It was an unusual event that Apple had invited. Under the motto “scary fast” – in the official translation “scary fast” – they not only planned a Halloween event, but also chose an event time after the German witching hour, 5 p.m. local time. In the videos, wafts of fog wafted through the unusually dark Apple Park, and even the product presentations were designed to be scary. What Apple had to show was likely to cause shock, especially among its competitors.
At first glance, the innovations seem almost unspectacular: the company has updated two of its most popular computer series with the Macbook Pro and iMac. Both are actually just product maintenance: the new Macbook Pro in 14 and 16 inches and the iMac, which was updated for the first time in almost 2.5 years, cannot be distinguished from their predecessors at first glance. You can find an overview of the chic look in the photo gallery below.
The biggest innovation is actually inside. The star of the evening was clearly the new M3 chips. There is one main reason why competitors have to fear them: the three new chips M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max are the first computer processors on the market to be manufactured using the 3-nanometer process. And thereby manage to accommodate even more power in an even smaller space.
“The transistors are so small that you can fit two million of them in the thickness of a human hair,” explains Apple’s technology boss Johny Srouji. This has several advantages. The chips offer more performance but still use significantly less energy. The new computers are said to be up to 2.5 times faster than the M1 models. “This is a monstrous improvement,” says Srouji, chuckling as he describes the Halloween theme.
Apart from the massive jump in performance, the computers remain virtually unchanged. The biggest change is in the entry-level MacBook Pro: Last year, Apple offered a 13-inch model that was delivered with the dynamic touchbar (you can find our test here), but this has now been canceled. The Macbook Pro with the basic M3 now also comes in 14 inches. This increases the starting price: Instead of 1,600 euros, the cheapest Macbook Pro now costs 2,000 euros.
Apple is once again drawing a harder line between normal users and Pros: While there was an overlap between the Macbook Air and the Macbook Pro in the M2 models, all Pros are now clearly priced higher than the entry-level models.
If you choose one of the more powerful notebooks with M3 Pro or M3 Pro Max, you can also stand out visually: With Space Black, Apple is offering a completely black notebook for the first time since 2008. A new coating method should also protect it from fingerprints. The fact that the color is only reserved for the expensive models is probably no coincidence: Apple is probably deliberately aiming for the black look as a status symbol.
Technically, the new Macs only differ from their predecessors in the chips. Whether it’s the display, connections or features: almost everything is identical to the previous models. Only the top model of the M3 Max now offers 128 GB instead of the previous 96 GB as a possible RAM configuration. However, very few customers are likely to need this – especially since the surcharge for this top equipment compared to the basic model equipped with 36 GB is 1500 euros.
The announcement of the new notebooks is also surprising because it comes unusually quickly. The Macbook Pro with M2 Pro and M2 Max are less than a year old; Apple only introduced them in January (you can find our test here). There is probably one main reason why the company is now adding so quickly: After the more powerful M2 chips missed the Christmas business last year, they obviously want to take them back with them this year. Probably also because after the home office wave, the number of purchases of computers generally fell.
This perhaps explains the fact that Apple apparently relies primarily on customers who are currently using older computers. The presentation also made a direct comparison to the previous generation, but the leaps in performance compared to older models were emphasized even more. It was repeatedly emphasized how much faster the new Macs are compared to those with Intel chips. And thus comparisons were made to computers that were more than three years old.
The fact that more games were shown than usual is probably directly related to the new chips. The GPU graphics unit now takes up almost half of the processor surface. This enables Apple to take a new approach: The technology called “Dynamic Caching” makes it possible for the first time to dynamically allocate as much memory to the GPU as it actually needs. This should improve utilization. And the company promises to dramatically increase performance.
What sounds very technical has visible consequences. With ray tracing, impressive lighting effects can now be calculated for the first time without your own graphics card, making games appear much more natural.
It was already clear in the summer that Apple was focusing more on games. With a special developer kit, the company has made it easier to port games to the Mac. With “Resident Evil Village” or “Assassins Creed Mirage” (here our test), top titles are increasingly being offered for Apple’s system.
Another, more important innovation should come in handy for almost all users: The new M3 chips consume significantly less energy across the board. Apple achieves this by also increasing the efficiency of the computing cores by up to 50 percent. In everyday life, the new Macs have to access the more energy-hungry performance cores less often. The effect should be noticeable: the performance of an M1 chip should only be achieved with about half of its power consumption, explains Srouji. Competitors are said to use up to five times as much energy to achieve the same performance.
The impact on battery performance is simply summarized in one number: Apple promises up to 22 hours of battery life. This is remarkable because the company usually understates rather than exaggerates these figures. And the devices tend to exceed the specified values in tests. However, it is likely to be less at full performance: the new notebooks can also access full performance without a cable and are not throttled.
What: Apple
