Apple launches new 14/16-inch MacBook Pro and 24-inch iMac, equipped with M3 series chips

Today, Apple held a brief product launch event for October; Apple simply unveiled the 14/16-inch MacBook Pro equipped with the new M3 series chip, alongside the 24-inch iMac.

Apple has introduced a 14-inch MacBook Pro variant, designed to supplant the M2 chip 13-inch MacBook Pro. This model, along with the high-end M3 Pro chip 14-inch version, largely retains identical specifications, including a 120Hz refresh rate and a 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display boasting a peak brightness of 1000 nits — and the recognizable “notch.” Distinguishing features are primarily the inclusion of the M3 chip, a reduced number of USB-4 ports, and a slightly diminished battery capacity. However, thanks to the M3’s energy efficiency, the advertised battery life is marginally longer.

The base model of the M3 chip 14-inch MacBook Pro still starts with 8GB of RAM. However, the storage across the MacBook Pro lineup now commences at 512GB. As a testament to Apple’s pricing strategy, the M3 chip 14-inch MacBook Pro now costs $1599.

The advent of the M3 Pro chip 14/16-inch MacBook Pro is somewhat surprising, considering Apple released the M2 Pro/Max chip just in January of this year. This cadence of launching early 2023 and late 2023 models in the same year echoes certain competitors’ tendencies to frequently update CPUs. To distinguish these latest offerings, Apple introduced a new deep-space black color variant. Beyond the chip upgrade, little has changed — Face ID remains absent, relying still on fingerprint recognition, and the conspicuous notch houses a 1080p camera.

The upgrades in the M3 Pro/Max chips aren’t revolutionary, albeit noteworthy. Leveraging the latest TSMC 3nm process, the CPU performance exhibits a 30% enhancement in performance cores and a 50% improvement in efficiency cores compared to the M1 series. Given Apple’s emphasis on comparing the M3 to the first-generation M1, its caliber is evident. However, the GPU upgrades are significantly more robust, introducing dynamic cache, Mesh Shading, and hardware ray-tracing acceleration, resulting in graphic rendering capabilities 2.5 times superior to the M1 series. Other improvements include a 60% performance boost in the NPU and a new multimedia engine that now supports AV1 decoding.

Apple’s newest fleet of devices will be available for pre-order on November 1st, with shipping commencing on the 7th.