Mesh shaders, ray tracing, and space black finish?
No, believe it or not, you didn't just travel back to 2019.
You watched Apple's scary fast event announcing,
among other things, their latest M3 chip lineup.
But while some of what they talked about
felt a little yesterday's news,
but magical this time, typical Apple,
the rest of it was full of some pretty big dunks
on the rest of the computer industry,
which is also becoming kind of typical Apple.
I mean, here, think about all the variety
in the world of PC laptops.
Apples, by contrast, are downright boring.
They don't even have touchscreens, for crying out loud.
And yet, they deliver time and again on what matters
so effectively that I can't even blame folks
for flocking to them.
Say it with me, PC industry,
nothing else matters until you get these things right.
Power efficiency, performance, and portability.
Come to think of it, now that they've got
a new process node, the number three is everywhere here.
Three nanometer on the M3 chip with three main M3 SKUs.
The announcement video is 30 minutes, 31 seconds long,
held on October the 30th in 2023.
What is next?
Are they gonna make me write three segues
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Apple's main focus today was showing off, once again,
the most powerful laptops we've ever created,
which is kind of a no-doy moment.
I mean, why would you make a new one that isn't better?
But after all those years of Intel
missing their tick-tock development cycle
and rehashing the same 14 nanometer chips,
it kinda makes sense that Apple feels the need
to rub some salt in their ex's wounds
and clarify that, yes, generational improvements
are actually a thing.
Let's start with the GPU.
They're claiming that their new three nanometer hotness
is the biggest leap forward in graphics architecture ever
for Apple Silicon.
And considering what they had before,
they're probably right.
Hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shaders,
while nothing new to PC gamers,
are certainly going to be a key part of their path
toward making games look incredible on the Mac.
Alan Wake 2, for example, just came out to rave reviews
over their implementations of these key technologies.
But while the game looks amazing,
older 10-series NVIDIA cards struggle with it
due to Alan Wake 2's requirement for mesh shaders
having dropped support for vertex shaders altogether.
So while Apple's announcements might not sound impressive
if you've been hearing these words
for almost half a decade,
in typical Apple fashion, they're showing up to the party
just in time for their implementation to actually be useful.
Kind of smart, really.
But they've also got some outright new stuff,
like dynamic caching.
In a nutshell, M Silicon Macs use unified memory
that is shared between the CPU and the GPU.
And normally, some portion of that memory
would be reserved for the GPU
by looking at the maximum amount it could possibly need
for the most intense parts of a game
or a video editing workload,
and then holding that all the time.
But now, M3 can dynamically determine exactly,
und exactly, how much memory it actually needs
in any given moment, and allocate that to the GPU.
It's on all three of the new chips.
There's that number again.
And it supposedly dramatically increases
the average utilization of the GPU.
We're gonna have to wait and test it for ourselves,
of course, but if it's done well,
this is a major benefit of a tightly integrated system.
Though you'll be paying a major premium for it,
especially if you shell out for the 40 core GPU version
of the M3 Macs, rather than the 30 core base one.
Cutting edge costs though,
and if they're vague and nebulous slides are to be believed,
M3's performance per watt is about to put even more pressure
on the likes of Intel,
who recently resorted to rehashing old CPUs again
with their 14th gen desktop processors.
14 is really not Intel's number, hey?
Speaking of Intel and CPUs,
this whole event had major Jilted X lover vibes.
Am I right?
Like how many times did they mention team blue?
Intel.
But be that as it may,
the CPUs on these new chips look very,
so long, see you later, don't need you, impressive.
First, not only are the P cores and the E cores
30 and 50% faster than the M1 respectively,
but they've improved the branch prediction on both
and strategically juiced up core counts.
So the regular M3 in the now entry-level 14 inch MacBook,
bye-bye 13 inch model,
is an eight core CPU with a 10 core GPU
and support for up to 24 gigs of unified memory.
The M3 Pro sports 12 CPU cores,
18 cores for graphics,
and up to 36 gigs of unified memory.
That is a pretty good amount of memory for a laptop.
And it's not even close to the Max,
the M3 Max that is,
that offers up to a whopping 16 CPU cores,
up to 40 GPU cores,
and up to 128 gigabytes of unified memory.
A feature that previously was only seen on desktop Macs.
The only thing I don't like about all of this
is Apple's de-emphasis on what kind of CPU cores
we're looking at.
See this generation,
it's not a problem yet,
because only the Max SKU deviated from their previous
one-to-one ratio of performance to efficiency cores.
And it did so in a positive way,
with a three-to-one split.
But I also kind of feel like we're being primed
to not think about what kind of cores we're getting,
so that maybe they could go the other way in the future.
But that's for future Linus to complain about.
For now, the M3 lineup has more going for it
than just a new chip.
Apple continues to lead the way on laptop displays,
with their Liquid Retina XDR display
peaking at up to 1600 nits in HDR,
and 600 nits in SDR,
all while running at 120 Hertz.
That is astonishing for a machine that runs on battery.
And speaking of,
they couldn't resist taking some shots at Intel
over their crummy battery life,
boasting that an M3 machine will give Intel Mac owners
up to an additional 11 hours of battery life
alongside the up to 11X performance uplift.
An uplift that is consistent,
whether you're plugged into the wall
or running on the aforementioned battery.
That's really cool,
because now if you feel the need to step outside
for some fresh air or just to change the scenery,
you don't have to worry about a worse digital experience
because of it.
Just unplug, pop your M3 MacBook into an LTT backpack,
which has lots of space for even the 16-inch in there,
and an AirTag in the hidden pocket, and walk away.
And that's it.
That's all the love you get from an LTT store.com.
But hey, maybe you like having a stationary computer.
Where's the love for you?
Well, the good news is the new iMac,
which comes with a four and a half K display now,
is getting the regular M3 chip.
The bad news is that's all the love you get.
Apple, where the heck are the Pro and Max models, guys?
Oh, wait, I get it.
They probably could have done that,
plus three chassis.
That seems like it was the right number today.
But more will almost certainly follow
if Apple's to keep hold of their efficiency crown.
The just announced Snapdragon X Elite
looks poised to make the competition
a lot more interesting.
And Microsoft's decade-plus long slog
to make Windows on Arm a reality
feels like it's finally on the cusp of bearing fruit.
Of course, most of the comparisons I saw Qualcomm making
were to M2, and you can't actually buy
any of that stuff today.
So if you're looking for something
to compete with a MacBook,
you'll have to check the links below
where we'll have MacBooks.
Just don't expect them to be cheap.
The 14-inch M3 MacBook is $400 less
than the old 14-inch MacBook, so that's cool.
But it's also $300 more expensive
than the previous entry-level model,
now that the 13 option doesn't exist anymore,
and you'll be paying that price
for just eight gigabytes of unified memory
and a wimpy 512-gig SSD.
Once you start speccing out the 16-inch versions
with the M3 Pro and the M3 Max,
well, it doesn't take long to start hitting
three, four, or even $7,000.
And that's nothing compared
to what they've done with the iMac.
Sure, it starts at 1,300 bucks,
but that is with a 256-gig SSD.
By the time you put a terabyte of storage in it,
you've spent $1,700 on a machine
that just has the most basic M3 silicon in it.
Man, do these guys ever charge a premium
for that sweet, sweet memory and storage,
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Thanks for watching.
If you guys liked this video,
make sure to check out our iPhone 15 coverage
from earlier this year.
That A15 Pro chip is something else.