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Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

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Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#101

I purchased a fully maxed out M2 Max MacBook Pro when it was announced like 6 months ago. I knew it was going to be outdated eventually, but within 6 months, wow. Did not expect that.

I use a maxed-out M1 Max and have 0 complaints. There was never a task where I felt the memory or CPU performance was not enough

Same here, battery lasts for a long while and it never gets hot, which is a big deal for me as I use it on my lap for long periods of time.

When I bought it, I knew it was going to be a laptop that I'll keep for at least 5 years. So far, it still feels like new.

Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#102
One thing that left me a bit confused was the comparison against Intel Macs. Although I am still using an Intel 16-inch MacBook, I really wanted to see how the M3 fared against the M2, not Intel and M1. I think it's no surprise the M3 exceeds the Intel Core i7-9750H in basically all of Apple's own benchmarking. My real question, which will probably be answered next week, is how it compares to the generation right before it.

My work laptop is a 14-inch MacBook Pro and I've been impressed with the battery life considering all of the containers that run (on Kubernetes!) as part of my dev workflow. I guess Apple deciding to compare Intel and M1 was to try to convince existing MacBook users to upgrade to the latest generation CPUs.

Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#103
post #7

Base 14" M3 MBP comes with 8 GB RAM at $1599 USD. That's pretty stingy.

Hey don't be stingy yourself, Tim's people said "it's the perfect MacBook for students and aspiring musicians.."! Seriously, you can't make up this stuff..

What do you mean, have you set foot on a college campus this decade? It's a sea of macbooks. A $1500 sticker price isn't stopping people.

Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#105

Am I the only one shaking my head that they kept comparing the M3 chips against M1 chips skipping M2? Just like the last product release spent more time on huffing their own farts (the Apple Watch is the first of its kind carbon negative product), there is no real innovation or something to garner interest for me here.

I think it makes sense in that the people that bought M2 are not likely to be in the market for an M3. The people looking to buy an M3 are likely upgrading from either an M1 or an older Intel based MBP.

Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#106
post #7

Base 14" M3 MBP comes with 8 GB RAM at $1599 USD. That's pretty stingy.

Hey don't be stingy yourself, Tim's people said "it's the perfect MacBook for students and aspiring musicians.."! Seriously, you can't make up this stuff..

I proudly use an M1 Mac Mini but the fact that they're so full of themselves constantly makes me laugh(?)

Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#107
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i mean, if the machine does the job you purchased it for, is it really outdated? Unless the job it is doing is to be the best and latest, as a status symbol...

Oh I'm super happy with it - it has handled everything I've thrown at it and then some and I'm not planning on upgrading anytime soon. But I feel like with the M2 Pro's having such a short shelf life, what that means for long term support.

Given Apple’s history and California law, I wouldn’t worry that your M2 will have a short lifespan.

Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been doing more multiples of 6/12 lately, I supposed it's related to the available chip sizes for the LPDDR5X. M2 and M3 go up to 24GB M3 Pro is available in 18GB and 36GB M3 Max is available in 36GB, 48GB, 64GB, 96GB, and 128GB

Why do I need to select the most expensive M3 Max version (the one with 16 cores) to get 48 or 64 gigs of RAM. The M3 Max with 14 cores only allow 36 or 96 gigs. Just let me choose 14 cores and 64 gigs.

In previous gens they had different die sizes with different physical numbers of memory controllers and connections. Guessing it's similar here.

Rumor is Apple bought all of TSMC's initial 3nm production. They are probably yield limited on full featured chips.

Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#109

Am I the only one shaking my head that they kept comparing the M3 chips against M1 chips skipping M2? Just like the last product release spent more time on huffing their own farts (the Apple Watch is the first of its kind carbon negative product), there is no real innovation or something to garner interest for me here.

The mainstream marketing for iPhone 15 is only highlighting that's its made from titanium... I'm sure there is some innovation in manufacturing, and I do love my 15, but it's devoid of any innovation.

Re: Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

#110
post #11

I don't understand why they don't update the entire lineup whenever a new chip comes out, especially if really only swapping the chip in the macbook pro and imac here. On a separate note does anyone have any insight on how unified memory compares to vram in the context of machine learning performance? Considering an H100 with 80GB costs like $30k a maxed out macbook pro with 128gb unified memory for $5k is interestin…

I expect it's a combination:

1. Engineering bandwidth (it's work to upgrade a lineup! They probably need at least a year)

2. Manufacturing bandwidth - they probably spent the first half of the year manufacturing the 3nm iphone processor while researching the mbp processor. I expect it's difficult to ramp manufacturing on many chips simultaneously

3. Sure, consider the demand side. If my parents are going to buy a new laptop and a new phone this year, I think they would be more likely to do that 6 months apart. Similarly, I expect keeping a cadence of announce products a,b,c in this quarter and d,e,f in that quarter helps keep apple in the news (for good/exciting things)

Wrt machine learning: I can't wait for the results to come out for this once we can get our hands on it

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