I currently have an M1 MacBook Air, but I’d LOVE to upgrade that to an M3 MB Pro! Or even an M3 iMac, Mac Mini, or Mac Ultra? Frankly, I would buy the next new Mac, almost regardless of which model it is, as long as it has the M3 processor (protecting at least from some early obsolescence) AND it’s somewhat affordable. So I think an M3 Mac Pro will not be a consideration for me.
Ideally, I’d love an M3 MacBook Pro, 14-inch (since I have a 27-inch monitor on my home desk, where I’d use it most of the time anyway). Also, I want at least 32 GB of RAM (maybe 64), at least a 2 TB SSD, and enough power and cores to run basically everything that exists out there. I don’t want to ever be limited by not being able to run certain software because my system “doesn’t have enough horsepower” (whatever that means).
Marketing the event with “Scary fast” to me means they have to intro something that is really exciting. Also, the 8PM US ET is interesting. My wild guesses:
Some new gaming announcement. Apple has been half-stepping into the non-mobile gaming world on the mac for the past year now with Game POrting kit, etc. and clearly has been working with developers to get AAA title momentum. I don’t think they’re going stay halfway in/out for long. They may announce something that blows everyone away with how scary fast games will run on macOS. Keep in mind that for years linux was the ignored stepchild of gaming and then when Valve sponsored some dude(s) to enhance a fledgling project to interpret DirectX calls to linux via middleware (IIRC it was DXVK) it almost immediately turned linux into a legit gaming platform.
Another crazy idea: Apple gets back into networking e.g. a new Airport that is “scary fast”
Or it could just be the release of the M3 along with an iMac Pro…
Perhaps Apple is putting the new Apple M3 Ultra chip into the Mac Pro to make a scary fast machine for business and scientific computing. This would create even more interest in the release of their other Macs with M3 Chips.
The M2 MBP I got is a 16GB RAM one and coming from a 64GB RAM M1 Max, I thought it won’t be sufficient and that there would be a lot of swap usage. But surprisingly, that’s not the case. As long as I don’t have a gazillion apps open, 16GB RAM is just fine.
I also have found that to be true. But my normal complement of apps gets me close to 16GB of memory usage, and opening Adobe Bridge, Adobe Camera Raw, and especially Adobe Photoshop, easily puts me past that limit, and I begin to use my internal SSD drive for swap space.
For Apple to hold an event, it must be significant. You’d think that they’d be looking at something an hour long to make it worth their while.
An M2 24” iMac could be a press release, unless they bring the M2 Pro to it.
My guess is that something is being released with an M3, maybe the MBPs first this time with the pro and Max chips, and the iMac as it’s the only M1 only variant.
Seems a bit soon for the MB Air, maybe even for the Mac Mini.
With the exception of a few individuals in the graphics department I don’t recall any “office” user ever asking for a faster computer. If they had a base model 27" iMac they were happy. Occasionally I’d get a request for a “clicky” keyboard,or a different mouse/trackpad but that’s all.
well, here’s what I have running in my 16GB RAM M2 MBP:
Safari with 17 tabs (WhatsApp web, Capacities, Messenger and Fastmail always there) and 10 extensions
Google Chrome with 13 tabs and 18 extensions
Affinity Photo 2
Finder with 5 tabs
Spark Mail with 14 email accounts
1Password 7
Local (web server software)
Paste
Setapp
CleanShot X
Messages
Discord
Dash
Alfred
ImageOptim
Trickster
UpNote
Typinator
Lasso
Bartender 5
Yoink
Visual Studio Code
Music
To me, that (the fact that swap is not being used and memory pressure is green) is phenomenal!
The only ones that I am not running that I would otherwise have always open on my other computer are: BetterTouchTool, Keyboard Maestro, PixelSnap, Focus, ScreenFlow and standalone apps of these: Messenger, Capacities, Slack.
M3, M3 Pro, M3 Max. 15-20% faster than M2 as you’d expect.
GPU they’re claiming is significantly faster per core with a new “dynamic caching” technology. It also has the hardware ray tracing mentioned in the iPhone event
MBPs are updated. Memory limits are higher (M3 Max goes up to 128GB. That’s a lot of dynamic caching!)
You can get space black MBPs with a space black MagSafe charger. They look pretty nice.
The 24" iMac is updated with the M3. No new screen sizes.
I’m disappointed if the performance jump over the M2 is only 15-20%. For some reason, most of the comparisons in the presentation were with the M1 chip instead of the M2.
The Pro is a strange step, isn’t it. It also has that lower max memory (36GB vs. 128GB on the Max.) My theory is that they’ve identified the Pro as being the chip for people who want the nice Pro laptops, enough ports and super long battery life. If they are doing work where faster compute saves significant time or they value RAM, they’re probably going for the Max anyway.
I’d like more too. They said 15% single core on the performance cores and 30% on the efficiency cores. They also specialized the chips: the Max also has 50% more performance cores now, and the Pro has 50% more efficiency cores now. So on paper, the Max could be ~70% faster when saturated and the Pro could handle ~90% more load before having to spin up its performance cores. I’m curious to see benchmarks and real-world profiling.
