday, October 25. Text in the Monterey beta explains, “Your Mac will optimize performance to better support resource-intensive tasks.” 

The 14-inch MacBook Pro model can also be fitted with the M1 Max as an option, but it misses out on the additional boosted performance mode. Although the reason isn’t public, it is likely due to one or a combination of thermal design profile and system power supplies. On the CPU side, the M1 Pro and M1 Max have the same 10-core design, but there haven’t been any indications of performance differences between the chips in the early benchmarks that have been circulating.

It will be interesting to see whether 16-inch MacBook Pro users will need to manually enable the High Power mode, or whether the system will automatically boost system performance. If one was to hazard a guess, manually enabling the option seems likely. Apple gives users the option to manually enable Low Power Mode on its iPhones and iPads, for example. Enabling High Power Mode may also require the MacBook Pro to be plugged into a power supply.

The Apple M1 Max would already be giving competitors like Intel headaches -- knowing the chip has boost capabilities beyond what Apple has already revealed will help to ensure they have nightmares too.

Pre-order the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro chip from Amazon for US$2,500.