Apple could add this to the M* series SoC whenever they wanted to. They just don't want to, apparently. :/
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Gurman: Apple Testing 'M3 Pro' Chip for MacBook Pro With 12-Core CPU and 18-Core GPU
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Optional turn on/off feature for a lit apple logo would be great. Sometimes you don't want to blind the person sitting next to you. However, in the old days it was just a punched hole in the lid and the light came from the backlight diffusor. Nowadays, with the mini-LEDs the apple logo would constantly flash and blink all the time.
If Apple were to put a dedicated screen in the shape of their logo instead, that would make things interesting. Perhaps the logo screen could provide notifications and battery status, just like on an Apple Watch? But only OLED screens are thin enough to consider, they do burn-in and out quickly though. Not really a sustainable feature for an iconic logo.
These days I just put a protective hardshell case onto my MacBook. The iconic logo is covered anyway, which is a good thing, because its shiny surface is a nasty fingerprint magnet.
Yep, that’s one of the rumors; but it would really be odd to introduce the new M3 SOC and a major new product that doesn’t include the new SOC — so I’m keeping fingers crossed for a positive surprise! 🤞🏽
Sure, but the M3 MBA might not be planned to be released for 4-10 months?
Understood .. but still hoping for an MBA surprise despite the leaks 🙏🏽 🤓
Please, please let this happen. It was so iconic.
Well it wasn’t in the jump from M1 Pro to M2 Pro. 16% increase even adding 2 efficiency cores was a pretty lame increase.
I really want the pulsating sleep LED to come back - it looks like the machine is breathing when asleep. One of the things I miss since moving to newer Macs - I guess maybe even a decent startup sound again too pls.....
So I guess you are like me, using open tabs as “webs to check later” for projects. Get Auto Tab Discard extension in Firefox, and set it to X minutes so any tab you aren’t checking often freezes and releases all the memory and CPU used once that time has passed (but it’s still there, and will reload on click). With that you can literally have thousands of open tabs using very little RAM.
I’m hoping they’ll add hardware based raytracing on those GPUs. I have a lofty dream of gaming on my Mac one day, even if I’m limited in game selection.
It would look cool, but the fingerprints…. I remember the black MacBook being really popular when I worked for an Apple reseller.
Not every iteration is going to be a big jump. 16% is fine.
I’d start getting worried if neither the M3 nor the M4 move the needle much.
Right, but I guess we'll have to wait for June's WWDC to find out. I wouldn't be really surprised if it actually came with M2 though, according to what Apple just did with the iPhone 14 series (The base model and the Plus came with last year's chip, A15 Bionic) which was honestly not great. Hope they don't adopt the same strategy with the MacBook family 🫠.
Yep I agree, it was cool-looking but at the same time not very practical. Would be cool if it came with an option to turn it off but if OLED display ever came to Macs, it'd probably be a little too complicated to bring it back since it's already hard to do with mini-LED. And in order to make a separate screen for the glowing logo itself, they'd probably have have to make the chassis thicker .. so I don't really have big hopes of bringing it back.Optional turn on/off feature for a lit apple logo would be great. Sometimes you don't want to blind the person sitting next to you. However, in the old days it was just a punched hole in the lid and the light came from the backlight diffusor. Nowadays, with the mini-LEDs the apple logo would constantly flash and blink all the time.
If Apple were to put a dedicated screen in the shape of their logo instead, that would make things interesting. Perhaps the logo screen could provide notifications and battery status, just like on an Apple Watch? But only OLED screens are thin enough to consider, they do burn-in and out quickly though. Not really a sustainable feature for an iconic logo.
These days I just put a protective hardshell case onto my MacBook. The iconic logo is covered anyway, which is a good thing, because its shiny surface is a nasty fingerprint magnet.
I don’t follow. The M3 hasn’t been introduced, and I’m guessing won’t be until later this year.
Ultimately, I think it boils down to exactly that. The 2016 MBPs had lids so thin, using the backlight to light up the Apple logo would’ve caused too much leakage, and using a separate light wouldn’t have been sturdy enough.
I agree @Pinkyyy 💜🍎, M2 is more likely than M3 — just hoping for a delightful surprise! 😂
Good call-out. I’m assuming that the M3 will be announced at WWDC even if the associated product(s) won’t be available for purchase for a few months.
"Cheapest" possible configuration for 36 GB of RAM is 6x6 GB of RAM on a 384 bit bus.
The SOC appears to have 24 GPU cores, total.
The M series have CPU, GPU and memory in a SoC package. Ray tracing runs extremely hot and if they add that to the package the components all together will start to throttle.
PCs still have the CPU, memory and GPU as separate components so they are not exposed to an SoC overheating.
We will get ray tracing once it can run efficiently.
“ray tracing” is a rendering method, it cannot run. What can “run hot or not” is a concrete hardware implementation. There is no reason why an RT implementation has to “run hot”.
Where did you get this notion anyway? From Nvidia? Because it’s like saying “internal combustion engines are slow because this one company makes a big tractor”
We literally have consumer chips that output hundreds of watts of heat. Apple is not nearly close to that. They could increase the power consumption of their SoC by 2x and still be below mainstream desktop CPUs.
Hm, I’m sure that 4x9GB would be significantly cheaper. But 384-bit bus would be obviously faster.
It wouldn't be significantly cheaper considering that there are no 9 GB memory modules.
4, 6, 8, 12, 16 GB per 64 bit module. Thats it. With those memory modules the only possibilities are 6x6, or 3x12, for 36 GB of RAM.
Laughably - the cheaper version is 6x6 GB. And if it is - 384 bit bus for M3 Pro. So expect that 36 is base, and 48 GB and 72 GB are CTO configs.