We already knew from A17 Pro that there were no power efficiency gains from N3. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Apple chose +15% performance here. They can’t have both.
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Apple's New MacBooks With M3 Chips Offer Up to 22 Hours of Battery Life
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We already knew from A17 Pro that there were no power efficiency gains from N3. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Apple chose +15% performance here. They can’t have both.
I think it’s come to the point where the hardware is already super efficient on processor level for certain tasks… the next step is to focus on display power usage and new battery technologies. That’s where the next big gains in battery life will be found.
Not only that but it’s got 8gb ram too. I was gonna get base m3 but by the time you get ram upgraded may as well get the pro.
Mine as well. Always plugged in at home, but once or twice every 3-4 months when I have to travel I appreciate it. I don't even have to bring iPad along anymore.
Which is especially surprising given that the Pro chip went from 6 P-cores to 5 P-cores, and from 8 P-cores to 6 P-cores, while both gaining 2 E-cores...
So the claim of "up to 22 hours of battery life" is correct.
"Up to" means anywhere from between 0 seconds of battery life and 22 hours of battery life. It all depends on what it's doing.
Apple isn't claiming that it has 22 hours of battery life for every single task.
Apple was definitely pushing us Intel MBP users to upgrade. I have a 2019 16-inch Core i9 that I got in 2020. If I had to upgrade, it might be better to get an M2 on sale. I don't do any heavy duty graphics or video work that would benefit from an M3 chip. I don't care too much about color, although I like Space Gray better than black.
Right, and everyone is just assuming the physical battery will stay the same. Remember when a lot of people thought the iPhone 13 Pro would have amazing battery life due to the energy saving ProMotion feature? But no, that wasn't the case...Apple made the battery smaller. They could very well do the same thing to the Macs to make them lighter and/or save the battery life gains for a future Mac.
My guess is no MBA update until March or April at the earliest. A summer update for back-to-school season (maybe at WWDC?) at the latest.
This has always been the case. Their battery life tests using the playing of a video is a bit misleading too… as this task is ran super efficiently by almost all processors (Apple, Intel and others)… what’s more useful to the average user is the battery life under mixed usage (loading website, watching YouTube, playing a single movie or two). This is the more real to life figure and they do still show it… but they jump on the video playing u til battery dies figure as it’s the biggest number, despite no one actually ever really doing that 😂
Then M3 is a flop. Same performance gains as in M1->M2, without any efficiency gains while going from 5nm to 3nm.
Likely right! Not a fan of this multiple levels of M3. Seems like yet another money grab.
If they'd updated the MBA's with M3, they'd have no buyers for the 14" M3 MacBook "Pro"
Really gross way they are doing that.
Purposely holding back MBA just to juice some sales of that weird "not really Pro, MacBook Pro"
This actually made me go check. They actually increased the battery for the M3 Pro/Max and still only managed the same battery life lol
Yet there’s comments asking for “the same battery life upgrade for MBA” — I think they’ll be very disappointed. As I am right now.
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Just use it until it’s no longer fit for purpose. I still have one Mac that is Intel based and it still does everything I need and still runs Sonoma. I’ll upgrade it when it wears out, or if support is completely gone (but then I’d still have the Linux option, or even windows, for it)
M2 is already super fast for MacBook Air use cases… it in no way is a negative
After looking at it more, you're right
What a bummer
I thought going 3nm would have some tangible easy to get gains for them.
I was wanting it for better battery life (presumably) on 3nm M3
That looks like it might not be a "thing" here, sadly
Yeah, I don’t think the battery life will be much different. The M2 already sips power on MacBook Air… they would probably need a new display technology or battery tech to really improve the battery life on the air. They are at a point of diminishing returns on power efficiency for processor when you consider the whole package (ie all of components using power in the laptop for most workloads)
My 2021 M1 14" MBPro MAX 64GB 4TB SSD did not suddenly become obsolete during the presentation! 
The important titbit for me not mentioned was the single core capabilities. The new color black was a yawn. I expected the maximum memory could be 128GB with the Max processor. It did go from WiFi 6 to 6E and Bluetooth went from 5.0 to 5.3. The screen appears to be the same but went from 500 to 600 nits of brightness. Only one more hour of battery time was not the increase I was expecting.
The M3 chassis appears identically shaped and fitted with holes the same as my M1's chassis. To order the 14" M3 MBPro Max with 128GB and a 8TB SSD it is $6,889 before sales tax and my 10% military discount. The same configuration of my M1 (64GB ram and 4TB SSD) would cost $4,899.
I think something else did not materialize for this presentation. What we saw did not justify the weird show start time for the dog and pony show.
What I am sure of is that my 2021 model is nearly worthless as a trade-in
The important titbit for me not mentioned was the single core capabilities. The new color black was a yawn. I expected the maximum memory could be 128GB with the Max processor. It did go from WiFi 6 to 6E and Bluetooth went from 5.0 to 5.3. The screen appears to be the same but went from 500 to 600 nits of brightness. Only one more hour of battery time was not the increase I was expecting.
The M3 chassis appears identically shaped and fitted with holes the same as my M1's chassis. To order the 14" M3 MBPro Max with 128GB and a 8TB SSD it is $6,889 before sales tax and my 10% military discount. The same configuration of my M1 (64GB ram and 4TB SSD) would cost $4,899.
I think something else did not materialize for this presentation. What we saw did not justify the weird show start time for the dog and pony show.
What I am sure of is that my 2021 model is nearly worthless as a trade-in
Right now I am not convinced with the M3 to drop cash BUT I think this is a great release. No more 13" Pro model that became redundant with the 14". Now you can get a Pro machine with regular M3 for not much more than the air. The value of the base model is pretty great.
One thing I noticed is that there was no mention of mini led just xdr? Does anyone know if they went back to LCD?
If I didn't absolutely love having a fan less and super light laptop the 14" base model with added ram is extremely tempting. I think I will wait until the M3 air is released and the M3 pro's start to go on sale.
Now we have an air 13", an air 15" eventually on M3 and Pro model on M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max. This is the best line up of MacBooks ever!!
One thing I noticed is that there was no mention of mini led just xdr? Does anyone know if they went back to LCD?
If I didn't absolutely love having a fan less and super light laptop the 14" base model with added ram is extremely tempting. I think I will wait until the M3 air is released and the M3 pro's start to go on sale.
Now we have an air 13", an air 15" eventually on M3 and Pro model on M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max. This is the best line up of MacBooks ever!!
Imagine if Apple skipped updating the MBA to an M3 so they could, in your words, juice M3 MBP sales. No MBA update until they release the M4 chip, like how the iMac skipped the M2 chip. That would mean no MBA update until... 2025?