tenthousandthings

For me, the most interesting is the crux of the second question, "... Apple is learning. But what?"

This question could be applied to the Apple silicon experience. I think there is a lot of confusion with regard to the cadence of the silicon and the timing of product releases. M3 seems to mark a shift away from the initial M1/M2 framework, toward something Apple has been aiming for. I'm just not sure what that is. What is the long-term payoff for their sustained, disciplined focus on energy-efficient power and performance?

In general, I think the thing the tech journalists (and just people who are not listening in general) often lose sight of is the mantra that Apple keeps repeating: that they make whole systems. Apple silicon is aimed at specific products. It begins and ends that way. The iPhone and iPad grew from that approach for a decade before Apple silicon came to macOS. Now we've got spatial computing and visionOS, nearly here. It hardly seems coincidental that the graphics power and performance of A17 Pro and M3 are already here. 

mattinoz said:

AppleInsider said:

24-inch iMac M3 review - A welcome change, for Intel Mac users

The 24-inch iMac does have a wide opening available for one market: Intel Mac owners who have yet to make the jump to Apple Silicon. Intel owners, that noise you're hearing isn't your Mac's fan, it's the sound of inevitability. Apple will discontinue Intel Mac support in macOS sooner rather than later, and we're already seeing signs of that, with Apple Silicon-only features.

Despite the headline, there is no clear evidence to back this statement suggesting Apple's support of Intel machines in OS will be less or sooner than the standard legacy policy Apple has applied to date.

Mike can speak for himself, but I don’t think he is suggesting that. Standard legacy policy means 2018 machines (including the 2018 Intel Mini) won’t be supported beyond macOS 14 Sonoma.

macOS 15 will be the last for all 2019 machines except the Mac Pro (and possibly the old iMac Pro). macOS 16 will be the last to support Intel. This is “inevitably” happening.

I would go a bit further than Mike, and say the M3 Retina 4.5K iMac is a thank you to average Retina 4K and 5K iMac users. Making the iMac the flagship for M3 sends a good message to them.

Note: I’m not talking about myself, someone who spent north of $4000 on my last Retina 5K iMac, all told. My thank you was the Mac Studio, and I hope, next year, some newfangled displays to choose from.

Rogue01 said:

mike1 said:

timmillea said:

Next on the culling list is the Mac Studio. When a 14" MacBook Pro can outshine a Mac Pro in reported benchmarks, then the entire M3 SoC family can be fitted to a Mac Mini. There is simply no need for the Studio. 

Wow. That is a ridiculous conclusion. Everyone should stop developing new computers and chips now. timmillea has decreed that computers can no longer get faster/smaller/more efficient or better in any way. Do you seriously not believe that the Studio, Pro with M4 and M5 or whatever is coming won't have better benchmarks than the current M3?!

Actually it is not so ridiculous considering the M3 Pro is only 6% faster than the M2 Pro, and intentionally hobbled by Apple to upsell their other computers.  The M3 Max has the huge increase in performance, but the M3 Pro was hobbled with two less performance cores, one less GPU core, and 25% slower memory bandwidth than the M2 Pro.  Why would Apple do this when they claim Apple Silicon is so great?  So a MacBook Pro with M3 Max will be faster than a Mac Studio with M2 Pro and M3 Pro.  So the 3nm process for the M3 Pro did absolutely nothing for the chip.  If Apple maintained the 8 core performance and 4 core efficiency with the same GPU core and same memory bandwidth, the M3 Pro would be a much better chip.  So don't assume the M4 or later would be surprisingly better when everyone thought the M3 was going to be this huge performance boost.  Only true if you look at the M3 and M3 Max.  M3 Pro is a waste.

But the Mac Studio does not come with M1 Pro or M2 Pro. It won’t have M3 Pro either. So yes, speculation that the Studio will be phased out is “ridiculous” and your assertions border on FUD. Mac Studio is the only other beneficiary of M3 Max, a win that will scale up to the M3 Ultra as well.

Your “upsell” and “intentionally hobbled” opinions about M3 Pro don’t apply to the iMac, and they don’t apply to the Mac Studio. Not that I agree with them. Even if this was a discussion of the MacBook Pro, your comments about TSMC 3nm and the A17/M3 architecture are, hmm, what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh right, bullshit. 

So, since this is the "future products" forum, I'll say it was interesting updating the document I maintain to track this. It goes beyond the present, and includes my predictions. You can see the old ones above in my second and third posts. I'm still thinking about new ones.

Mainly what was blown to smithereens by this move, releasing M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max all at once, was my sense of the cadence. As I argued then (above), I thought I saw a two-year refresh cycle emerging. This was, obviously, wrong. The MacBook Pro was refreshed after almost 10 months, and the iMac was refreshed after almost 30 months (almost 36 months after the release of M1).

One thing I said, though, still rings true. It's about products. The M2 launch was tied to the (then) new MacBook Air. The M3 launch is about getting the iMac back into the fold (and straightening out the iPadOS lineup, which didn't happen, but they went forward with what they had, which was macOS), yes, but more importantly it's about keeping the MacBook Pro on the cutting edge. Qualcomm has a bunch of high-end comparison slides to the M2 family that were current for, what? One week? I'll bet they thought they'd have months of unchallenged/unverified claims about the Snapdragon X Elite, due "mid 2024." Apple just laughs and says, "We ship products, not benchmarks."

jeff fields said:

thadec said:

I have seen in forums that the M3 still only supports 2 displays. Meaning that people are going to pay $1600 for an M3 MacBook Pro that can only support a single external monitor. Granted, the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 3 Chromebook can only support a single external monitor, but that is because it is a $280 device that runs on a 32 bit SOC that was designed in 2017. (Moreover it is technically a tablet and not a laptop.) So can someone please explain this limitation with Apple Silicon's base chips? Whatever it is, you can bet that the Qualcomm chips in 2024 as well as the Nvidia and AMD ARM chips in 2025 aren't going to have them.

That's two EXTERNAL 5K displays; i.e., a total of 3. And that's the minimum M3 config. Please do your research for at least five seconds before posting in public about this. Or watch the event. Or do, well, anything to be informed before misleading the entire thread.

PSA: This is just wrong. I don’t agree with Thadec’s take, but they are correct. If you’re going to lecture people about doing research, you might want to check your own. M3 supports one external 6K display.

M3 Pro supports the internal display plus two 6K or one 8K. M3 Max supports the internal display and three 6K and one 4K, or two 6K and one 8K.