Marvin

hagar said:

9secondkox2 said:

It’s only right. This isn’t some frivolous indie app.abbreviating the name to be cool.  This is a social media giant undergoing a legitimate rebrand. X is its name so X should be its listing. Anything else would be asinine. 

Tell that to Google. Search for X and see what happens. 

This is the most insane rebrand ever. 

The rebrand makes sense in the context of what the future intention is for the company, which is to handle payments. The Twitter brand is only relevant for messaging. TwitPay, TweetPay, Twitter Pay don't fit.

Elon Musk wants to make another Paypal but mixed with social media instead of eBay. It's resurrecting an old company brand from over 20 years ago X.com, which was renamed Paypal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal

The parent company is X Holdings and there are suggestions Musk might try to wrap all his companies (Tesla, SpaceX, X.com/Twitter) under X Holdings similar to Alphabet with Google.

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-x-everything-app-finances-twitter-payments-2023-7?op=1

Online financial services are becoming more popular but haven't replaced big banks: Revolut, Wise, Venmo, Swish etc. Some of them are banks so they offer the same kind of insurance as a bank and are much more accessible. Some also allow direct trading in stocks and crypto ( https://www.thestreet.com/cryptocurrency/elon-musk-x-twitter-dogecoin ).

Most have only a few million users. Venmo has 90 million. Paypal has over 400 million. WeChat Pay has 900 million. AliPay has 1.3 billion.

X.com will be setup similar to WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat_Pay
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat

The messaging brand could have been XChat or Xpress (likely all used already) but whatever brands they use for the separate services, X will be the parent brand, which Musk has used in the sense of a Mathematical variable:

https://news.yahoo.com/x-xii-pronounce-name-elon-220808895.html

Alphabet is an alphabet of company names, X is a variable that can be assigned to anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com (X.com redirects to Twitter)

chasm said:

mayfly said:

Is it just me, or are those before and after exactly the same?

Read the caption on the picture more carefully. In the first image on the left, you are seeing the entire image. As the caption says, the artist used the generative feature to add more landscape to the BOTTOM of the picture, which is evident in the image on the right.

I would certainly agree that a better example would have been converting a 4:3 photo into a 16:9 photo, but the example in the article does show what it is claiming to show.

It can do even better than that. Here's an example photo:

https://www.theaussieflashpacker.com/2015/10/top-10-most-beautiful-lakes-in-world.html

Uncrop image, select inside, invert, generative fill with no prompt:



It can still give some bad results for people, animals etc with things not drawn correctly like hands but it's getting very good and fast at doing some things. It will be a huge time saver when it comes to doing quick mockups or marketing images.

Chris_Pelham said:

I find it hard to believe that Apple might debut the first M3 3nm chip in the 13" MacBook Pro and thereby outclass the 14" and 16" MacBook Pros, which are surely much more popular with professionals, or in a Mac mini rather than the Mac Studio or Mac Pro, because it would make the product line specs look funny. I can believe they might try reinvigorating the iMac line with the new chips, especially if they simultaneously launch a larger iMac or bring back the iMac Pro.  I guess the main reason to believe that Apple might start with more consumer oriented machines would be that Apple would want to wait until it has the M3 Pro, Max, and Ultra chips ready before updating the higher-end machines.  They could wait and update all of them at once, but maybe they need to start pumping out the basic M3s first to get the manufacturing process down. 

It's more to do with sales volume. The entry-level lineup is at a much lower price so they sell far more of them.

Apple's Mac average selling price has always been around $1300 so the majority of their sales come from units around or below that price point. The 13" Air starts at $999, 14" MBP starts at $1999.

( $999 x A + $1999 x B ) / ( A + B ) = $1300, where B = 1 - A, A = 70%, B = 30%

I'd estimate products above $2k are closer to 20% of unit sales and below make up 80% so for every Pro Mac, they sell 4 entry-level models.

The 13" MBP starts at $1299. I expect they could be selling as many as 4 million units of those. Air is probably 10-15 million units. Then 3 million for all the Pro MBPs.

Larger chips also tend to have lower yields, all of the Pro chips are multiples of the entry ones. If an entry chip has a 95% yield, 1 in 20 bad, a 2x chip might have 1 in 10 bad, 90% yield.

https://www.phonearena.com/news/tsmc-3nm-good-start_id146228

Yield can improve during production so it makes sense to do the larger chips later.

Intel's Sapphire Rapids chips had around 100 billion transistors and were reported to have yields around 50-60%:

https://www.networkworld.com/article/3679068/intel-is-shipping-the-next-generation-of-xeon-scalable-processors.html

M2 Ultra has 134 billion transistors. M3 Ultra will likely have over 200 billion. That contributes to the high cost of the higher-end chips.

It's not likely that current users of higher-end models would drop down to a lower model either. If someone has M1 Max, M3 at M1 Pro level is half the performance, it tops out at 24GB RAM, the laptops don't have XDR displays and support fewer displays/ports etc. Someone with M1 Max will wait for either M3 Pro/Max to get the same performance with the Pro at a lower price and lower power level or 2x performance on the higher model.

AppleInsider said:

M2 vs. M3: Better performance

With Apple's introduction of a third generation of chip, it's almost certain that there will be some form of performance improvement along the way. We just don't know by how much.

The most obvious way to compare is to look at what Apple itself says about going from M1 to M2. At launch, this included claims of "an 18% faster CPU, a 35% more powerful GPU, and a 40% faster Neural Engine."

Working out where the M3 could take performance could be of a similar level once again. Though, with changes in nanometer and unanswered questions about memory bandwidth, the changes could be considerably larger.

Seeing as we have already raised the A-series chips as a point of comparison, examining the iPhone lineup could give some idea of what to expect. 

M2 vs M3: On the GPU side, things could improve extremely well, theoretically

Over to the GPU side, and comparing the performance has a lot more variance when it comes to the M3. The equivalent A15 to A16 improvement of 11% for Metal is good, but then there's the 25% boost if you look at A14 to A15.

But if you look at the improvement from M1 to M2, that's a 37% gain. In Metal score terms, that would put the M3's GPU capabilities at around double that of the M1 if the improvement from M2 to M3 mirrored that of the M1 to M2.

Since we don't know enough about the chips, we can't give a more definitive result than this. At least, until Apple brings the chips out.

The improvements come mainly from transistor count.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A15 (N5P, 15b transistors)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A16 (N4P, 16b transistors)

TSMC said:

https://pr.tsmc.com/english/news/2874

"As the third major enhancement of TSMC’s 5nm family, N4P will deliver an 11% performance boost over the original N5 technology and a 6% boost over N4. Compared to N5, N4P will also deliver a 22% improvement in power efficiency as well as a 6% improvement in transistor density."

A15 -> A16 was a small increase in transistors so performance increase was small.

TSMC says about 3nm:

https://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/logic/l_3nm

"N3 technology will offer up to 70% logic density gain, up to 15% speed improvement at the same power and up to 30% power reduction at the same speed as compared with N5"

M2 has 20 billion transistors. Increasing it 70% would be 34 billion, which is the same amount as M1 Pro. That would put the Metal result closer to the grey bar above, even a bit beyond it.

I expect all the M3-class chips to equal the next highest M1 equivalent:

M3 = M1 Pro
M3 Pro = M1 Max
M3 Max = M1 Ultra
M3 Ultra = 2x M1 Ultra

This mainly applies to the GPU performance. M1 -> M2 was 7-core GPU to 10-core = 1.4x. M2 GPU = 10/16/19/30/38/60/76
M3 GPU cores could be 16/26/30/48/60/96/122. This wouldn't bring it up to an Nvidia 4090 at the top yet but close enough.

CPU cores don't increase as much usually, they tend to add a couple of cores, 8 -> 10, 10 -> 12. Entry-level could easily stay at 8-core CPU and have 10/12/14/28-core upgrade options.

Real world performance increase is usually somewhere around 20% CPU, 50% GPU increase. The increases are more worthwhile skipping a generation i.e M1 -> M3, M2 -> M4. Going M1 -> M2, M2 -> M3 won't be a very noticeable upgrade.

M3 at this level would mean Vision Pro is like having a 14" M1 Pro Macbook Pro on your head.

emcnair said:

I don’t see the point of continuing the 13” MacBook Pro. The M series Apple Silicon chips makes the MacBook Air quite formidable. If you need more power, move up to the 14” or 16” MacBook Pro. Creatives tend to want larger screens. I just can’t imagine a use case where a 13” would be preferred over a 14” for pro users. Not to say that there isn’t a use case. I just don’t see it.

Greg Joswiak answered this in a recent interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgLrBSQ6x7E&t=553s

They are still selling a lot of them due to it being a cheaper entry point into the Pro lineup than the 14". Part of the reason for this is the spec though - 8GB/256GB/M2. With the spec bumped to 16GB/512GB, the 13" MBP is $1699 vs $1999 for the 14" and this $300 difference gets M2 Pro and XDR display.

If the 14" had an 8GB/256GB option, it could start at $1599. They might be able to reach $1299 with M2 but $1499 would be doable with M2 Pro and that would allow them to drop the 13" but they'd probably have to still sell them at the same time to make sure they weren't losing sales. They could easily be selling 4 million of the entry ones, which is ~$5b.

They might not be able to produce enough XDR panels to sell the 14" at a lower price point yet.

If people start opting for the 15" Air, that could allow them to discontinue the 13" Pro.

charlesn said:

These predictions never make sense. Since when does Apple update the same products twice in the same year? Exactly right. Never. The Mini just got the M2 AND a complete overhaul in January--so Apple's going to update it again 9 or 10 months later? Ridiculous. The MBPs just got speed-bumped to the M2 in January--and Apple never makes another processor change this soon. I would have guessed that *maybe* the 13" MBA, which has been out just over 1 year, would have gotten the M3 this fall. But with the release of the 15" M2 model, I don't see Apple having the two sizes of MBAs on different processors--I think both models stick with the M2 until maybe next summer. 

It has happened before, in 2011, 2012 and 2013, there were two MBP updates:

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/index-macbookpro.html

This year it would be justified for the Air because it's their best-selling Mac and the 13" Air update was over a year ago. If they don't, they won't have an Air update in 2023 and probably no more Mac updates for the year. An M3 13"/15" would be a good update for education buyers. I expect MBP updates in 2024 (March-June).

elijahg said:

emcnair said:

I don’t see the point of continuing the 13” MacBook Pro. The M series Apple Silicon chips makes the MacBook Air quite formidable. If you need more power, move up to the 14” or 16” MacBook Pro. Creatives tend to want larger screens. I just can’t imagine a use case where a 13” would be preferred over a 14” for pro users. Not to say that there isn’t a use case. I just don’t see it.

It is significantly cheaper than the 14" model. £800 in fact. I'm surprised it got the M2, I thought it would get neglected as the cheap model like the 21" Intel iMac was; which still had an HDD right up until it was replaced with the M1 iMac.

The 14" MBP is overpriced. It should be around the £1800-£1900 mark IMO, especially since the 15" MBA is only £1399 and the 13" MBP £1349. In fact £1860 is the price of the US 14" MBP, including the UK's 20% sales tax. For some reason though Apple feels the need to charge UK customers £2149 which is the equivalent of $2760. It's way overpriced.

The 14" has a higher entry spec than the 15" and it has a much nicer display. The XDR display is like OLED quality, the Airs just have standard IPS panels.

15" Air $1299 -> £1399 (1.07x)
14" Pro $1999 -> £2149 (1.07x)

They do seem to be adding something extra into the price, maybe it's to cover the 2 year EU-mandated warranty:

https://www.apple.com/uk/legal/warranty/products/uk-ireland-warranty-edition.html

If it just used the exchange rate plus tax, the prices would be 15" Air = £1199, 14" Pro = £1899.