I think April would be too soon for M3. I'd guess no earlier than WWDC 2023.
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Gurman: Apple Silicon Mac Pro Testing Ramping Up, New MacBook Pro and Mac Mini to Launch Within Months
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I suppose I should put headers on those columns:His numbers feel be a bit inconsistent...
I had figured the M2 Max MBPs would get a new max RAM configuration of 96 GB (2x 48GB on the M2), but Gurman suggests 64GB and 256GB Max for the Mac Pro; but, he DOES say there's a 192 GB RAM configuration of the Mac Pro which would match my expectations for an M2 Ultra full RAM configuration. That would give the M2 Quadra a max RAM configuration of 384GB?
Emotional intelligence 2.0 is a great book, I highly recommend it. If you want rainbow colors advocate for rainbow colors, no need to throw shade on what others like.
Yeah, also isn’t it pretty unusual for apple to release these products in dec, jan or feb?
So basically he’a saying november or possibly march? Not very helpful.
Seems he’s just making a statement so that he’s correct no matter what
This shouldn't be a mystery at this point. 'Leaks' from the usual sources nowadays are simply hype mitigation by Apple so Wall Street doesn't crucify them when product announcements don't live up to fanboy expectations.
Even with concern the 24” iMac would seem small, it’s colors and design made it unique and because it was in between the previous 21” and 27” iMacs, somehow it catered to both ends of the consumer spectrum as people matched its colors to their rooms. Thermal design with dual fans is great, bleeds off heat extremely fast when SoC is 80C or 90C compared to other M1 designs.
Unfortunately there won't be two different designs for the MacBook Air, so the fugly current design must die! 😵🔫
A quick look shows that the Radeon Pro Vega II Duo has 128 "compute units" - and the 2019 Mac Pro can take two of those, so 152 cores isn't really unbelievable.
With the existing chips:
M1 has 8 GPU cores
M1 Pro has 16 GPU cores
M1 Max has 32 GPU cores
M1 Ultra is 2 M1 Maxs linked together and has 64 GPU cores
"M1 Extreme" - 4 M1 Max dies - would have had 128 GPU cores (it didn't appear, but everybody was speculating about it)
Now,
M2 has 10 GPU cores.
So, following the same pattern you'd predict:
M2 Pro would have 20 GPU cores
M2 Max would have 40 GPU cores
M2 Ultra would have 80 GPU cores
M2 Extreme would have 160 GPU cores
Gurman's numbers are a bit down from that suggesting that the M2 Max will have a mere 38 GPU cores. If you're worried about those not being nice round numbers, there's no law that says you have to have a multiple of 10 or 16 cores - but it could be that the specs came from "binned" versions of a chip with up to 80/160 cores.
That's "just" a quality assurance problem - plenty of Mac Studios don't suffer from excessive noise. If it's ever fixed, it will be fixed silently (ha!) by beefing up QA procedures or changing a component supplier etc.
Am I the only one baffled by the lack of a decent mid-range desktop? The Mac Mini and the iMac are both base M1. The Studio has a Max and Ultra option, which are beyond most peoples needs and budget. There are no Pro chip desktops. If you want that level of performance you buy a MacBook Pro. The 16" MacBook Pro offers a Max option, so there's some overlap between the laptop and high-performance desktop... If Apple can squeeze the performance out of a laptop, surely we can expect the same from a desktop machine?
Perhaps the 24" iMac is heat constrained, but that's just one more reason to bring back a larger iMac that so many people are asking for. Surely a Mac Mini chassis that was able to dissipate Intel heat levels for years can handle a Pro level chip.
I'm really hoping the M2 generation gives us back reasonably performant desktops. The lack of any predictions in this space is as baffling as the lack of options in the first place. Do people really only buy very low end or high end?
Perhaps the 24" iMac is heat constrained, but that's just one more reason to bring back a larger iMac that so many people are asking for. Surely a Mac Mini chassis that was able to dissipate Intel heat levels for years can handle a Pro level chip.
I'm really hoping the M2 generation gives us back reasonably performant desktops. The lack of any predictions in this space is as baffling as the lack of options in the first place. Do people really only buy very low end or high end?
The M1 iMac came out in April 2021. April 2023 would be 2 years. MacBook Air with M1 came out in November of 2020, got updated June 2022, that’s less than 2 years. So, the iMac is actually ripe for an update. It’s just that waiting until June 2023 would be long in tooth. They should already be previewing next generation Silicon by then.
It doesn’t seem to bother people though since I see a lot of persons still walking out of the store with M1 iMac to this day. If you need a new computer, you’ll buy it.
76 and 152 cores seems entirely consistent with what we've been hearing.
M2: 10 cores
M2 Pro: 19 cores (1/2 Max)
M2 Max: 38 cores
M2 Ultra: 76 cores (2x Max)
M2 Quadra: 152 cores (4x Max)
It is possible the chip will have 20 GPU cores and Apple is just gambling that due to yield issues, binning one GPU down per GPU cluster will make the most sense?
Nobody said UltraFusion was a scalable architecture, which can support more than two chips. 🤷
Whatever do you mean, lack of a decent mid-range desktop? The Mac Studio is a spectacular mid-range headless desktop, and below the Studio are two Minis at the low end of the headless desktop range. Agreed that leaves some space between the top Mini and the bottom Studio, but most folks expect that to be filled soon with an M2 Mini or another Studio.
My personal preference is for Apple to fill that space with a Studio with a Pro chip in it rather than with a Mini with a Pro chip in it. The Studio has far superior heat management and ports, and my guess is that many users will be maxing out whatever box fills that space.
Note that my comments do not apply to All-In-One boxes like iMacs. AIOs do not interest me.
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Apple has always been willing to toss niche customers under the bus.
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I just don't see how it could be any other way with Apple Silicon. Apple Silicon and modularity don't go together.
Every time I hear about "niche" I think of the this scene. Those that hear from them seldom live to tell the tale!
Their demands sound like the Macs we desire.
What disaster would you expect if Apple updates the chips in the MacBook Pros? The basic laptops are very good. Upgrading the chips should be a plus. We are not expecting any design changes in the MBPs with this upgrade. Just the M2 Pro/Max.
Calling the iPad release a disaster seems an odd take. Apple did a decent upgrade of the base iPad and then just did spec bump chip updates to the pro line. Of course many of us would have wished for more changes in the iPad Pro, but just the M2 upgrade is a nice addition. The main accusation you could make is that they didn’t do enough. Hardly a disaster.
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