New Macs launched with M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chipsets at Apple’s Scary Fast event

Apple’s Scary Fast event is here with some spooky announcements. The event started off with M3 chipsets announcements and Apple’s shift to the 3nm process.

To put all new chip rumors to rest, the Cupertino tech giant announced all M3 series chips in one go.

The M3 Lineup

The M3 chip has the standard 8-core CPU and a 10-core GPU with up to 24GB of unified memory configuration. The M3 Pro offers a 12-core CPU and an 18-core GPU with up to 36GB of unified memory. Moving along the lines, the M3 Max sports a 16-core CPU paired with a 40-core GPU and up to 128GB of unified memory. We have new unified memory specs this year. We have covered that in the pricing section.

Better GPU utilization

Apart from the regular performance upgrades, Apple has focused more on how they improved the GPU utilization with their new Dynamic Caching feature, Mesh Shading, and hardware-accelerated Ray Tracing.

This allows the new M3 Macs to take more advantage of the underutilized GPU for better performance for all kinds of tasks. Be it video editing, 3D rendering, or analysis-based workflow, the new M3 chipsets will blaze through all kinds of tasks. This means the M1 and M2 apps can take full advantage of the new hardware on macOS Sonoma,

New color, Who dis?

The new M3 MacBooks come in a much-awaited Space Black color. The regular M3 MacBook Pro will come in Space Gray and Silver colors, while the M3 Pro and M3 Max are available in Space Black and Silver colors.

The TouchBar MacBook Pro is dead

Apple has killed off the 13-inch TouchBar MacBook Pro at the Mac event. They didn’t even acknowledge its existence and casually mentioned the 14-inch MacBook Pro would start with an M3 chip. This meant a price hike. So, your base model of the 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro now starts at $1,599 from $1,299 for the 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro. The only good thing about the price hike is that Apple didn’t cut corners on the rest of the hardware. This means you’ll get the 1600 nits Liquid Retina miniLED XDR display running at 120Hz. The industry-leading 22 hours of battery life, hardware hardware-accelerated media engine, a six-speaker studio system, and a FullHD Facetime camera. Finally! Did I mention it supports Wi-Fi 6E?

Since it’s the same design as the 14-inch M2 Pro / M2 Max MacBook Pro, we have a dedicated HDMI port, just two Thunderbolt Ports (the M2 Pro and M3 Max variants have three ports), and a full-size SDXC card reader.

The M3 iMac

Apart from the under-the-hood upgrade for the MacBook Pros, the tech giant also announced the M3-powered iMac. After all, who wouldn’t want to cash in on the upcoming Holiday season, right?

Except for the fact that the base model now sports an 8-core GPU in M3 as compared to a 7-core GPU in M1; everything about the new M3 iMac is exactly the same as the M1 iMac. It just sports a new chip and comes in the same seven colors. In fact, it still uses Lighting cables for its accessories.

Pricing & Availability

The new M3 iMac starts at $1299 USD and will be available next week. You can pre-order it today. The new MacBook Pro pricing is a bit spooky.
The base model of the M3 MacBook Pro starts at $1599. Here’s a look at the new pricing.

You can pre-order them today but the M3 Pro will be available November 7 and the M3 Max will be available November 14 onwards.

Spooky Surprise

This Apple Event had a special surprise at the end. You can watch the event here:

PS: This Apple Event was shot entirely on an iPhone.