First M3 Apple Silicon Macs Likely To Launch In October (9to5mac.com) 30
Apple is preparing to launch its first M3 Apple Silicon Macs in October, according to Mark Gurman in his latest Power On newsletter for Bloomberg. 9to5Mac reports: Following the usually new iPhone launch event in September, where we are expecting the iPhone 15 and Apple Watch Series 9 and new Apple Watch Ultra, Apple is reportedly lining up new Macs for an October debut. Likely models include a new M3 iMac, M3 13-inch MacBook Air, and M3 MacBook Pro. For the M3 chip, we are expecting similar core counts to the M2 but with enhanced performance and efficiency thanks to the move to a new 3-nanometer silicon fabrication process.
It may seem weird for the first M3 Macs so soon after the M2 cycle wrapped up â" with products like the M2 Ultra Mac Studio and 15-inch MacBook Air only debuting last month â" but there has been much speculation that the latter parts of the M2 lineup were delayed due to supply chain issues. And while an M3 MacBook Air may be ready to go in October, M3 updates for products like MacBook Pro and Mac Studio are further out. Gurman does not specifically say Apple will hold an October event, or whether new Macs would arrive via press release. The decision on whether to hold a formal event has probably not yet been finalized, but you can imagine Apple would want to hold an event for a significant new Mac launch.
It may seem weird for the first M3 Macs so soon after the M2 cycle wrapped up â" with products like the M2 Ultra Mac Studio and 15-inch MacBook Air only debuting last month â" but there has been much speculation that the latter parts of the M2 lineup were delayed due to supply chain issues. And while an M3 MacBook Air may be ready to go in October, M3 updates for products like MacBook Pro and Mac Studio are further out. Gurman does not specifically say Apple will hold an October event, or whether new Macs would arrive via press release. The decision on whether to hold a formal event has probably not yet been finalized, but you can imagine Apple would want to hold an event for a significant new Mac launch.
Two earlier rumours (Score:4, Informative)
The "plain" M1 and M2 have a memory module or whatever you call it that can hold one or two RAM chips, 8GB each on M1 and 8 or 12GB each on M2. (Pros have 2 of these modules, Max have 4, and Ultra have 8). 36 GB of RAM, that's either two 18GB modules, so they tested an M3 Pro with 9GB RAM chips instead of 8GB. Unlikely when 12GB is available. Or it's one 36GB module, so either a module can have 3 chips up to 12GB, or a module can have two 18GB chips. People think the latter is more likely, so the limit is up to 125% more RAM than M1 or up to 50% more than M2.
The other rumour is much smaller process size. Maybe Apple uses that just to make the chips smaller and cheaper and more profitable. Or they use them to put say 50% more cores on each chip. That would be M3 with 6 performance and 6 power saving cores and 12 GPUs, Pro/Max with 12 performance and 6 power saving cores and up to 28 or 56 GPU cores, an Ultra with twice that. That would make the low range model very powerful.
And Apple could build an M3 "Mini" with half the size at ultra low cost, say 3 performance and 3 power saving cores and 6 GPUs, a bit less performance, but for a really good price and really good battery life.
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Rumour 1: A Mac with 36GB of RAM has been found reporting benchmark results
Why such an odd number? I know you CAN put in 36GB of RAM, but generally it's installed in series of 8s.
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Let me know when they stop using silicon (Score:2)
Inflation (Score:2)
It may seem weird for the first M3 Macs so soon after the M2 cycle wrapped up â" with products like the M2 Ultra Mac Studio and 15-inch MacBook Air only debuting last month
Maybe they're adopting the Chrome release scheme, as Firefox did. I'll hold out for M52 (or the nearest ESR).
Literally the only thing I care about (Score:2)
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Even on the M1 mini, that's a problem. Because by design one has to be HDMI and the other has to be DisplayPort. I have one set up with two identical monitors and had all sorts of issues enabling HDR because the two screens behaved totally differently on the different connections.
I do like Apple Silicon (Score:5, Interesting)
Used to hate Apple, mostly because of the smug marketing. The M1 MacBook Pro finally tempted me to give them a try and I've loved the battery life and performance. It just runs and runs, and runs cool. I don't think it was just marketing, I think it really is a far more efficient architecture than we were used to.
Re: I do like Apple Silicon (Score:5, Funny)
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It's all a system on a chip, can't upgrade the RAM or storage space. Apple gets to be the gate keeper
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You can get Ryzen laptops from Lenovo that have 20+ hour battery life, and they are at least somewhat upgradable. Better performance than M2 as well.
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You can get Ryzen laptops from Lenovo that have 20+ hour battery life, and they are at least somewhat upgradable. Better performance than M2 as well.
Can you get them from anyone not incompetent with software (including drivers) and customer-hostile? And with a competent website? There's no one place you can go to even see all of Lenovo's laptop lineup.
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I've got high hopes for Framework's 16; they've got a nice 13 using Ryzen, but I'm holding out for something with a discrete Radeon GPU. https://frame.work/ [frame.work]
Laptops using Ryzen/Radeon are stupidly rare, especially if you're trying to avoid terrible manufacturers. Origin (who are you?!) and Alienware have models that seem decent, but not quite what I want (and Alienware is pricey and carries Dell's stink).
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Lenovo's software is fine, and they are far more customer friendly than Apple.
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You can get Ryzen laptops from Lenovo that have 20+ hour battery life, and they are at least somewhat upgradable. Better performance than M2 as well.
Can you? I'm less tethered to the Windows ecosystem than I used to be. I have a gaming laptop I can use for that and all of the technical things I want to do--including messing around in .NET or PowerShell--I can do on my Mac. I'm not paranoid about telemetry or anything, but I do find MacOS is less intrusive than Windows though I prefer Windows' keyboard support for UI operations.
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Z13 and Z16. They are due for a refresh soon and last year's models are discounted at the moment.
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I think it really is a far more efficient architecture than we were used to.
That's not good. That will only serve to make the software stack running on it more complex, less efficient & less responsive, for no net end-user gain.
Oh yeah, it may feel like an upgrade now. Just give it a few years, until this newfangled tech is considered a bare minimum.
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The M1 MacBook Pro ... loved the battery life and performance. It just runs and runs, and runs cool.... I think it really is a far more efficient architecture than we were used to.
The problem that Apple has for me now is that the 14" M1 MacBook Pro is such a superb machine I've not got any upgrade envy. Sure, the bench testing of the M2 showed greater speeds than the M1, but at the end of the day my M1 is more than good enough for all my needs (general work, photo editing, some video, software development). Depending on the usage, I can charge it up every two or three days.
The M3 may blow the M2 out of the water... but if the M1 meets all my needs, where is the incentive to upgrade?
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That's the way it should be. If your laptop can't last you through two or three generations, why even spend $2k on it?
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Used to hate Apple, mostly because of the smug marketing.
Think about that. You used to hate apple, meaning you hated Apple in the past when they were running intel. Back then Apple had a decent product line that was made with common parts. Meaning you could easily upgrade or expand the product.
But now, Apple does everything they can to keep you from expanding or upgrading their products. To upgrade, you have to replace.
If you hated Apple when it was arguably a better company. Think about how much you will loath Apple now with the current "screw you"
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Having both a Mac Mini and PC (Score:1)
New nodes not used for larger parts. (Score:4, Interesting)
Supply chain issues cause quick hardware turnover (Score:4, Interesting)
The rapid release of the m3 behind the m2 because of supply chain issues is mirrored in the company I work for. We haven't even fully released the first product on our new hardware platform (lets call it 'gen2'), and we are already working on putting the next software release on the next-gen (call it 'gen3') hardware platform. Typically, platforms last 3-5 years between design refreshes, but gen2 is only going to have two or three software products released on it before we introduce gen3 hardware - and it was because of supply chain issues. Our company is finally caught up, but its too late for gen2 to be extensively used, and we are moving on to gen3 very quickly.