tenthousandthings

nubus said:

tenthousandthings said:

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).

The A16 was pretty much an A15 due to the delay of 3nm. It seems M-series will follow A-series and that Base/Pro/Max can easily be launched at the same time. [...]

[Hi, sorry, I only have a little time in the morning for fun stuff like this...]

Well, definitely Apple and TSMC are capable of maintaining an annual cadence from the standpoint of silicon fabrication -- they've been doing it together for a decade now with the A-series and iOS, with Apple receiving the first high-volume production on TSMC's latest and greatest process node every year but one.

But there may be reasons why the M-series and macOS will be different. An annual cadence is rigid -- it doesn't allow for the kind of flexibility Apple needs to introduce a variety of new macOS devices. Setting aside Apple's long history before M1, I think we've already seen at least two examples of this in the Apple silicon era. First was when they held back the M2 launch, nine months after the A15. M2 waited for the (then) new MacBook Air, which was then given seven months to establish itself in the spotlight before the M2 Pro/Max launched. Second was the iMac remaining on M1, allowing the Mac Studio sixteen months to establish itself, a period that included an M2 refresh for the Mac Studio, while the iMac sat still.

So I'm thinking an 18-month cadence overall (in line with the original rumor), with some flexibility built into that, pending new-product and competition-driven releases. Thus, for example, I think there a good possibility the Mac Studio and Mac Pro will see the M3 Ultra refresh in Q1 2024, but I'm still predicting WWDC 2024.

REVISION

Adding some information I didn't include in my timeline about the A9. You'll see why I'm adding this info when I reply to Nubus's comment...

The A9 was dual-sourced, from both TSMC and Samsung, due to the introduction of FinFET transistors. Apple hedged its bet, sourcing from both. So the A9 line of my timeline should read:

A9 (September 2015) iPhone 6S :: iPad 5 [TSMC 16nm; Samsung 14nm]

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.

Not sure how it happened, but a key piece of info got edited out of this summary. The NY Times is the source of the story about China and AI being at issue, while Variety is the source of the story that says the parting is amicable. 

We still have about a month before I will feel comfortable saying this, but it’s really starting to look like iMac will skip M2. This goes against everything I understood about Apple silicon for macOS. To the point where I still don’t really believe it. It’s unbelievable. I just don’t get it.