Upcoming M3 chips

Happy with my M2 Macbook so content waiting for a couple more generations before upgrading again. Be interesting to see if Apple bring anything else to the table in the updated M3 laptops beyond just a more potent CPU/GPU.

Can't blame Apple for price gouging especially given the hardware advantage that they currently have over Intel/AMD laptops generally. None of them can currently offer a lightweight silent laptop with 20 hours + battery life and the CPU/GPU performance to match the M-series Apple chips.
 
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Therein lies the problem, I have a decade old laptop that still works fine (3940xm) but having recently bought my wife an m1 air i am serious impressed with battery life weight etc and think it may be time to upgrade mine to a new pro or air.
 
fish said:
Therein lies the problem, I have a decade old laptop that still works fine (3940xm) but having recently bought my wife an m1 air i am serious impressed with battery life weight etc and think it may be time to upgrade mine to a new pro or air.
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Yeah that was my recent experience with my girlfriends MacBook Air M1.

It had insane battery life and MS Office Word actually worked far better on it than on my gaming laptop.

It's almost like Apple's closed ecosystem means that devs can design a programme with far fewer hardware variables so the app just works better.

I'm sure there are Windows fans out there screaming at this but I really don't like Windows 11 as an OS.
 
there is also a fairly conservative minimum spec so apps have to work with 8gb ram for instance as a simple drop in upgrade is not a viable option. Any extra is just a nice bonus.
 
fish said:
there is also a fairly conservative minimum spec so apps have to work with 8gb ram for instance as a simple drop in upgrade is not a viable option. Any extra is just a nice bonus.
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I love my 8GB M1 MBA. If I didn't need a big desktop machine I could quite easily live with it for day to day activities.
 
I do kind of wish I had bought 2 as a his and hers when they were on the crazy offer :D It would just be nice to have a serial port and Lan port for proper debugging support.
 
JollyJamma said:
Yeah that was my recent experience with my girlfriends MacBook Air M1.

It had insane battery life and MS Office Word actually worked far better on it than on my gaming laptop.

It's almost like Apple's closed ecosystem means that devs can design a programme with far fewer hardware variables so the app just works better.

I'm sure there are Windows fans out there screaming at this but I really don't like Windows 11 as an OS.
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The only thing I'm not keen on is Office on Mac - I'm guessing it's because of me using the Windows variant for ages but the better half uses it work and has no problems with it whatsoever so would probably get used to in time. Apple Silicon is an absolute game changer tbh. The only thing putting me off is the lack of external monitor support on the base models - probably greedy apple making you buy the more beefy ones to get more than 1 external monitor - criminal really :(
 
Andrew Moore said:
On the fence.. do I go M1 Pro to m3 max for very noticeable gains or wait another year for m4 and get the pro version hoping it’ll be m3 max “like” in al but the GPU.. I don’t know. I’m not convinced it’s worth dropping what will amount to £4299 on the same laptop with a different chip inside.
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Keep your M1 for now. MBPs are due for a redesign in a couple of generations.
 
Despite everything said, this seems like quite a minor update, they were very vocal about the speed increases from the M1 to the M3 but the difference between M2 and M3 seemed relatively small.
 
Feek said:
Despite everything said, this seems like quite a minor update, they were very vocal about the speed increases from the M1 to the M3 but the difference between M2 and M3 seemed relatively small.
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Typical graphs from any company, not just Apple. Show the big gains from an older product. They are still trying to show gains from Intel Macs.
 
Feek said:
Despite everything said, this seems like quite a minor update, they were very vocal about the speed increases from the M1 to the M3 but the difference between M2 and M3 seemed relatively small.
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It's typical Apple. Consistent incremental updates and before long it will be huge. Already 30% ahead of M1 in ST.

The biggest difference is the chip differentiation.

M2 Pro and Max had the same CPU arrangement, 8P-4E cores. With M3 series it's a bit difference. M3 is 4P-4E, M3 Pro is 6P-6E and M3 Max is 12P-6E. Memory bandwidth for M3 Pro has also decreased compared to M2 Pro.

Apple has realised that just bigger GPU and more IO are not enough for people to upgrade to the Max tier products. So they changed the segmentation. We'd end up paying more.
 
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