As was widely expected at Apple’s “Scary Fast” event last night, the company announced the new M3 chip including an updated 14-inch MacBook Pro, 16-inch MacBook Pro and 24-inch iMac with the new chip.
Apple announced a new M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chip which comes almost 18 months after the M2 chip was released.
The basic M3 chip is inside the new 24-inch iMac and a new entry level 14 inch MacBook Pro.
The M3 Pro or M3 Max chips are available in the new 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pros.
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What’s New About The M3 Chip?
The new M3 chip is made using a more efficient 3-nanometer process according to Apple making them even faster and more efficient than the M2 chip.
The M3 chips also has an updated GPU which supports ray tracing, mesh shading and Dynamic Caching for optimizing the amount of memory the chip uses for tasks.
You can customize the M3 chip with up to 128GB of unified memory and the most powerful M3 Max chip has 92 billion transistors, 40-core GPU and 16-core CPU.
There is no M3 Ultra chip yet although if Apple update the M2 Mac Studio next year, it will probably launch one.
Which New Macs Were Announced?
Apple announced three updated Macs with the M3 chip which are as follows.
1. Updated 24 inch iMac with M3 chip
Apple claim the updated 24 inch iMac is twice as fast as the previous M1 chip 24 inch iMac. It also has a 4.5K Retina Display with support for 1 billion colors (the same color support as the Apple Studio Display) and a 1080p webcam.
You can customize it with up to 24GB of memory and in time honored iMac style, its available in six colors: silver, yellow, orange, pink, purple and blue.
Pricing: Starts at $1,299 for the 8-core CPU base model or $1,499 for the 10-core. Pre-ordering is available now with first shipments due on the 7th of November 2023.
2. Updated 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pros with M3 Pro or M3 Max chips
The updated 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pros can be customized with either the M3 Pro or M3 Max chips.
Both M3 MacBook Pros have a Mini LED display, 1080p webcam, six speaker surround system supporting spatial audio, up to 22 hours of battery life (in optimum conditions) and up to 128GB of RAM.
You can order them in a new mark resistant space black anodized finish or silver.
Pricing: 14 inch M3 MacBook Pro starts at $1,999 with 16 inch M3 MacBook Pro starts at $2,499. Pre-ordering is available now with first shipments due on the 7th of November 2023.
3. New 14 inch MacBook Pro with M3 chip
Apple also announced the release of a new “budget” 14 inch MacBook Pro with base level M3 chip which starts at $1,599.
The new cheaper MacBook Pro replaces the 13 inch M2 MacBook Pro released in 2022 and Apple claims it is up to 60% faster than the 13 inch model.
It also replaces the Touch Bar MacBooks which are now discontinued by Apple.
The new 14 inch MacBook Pro is only available with 8GB of RAM so it won’t be a MacBook Pro for creative professionals. It’s also only available in space-grey or silver.
Pricing: The new 14 inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,499. Pre-ordering is available now with first shipments due on the 7th of November 2023.