All product announcements from the Apple Scary Fast Event
Apple brings back color and speed with its new MacBook and iMac, announced at its Scary Fast event.
Today the latest Apple Event took place called Scary Fast. This event saw Apple take a deep dive into its Mac line of products. Let’s take a look at everything Apple announced.
All Apple Scary Fast Event announcements
The Apple Scary Fast Event took place on October 30, 2023. The event highlighted a new series of chips, new entries in the MacBook line, and a return to the iMac featuring a suite of colors.
M3, M3 Pro & M3 Max chips
Source: Apple
Apple kicked off its Scary Fast event with the unveiling of its new line of chips, the M3 series. In a press release, Apple notes that these are the MacBook and iMac are the first personal computers to feature 3-nanometer process technology, capable of rendering speeds 2.5 times faster than the M1 chipsets.
Apple announces new M3 chips. #AppleEvent pic.twitter.com/i5mXso4mk4
— Shacknews (@shacknews) October 31, 2023
One of the selling points of the M3 series is what Apple is calling Dynamic Caching. This is the cornerstone of the new GPU architecture that allows “only the exact amount of memory needed” for each task. Furthermore, the M3 uses unified memory architecture, allowing the chips to “access the same data without copying it between multiple pools of memory”. The chips also allow for 128GB of memory.
New MacBook Pro
Source: Apple
Apple’s next announcement was a new range of MacBook Pro products featuring the M3 series of chips. The new MacBook comes in a 14-inch and 16-inch variety and even features a new Space Black color option. All models of the MacBook Pro feature the Liquid Retina XDR display that offers 20 percent brighter SDR content. They also feature a 1080p camera, six-speaker system, 22 hours of battery life, and more. The prices start at $1,599 for the 14-inch and $2,499 for the 16-inch.
New MacBook Pro... Now in Space Black. #AppleEvent $AAPL pic.twitter.com/hVNEPle2xQ
— Shacknews (@shacknews) October 31, 2023
New iMac in various colors
Source: Apple
Finally, Apple is bringing color back to the iMac with the latest release of the popular personal computer. Like the MacBook, the iMac features the new M3 chips and a 24-inch, 4.5K Retina display. But most importantly, it comes in seven different colors. Those who use an iMac for editing will be pleased to hear that the new version can edit and play back up to 12 streams of 4K video and editing software, like Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro, are 2 times faster.
Apple unveiled the starting price points for the iMac products with the 8-core GPU starting at $1,299 and the 10-core GPU starting at $1,499. Consumers will be able to select additional features and tweak elements when making their purchase.
That’s everything from the October 2023 Apple Scary Fast Event. For a deeper look at the announcements, take a look at our Apple topic page, where you can find write-ups for a lot of the highlights as well as information on Apple’s recent earnings reports.
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Shacknews
replySam Chandler posted a new article, All product announcements from the Apple Scary Fast Event
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It'll be interesting to see if we just get the M3 for the Air/13" Pro or the M3 Pro and Max at the same time.
Apple's problem is the M1 is still too fast, no reason to upgrade :(-
My M1 is still going great and I think I have the base model. No complaints. I haven't even thought of upgrading.
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I like it for the east coast anyway. If I wanted to watch live I could because I’m not working.
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It’s aligned with Japan’s work day, supposedly for gaming announcements.
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If nothing else the spooky intro music was deeply enjoyable.
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How did he not say “Heeere’s Johnny!” Big miss.
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RIP 13” MacBook Pro
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Performance improvements look pretty nice. About a 15% bum in compute. I'll be interested to see how the new GPU performs.
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They're pitching hard at Intel users now that the M3 is such a big jump over both the old Intel Macs and M1. The Mac sales slump over the last year was presumably because M2 was such a small improvement over M1.
The iMac bump is good too, not just because of the M3 but also because RAM isn't limited to 16GB. Its a huge bump for anyone coming from an Intel iMac. -
It's a cyclical marketing event conducted by a $3 trillion company. What did you expect?
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Something innovative?
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You think they should add "or not, up to you" at the end of every presentation?
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If they had Ron Swanson do their product launch videos I could get behind that.
"Buy our new laptops, or don't, I'm not here to beg."
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i just wanted a m3 ipad mini
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Yeah it isn't doing anything for me.
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Looks like it's very much tied directly to the CPU. I wonder what this says about the system integration. The previous model had a lot more configuration options. I am leaning towards the M3 Pro with 36 gigs and 1 TB SSD. Also the SSD price differences are absurd. $400 to jump from 1TB to 2TB? Woof.
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even if it's made of the very best fastest ssd chips ever, they've been charging that amount since the very beginning of the apple silicon age. It's like "woooo we have 3nm super tech" and at the same time "ssd's are too hard to make so we need them to be very expensive cause trust us it's worth it"
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I guess I'll be investing in some external storage.
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Note on the battery life: Up to 22 hours Apple TV app movie playback Up to 15 hours wireless web
Then from the bottom of the page: Actual rating of 69.6 watt-hours (14-inch model) or 99.6 watt-hours (16-inch model). Testing conducted by Apple in September and October 2023 using preproduction 14-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M3, 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD; preproduction 14-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M3 Pro, 12-core CPU, 18-core GPU, 18GB of RAM, and 1TB SSD; and preproduction 16-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M3 Pro, 12-core CPU, 18-core GPU, 36GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD. The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 8 clicks from bottom. The Apple TV app movie playback test measures battery life by playing back HD 1080p content with display brightness set to 8 clicks from bottom. Battery life varies by use and configuration. See apple.com/batteries for more information.-
I don't think I've ever owned a single electronic product that runs on batteries that has a run time anywhere close to advertised life.
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I was just noting the hours and how they arrived at the measurement. No gotcha.
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8GB on anything labelled Pro is a definite disgrace and/or outrage.
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Yeah, that's what I'm hung up on, too.
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I'm sure that's the vast outlying use case but ultimately it doesn't really matter. The price cut and ram upgrade cost effectively makes the "same price base" model 16GB which is fine I guess, just kinda bad optics for people who care about that kind of thing.
I bet they don't sell many 8GB MBPs, but they also probably don't care because it probably doesn't really cost them anything to offer it and a "lower price" makes good headlines for people who don't care about specs.
I guess on the flip side, people might care about the 120hz hdr display and some other stuff in the MBP that makes it a worthwhile upgrade over the MBA so maybe there is a market for it.-
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It’s mostly time series so access patterns are super predictable. the state of my algorithms/models are usually a few hundred MB max, and often small enough to reside entirely in cache. and then my compute can usually only process 100MB/s of data, which an ssd can easily serve. so yeah, I mostly don’t care much about how much memory I have!
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The entry level 8gb MBP is their best selling MBP. That’s why it exists, because the branding of MBP is so strong. Tons of corporate buyers want a “pro” machine without actually needing it, and that’s the one they go for. It’s why the touchbar MBP has stuck around for so long until now.
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As we approach 2024, the only way to get any device from Apple that isn't gimped to 60hz is to pay more for something with Pro on the name. So, MBP is the only way to get a display and IO that isn't handicapped. I rarely use the extra horsepower of my MBP these days but screen/IO are huge for me.
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So they reduced the base model from 16GB to 8GB, lowered the price by $200, and guess what it costs to upgrade to 16GB?
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It's actually managed shockingly well compared to Windows boxes. It's not enough for a dev or power user, but for a typical home Web surfer and social media user, it's actually plenty.
I didn't believe it myself until I saw it in action.-
Agree for a Pro it's sorta shady, but I've been using 8GB M2 Air for over a year and in my lame ass casual usage have never, ever had an issue
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Looks like they went for more balance with the Pro. It's 6 P cores and 6 E cores. M2 Pro was 8/4.
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Ars has a good breakdown of the CPU changes. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/10/everything-to-know-about-apples-new-m3-m3-pro-and-m3-max-processors/
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I’m having a hard time between 16 and 14. I love my 16, but it is bulky sometimes. I do enjoy the screen space and use it at home mostly.
The reduced weight and footprint of the 14 could be nice.
Either way I’m going Max/36/2tb.
These ram amounts are messing with my mind. 18/36/48. Pure insanity.-
Go 14 and use an external display then - this 4K 32" model from Dell is just $249
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2GRMGFL -
I've got a 16 and work gave me a 14. I prefer the 16.
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I think the paradox Apple has going forward is in how to handle what are essentially spec bumps now that they're making the CPU/GPU.
In the Intel era there were a number of times when a spec bump wasn't worthy of a whole presentation. It was just: Intel has a faster chip and oh hey now the Macs you can order have that faster chip too. Done and done. They didn't bother to have an event unless something else changed like the body of the laptop or they added Touch Bar or something.
What they announced yesterday were spec bumps. The devices are more or less literally the exact same things other than they now have a better chip in them.
The thing is, Apple has been pushing this idea that there's not better or worse versions of a given chip with a given name. With the M1 line there was the M1, and if you want faster there's the M1 Pro, then the M1 Max, then the M1 Ultra. When you go to "About this Mac" you just see "Apple M1" or "Apple M1 Pro", etc. There's no "M1 @ 800Hz" or something. Strictly speaking it's not always completely accurate (both the M1 MBA and the M1 mini had an "Apple M1" in them but the mini had an extra core for some reason) but that's the marketing angle they're going for.
So if the computers announced yesterday had just been "oh hey you can order a Mac with a better processor on their store now" and no Event, it would basically be unveiling the M3 line of processors with no fanfare. An Intel processor running a little faster is worthy of no fanfare, but they want there to be a big deal about an M(n+1) processor being released.
So on the one hand it's a letdown since it's an event that could have just been a press release other than it's unveiling the M(n+1) processor, on the other hand given that Apple sometimes gets crap for seemingly ignoring or neglecting the Mac, I'm glad they decided it was worthy of an event. The fact that it was only announced about a week out is sort of the compromise - they want to build up hype but not too much hype.-
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No, the M2 was announced at the WWDC 2022 keynote. That was a keynote that was going to happen either way but it was more than just a press release. They had like charts and everything that were careful to compare it to the M1 but not the M1 Pro/Max/Ultra.
I think the real deal here was both to announce the M3 as well as put a refresh in for the iMac going into the holidays. They were aware no one was going to buy an M1-equipped iMac in the tail end of 2023 and beyond.
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Have any Mac users noticed that after a day or two there is significant input lag when adjusting the volume controls until you reboot. I don't know how long it's been the case, but I noticed it a couple weeks ago for the first time and now it bugs me when it happens. Nothing else seems to be a problem performance wise as far as I can tell, so it's just a minor annoyance at this point.
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I've done more digging on the specs this AM and it looks like Apple really made some interesting tradeoffs with these new CPUs. The M3 and M3 Pro actually have less memory bandwidth (https://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/31/apple-m3-pro-less-memory-bandwidth/) than the M1 and M2. I think they made these tradeoffs to keep prices the same, but still get the same amount of profit per chip. It may also be that they are nerf'ing the middle of the line up to force people to buy up. All that said, Apple does a nice job of letting you compare old and new devices on their site and I think I've settled on the idea of buying a refurbished M1 Max or M2 Pro 16 inch MBP. The performance difference isn't great enough to justify the newest one, since virtually nothing else about the hardware has changed since 2021.
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Good to know. I hardly ever use my personal laptop with a monitor. But I might wait for an M2 Pro to pop up on the refurbished site.
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Plenty of M2 Pros there now, i'm sure there will be even more i a few weeks.
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Behind the scenes of the presentation, shot on iPhone
https://youtu.be/F0Mxmy1Dkzw
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