Man, I just purchased a M2 Macbook Air 15 a few weeks back. I really wanted the M3 chip for the thermal improvements since this laptop doesn't have a fan, and especially for future proofing it. Not going to lie, despite the financial setback it would cause me, I would be tempted to upgrade to the M3 version if they release it in June.
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These M3 Macs Are Still Coming, But Are They Worth the Wait?
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It’s not just about PCIe. It’s about thunderbolt ports, it’s about real RAM, it’s about being able to spec a machine to match your workflow and it’s about Apple building a machine that is the fastest computer on the market, not the fastest MacPro.
Why would anyone spend that kind of money when we can build a PC, to spec, for less? FCP isn’t a standard anymore. Premier and Resolve are and they are both cross platform.
Yes, this is 100% true. You can even put numbers to it.
I wrote this somewhere before. The way to estimate "real world" speed up for your tasks is to..
- Look at your average CPU utilization on Apple's Activity Meter, Let's say it is 10%
- Look at the benchmarked speed increase between the two chips, Let's say you are moving from M2 to M3 so it is 20%
- Multiply those two numbers. So 0.10 * 0.20 = 0.02, so you would expect to see a 2% speed boost for your use case.
Your car analogy is accurate in some cases where something outside of the computer limits the speed of your work. Perhaps you are writing to kind of report in a word processor or you are watching a video. A fast computer can not make you type faster and watching a movie 20% faster is pointless. IN these cases you'd see zero improvements.
This is why I could write a document on my 1983 vintage IBM PC with floppy disks about as fast As I do now on my M2-Pro based Mac. I can only think and type so fast.
I would want to see some TDP numbers for the M3 variant used. Apple went from 13.8W in the M1 MacBook Air to 20W in the M2 MacBook Air. I still have questions about how much of the thermal throttling is from the absence of the traditional heat sink and how much is from shoving another 6 watts of heat into a fanless case.
Knowing Apple's marketing department, they will shrink the battery to make sure that the M3 MacBook Air doesn't challenge the M3 MacBook Pro on battery life.
Said Apple marketing department had no problems with the MBA having such a great battery life before, why would they start now?
For Intel Mac owners, absolutely.
For M1 owners, maybe.
For M2 owners, only if the M3 has a must have feature.
Hardware raytracing or 128GB memory for example.
For M1 owners, maybe.
For M2 owners, only if the M3 has a must have feature.
Hardware raytracing or 128GB memory for example.
That’s me almost 100% of the time. I did buy my M1 13” MBP new at full price, but everything else is either refurb or bought on extreme discount.
Exactly.
Does your computer do the work that you intended it for? That's it, that's the purpose.
I think it’s great that they’re upgrading whenever they can as opposed to whenever a third party (aka Intel) can. If it doesn’t cost Apple much to use new chips other than their normal cost of “operations” then why not? It’s a win/win. Just upgrade when you need to and the technology will be impressive either way.
i see no reason why it won't have that. apple will probably use this as a last minute surprise to pop the sales
All that matters is that the embarrassing emoji bar has finally been eradicated. Another vestige of Jony Ive's disastrous douchebaggery put to rest.
Yup - more than 4 efficiency cores makes little sense (on any computer that manages cores like Macs do), since anything that wants a whole bunch of cores is going to try to schedule on the P-cores anyway.
The 8 e-cores on the M2 Ultra (and presumably the M3 Ultra) is ALSO a waste, but it's understandable how they got there, since that's simply two of a smaller chip attached by a high speed bus. You're not going to delete the extra e-cores.
I think that starting with the M3, the M3 Pro chip is taking on a different role in the M3 lineup. It appears that real benefits of the M3 pro chip is to retain features obtained with a new M3 (e.g.; speed bump as compared M2, ray tracing, AV1 decoding) while providing enhanced I/O. The main benefit of M3 pro chips (as compared to the standard M3 chip) is additional interface ports and the ability to support additional external displays.
M3 pro chip is NOT intended to provide a significant CPU/GPU as compared to the M3. And it now provides a different function (more I/O) in the M3 lineup, as compared to the M2 pro chip did in the M2 lineup.
The intended market for the M3 pro chip is for potential M3 customers who need more external displays.
If you pay the extra for the unbinned M3 Pro you are getting 50% better multicore CPU performance and 80% better graphics performance than the M3 and that is going to make use of the 50% higher memory bandwidth. The base binned M3 Pro is probably closer to 30% better multi-core CPU and 40% better GPU than the M3.
I am sure there is some market for that but for a lot of users it won't matter. I know for my typical workloads (multitasking + working with large files) RAM is more important than extra cores, which is why I went for the M3 with 24GB in the end.
Not having an M1 Air, I'm betting that you don't know why the M2 Air is so much better. It has a MagSafe 3 power supply cable while the M1 Air uses a USB-C cable that takes half the available ports (there are only two) — thank you, Jon Ivie and good riddance. Having older eyes, I don't like both ports taken up by the power cable and external monitor leaving none for anything else—not a problem with the M2 Air.
Performance-wise, they are similar enough so one should be discontinued but that is the M1 Air—and it is except for the Refurb Store where there are plenty. As long as my wife likes hers, we'll be keeping it but I bought the M2 Air for myself. Just sayin...