Apple's First M3-Powered Macs Likely to Launch in October

[MacRumors]

Apple's first M3-powered Macs could arrive as early as October, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Writing in his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman said sources tell him an October event will follow Apple's iPhone 15 series announcement in September, and the state of Apple's current product lineup suggests it will focus on new Macs with M3 chips.

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 believes the first beneficiaries of the new M3 chip will be the next iMac, 13-inch MacBook Air, and 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Looking further ahead, new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M3 chips are expected to arrive in early 2024, featuring M3 Pro and M3 Max chips, according to Gurman in a previous report.

The M3 chip is expected to be built on chipmaking partner TSMC's 3nm process, resulting in significant performance and power efficiency improvements over the 5nm-based M2 chip that Apple's most recent Mac models are based on. TSMC kicked off mass production of 3nm chips in late December.

Article Link: Apple's First M3-Powered Macs Likely to Launch in October

 

[jayducharme]

Fingers crossed for a new Mac mini…

 

[asiga]

Any chance the M3 will improve raytracing on the GPU, providing true hardware raytracing?

 

[asiga]

Fingers crossed for a new Mac mini…

It's weird that they updated almost the whole Mac product line in the WWDC with enhanced M2s because the M3 was not ready, and that they are now ready to release M3 Macs in October... why the rush this WWDC? There have been WWDCs in the past with no new Mac announcements, I don't get the need for the rush this year.

 

[brgjoe]

Since I technically don't *need* a laptop now, this is the reason why I think I will wait until the fall to get one. And if these rumors are true, then once the 13" Macbook air arrives with the M3 chip, I will go hunting for sales on the M2 Macbook Air at that point. Fall/Winter seems to be a good time for sales anyway. So hope this rumor is true.

 

[danbalsh]

It’d be super weird to have the 13” and 15” MacBook Airs with different processors…

 

[barcode00]

Why are they still going with the 13-inch MacBook Pro?

They laughed when it was mentioned.

 

[picxar]

Makes no sense. Why would Apple do that? Apple refreshed nearly every mac in the first half of this year, only to refresh it a few months later again? Maybe there will be a M3 for the Air and the Mac Mini, but surely no M3 Pro/Max etc..

 

[itsboi]

Amazing how the Vision Pro is launching with an M2... it'll be nearly 2 years old by the time it releases.

 

[Onimusha370]

Nice, I’ve long been confused by the early 2024 rumours. October/November makes so much sense given it’s based on the A17 - just like the A14/M1 in 2020. 18 month cycles for X chips are well established.

Will be interesting how early in 2024 the Pro/Max chips appear. Feel like WWDC is most likely but I’ll be pleasantly surprised if they come in a spring event. Might upgrade from M1 Pro -> M3 Max when the time comes.

 

[t0rqx]

It’d be super weird to have the 13” and 15” MacBook Airs with different processors…

They created this hot mess by launching all kind of different products to target every segment. For example: The Mac Pro sort of makes no sense anymore with the Studio around. This is what you get of marketing is trying to create products aimed for financial gain only. Like SJ said, make great products and money will follow.

 

[Onimusha370]

Amazing how the Vision Pro is launching with an M2... it'll be nearly 2 years old by the time it releases.

I’m still convinced it’ll get the M3 and they’ll announce this as part of the October event

 

[itsboi]

I’m still convinced it’ll get the M3 and they’ll announce this as part of the October event

Hopefully, the efficiency gains will boost it from 2 hours to 2 hours and 15 minutes.

 

[t0rqx]

Amazing how the Vision Pro is launching with an M2... it'll be nearly 2 years old by the time it releases.

It's what keeps you upgrading.

 

[Steve121178]

Hope so. Really want to upgrade my late 2012 iMac to a M3 powered 24" iMac. Should be one hell of an upgrade...

 

[vmistery]

Hm, will they be 3nm then? I thought I read here that TSMC was struggling with this apple specific version of 3nm so it was going to be a limited run? Doesn’t sound like a chop you’d want to build lots of variations of.

 

[dantracht]

Wouldn’t shock me if they upgrade the 15” air to the m3 too. iPad 3-4 memories?

 

[Skyscraperfan]

I do not like that Apple uses that "3nm" marketing BS. Nothing about those chips measures 3 nanometres. It reminds me on the "1 inch sensors" that have a diagonal much smaller than one inch. Apple - like others - also cheats with screen diagonals, as it includes the rectangular corners that are not there.

 

[boak]

It's weird that they updated almost the whole Mac product line in the WWDC with enhanced M2s because the M3 was not ready, and that they are now ready to release M3 Macs in October... why the rush this WWDC? There have been WWDCs in the past with no new Mac announcements, I don't get the need for the rush this year.

Those were M2 Pro/Max/Ultra.

This is M3.

Base M chips comes before the other variants.

 

[TFK.]

It’d be super weird to have the 13” and 15” MacBook Airs with different processors…

They will definitely discontinue them

 

[mous94410]

I was planning to buy a base M2 MacBook Air to replace my M2 Mac mini but I think that I’ll wait a little bit

 

[cicalinarrot]

Any chance the M3 will improve raytracing on the GPU, providing true hardware raytracing?

Real-time ray tracing is basically just for gaming, that isn't much of a thing on Macs, even on PC gaming is a possible and relevant option in very few cases, and it requires powerful GPUs (Macs have great integrated GPUs but only the high-end models can compete with recent Nvidia and AMD dedicated ones).
And I frankly believe that ray tracing is a brute-force solution to get good graphics that is still so vastly less efficient than traditional tricks that it'll take another decade to become a standard.

If I had to make a (very speculative) prediction, I'd go with raw power and say that Apple may consider that when their low-end chips are about as powerful as the weakest GPU where Nvidia put ray tracing, the 2060. Which according to benchmarks is about three times as powerful as an M2 processor. If the generational increment stays the same as M1 to M2, that may happen with the M5 or M6...

 

[Leon Ze Professional]

I'm going to call bollocks on Mark Gurman's Macbook Air and Pro 13 inch prediction. You watch his prediction slip leading up to the iPhone release.

The only prediction from him that looks likely is the 24 inch iMac release with M3 in October.

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

Watch Apple put these in the iPad Pro’s and still only advertise 10hrs battery life like they have since the existence of the product line. Gotta push the slumping iPad Pro sales to give false hope to the masses again about it being a computer replacement.

 

[klrobinson999]

Please give us a larger iMac!