More detail on Apple’s plans continues to emerge, with the first new Macs expected in October 2023 and releases of M3 models continuing through to the end of 2024. We have the details.
What We Know So Far…
From everything we have learned so far, it would appear that the M3 range of Apple Silicon chips will offer a bigger performance jump than the M2 chips offered over the M1 range.
The reason for this is that with Apple’s third-generation SoC chips, some of which will have up to four dies (as opposed to two dies in the 5nm designs, it is expected to translate into Apple silicon SoCs potentially having up to 32 CPU cores.
In February 2023, according to a report by DigiTimes, Apple booked 100% of TSMC’s 3nm output even though the product is more expensive and has a lower utilisation rate. It has been reported that these 3nm SoCs are apparently destined for Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro and the new M3 Macs.
In July 2023, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said this in the 16th July edition of his Power On newsletter…
“Now that Apple has gotten the 15-inch MacBook Air and new M2 Ultra-based Macs out the door, the October launch could feature the first Macs with M3 chips. October is too early for new high-end MacBook Pros or desktops, so the first beneficiaries of the new chip should be the next iMac, 13-inch MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro.”
What’s New?
We are now developing a much better picture of Apple’s plans for its 3rd generation of Apple Silicon SoCs. A lot of this is coming from 3rd party developer logs shared with Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
In the 6th August edition of his Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman reports that the logs revealed Apple is already testing M3 powered models, with the first one being tested probably being a Mac mini with 8 CPU cores (four efficiency cores and four performance cores), 10 graphics processor cores and 24 gigabytes of memory.
The logs also show the following M3 Macs are in development…
M3 13-inch MacBook Air (codenamed Mac 15,1 and J513/J613)
M3 15-inch MacBook Air (codenamed Mac 15,2 and J515/J615)
M3 13-inch MacBook Pro (codenamed Mac 15,3 and J504)
M3 iMac (codenamed Mac 15,4, Mac 15,5, J433 and J434)
M3 Pro and M3 Max 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros (codenamed Mac 15,7, Mac 15,8, J514 and J516)
Possible M3 Mac mini (codenamed Mac 15,12)
In the 13th August edition of his Power On newsletter, Mark revealed even more from the 3rd party developer logs that he has seen. From these and his other sources, Mark has been able to provide a much more detailed breakdown of each new Apple silicon chip…
M3:
Specifications: eight CPU cores (four performance and four efficiency) and 10 GPU cores.
Macs that will use the chip: Base MacBook Pro, 13-inch MacBook Air, 15-inch MacBook Air, Mac mini, iMac. (The next iPad Pro will get the M3 as well.)
M3 Pro:
Base configuration: 12 CPU cores (six performance and six efficiency) and 18 GPU cores.
Top configuration: 14 CPU cores (eight performance and six efficiency) and 20 GPU cores.
Macs that will use the chip: 14-inch MacBook Pro, 16-inch MacBook Pro, Mac mini.
M3 Max:
Base configuration: 16 CPU cores (12 performance and four efficiency) and 32 GPU cores.
Top configuration: 16 CPU cores (12 performance and four efficiency) and 40 GPU cores.
Macs that will use the chip: 14-inch MacBook Pro, 16-inch MacBook Pro, Mac Studio.
M3 Ultra:
Base configuration: 32 CPU cores (24 performance and eight efficiency) and 64 GPU cores.
Top configuration: 32 CPU cores (24 performance and eight efficiency) and 80 GPU cores.
Macs that will use the chip: Mac Studio and Mac Pro (if Apple continues making those).
Changes In Unified Memory Options
These developer log files have also revealed that Apple is testing models with different memory configurations from the currently available Mac computers. For example, the Mac that came to light, which is probably a Mac mini, had 24GB of unified memory. Moving onto the MacBook Pro laptops under test, show options with 36 and 48GB of unified memory. Currently, the MacBook Pro laptops offer 16, 32, 64 and 96GB configurations. However, Mark Gurman does make this caveat…
“The actual specifications could change during the production process, or consumer versions could differ from what Apple is testing internally”.
Release Timetable
From the 16th July edition of his Power On newsletter, Mark revealed that he believed that the first M3 Mac computers would be 24-inch iMac, 13-inch MacBook Air, and 13-inch MacBook Pro to be released in October 2023, all with the base level version of the M3 SoC.
As to the Mac computers, the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M3 Pro and M3 Max chips are expected in 2024, along with an M3 version of the Mac mini, followed by new versions of the Mac Pro and Mac Studio with the M3 Ultra, with Mark adding “And it’s plausible that an M3 Ultra chip doesn’t arrive until the end of that year at the earliest.”
Mac Pro Future Questioned
In the 13th August edition of his Power On newsletter, Mark also dropped a bit of a bombshell with regard to which Mac computers would benefit from the M3 Ultra SoC. He said…
“Macs that will use the chip: Mac Studio and Mac Pro (if Apple continues making those).”
This concern other the future of the Mac Pro may have a good foundation. For example, Apple Insider’s Malcolm Owen has said…
“There's a chance that Apple's fumbled Mac Pro update could lead to it giving up on the model for the moment.
With the introduction of the Apple Silicon model, some elements of the Mac Pro's utility became less impressive, in part due to the existence of the Mac Studio. With both the Mac Pro and Mac Studio able to use Apple Silicon, and with the Mac Studio being generally cheaper to purchase, it made the Mac Pro a hard purchase for anyone just wanting high levels of performance.”
In our article, Which to Buy - Apple Mac Studio or Mac Pro 2023? back in June 2023, after Apple announced the new Mac Studio and Mac Pro with the M2 Ultra chip, I showed that you could get a similarly specced Mac Studio for $4,297 compared to a Mac Pro coming in at $6,999. I acknowledged that even though they are built around the same M2 Ultra chip, there are more ports on the Mac Pro than on the Mac Studio, with two more Thunderbolt 4 ports and double the HDMI and Ethernet ports on the Mac Pro.
However, the Mac Pro’s claims of being ‘expandable’ have taken a serious dent with the Apple Silicon model. This latest variant does not support additional graphics cards at all, and the SoC architecture also means that the memory cannot be extended as it is an integral part of the SoC design.
The one area that is still expandable is the range of SSD storage options. If this is of interest to you, then do check out our article Upgradable SSD Is Back In A Mac!
Coming back to the PCIe slots, one area of good news, especially for those who want to use the PCIe slots for additional storage, is that six of the seven PCIe slots are 4th generation, which Apple claims provide… “twice the bandwidth for audio and video I/O, networking, and storage cards”. Apple goes on to claim that “the latest PCIe gen 4 SSD cards, for example, are capable of a colossal 26GB/s”.
All of this makes the Mac Pro a much harder sell, even to those who need PCIe slots for Pro Tools HDX cards. If you do need up to 3 HDX cards to run Pro Tools, the Avid HDX cards only need PCIe 2.0 and Thunderbolt 3 to work. You won’t need the 4th gen PCIe slots, so you can save spending over $1,900 by going for the Mac Studio and a Sonnet chassis. My conclusion was that only if you need the extra bandwidth or the expandable SSD storage is it worth considering the Mac Pro.
All in all, it looks like the future of the Mac Pro is by no means certain. Unfortunately, the SoC design has compromised some of the key features users wanted from the Mac Pro model. As the Mac Pro sales are a very small part of Apple’s sales figures, Mark Gurman’s question about the future of the Mac Pro is well founded.