It’s either the M1 MacBooks are so good or the M3 does not offer much of a difference versus the M2.
During Apple’s Scary Fast event yesterday, the company revealed the all-new Mac and MacBook Pro. These new MacBooks come with the new M3 series of chipsets which include the M3 itself, the M3 Pro, and the M3 Max. Again, for the 1000th time, this is Apple’s most powerful chipset yet.
When we saw the event live yesterday, we were a bit surprised to where they compared the M3 with. They compared it with the M1 and not the M2. Meaning, they are most likely aware that the new chips do not offer anything significant against the M2, that or the M1 is just so good. Now you can browse on your Twitter feed slightly faster! What a great improvement. In their press release on their website, they even said that the M3’s performance cores are 30% faster than the M1. However, they did mention the M2 when comparing the chip’s efficiency. Here, they said that the M3 is 30% more efficient than the M2 and 50% more than the M1.
Apple’s press release of the new MacBooks consist of them talking mostly about the new chip so it feels closer to unveiling the M3 than it is about the new laptops and computers.
The company maybe is still a little salty with Intel since they compared it to an Intel Core i7 two generations below it, for some weird reason.
The basic M3 chip is used for the 14″ MacBook Pro. The chip boasts a feature known as “Dynamic Caching”. This feature allocates local memory in real time so only the needed amount is used for each and every task. This makes using the laptop seamless and smooth. In addition, the laptops feature up to 128GB unified memory so that each program runs smoothly while using only the required memory of a specific task.
In case you’re wondering. Yes, the new MacBook Pro retains the same exact design as the previous one, including the unnecessarily large notch to place the FaceTime camera.
There is also a variant of the 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M3 Pro and M3 Max chip. These chips are also used for the larger 16-inch variant. The M3 Pro is built upon an 18-core GPU and a 12-core CPU, as well as 37 billion tiny transistors, while the M3 Max is built upon a 40-core GPU, a 16-core CPU, and now almost double the transistor count at 92 million! Apple is the type of company to use a billion cores for their chipsets to achieve maximum performance, as opposed to Intel or AMD that optimize their chips instead while having fewer cores and threads.
In terms of their spec sheet, both laptops are nearly the same. Both laptops use a Liquid Retina XDR display, runs MacOS Sonoma, and features a six-speaker sound system with Apple’s own Spatial Audio. In addition, Hardware-accelerated ray tracing is supported, like that of the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. Another thing these laptops are boasting are its 22-hour battery life.
Both these laptops will be available starting November 7th. If you visit the Apple website right now, you can see your heart attacking you and your wallet melting. You see, the base M3 14″ MacBook Pro starts at PHP 104,990. Remember, that’s only for the 8GB + 512GB option.
Meanwhile, the base 16″ M3 Pro MacBook starts at PHP 159,990. It’s best to not eat or drink at this time. You may be malnourished but at least you got a shiny new MacBook Pro!
Colours include Space Grey (only for M3 and M3 Pro 14″ MacBook Pro) and Silver, and Space Black (only for 14″ M3 Max MacBook Pro and 16″ MacBook Pro) and Silver.
M3 iMac
If there’s a new MacBook, you can be sure there’s going to be a new iMac as well. Just look at those pretty colours! It almost matches that of Apple’s old rainbow logo. However, unlike the MacBooks, the new iMac is stuck using the base M3 which isn’t bad because the chip is designed for multitasking in mind but you’d think being the new desktop computer, Apple would at least provide an M3 Pro version of it. What’s good is that because Apple manufactured the chipsets themselves, they can add as many cores as they want even just for the base variant as the M3 iMac has two options to choose from: an 8-core M3 variant or a 10-core M3 variant.
According to Apple, the M3 iMac is 4x faster than the “most powerful 21.5-inch iMac Model…” which was released 6 years ago, and 2.5x more powerful than the “most popular 27-inch iMac Models”… which uses a 10th-gen Intel Core i7 chip. They are really playing with us here.
Like the new MacBook Pro, the M3 iMac uses a six-speaker sound system with spatial audio and apparently “studio-quality microphones”. It also boots up with the latest MacOS 14.1 “Sonoma”.
As for the display, it’s a 24-inch 4.5K (4480x2520px) Retina display with a wide colour gamut. It also features a Thunderbolt 3 port which is an upgraded version of USB-C that also supports other types of ports such as DVI, VGA, and HDMI… if you have the adapters for them.
It comes in seven different colours: Green, Pink, Silver, Yellow, Orange, Purple, and Blue. That’s almost every colour of the rainbow! And when you get to the end, you may be able to find a pot of gold which may hopefully help you purchase the new desktop PC. It will also be available on November 7th and starts at a hefty PHP 84,990 and that’s just the 8/256 option.
If you want the best of the best M3 iMac (10-core, 8/512) it will start at PHP 108,990. Note that this is just the base variant of the best version of the M3 iMac as the ultimate variant with 24GB RAM and 2TB storage starts at PHP 168,990 and no, it doesn’t even come with the Magic Trackpad, only the Magic Mouse. If you want both, you have to add PHP 6,490 to your purchase.
If you have the M1 MacBook Pro, you can just keep it as it will still last a little while longer.
Source: Apple Newsroom, Apple iMac
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