What's up with the new Scary Fast M3 MacBook Pro!
Apple finally announced its new 3-nanometer chips for the Mac, the M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max, in the new MacBook Pros and a 24-inch iMac. We didn’t get everything we thought we would. Here are the chips, the MacBook Pros, which one I’ll get, the iMac, and a rant about tech leakers.
The Scary Fast October event was expected, then not expected at all, then suddenly expected again, which was pretty weird.
The chips
These are Apple’s first 3 nm chips for the Mac, and I think the first 3 nm chips in desktops and laptops ever.
- M3: 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU.
- M3 Pro: up to a 12-core CPU and 18-core GPU.
- M3 Max: up to a 16-core CPU and 40-core GPU.
Apple put up wildly ambiguous charts showing the M3s mostly against the M1, not the M2. It seems like the M2 is just a tiny stepping stone from the revolutionary M1 to the 3 nm M3, which is crazy, because my M2 Max MacBook Pro was released earlier this year and is already being replaced. My guess, from those charts, is about a 15–20% performance increase from M2 to M3, which is pretty good for a part-year-over-part-year update.
One interesting change: the 12-core M3 Pro has six performance and six efficiency cores, whereas the 12-core M2 Pro and M2 Max had eight performance and four efficiency. So there are fewer performance cores in the M3 Pro, and I’m curious how that affects my day-to-day work.
All the M3 GPUs have hardware ray tracing, as in the iPhone 15 Pro’s A17 Pro. But that’s speculative for now, since no games support it yet, and Apple didn’t bring developers on stage to talk about how their games run on M3, which seems a lost opportunity.
The MacBook Pros
All the chips go in the 14-inch MacBook Pro, including the base M3, now $1,599. That gets you the ProMotion display, amazing speakers, a better keyboard and a bigger trackpad, none of which came with the 13-inch MacBook Pro. There’s not much to complain about. The only thing missing is the third Thunderbolt port on the right side. The base M3’s ports are Thunderbolt 3 / USB4, while Pro and Max have Thunderbolt 4, and for you that means nothing, since both run at 40 Gb/s.
The base M3 comes in Silver or Space Gray; the Pro and Max also get the new Space Black, a specially anodized aluminum that reduces fingerprints. And it’s black, so you know those are the real Pro laptops.
The 14-inch options: the base M3 (8-core CPU, 10-core GPU); an M3 Pro with an 11-core CPU and 14-core GPU; an M3 Pro with a 12-core CPU and 18-core GPU; or an M3 Max with a 14-core CPU and 30-core GPU, or a 16-core CPU and 40-core GPU.
Which one I’m buying
I currently use an M2 Max with a 12-core CPU and 30-core GPU, which I think is overkill. I could get by with the old base M2 Pro with more memory: memory, more than anything, has been my limit. My 14-inch has 32 GB, about the minimum I need to do everything smoothly, with a little overhead.
So I’m getting the 14-inch M3 Pro, and because I’m a Pro, in Space Black. I want the bigger chip: the 12-core CPU and 18-core GPU, which starts at $2,399.
- I’m skipping the M3 Max. I don’t need the GPU cores, and the Pro should run cooler. My one complaint about the M2 Max is that it runs a bit warm; I don’t hear the fans, but I feel the heat.
- Memory: it comes with 18 GB, and I’m bumping it to 36 GB, my 32 GB base plus 4.
- Storage: 1 TB by default, and I’m adding 2 TB for $400, the right amount for the videos I’m working on, my other files and photos.
That comes to $3,199, which sucks after spending about $3,500 on my current laptop earlier this year. So subscribe and watch my M3 Pro versus M2 Max comparison, because I need help paying for them, and I guess selling one. I should have it Tuesday.
The rant: tech leakers
I’m tired of tech leakers ruining Apple events. We’re fed stories for weeks, months or even a year in advance, and then the event comes without those things, and we feel disappointed and cheated, like Apple is screwing us. It’s not Apple; it’s the leakers. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be super happy about these new Macs.
We were told this weird Monday late-night event, business hours in Asia, would bring crazy game developers, new AAA games on the Mac, or other big partnerships. They didn’t happen. The hardware is here, but no partnership or game to go with it.
On the 24-inch iMac: the leakers said the Magic Keyboard, Mouse and Trackpad were finally going to USB-C, and they’re still Lightning. We were told color-matched USB-C cables were definitely coming for the iMac accessories, but first they were definitely coming with the iPhones in September, which didn’t pan out. And a seventh-generation iPad mini was definitely coming to fix the jelly scrolling. Also no.
So we went in expecting all this and got “boring” MacBook Pros, an iMac and some 3 nm chips. But we should be happy that Apple is still putting in the effort, time and money to update products, compared to previous years when they felt stagnant. Getting basically yearly updates is amazing, and I can’t wait to get my hands on them. If you want me to get an iMac and check it out, let me know.
Links
- Get the Violet Sky wallpapers
- iPhone 15 pro Max 1 month later
- My Charging Partner: Ugreen Amazon store
- My Case Partner: Pitaka
- https://www.threads.net/@jerryschulzeonyt
- My iPhone Art
- Grovemade Desk Mat and Knife (save 10% JERRY10)
- UNLIMITED Cloud Backup for your Mac with Backblaze
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