Trick or M3-treat? - Apple’s pre-Halloween “Scary Fast” virtual event

[williamcll]

I wonder if they fixed the thermal issues this time? M1 Macbook Air and M2 Mac Mini have poor thermal solutions and were prone to throttling.

 

Also interesting time to post this as Qualcomm announced their Snapdragon XElite chip for laptops which does have a faster CPU performance to the M2 on the same wattage.

[thechinchinsong]

The base model pro at $1599 but 8GB of RAM still doesn't feel right, even if its well managed and fast, but everything else seems like a pretty standard upgrade. Same prices for the new chips with everything else kept the same or similar. Apple's still the king of the hill when it comes to these SoCs and it doesn't look like they're slowing down too much.

49 minutes ago, williamcll said:

Also interesting time to post this as Qualcomm announced their Snapdragon XElite chip for laptops which does have a faster CPU performance to the M2 on the same wattage.

Also interested to see how the XElite chips compare, but I'm not holding my breath too much. At most they have similar perf/watt and perf in general, but Apple's software is still ahead. At worst we get repeat of Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 and anemic windows on ARM.

[captain_to_fire]

3 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

The base memory for the M3 is still 8GB. (but part of it is now used more efficiently by the GPU thanks to dynamic caching I guess? Silver linings..)

 

Keyboard/Mouse/Trackpad for the iMac are still Lightning.

 

Base RAM for the M3 Pro went from 16GB to 18GB. (double that for the Max)

I'm guessing the reason as to why Apple axed the 13" Pro in favor of the 14" Pro with the M2 chip is because of probably sales figures. The 13" Pro still uses a 720p webcam and still has the touch bar but doesn't offer more I/O. It's very likely that the base 14" Pro M1 Pro/M2 Pro sold well because it has 16GB/512GB, bigger brighter screen than the Air and has a full size SD card, HDMI port, and three TB ports not to mention Pro Motion.

 

This will make the 15" Air a tough sell even if it gets an M3 update. 15" Air (8GB/512GB) is also $1500 but it only has an LCD display, and two TB ports. Compare that to a 14" Pro (M3 chip, 8GG/512GB), Pro Motion display, two TB ports, HDMI, and full size SD card slot so one less dongle to carry.

[captain_to_fire]

2 minutes ago, thechinchinsong said:

Also interested to see how the XElite chips compare, but I'm not holding my breath too much. At most they have similar perf/watt and perf in general, but Apple's software is still ahead. At worst we get repeat of Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 and anemic windows on ARM.

Even if Qualcomm manages to make a chip on par with Apple's, the major obstacle would be Windows itself and developers. Windows itself is bloated because it cannot let go of legacy stuff that enterprises uses unless they want a major outcry from PCMR cavemen to businesses. 32-bit applications for instance are still supported in Windows 11. Also, will devs both big and small be willing to do the work in porting their programs into ARM64 instructions.

 

Apple on the other hand can easily change their OS without major outcry. Is there anyone who complained when Apple axed 32-bit on Macs? I bet Apple could make the upcoming 2024 macOS an ARM exclusive and not a lot of people would raise a stink about it. I think the 1st gen PCs with Snapdragon XElite would become a hard sell because it'll probably be priced more than their Intel/AMD counterparts.

[missell]

7 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

This will make the 15" Air a tough sell even if it gets an M3 update. 15" Air (8GB/512GB) is also $1500 but it only has an LCD display, and two TB ports. Compare that to a 14" Pro (M3 chip, 8GG/512GB), Pro Motion display, two TB ports, HDMI, and full size SD card slot so one less dongle to carry.

Oh wow. I completely overlooked this. I've been planning on getting a 16GB/512GB 15" Air toward the end of the year, the difference between the same specced 14" Pro is roughly $200 AUD. Absolutely worth it for the additions and newer platform IMO.

[saltycaramel]

Full event posted:

 

 

Behind the scenes of the event being fully shot on iPhone 15 Pro:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3dbG9pAi8I

 

(it’s an unlisted video that was quickly made private, not sure when will it be made available again)

[saltycaramel]

Nice table with every (M-series) Apple Silicon chip 

 

https://x.com/remo_pr0/status/1719266477348470993?s=46&t=uhBUIuZsslNKMlHtFg23AQ

 

The M3 family currently comprises a total of 7 “SKUs”, could easily pass 10 once the M3 Ultra is unveiled.

 

That’s some binning.

 

Apple is shipping 18 different M3 packages taking into account all the various on-package RAM configurations.

[captain_to_fire]

Apple seems to have listened to the complaints of slower SSD speeds (though still remarkably faster than SATA SSDs) by putting two NAND flash on RAID0 on the base 14" Pro M3. The M3 SKU of the 14" will only have a single fan which is fine perhaps because it has less performance cores and lower clock speeds than the Pro and Max.

 

[captain_to_fire]

15 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

Nice table with every (M-series) Apple Silicon chip 

 

https://x.com/remo_pr0/status/1719266477348470993?s=46&t=uhBUIuZsslNKMlHtFg23AQ

 

The M3 family currently comprises a total of 7 “SKUs”, could easily pass 10 once the M3 Ultra is unveiled.

 

That’s some binning.

Interesting. Apple reduced the E core count on the M3 Pro by 1. I'm guessing the yields on the TSMC N3B remains low so yay for crazy core counts. Judging from TSMC's page it looks like the iPhone 16 Pros and Q4 2024 Macs will have the tock process/3 nm+/N3E and N3P which will provide significant performance and efficiency gains.

[Kisai]

7 hours ago, williamcll said:

I wonder if they fixed the thermal issues this time? M1 Macbook Air and M2 Mac Mini have poor thermal solutions and were prone to throttling.

 

Also interesting time to post this as Qualcomm announced their Snapdragon XElite chip for laptops which does have a faster CPU performance to the M2 on the same wattage.

That is the intended design for the air. The Mini's always had a fan, but the fan almost never spins up, on any generation of mini unless you quite literately spin up something like a video encoder.

 

People likewise buy these things with that expectation, not wanting to listen to a jet engine like other laptops and SFF's.

 

[goodtofufriday]

So I JUST bought a M2 mbp with 8gb ram and 256gb ssd for 900$

Should i just go ahead and return it? will the used market for the hiher end MPB go down in the next few months?

[saltycaramel]

58 minutes ago, goodtofufriday said:

So I JUST bought a M2 mbp with 8gb ram and 256gb ssd for 900$

Should i just go ahead and return it? will the used market for the hiher end MPB go down in the next few months?

You scored the last cheap Macbook with active cooling that will ever exist, now they start at 1600$ if you want a fan. 
 

I would keep it if that’s what you need today and you like having the touchbar..

[saltycaramel]

6 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

Behind the scenes of the event being fully shot on iPhone 15 Pro:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3dbG9pAi8I

 

(it’s an unlisted video that was quickly made private, not sure when will it be made available again)

 

Reposted on X:

Log video and external SSD support change everything for the 15 Pro video recording potential..

[Forbidden Wafer]

10 hours ago, williamcll said:

I wonder if they fixed the thermal issues this time? M1 Macbook Air and M2 Mac Mini have poor thermal solutions and were prone to throttling.

It's Apple. A. K. A. They won't ever fix it. 

 

They should just have slapped a frore systems cooler there instead of the wimpy fan. 

[thechinchinsong]

5 hours ago, captain_to_fire said:

Apple seems to have listened to the complaints of slower SSD speeds (though still remarkably faster than SATA SSDs) by putting two NAND flash on RAID0 on the base 14".

Hallelujah! Even if the slower ssd on the old base model was still plenty quick, im glad to see they addressed that downside here. Knowing Apple, they could have just as easily ignored that problem forever.

[goodtofufriday]

1 hour ago, saltycaramel said:

You scored the last cheap Macbook with active cooling that will ever exist, now they start at 1600$ if you want a fan. 
 

I would keep it if that’s what you need today and you like having the touchbar..

Never used a mac in ernest. Ive got a taped together imac thats just there so I can help other people that have macs.

Wanted the M2 so I can start learning about arm based systems, since it seems the future is going that way, at least in the mobile space.

[Paul Thexton]

17 minutes ago, thechinchinsong said:

Knowing Apple, they could have just as easily ignored that problem forever.

If they've not made the same decision this time re: using 1 vs. 2 chips, there's nothing to say that it won't happen again in future. It's purely a BOM cost decision I reckon and I wouldn't be surprised if in a future iteration of Macs the same thing happens on base spec models.

[LAwLz]

Seems like a really good upgrade if it lives up to Apple's numbers.

 

Compared to the M2 it has:

15% faster performance cores.

30% faster efficiency cores.

15% faster NPU.

Hardware accelerated AV1 decoding (no encoding sadly).

80% faster GPU (in what software? Seems like it's more or less the same amount of cores so I guess it all comes from the improved architecture).

 

 

 

The M3 Pro is a bit weird. It loses one or two P cores depending on which one you get, but gains two E cores. Not sure if I think that's a good tradeoff.

It goes from (P+E):

6+4 or 8+4

to 5+6 or 6+6

 

The Max gets a much bigger upgrade though, because it gets two or four more P cores (depending on config), which is probably why it gets such a massive performance uplift (100% faster than M2 Max in Cinema 3D).

 

The Pro and Max now get a slight upgrade to the maximum amount of RAM. I would have liked to see a bump in the base M3 so that it gets at least 10GB of RAM but oh well... Maybe next year.

[HenrySalayne]

27 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Seems like a really good upgrade if it lives up to Apple's numbers.

 

Compared to the M2 it has:

15% faster performance cores.

30% faster efficiency cores.

15% faster NPU.

Hardware accelerated AV1 decoding (no encoding sadly).

80% faster GPU (in what software? Seems like it's more or less the same amount of cores so I guess it all comes from the improved architecture).

It has up to 15% faster performance cores and up to 30% faster efficiency cores - numbers out of thin air nobody can reproduce or confirm.

Apple is more and more obfuscating these details on their slides. The "starting at" price has been whitewashed to just "a price". The "up to performance improvements" are just "performance improvements". They know that these slides are widely publicised and without the context of somebody hastily throwing "up to" and "starting at" into their talking points completely paint the wrong picture.

 

These two slides were in this order with no slides in-between:

 

 

Talk about “Starting at” is the Biggest Lie in Tech:

 

[Ydfhlx]

Base model of a "Pro" computer with total 8GB of shared RAM+VRAM in 2023. And they charge you $200 for another 8GB. Hey, at least it's not 4GB, right...?

 

They do it purposely to have lower price on the slides while knowing almost not many people will get it.

[PocketNerd]

Looks like Apple has effectively killed off the 13-inch pro with this announcement, and the death bell has been rung for Intel-based Mac support. Given their focus on getting users to upgrade/switch

[Commodus]

56 minutes ago, Ydfhlx said:

Base model of a "Pro" computer with total 8GB of shared RAM+VRAM in 2023. And they charge you $200 for another 8GB. Hey, at least it's not 4GB, right...?

 

They do it purposely to have lower price on the slides while knowing almost not many people will get it.

That's a rough deal. At the same time, it's more honest than the 13-inch Pro; you're at least getting more than a cooling fan and better battery life. I could see it working if you don't need a ton of computing power but still want a meaningful upgrade over the Air.

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

It has up to 15% faster performance cores and up to 30% faster efficiency cores - numbers out of thin air nobody can reproduce or confirm.

Apple is more and more obfuscating these details on their slides. The "starting at" price has been whitewashed to just "a price". The "up to performance improvements" are just "performance improvements".

Apple has historically been very good with their performance numbers. I wouldn't be surprised if their numbers line up pretty well with for example SPEC numbers. Of course that remains to be seen when tested by third parties. That should happen within a few weeks. 

 

I still think it sounds very promising. 

[saltycaramel]

Out of curiosity, can somebody point me to a 1599$ 14.2” Windows laptop with a miniLED 1600nit/1000nit Vrr 24-120Hz display and flexless sturdy unibody aluminum build?

 

So I can better appreciate how Apple is ripping off the M3 14” MBP buyers with those pesky 8GB of RAM in the base 1599$ config...

[HenrySalayne]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Apple has historically been very good with their performance numbers. I wouldn't be surprised if their numbers line up pretty well with for example SPEC numbers. Of course that remains to be seen when tested by third parties. That should happen within a few weeks. 

 

I still think it sounds very promising. 

You should not forget that "up to 30%" actually means "this is the utmost maximum performance increase you can expect on one particular workload if all the stars align". This could mean that most tasks see a 15% increase while this one task sees 30%; it could also mean all tasks but one see absolutely no improvement.

This is just like Nvidia with their absolutely worthless "4x performance" claims with the 40 series.