[chucker]

• More faster and all that. The CPU isn't really that much faster, but the GPU makes a big leap compared to M2.
• The 13-inch MacBook Pro is now gone. Replacing it is a new low-end 14-inch option. It goes up from $1,299 to $1,599, but the configuration is overall much nicer: mini-LED with HDR, higher res, MagSafe, HDMI, nicer camera, nicer speakers, 512 (instead of 256) GiB SSD. Still 8 GiB RAM, though.
• There's a new brownish grey color option that they call black.
• The M3 (not Pro or Max) is still limited to two displays. So, that 14-inch MBP only lets you connect one external display.
• …I think that's basically it?

[Bryson]

Damn on the displays. My current setup is a final-generation 13" Intel MacBook Pro with two external monitors. If I have to ditch a monitor because of an artificial restriction, that will suck.

[chucker]

It isn’t that artificial, though it certainly is a choice. (Specifically: to make each display controller rather high-end, but then to give it only two of them.)

You might get away with DisplayLink. A coworker of mine got a dock with that built in. There are a few gotchas, but mostly it means when they get to the desk, they get to use both screens in addition to the internal.

[Bryson]

I consider it artificial given that my "ancient" Intel MBP supports it, and I feel like the featureset should really only move forwards... But maybe I'm naive...

I'll look at the Displaylink options. I don't know when I'm getting a new machine but it may well be soon. I suspect the right answer is to go for the 14' with M3 Pro...but yikes, the config I would need is close to $4k (CAD)

[psmith2.0]

Ah, so that old-style 13" MacBook Pro that nobody here liked or understood is finally gone. That's a good thing, as it just kinda sat there, more expensive/capable than any Air, yet sharing the name with the 14" and 16" models, while sporting a completely different design. Don't tell me that wasn't a source of confusion for customers in recent years. It was a source of confusion for me, and I halfway follow this stuff!

Seems reasonable to me that any "pro" is looking at spending $1,599+ for their capable, no-compromise notebooks. Fair enough. The rest of the solar system, IMO, is more than served by the Air of some sort/configuration.

This makes it all a little simpler: M2-based, fanless MacBook Air in 13", and M3-based, "pro" models in 14" and 16". This is the first time in a few years that the notebook lineup finally makes sense and is easy to understand at a glance. Glad that 13" went away if they weren't going to rename it "MacBook" and let it occupy that middle-ground between the Air and Pro. That little wrongly-named bastard has bothered me for years.

I like when lineups are clean, neat and clearly-defined. I hope they continue on this path re: some other products, where the overlap and "huh?!" is a bit more than necessary.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Bryson I consider it artificial given that my "ancient" Intel MBP supports it, and I feel like the featureset should really only move forwards.

No, I totally get that.

[Matsu]

How does the MBA 15” fit in

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Matsu How does the MBA 15” fit in

It’s two consumer sizes and two pro sizes. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[Matsu]

Odds and evens.

[kscherer]

They should have just left that middle space empty. The MacBook Air with some upgrades was filling it nicely.

Now, it's even muddier than it was before.

I'm not sure who's running the marketing/product placement departments at Apple, but they seem to love confusion.

At first I thought the 14" M3 was a good fit, but as we try to configure and make sense of what to stock, it's like, 15" Air 16/1TB is $1699, and 14" Pro 16/1TB is $1799. Screen, processor? Screen, processor? Uh, is HDMI worth $100? Better screen but smaller, is that worth $100? Heavier, but slightly better battery, is that worth $100? The speakers are better in the Pro — maybe. Who knows what else they crippled in there!

One of these things is not like the other!

The boss just told me his neck hurts from all the head shaking.

This is a mess.

It seems like the new 14" MacBook Pro M3 offers an HDMI port as its sole "advantage" over the 15" MacBook Air. I mean, who's going to buy that thing in its base configuration that shouldn't just spend another $400 and get a much better thing? I don't get it. Is it an intentional space-filler that encourages people to get the "Pro" Pro?

[chucker]

Originally Posted by kscherer Now, it's even muddier than it was before.

Oh, hard disagree. Before, we had a model in an entirely different chassis, lacking features all other laptops now had, and offering the Touch Bar when clearly it was already supposed to be dead. That made no sense at all.

Now, it's a low-cost option of the 14-inch. Same chassis, lesser SoC. Done.

Originally Posted by kscherer At first I thought the 14" M3 was a good fit, but as we try to configure and make sense of what to stock, it's like, 15" Air 16/1TB is $1699, and 14" Pro 16/1TB is $1799. Screen, processor? Screen, processor? Uh, is HDMI worth $100? Better screen but smaller, is that worth $100?

Yes, well, when you use BTO options, things get weird. Give the Mac mini with M2 Pro 32 GiB RAM and the 10GigE option, and it's $1,799, at which point… why not just spend another $200 and get the Mac Studio, which will offer better cooling and way more ports, and swap the M2 Pro for an M2 Max?

Originally Posted by kscherer It seems like the new 14" MacBook Pro M3 offers an HDMI port as its sole "advantage" over the 15" MacBook Air.

$100 buys you a newer SoC, active cooling, HDMI, SD, a much, much nicer display, nicer speakers, and worse color options.

[psmith2.0]

You always gotta factor in the folks who, for no other reasons whatsoever, just want to own a notebook with the word "Pro" on it, in a serious, non-fruity color.

Those folks exist, and even if a lower-priced Air absolutely trounced anything with "Pro" in its name, some people are still gonna spend more money for the "pro" model, because they need all the help they can get, I guess. The red sports car and 23-year-old girlfriend/side piece just aren't enough.

There's no "figuring out" or making sense of all this. All you can do is just point out to the customers what you wrote above and let them make those "is it worth $100?" calls themselves.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by psmith2.0 You always gotta factor in the folks who, for no other reasons whatsoever, just want to own a notebook with the word "Pro" on it, in a serious, non-fruity color.

Yep. Including companies, where IT sets a policy that lasts for like ten years, and it says "you can only buy Dell Latitude, HP ProBook, Apple MacBook Pro, …". So, Apple makes a MacBook Pro. It doesn't have the M3 Pro in it, but it has the same chassis, and many of the same features.

[kscherer]

Originally Posted by chucker $100 buys you a newer SoC, active cooling, HDMI, SD, a much, much nicer display, nicer speakers, and worse color options.

$100 less gets you lighter weight, a bigger screen, no fan noise, faster RAM, and …



I'm telling you, it's a mess!

We're working through what to stock on the shelf and there are just way too many places where these things cross over each other. A proper inventory line has one device working its way upward until there is an equivalent low-end system at the next level. The MBP M3 spends way too much time walking in the same steps as the 15" MacBook Air. They're too close to each other, and one or the other suffers.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by kscherer $100 less gets you lighter weight, a bigger screen, no fan noise, faster RAM, and …

I don't think 100 is faster than 100.

And, yes, one of them is lightweight and fanless, and the other isn't. That's… been the case for a while now? Is your argument that they should only have the Air in the future?

Originally Posted by kscherer I'm telling you, it's a mess!

No, it was a mess before.

Originally Posted by kscherer The MBP M3 spends way too much time walking in the same steps as the 15" MacBook Air. They're too close to each other, and one or the other suffers.

Some people wanted a bigger MacBook. Previously, that would have cost them at least $2,499. Now it's $1,299. Yes, that means there's some overlap. This is really no different than being able to configure an iPhone 15 Plus with 512 GB storage, which is $1,199, which is more than the iPhone 15 Pro. Oh noes!

[kscherer]

I know, Chucker, I get it.

Monday morning the 13" MacBook Pro was way too close in price/performance to the MacBook Air, and now there's a new 14" MacBook Pro that is way too close in price/performance to a much better 14" MacBook Pro. I mean, the base 14" MacBook Pro M3 should have 16GB RAM, so that makes it $1799. So, why not just pay $200 more for a much better laptop?

I know people will buy it because it has "Pro" in the name. That's always been the case. I just can't see the target audience where the M3 Pro is not the vastly superior option, because the workload that's gonna make the fans spin also needs more RAM, and that puts you solidly into M3 Pro territory.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by kscherer I know people will buy it because it has "Pro" in the name. That's always been the case. I just can't see the target audience where the M3 Pro is not the vastly superior option, because the workload that's gonna make the fans spin also needs more RAM, and that puts you solidly into M3 Pro territory.

Agreed. I guess what confuses me is how that's any different than the situation before — the 13-inch M1/M2 also had barely any target audience. As soon as you configured it to be remotely powerful, you might as well get the 14-inch instead. And if you didn't need that power, the Air probably served you better.

I have the same quibble with the iPad line-up.

Anyways, five benchmark results have arrived. It's unclear if these are from the iMac, or the M3 (non-Pro) 14-inch.

The medians are 3018 / 11671. That's up 14.7% / 19.8% from the Mac mini's M2.

Geekbench lists the clock as 4.05 GHz, but I wouldn't fully trust that yet; it sometimes merely guesses what the clock is. But if true, then the clock is up 16.4%, so single-threaded IPC is actually 1.5% worse than before (which is surprising, given that memory bandwidth on the non-Pro hasn't changed), and multi-threaded IPC is only up 2.9%.

Which… for a two-generation jump doesn't seem so great? But again, it's possible that Geekbench is wrong about the clock. Or that these results don't reflect final shipping machines. Or that it is not, in fact, a two-generation jump; that these are actually A16-derived cores (but the GPU raytracing feature would suggest otherwise).

[chucker]

Of course, ignoring clock changes, a 15%/20% improvement in 18 months is pretty good. The clock steadily increasing just worries me because, well, they're not gonna be running the M7 at 6 GHz…

[kscherer]

Originally Posted by chucker Agreed. I guess what confuses me is how that's any different than the situation before — the 13-inch M1/M2 also had barely any target audience. As soon as you configured it to be remotely powerful, you might as well get the 14-inch instead. And if you didn't need that power, the Air probably served you better.

Precisely why I stated that they should have just left that middle price slot empty and let the MacBook Air fill it.

[PB PM]

Originally Posted by chucker Of course, ignoring clock changes, a 15%/20% improvement in 18 months is pretty good. The clock steadily increasing just worries me because, well, they're not gonna be running the M7 at 6 GHz…

I assume they will just do what everyone else is doing and just throw more cores, and more specialized cores at that, at the problem.

[kscherer]

Originally Posted by PB PM … more specialized cores …

This makes a great deal of sense. Apple's Afterburner card is already basically wired into Apple Silicon, and that was a thousand dollar option with Intel Mac Pro's.

AI, ML, Audio and video codecs, security processing and storage. All those things are becoming increasingly specialized cores and most certainly represent a significant reason why AS is so efficient. Clock speed is nice, but becoming less important as these specialized cores take on more tasks with blazing performance.

It is the way forward.

[PB PM]

Originally Posted by kscherer This makes a great deal of sense. Apple's Afterburner card is already basically wired into Apple Silicon, and that was a thousand dollar option with Intel Mac Pro's. AI, ML, Audio and video codecs, security processing and storage. All of things are becoming specialized cores and most certainly represent a significant reason why AS is so efficient. Clock speed is nice, but becoming less important as these specialized cores take on more tasks with blazing performance. It is the way forward.

Yes, until we move past traditional computing, at least for most people. There are plenty of high end work loads that need speed, but improvements will come from optimization for cores. That said, I cannot see quantum computing becoming a house hold things, so for personal computing, that is likely the case for the foreseeable future.

[kscherer]

Originally Posted by PB PM … I cannot see quantum computing becoming a house hold things …

Not any time soon. But, one day in the way-off future, don't be surprised.

Tik-Tok is taking up significant portions of human time, and the poser-doofs are going to need all the Mega-Quantums™ they can get!

And oh, by the way, I want everyone in here to know that I invented the term "Mega-Quantum™", so don't go stealing my cred!

[chucker]

Originally Posted by PB PM I assume they will just do what everyone else is doing and just throw more cores, and more specialized cores at that, at the problem.

That’s certainly how they’re approaching the M3 Max. Its p-cores are up, each core is a bit faster, and the end result is… the M3 Max performs the same at multithreaded as the M2 Ultra!

[drewprops]

Originally Posted by PB PM That said, I cannot see quantum computing becoming a house hold things, so for personal computing, that is likely the case for the foreseeable future.

Made me think of:

Originally Posted by Ken Olsen, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."

...

[PB PM]

Originally Posted by drewprops Made me think of: ...

There are some very good reasons that quantum computing is a very long way off from home use. Like the cooling requirements. Our current silicon based chips don’t have those power and cooling needs, it’s a totally different thing. It’s not like old mainframes that got shrunk as transistors got smaller, totally different technology. We are more likely to be networked to a quantum computer, from our silicon based home computer for heavy lifting tasks than ever having one in our homes.

[Matsu]

I think I said this at the last product launch, but apart from a really big screen, it seems that for me consumer products will probably work just fine. It's mostly photoshop/lightroom and the like that I do here. I would like to try my hand at video and audio production only because the kiddos are showing an interest in social media, and rather than have them make dubious content, I'd sooner have them learn/explore content creation techniques - if that becomes something that continues to interest them. They can already do quite a bit on their iPads.

I'm wondering how much longer until that's really my ideal machine: just an iPad that wirelessly/wired docs to a monitor/keyboard/mouse/storage and runs MacOS apps (and the appropriate file system for dealing with large local libraries...)

[Yontsey]

If anyone is looking to get a new M3 MBP or any Apple product, Chase is offering 50% bonus using Chase Sapphire points to purchase.

[Yontsey]

Has anyone seen the new black MBP in person yet? Thinking about snagging a 14" MBP M3 Max through Chase....

[turtle]

I haven't seen one in person yet. I will say I've heard it loos great.... but that is all personal opinion right?

With Apple's return policy and the bonus it seems like it would be a good time to "chance" it. Return it if you don't like it.