Apple has just killed Intel… again, by announcing 3 new chips, a brand new color for the updated MacBook Pro, and an updated 24-inch iMac, here is everything you need to know that had Apple saying this to every other chip manufacturer.
So Apple surprised us with an October event, which is scary not to you or me but to Intel. Because it is indeed hauntingly fast, let me explain.Â
M3 Chips
They are launching 3 new chips, which are the M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max. As expected, these will have performance per watt as the focus. It’s all built on the latest 3nm process, which is a crazy leap considering Intel’s latest 14th-gen series are still using 7nm and the Apple M2 chips are using 5nm.
Now, the main focus for the M3 Family as a whole is that this round is more towards the graphics or GPU capabilities of the new chips. The GPU will have Dynamic Caching, which is a new Apple silicon architecture process.Â
In a nutshell, it’s supposed to move the processing from the software to the hardware side. This is also true for their Mesh Shading and Ray Tracing, which, in combination, will increase performance up to 2.5 times faster than the M1 chips. Then, the new media engine also includes support for AV1 encoding.
On the CPU side, as expected, all of these will have a bump in performance, which will be up to 30% faster performance cores and 50% faster efficiency cores. The enhanced neural engine will be up to 60% faster, and all of this is done while actually using half the power of the M1. Excellent stuff right here
For spec nerds out there, the M3 only has a single variant where there are 8 CPU cores, 4 performance, and 4 efficiency. The GPU is a 10-core unit, and you can pair this chip with either 8GB, 16GB, or 24GB of unified memory, and you can max out the storage up to 2TB.
And this is only available for the 14-inch variant, so there is no 16-inch variant for the baseline M3 chip MacBook Pro.
There are 2 variants of the M3 Pro chip. One with 11-core CPU and 14-core GPU. The other is a 12-core CPU and 18-core GPU unit. Unified memory comes with either 18GB or 36GB, and you can configure up to 4TB of storage.
Now, if you are a power user, the new M3 Max chip comes in two flavors. One will have a 14-core CPU and a 30-core GPU. This comes with either 36GB or 96GB of unified memory, and you can get up to 8TB of storage.
Not enough power, you say? Well, the second variant comes with a 16-core CPU and 40 freaking GPU cores. The unified memory comes in either 48GB, 64GB, or a whopping 128GB. On a laptop! Madness, I say! And yes, you can configure up to 8TB of storage over here as well.
Now, all of the chips will come with a 16-core neural engine, so that simplifies things a little bit.Â
So that is all about the M3 Chips, and I have left our discord community link down here so we can talk about the new chips and product announcements together. Link: https://discord.gg/taRdMMwBYk
MacBook Pro
Talking about product announcements, there will be two new Apple products that will be using these new chips, which are the MacBook Pro lineup mentioned and the new iMacs.
Now, before talking about the new iMacs, Apple has also introduced a brand new color, Space Black, and the good news is that they promise it’s resistant to fingerprints, which is always a worry for matt black users, especially on how it was on the Midnight MacBook Air.
And this new Space Black color is only available with the M3 Pro and M3 Max MacBook Pro, whereas the baseline M3 MacBook Pro will only have the option of either Space Grey or Silver as per usual.
So if you are looking for a 14-inch MacBook, you can get it with either an M3, M3 Pro, or M3 Max chip inside. Prices start at RM7,499 onwards.
The 16-inch MacBook will come with an M3 Pro or M3 Max chip, with prices starting at RM11,999 onwards.
Rounding up the laptop specs, similar to the previous MacBook Pro, it will have a Liquid Retina XDR display, a 6-speaker sound system with Spatial Audio, HDMI, Thunderbolt 4, and SDXC card reader, and support up to 4 external displays and up to 22 hours of battery life. Enough battery to outlast a vampire’s day.
It’s available in the US starting next month, but no word for Malaysia yet.
iMacs
Now for the new iMacs. There will be 7 color options available, similar to the previous generation, so no new colors here; I never had an iMac before, but if I had to choose, the purple color for me is the sexiest.
So, Apple keeps on mentioning how much better it is than an Intel chip, which is obviously true, but they are really aiming for those still using the Intel variant of the iMac to jump to the Apple silicon bandwagon.
Speaking of the chip, the iMac will only come with an M3 chip, which makes sense for the target market they are aiming for with this. You can get it with up to 24GB of unified memory and 2TB of storage, with its CPU and GPU maxed out at 8 and 10, respectively.
The display is a 24-inch Retina Display like before. Inside is Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, up to 4 USB-C ports with 2 Thunderbolt ports, and support for Gigabit ethernet on specific models.
The Facetime camera is 1080p, and of course, it comes with colour-matched accessories as well. There is no word if these peripherals were changed to USB-C port instead of Lightning, so there will likely be no change, but we shall see once I get my hands to unbox it.
So, there are two variants of the iMac that will be available. The 8-core GPU iMac will start at RM6,299, and the 10-core GPU will start at RM7,299.Â
So yeah, this is a really appealing package for someone who wants a modern all-in-one system with minimal clutter.
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And that is it, these are the highlights of the latest Apple Scary Fast event; now tell me, which product you are excited for me to review first?
