I’ve had a day to process what I saw in Apple’s Oct. 30th presentation as well as the ensuing discussions and howls of outrage. There seems to be more discussion over what didn’t happen than what actually happened. Seems like a lot of people somehow took rumour and speculation as likely fact and now they’re upset over nothing that was actually promised. They’re upset over gossip and assumptions that turned out not to be true.
There were rumours we might see certain products such as an iPad Mini 7 and USB-C accessories for the iMac. But there were also assertions from leakers that no new iPads or anything but MacBook Pros and revised iMac were going to be released. And the moment Apple’s surprise event was announced lots of people chimed in with their fervent wish lists of what they wanted to see in total conflict with was actually likely to be seen. And when their wish lists went unfulfilled we got the expected complaining and vitriol. People are mad because they didn’t get what they wanted despite they had no basis to expect getting it from a company who evidently sees things different than do.
Now the products themselves that were actually released.
We knew we were most likely to get new, or rather upgraded, MacBook Pros. And thats what we got. Glossed over is that Apple has been updating these MacBooks quite a bit since Apple silicon was introduced three years ago. In that time we’ve seen performance improve about 20-50 percent over the initial Apple silicon products. Thats pretty damned good over a 2-3 year period. They have also more clearly delineated the Pro line from the Air line, which is a good thing making things less confusing. The other news with improved performance was the addition of hardware ray shading, dynamic caching and mesh shading which are welcome for those interested in gaming or 3D modelling. This is all good stuff.
The most noticed surprising news was the introduction of a base MacBook Pro to replace the now discontinued odd-ball 13in. MacBook Pro with Touchbar. Touchbar is now dead, but everyone saw that coming so no surprise. Anyway with this new base Pro model it starts off where MacBook Air leaves off—the two product lines are now clearly delineated. Good.
The other item of note was the introduction of a new colour option for the M3 Pro and Mac versions of the MacBook Pro: Space Black, with an anodized finish to cut down on obvious fingerprints. A lot of people are going to drool over this colour. And it’s a new status symbol.
Some confusion over Apple tweaking and jiggling the M3 specs, but thats really no big deal. The automotive industry does it all the time and nobody blinks. All those spec numbers are basically meaningless because what matters is how the hardware performs in the real world. It’s going to be good.
The upgraded iMac has generated the most discussion and anger. The iMac upgrade was pretty much what was expected with the possible exception of no new USB-C accessories. The accessories weren’t really a given and Apple could quietly introduce those down the line, so this is really a non issue.
The real anger isn’t about what the 24 iMac is and Apple’s vision for it, but more over what it isn’t in the minds of many who never liked the redesigned iMac in the first place. A lot of people are pissed because they didn’t get their big screen iMac with an M3 Pro chip, something that wasn’t really on the radar anytime soon if ever. So their disappointment is channeled into everything they don’t like about the existing iMac.
Meanwhile we have an upgraded iMac more powerful than what we had before, with an M3 processor with a new neural engine, hardware ray tracing, more available RAM and no increase in price. Damn, how dare they!
Yeah, there a couple of minor things I would have liked to see. I would have preferred a higher RAM option of 32GB, but it’s not a deal breaker. 24GB with the new M3 will be fine. I would have liked to see the Apple logo returned to the chin. And I might have appreciated some new colour options, but that doesn’t really matter. Everything I liked about the 24 iMac is still there and the hardware is sufficiently upgraded as I hoped.
And, yes, the base model of the iMac at this price point should have higher specs of at least 12 GB RAM and 512 SSD as was vaguely speculated, but I’m not surprised it isn’t.
Overall I think it was a decent presentation and we got some good stuff. Not much to really complain about.
But that won’t stop some.
