That depends who you ask. Apple will tell you it's the fastest chip ever with 40-50% speed increase.
M3 is not ready or more to the point not good enough to be ready, 10% increase in speed through higher speed clocks is just as poor as the M2 was.
Apple will release its first MacBooks based on TSMC's 3nm fabrication process in 2024, not this year as some rumors have suggested. That's according to a new five-year global notebook shipments forecast published by DigiTimes.
Predicting an end to a two-year decline in the notebook market, the report forecasts a 4.7% shipment growth in 2024 driven by the easing of inflation and the introduction of new products, including new MacBooks powered by 3nm-based chips. From the report:
In July, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said October of this year could see the announcement of the first Macs with the M3 chip. Given that Apple launched new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models in January, and more recently new 15-inch MacBook Air, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro models in June, Gurman said the first beneficiaries of the new M3 chip would likely be the next iMac, 13-inch MacBook Air, and 13-inch MacBook Pro.
However, more recently in September, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that it seemed Apple will not launch new MacBook models with M3 series chips before the end of this year. Kuo only ruled out new MacBooks though, which appears to leave open the possibility of a new iMac coming this year. The current model featuring the M1 chip has now been on sale for over two and a half years.
DigiTimes itself recently suggested Apple would make a MacBook Pro announcement before the holidays. The Taiwan-based outlet earlier this month claimed Apple is preparing to ship new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with more power-efficient mini-LED displays before the year is out. That report did not mention the processor the models would be based on, but Gurman has previously said the next version of these two machines will feature M3 Pro and M3 Max chips, and that they will "probably" launch by the middle of 2024 at the latest.
The as-yet-unannounced M3 chip is widely expected to be fabricated with TSMC's 3nm process for performance and power efficiency improvements compared to the current 5nm-based M2 chip, which debuted in June 2022. It will also likely feature an all new GPU with hardware ray-tracing, first introduced on the iPhone 15 Pro's A17 Pro chip last month.
Article Link: Apple's First M3 MacBooks Coming Next Year, Claims Shipment Forecast
Almost certainly it'll have hardware ray tracing and AV1 support, which is something M1/M2 can't do.
I am waiting for the M3 too for AV1, but also because of the rumored bump in RAM memory, from base 8GB and upgraded 16GB, to base 12GB and upgraded 24GB.
I would NOT be surprised to see these pop up in an iPad first. They sell far more of those than Macs anyway.
The mba could at least still receive a spec upgrade that makes memory prices less ludicrous
I think Apple picked most of the low-hanging fruits with the Intel–>M1 transition, so to speak, and it’s more difficult to make further dramatic improvements. AMD is in a similar situation with Zen now. Technological progress isn’t linear, it comes in leaps and phases.
Interesting. Apple just had big blowout stock inventory sale of a lot of their MacBook lineup and CTO models have been back ordered a few weeks. Id think that’s a channel inventory clearance for either a soft update or something bigger.
Apple will release its first MacBooks based on TSMC's 3nm fabrication process in 2024, not this year as some rumors have suggested. That's according to a new five-year global notebook shipments forecast published by DigiTimes.
Predicting an end to a two-year decline in the notebook market, the report forecasts a 4.7% shipment growth in 2024 driven by the easing of inflation and the introduction of new products, including new MacBooks powered by 3nm-based chips. From the report:
In July, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said October of this year could see the announcement of the first Macs with the M3 chip. Given that Apple launched new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models in January, and more recently new 15-inch MacBook Air, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro models in June, Gurman said the first beneficiaries of the new M3 chip would likely be the next iMac, 13-inch MacBook Air, and 13-inch MacBook Pro.
However, more recently in September, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that it seemed Apple will not launch new MacBook models with M3 series chips before the end of this year. Kuo only ruled out new MacBooks though, which appears to leave open the possibility of a new iMac coming this year. The current model featuring the M1 chip has now been on sale for over two and a half years.
DigiTimes itself recently suggested Apple would make a MacBook Pro announcement before the holidays. The Taiwan-based outlet earlier this month claimed Apple is preparing to ship new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with more power-efficient mini-LED displays before the year is out. That report did not mention the processor the models would be based on, but Gurman has previously said the next version of these two machines will feature M3 Pro and M3 Max chips, and that they will "probably" launch by the middle of 2024 at the latest.
The as-yet-unannounced M3 chip is widely expected to be fabricated with TSMC's 3nm process for performance and power efficiency improvements compared to the current 5nm-based M2 chip, which debuted in June 2022. It will also likely feature an all new GPU with hardware ray-tracing, first introduced on the iPhone 15 Pro's A17 Pro chip last month.
Article Link: Apple's First M3 MacBooks Coming Next Year, Claims Shipment Forecast
The iMac is still M1. Are you suggesting Apple will upgrade the iMac to an M2 this late so they can start moving other products in their line up to M3?
Memory and storage options for an M3 15" MBA will be the same as the memory and storage options for the M2 15" MBA. You'll get 8GB memory and 256GB (hobbled) storage on entry/base model with a $200 price tag for each upgrade (e.g. 8GB to 16GB memory, 16GB to 24GB memory, 256GB to 512 GB storage, 512GB to 1TB storage, etc).
