It offers a huge year-over-year speed boost, but there's still one big unknown. Part of that disconnect comes down to parsing what Apple means when it adds the “Pro” label to a piece of hardware. Naturally, the term means different things to different people depending on what exactly they’re professionals at doing.

Then there’s the fact that the MacBook Pro has lived a double life not just as a pro workstation but as the high-end consumer Mac. Lots of people buy MacBook Pros who aren’t professionals—at least, not professionals at doing the sorts of things they might actually need a $3,000 computer for. These users buy it because it’s simply the best-performing Mac laptop.