Apple’s M3 Rumored Performance Scores Beat 12-Core M2 Max In Single-Core Test, Up To 12% Faster Than M2 Pro In Multi-Core

[cjcox]

In corporate and education? Yes. And that replacement cycle is happening regardless of if we’re referring to PC or Mac.

My reference points may be minimal, but I have a friend that works in a "top ten" Southern California University and they deploy new hardware every three years. Technically they replace hardware every year, but it's rolling so that it doesn't all happen at once. And yes this means every employee that needs hardware, every classroom, every lab. Just as one example.

Last time I checked, they're still on Earth.

Hmmm.. must be nice to have that kind of (infinite?) budget. Most real companies have been considering if they can move up to 7 given the low percentage gains now year to year performance wise. Emphasis on "consider" though. Because it hasn't been practical for most... yet, ... but give it a few more years. You have to remember that OEMs generally "max" (affordability wise) on a 5 year warranty. That too affects the practicality. You may not need the "new" hardware, but the cost of extending warranty above 5 years forces the landfill preference. "We are green!", shouts Apple and others. My reply, "I don't think so."

 

[DukenukemX]

Computer sales in general have been in the tank for several months between the lousy world economy and the aftermath of the pandemic-era spike in purchases. Fewer people can afford new computers, and many those that can bought one in the past couple of years. Apple has just managed to suffer relatively little compared to other major vendors — it saw shipments drop 10 percent, but Dell lost 37 percent and Lenovo gave up almost 29 percent. Apple actually gained market share that quarter, and in 2022 as a whole.

That's not to say it's all sunshine and roses, but the rumored production shutdown may just reflect the one-two combo of a lousy PC market and gearing up for M3 in mid-year.

This article was about January and February of 2023, and not last quarter of 2022. Given that all PC shipments are declining, this might explain why we're seeing "leaked" M3 rumors. It seems Apple's M2 Pro and Max aren't doing it for their consumers.

That doesn't quite say what you think it does, they shut it down for Jan and Feb to start it back up in March because with sales down across the board they are running a tight ship, there is very little large consumer or corporate spending that happens from Jan-April, especially in the current market.

Where in that article did it say that?

https://fxtec.com/

Sold out. I wonder if they had limited production or people like me want a physical keyboard?

 

[Lakados]

I think you’d have to be crazy to do 1 year cycles. Most I see is generally 3 years. 5 years is also kind of a stretch, but doable if you’re buying top end machines and want to max the life out of them.

The Mac Pro as an example is on its 4th year. If people bought a $20k machine, they’ll definitely be able to squeeze their money out of it over 5 years if they’d like.

It depends on the hardware, 10-Years for switches, 7-Years for servers, 3-5 years for desktops and laptops depending on changes in usage or how well they hold up. Like MBPs and the higher-end Dells go the distance, but the cheaper devices 3 years in and the keyboards are falling apart and the cases are cracking from being hauled around.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Because of blind faith in all things Apple, people will jump all over this and act as if it was the second coming of christ as they often do when Apple releases something that has already been around for a while....

I'm expecting the opposite to occur. A lot of consumers are going to see the $3000 price tag of Apple's VR that isn't even designed for them and think it's "stupid" then complain about it for the next 5 years. I expect to see both you and Duke in that thread.

The first Apple VR is "not going to sell well". And Apple is very aware of this.

And Apple would also release the M3 when they want, they know full well when it will be ready and planned their M2 cycle around it, give people maybe a year or so and then throw something new for them to buy, and many will, just cause...

I don't think it's quite that. Apple is definitely interested in releasing hardware every year, but their expectation is that users will upgrade in rolling cycles like they do with cellphones. If they can get every user to use their financing and pay over 3 years and then get them to "want to " buy every 3 years then that's obviously a win for them. They clearly want to "consumeratize" buying computers. There might be enthusiasts and tech-tubers that buy every "bump", but the vast majority aren't going to buy a new laptop every year just like they aren't going to buy a new cellphone every year.

The upside of this is that Apple has notoriously had a release and launch schedule that was entirely unpredictable, in which you never knew if an upgrade was coming until it was <2 weeks out. And this had mostly to do with the supply chain being as long as it is, and quite frankly Intel not launching product regularly that actually was any form of upgrade. Now with a new computer dropping every year like clockwork users can feel more "safe" about launch dates.

People that are aware of this can of course use their brains and decided to upgrade or not when they want to and ignore Apple's methods of trying to extract more money.

However, in fairness to Apple, selling a new computer every year is basically what Dell and HP are doing now. Heck, the reason why companies such as AMD and nVidia rebrand low end video cards as a "new model" is specifically so that OEMs can sell a "new computer" with "upgrades" every year. I don't think Apple is particularly unique in this regard - other than perhaps the fact that every year there will be an actual "upgrade" even if it's just a 10% bump.

MSP's and the OEM's push it like the world is going to end... I have seen clients pallet 100's of thousands worth of 3 year old server to the recyclers "just cause" (and no, they couldnt give it to me due to company policy blah blah blah" Heck, i didnt want the drives, just give me everything else!

I had the exact same experience with my friend. I even offered to buy some of their hardware, but they can't even do that because then it would be showing "preferential treatment" (policy). Basically it all either gets mass auctioned or recycled.

Hmmm.. must be nice to have that kind of (infinite?) budget. Most real companies have been considering if they can move up to 7 given the low percentage gains now year to year performance wise.

I'd love to see your data points on this. If you're referring to small businesses? Maybe. But anything remotely working inside the tech sector or Fortune 500 updates far more often than that. Usually it's 3-5 years. 3 years maybe the "shorter" side, but I wouldn't say it's "abnormal" either.

Emphasis on "consider" though. Because it hasn't been practical for most... yet, ... but give it a few more years. You have to remember that OEMs generally "max" (affordability wise) on a 5 year warranty. That too affects the practicality. You may not need the "new" hardware, but the cost of extending warranty above 5 years forces the landfill preference.

Basically this. But in fairness to Dell/HP et al, it doesn't make financial sense to warranty devices past 5 years for them either. All that would mean is essentially losing money for no reason. Hence the very steep extended warranty price.

"We are green!", shouts Apple and others. My reply, "I don't think so."

With Apple in particular they recycle everything and their process is very thorough.
They're obviously proud of this and definitely use it as a method to get people to buy their products, but that also means they can't be dishonest about what they're doing either:
https://www.apple.com/environment/
You can download and read a .pdf with an environmental report about every product they make. And also see precisely how much of every product can be and is recyclable in every product and exactly what happens when you turn in a product to Apple to be recycled.

I highly doubt you're actually interested in going through their material though. But if you're going to make blanket statements to the contrary, it would be good to know what you're talking about. I'd love to see competitors like HP/Dell have this level of recycling programs. But it has not and likely will not be a priority for them.

 

[Lakados]

This article was about January and February of 2023, and not last quarter of 2022. Given that all PC shipments are declining, this might explain why we're seeing "leaked" M3 rumors. It seems Apple's M2 Pro and Max aren't doing it for their consumers.


Where in that article did it say that?

Sold out. I wonder if they had limited production or people like me want a physical keyboard?

That's half the point that article was crap and they cherrypicked which parts of the story they told, Apple suspended all M2 production in Jan and Feb then brought it back online in March at a smaller capacity than they had been previously, but given the previous numbers were for the launch and the Christmas spending season you need that for a demanded product. Jan-March is known as a dry season for consumer and corporate spending, it picks back up again after Easter, so resuming production in March to feed that demand makes sense. The M2 is selling fine when compared to any other device sales, but of course, they are down too, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Acer are seeing their lowest consumer purchasing in 30 years, and Intel and AMD are both seeing large dips in sales proportionately (though this hurts Intel far more). People panic purchased for 2 years, and people who never needed a new device or home PC bought one because reasons, now the reasons are gone, half the planet has hardware they just purchased and no real need to upgrade, the panic buying during the COVID years will take a full hardware cycle to clear up so 2025 is the earliest that consumer purchasing of hardware is expected to normalize.

Even after it normalizes the whole industry is trying to figure out what it will look like, but Apple cutting back on M2 production is a sign that they too are being hit by reduced hardware purchasing. What should be noted though is revenue through the App Store has increased proportionately to the devices sold most of which were mid-range iPads, which really with the decent KB options that exist for them are surprisingly capable far more so than any Chromebook for sure.

I am personally looking at phasing out our purchasing of ChromeOS devices for iOS ones, ChromeOS for the cost isn't panning out anymore, the hardware is too limited and then requires a support backend of VMWare Horizon or Citrix so you can do any degree of work beyond the basic word processing and web browsing, the iPads can do that natively the new versions of Adobe there are really quite capable and Apple Manager now integrates with Azure for SAML based SSO so that should make deploying things easier.

The reason M3 is making the rounds is less of an Apple sales are slipping thing but because lots in the industry are closely watching the Apple Silicon and seeing where they go with it, Apple knows a lot more about the ARM/Qualcomm squabble than anybody else, and they are the first company to really put up a fight against x86 in a long ass time for the consumer market so that in itself is interesting. Intel got lazy and AMD caught up, AMD and Intel are fighting it out but their fight is dull because really that whole thing comes down to who can get access to the latest ASML equipment first and Intel bought the supply of hardware from them for the next 3 years so they won by throwing money at it and they will have their ASML 2nm equipment up and online before TSMC can even start taking delivery of their ASML 2nm equipment. So that leaves Apple with their silicon standing tall doing something that is different, how it works long term is somewhat irrelevant but they are doing something teams Red and Blue aren't so it generates news for the pure fact they are standing out.

More interesting in this is it buried the fact that AMD has pushed back and delayed the 7040 silicon.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Sold out. I wonder if they had limited production or people like me want a physical keyboard?

Very few.
(EDIT: Hardforum keeps breaking the link, it's not media, but it keeps thinking it is, so I can't direct link you to the News section. EDIT2: Fixed it by adding the link to other text. Really annoying forum auto behavior).

New update from Mar 21, 2023:

• We have shipped a total of 623 units to date.
• A total of 1332 devices are remaining to be shipped.

So, <2000 people want such a device. It's not even worth considering for any mass market cell phone provider to bother manufacturing. Their development pipeline also took >3 years. This will at most remain a cottage industry.

There were a few companies that manufactured add-on attachments for phones, which is inarguably the most cost effective way to get a keyboard on a cellphone. My brother had an iPhone 5S with a slideout keyboard way back when. But at this point I'm pretty sure all of those companies have also gone out of business because even selling keyboards as an accessory doesn't generate enough movement to bother manufacturing one (just did some quick searching, the last time I could find a keyboard case for an iPhone was the iPhone 6. It's been half a decade at least).

My understanding of the tablet space is that it's just barely large enough to sustain making keyboards for. All the originals are now dead though too like ClamCase.

As much as you don't want to accept this: the general public doesn't want physical keyboards on their phones.

 

[cjcox]

With Apple in particular they recycle everything and their process is very thorough.

Whoa, no. They recycle everything they can control or get sent to them (well, as much as is feasible, because it's not perfect). But if this is the definition of "green", I suppose you are correct.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Whoa, no. They recycle everything they can control or get sent to them (well, as much as is feasible, because it's not perfect). But if this is the definition of "green", I suppose you are correct.

You can only control what you do, not what other people do. If you want to take your PC and bury it in the ground and have it leech toxins there is nothing anyone can do about it, short of the government finding you and arresting you for illegal dumping (which is very unlikely).

But similarly it has to also be acknowledged that 1.) Apple vs other companies, Apple is doing much better. And 2) The users are the ones ultimately responsible for their own upgrade cycles. Apple can entice users with spec bumps, good financing, etc, but the end users are ultimately the ones that make that exchange.

 

[cjcox]

1.) Apple vs other companies, Apple is doing much better.

You cannot prove this. Of course, I can't prove it isn't true either. Be careful about trusting "the biased singular source" as being true. Again, though, you could be right, but you could also be wrong. Is there any 3rd party evidence to support the claim that only Apple is doing this (to the level you believe to be true)?

Do you work for Apple? I'd back your employment there.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

You cannot prove this. Of course, I can't prove it isn't true either. Be careful about trusting "the biased singular source" as being true. Again, though, you could be right, but you could also be wrong. Is there any 3rd party evidence to support the claim that only Apple is doing this (to the level you believe to be true)?

Apple is a mega corp with every set of eyes on them. It would be pretty easy to prove. Just find the shed with the the quite literally 100s of millions of phones made every year as well as laptops, ipads, and the rest. Just as a practical: that would be pretty hard to do. Especially considering that not-recycling means that Apple simply has to buy more materials than if they do recycle.

But I do find it odd that everyone is looking for a conspiracy. Do you work for the newspaper? I'd back your employment there.

Do you work for Apple? I'd back your employment there.

No. There was a time that I was trying to work in the ad agency that Apple contracts to, it was a long shot. Didn't even get close.

 

[cjcox]

Apple is a mega corp with every set of eyes on them. It would be pretty easy to prove. Just find the shed with the the quite literally 100s of millions of phones made every year as well as laptops, ipads, and the rest. Just as a practical: that would be pretty hard to do. Especially considering that not-recycling means that Apple simply has to buy more materials than if they do recycle.

But I do find it odd that everyone is looking for a conspiracy. Do you work for the newspaper? I'd back your employment there.

No. There was a time that I was trying to work in the ad agency that Apple contracts to, it was a long shot. Didn't even get close.

Perhaps greener than I thought?

 

[Aurelius]

This article was about January and February of 2023, and not last quarter of 2022. Given that all PC shipments are declining, this might explain why we're seeing "leaked" M3 rumors. It seems Apple's M2 Pro and Max aren't doing it for their consumers.

We're seeing M3 leaks because Apple chip details tend to leak months in advance. I wouldn't read more into it than that.

And I don't think it takes a genius to see that poor PC shipments from late 2022 were likely to continue into the start of 2023. The economy didn't suddenly bounce back; and while the MacBook Pro and Mac mini updates are important, they're not as important as something like the MacBook Air (which is arguably Apple's main volume seller). We should see estimates for PC shipments soon from the usual analyst groups, and I'd like to look at those before claiming that Apple is performing poorly.

 

[noko]

I've found some of the VR chat amusing. I would think for awhile Apple was panicking (I was going to say something their pants but that would be too crude). With the billions spent by Meta, the success or limited success of the Quest 2 and all the potential for Apple to make money by renting out virtual property, homes and decorations, artist holes with musicians. It would be too much to pass by.

Anyways unless Apple innovates like with the iPod, iPad, iPhone, their reign will start to crumble. Vr seems like where they could make a huge dent with very big dividents.

 

[Aurelius]

I've found some of the VR chat amusing. I would think for awhile Apple was panicking (I was going to say something their pants but that would be too crude). With the billions spent by Meta, the success or limited success of the Quest 2 and all the potential for Apple to make money by renting out virtual property, homes and decorations, artist holes with musicians. It would be too much to pass by.

Anyways unless Apple innovates like with the iPod, iPad, iPhone, their reign will start to crumble. Vr seems like where they could make a huge dent with very big dividents.

Apple reportedly doesn't want to create a metaverse. It wants to focus more on content creation, fitness, media and other tasks that can benefit from AR and VR. The Quest 2 is a hit, but mainly for people who want to play Beat Saber or work out in Supernatural; metaverse platforms like Horizon Worlds haven't done very well. Remember, Apple is a hardware company that uses software to help sell devices; Meta is an online platform company that uses hardware to get you buying virtual items and watching ads.

I do agree that Apple needs to hit it out of the proverbial park if its headset tech is going to succeed. It needs to solve challenges with interaction and make compelling experiences. I don't think the initial headset will do that (it's likely aimed at developers and pros with a $3,000 price tag), but it's going to lay the groundwork for a more accessible model in a couple of years.

 

[Nasty_Savage]

In corporate and education? Yes. And that replacement cycle is happening regardless of if we’re referring to PC or Mac.

My reference points may be minimal, but I have a friend that works in a "top ten" Southern California University and they deploy new hardware every three years. Technically they replace hardware every year, but it's rolling so that it doesn't all happen at once. And yes this means every employee that needs hardware, every classroom, every lab. Just as one example.

Last time I checked, they're still on Earth.

Corporate maybe, not education. Can expect a 5 year minimum for Ed. It probably should be three, but budgets don’t generally coincide with three years. Lots are settling for chromebooks due to expense nowadays

 

[sc5mu93]

With Apple in particular they recycle everything and their process is very thorough.
They're obviously proud of this and definitely use it as a method to get people to buy their products, but that also means they can't be dishonest about what they're doing either:
https://www.apple.com/environment/
You can download and read a .pdf with an environmental report about every product they make. And also see precisely how much of every product can be and is recyclable in every product and exactly what happens when you turn in a product to Apple to be recycled.

I highly doubt you're actually interested in going through their material though. But if you're going to make blanket statements to the contrary, it would be good to know what you're talking about. I'd love to see competitors like HP/Dell have this level of recycling programs. But it has not and likely will not be a priority for them.

if you're interested, HP does have recycling programs and also released sustainability impact statements for download.
https://www.hp.com/us-en/hp-information/sustainable-impact.html

I'm betting Dell has one as well.

 

[Lakados]

Corporate maybe, not education. Can expect a 5 year minimum for Ed. It probably should be three, but budgets don’t generally coincide with three years. Lots are settling for chromebooks due to expense nowadays

We’re trying to get away from them but it’s freaking hard when you’ve got thousands of them. We’re finding the new iPad’s to be the better investment but changing platforms is difficult.

 

[Lakados]

Apple reportedly doesn't want to create a metaverse. It wants to focus more on content creation, fitness, media and other tasks that can benefit from AR and VR. The Quest 2 is a hit, but mainly for people who want to play Beat Saber or work out in Supernatural; metaverse platforms like Horizon Worlds haven't done very well. Remember, Apple is a hardware company that uses software to help sell devices; Meta is an online platform company that uses hardware to get you buying virtual items and watching ads.

I do agree that Apple needs to hit it out of the proverbial park if its headset tech is going to succeed. It needs to solve challenges with interaction and make compelling experiences. I don't think the initial headset will do that (it's likely aimed at developers and pros with a $3,000 price tag), but it's going to lay the groundwork for a more accessible model in a couple of years.

I would like a good VR platform for artists, blender and the likes in VR is good but you need the high resolution options there. Apple gets some insane deals on their screens because of volume so I am hopeful but prepared to be very disappointed.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

Corporate maybe, not education. Can expect a 5 year minimum for Ed. It probably should be three, but budgets don’t generally coincide with three years. Lots are settling for chromebooks due to expense nowadays

The better schools, even elementary, are all on Macs with a fast hardware refresh rate. Windows and Chrome are for poors. This is even reflected at the malls in areas where the better malls have an apple store, the discount stores have Windows and Chrome. Even at the top firms I've worked at anybody who counts gets a Mac, if you have a Windows computer people know you are a nobody.

While I personally find it all silly, there is no denying that apple is for people who made it in life now. The competition is for people who failed.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Corporate maybe, not education. Can expect a 5 year minimum for Ed. It probably should be three, but budgets don’t generally coincide with three years. Lots are settling for chromebooks due to expense nowadays

My reference point that you literally quoted from is from someone that works in education. So, I guess he’s wrong? He isn’t replacing hardware every 3 years?

if you're interested, HP does have recycling programs and also released sustainability impact statements for download.
https://www.hp.com/us-en/hp-information/sustainable-impact.html

I'm betting Dell has one as well.

Nice. Going through their executive summary their targets in general are much lower than Apple. But, at least they are doing something.

Shall we bother to ask if “we know for sure” if they are actually doing these things or not cjcox ?

 

[KamikazePlatypus]

That is about the gains from TSMC N4 to N3.

Stagnation is about right, AMD and Apple are both hitting walls with TSMC, both have had an advantage for the past few years because TSMC was so far ahead of Intel and Samsung, but TSMC’s growth has slowed and the Apple and AMD gains have slowed proportionally.

Specialization and the further advancement of specific accelerators are the path forward, be it AVX-512, AV1, Tensor, or what ever fancy name comes up next. The next “BIG” shrink comes around 2nm, so that will net everybody another 10-15% but we are well ahead into the area of diminishing returns and the actual architecture doesn’t have much room left to grow.

Moore’s Law is almost* dead!

 

[noko]

The better schools, even elementary, are all on Macs with a fast hardware refresh rate. Windows and Chrome are for poors. This is even reflected at the malls in areas where the better malls have an apple store, the discount stores have Windows and Chrome. Even at the top firms I've worked at anybody who counts gets a Mac, if you have a Windows computer people know you are a nobody.

While I personally find it all silly, there is no denying that apple is for people who made it in life now. The competition is for people who failed.

lol, making it in life has nothing to do with Apple. If Apple has a good solution or tool for one than use it. Those that put a BMW in their front yard just so that their neighbors think they are something are usually the losers more worried about some perceived status. Some of us, me included, if very rich would have a beat up old car, better yet some sort of useful car in the front yard. Apple with their M series of products, in the end, are actually pretty good and that is all that counts. Name means nothing without something to back it up.

 

[DukenukemX]

The reason M3 is making the rounds is less of an Apple sales are slipping thing but because lots in the industry are closely watching the Apple Silicon and seeing where they go with it,

Considering the M2 Pro and Max were just released, I think the release of the M3 is odd, especially when the M3 matches or beats the M2 Pro.

Apple knows a lot more about the ARM/Qualcomm squabble than anybody else, and they are the first company to really put up a fight against x86 in a long ass time for the consumer market so that in itself is interesting.

Technically Apple tried this back when they used PowerPC, and you can see how well that ended.

Intel got lazy and AMD caught up, AMD and Intel are fighting it out but their fight is dull because really that whole thing comes down to who can get access to the latest ASML equipment first and Intel bought the supply of hardware from them for the next 3 years so they won by throwing money at it and they will have their ASML 2nm equipment up and online before TSMC can even start taking delivery of their ASML 2nm equipment.

This is how Intel always had the edge, until they got lazy and were stuck on 14nm what seemed like forever. The whole situation with AMD and Intel goes back to the Bulldozer disaster, as that left AMD stuck with a CPU architecture they had to stick with for several years, and somehow got worse as time went on. This left Intel with no competitor and of course no reason to improve for a very long time. This allowed Apple to leave Intel and go alone because Apple has been making ARM chips for their mobile products for a while. At the same time, Apple has no direct competitor, so it'll be interesting to see how this evolves over time. Apple's ARM could end up like Intel.

So that leaves Apple with their silicon standing tall doing something that is different, how it works long term is somewhat irrelevant but they are doing something teams Red and Blue aren't so it generates news for the pure fact they are standing out.

I hardly see anyone review Apple computers. There are a lot of Macbook reviews, but not from a big reputable source. Kinda of a holiday to see Linus Tech Tips or Hardware Unboxed review an Apple computer.

More interesting in this is it buried the fact that AMD has pushed back and delayed the 7040 silicon.

I think it's because of Apple's M2 pro and Max release. Even Toms Hardware claims the 7040 seems to compete with Apple's M1's and M2's which makes sense since AMD has removed PCIe 5.0 and lowered clock speeds, which is probably done to increase battery life. It isn't about performance anymore, but battery life. If AMD can even get close to the M2 Pro's battery life, that's a big win for AMD and a big loss for Apple. Hence why I think Apple is quick to push out the M3 and these "leaks".

 

[cjcox]

Shall we bother to ask if “we know for sure” if they are actually doing these things or not cjcox ?

Turning on my full fanbois, since Apple has delivered 50,000,000 more units than anyone on the planet in the past hour, they must have the larger carbon footprint.

 

[Lakados]

Considering the M2 Pro and Max were just released, I think the release of the M3 is odd, especially when the M3 matches or beats the M2 Pro.

Technically Apple tried this back when they used PowerPC, and you can see how well that ended.

This is how Intel always had the edge, until they got lazy and were stuck on 14nm what seemed like forever. The whole situation with AMD and Intel goes back to the Bulldozer disaster, as that left AMD stuck with a CPU architecture they had to stick with for several years, and somehow got worse as time went on. This left Intel with no competitor and of course no reason to improve for a very long time. This allowed Apple to leave Intel and go alone because Apple has been making ARM chips for their mobile products for a while. At the same time, Apple has no direct competitor, so it'll be interesting to see how this evolves over time. Apple's ARM could end up like Intel.

I hardly see anyone review Apple computers. There are a lot of Macbook reviews, but not from a big reputable source. Kinda of a holiday to see Linus Tech Tips or Hardware Unboxed review an Apple computer.

I think it's because of Apple's M2 pro and Max release. Even Toms Hardware claims the 7040 seems to compete with Apple's M1's and M2's which makes sense since AMD has removed PCIe 5.0 and lowered clock speeds, which is probably done to increase battery life. It isn't about performance anymore, but battery life. If AMD can even get close to the M2 Pro's battery life, that's a big win for AMD and a big loss for Apple. Hence why I think Apple is quick to push out the M3 and these "leaks".

Not really, there was only an 8-month gap between the release of the M1 Ultra and the M2, Apple runs a double release window one focusing on consumer launches right before the Christmas purchasing season and a second coming into the professional Q4 budgets so they can wrap up any existing budgets on new hardware purchases and tap into next years Q1 for overages, so that is an April announcement window for June/July procurement.

If anything about the architecture we can see that Apple was right, ARM or x86 aside, both Intel and AMD are starting to add specialized silicon to their upcoming releases, AMD and Intel both are talking about the end of heterogeneous computing, Intel, TSMC, and Samsung have reached a tipping point the costs associated with increased density have outpaced the increase in transistors. TSMC N3E for example delivers 1.3x the density of N5 but at 1.5x the cost, N3B is supposedly worse and will only be there for entities who must get the most from the silicon price be damned. Apple moved from PowerPC because IBM didn't have a roadmap that had a product with the power/performance/temperature curve they needed to meet their market. When Apple moved to their own silicon, neither Intel nor AMD had any products in their roadmap that did either, and here we are almost 3 years later and they are now both only hinting at releases that may finally meet Apple's offerings there. But that is a tangent, I can tell you right now from a development standpoint for servers and workstations we are changing what we are doing, throwing more CPU or more GPU at the problem is no longer an option, and the power/performance curve is not keeping up.

Specialized silicon is the way forward and in the upcoming years we are going to see a rapid increase in software defining the hardware and not the other way around as it has been for the last 40 years, Apple got in front of this with Apple Silicon, Neural Engine, and MacOS, but Microsoft, Intel, and AMD are now playing catchup and they have started to do the same.
AMD's launch of the MA35D this morning is the perfect example of this, GPUs can no longer meet the needed power/performance curves for streaming so they have been working to replace the encoder cards used by Amazon, Disney, Netflix, etc with the new card which uses customized dedicated silicon to deliver something like 3x the performance/watt of the previous GPU based parts.

Intel's first generation of their custom accelerators is going to be in Sapphire Rapids for their "Hardware Accelerator Blocks", AMD debuts theirs in the 7040 with the "AI Engine", all of those are just their versions of Apple's Neural Engine. Microsoft and Linux teams are already working on integrating those custom accelerators into the OS at low levels to improve power/performance metrics. Neural Engine's custom accelerators are what give Apple Silicon its advantage and once Intel and AMD implement theirs of course the playing field will level out, nobody stays in the front forever, and really we don't want them to. Apple may change back, they may create a custom ISA so they are completely unique, they may just go RISC-V or who knows Maybe RISC-VI if enough time passes. It really doesn't matter, the transition from x86 to ARM was basically seamless, the software didn't change, and most developers already had their ARM native versions ready for launch day with a few others being a week or so behind. Legacy software doesn't run any differently because the Rosetta translation layer was good enough on launch day to cover it with no noticeable workflow changes. Yeah I know a few places will go but look how badly this game runs, and yeah lots of games ran and still run like shit but nobody buys a Mac to game, it would be like me bitching about how shitty COD runs on my T640, and trust me I bitch about that box a lot but it's lack of gaming performance is not even in the running.

The thing you have to understand with Apple is you don't buy an Apple for the hardware, you buy it for the software that runs on it, Apple's are tools, digital air nailers, you use them for a job until they aren't suitable for that job anymore then you replace them. It makes them hard and boring as hell to review because any review you do for them needs to be targeted at the market they cater to, which is small. The general public does not care about Blender render times, Adobe Premiere workflows, or how many audio samples you can import into a project in real-time before it stutters, or any Divinci Resolve blah blah blah, it is dry content and does not generate youtube clicks and the people who would be looking for it already know where to get that information from. So Apple reviews get broken down to look at how pretty the screen is, OMG Battery life, WTF $$$, because for the few average consumers who will wander that way that is what they want to see, but you won't see a lot of time or effort put into those reviews because the audience is too small to justify the effort.

 

[SomeGiantIdiot]

Apple can always pump more wattage into the chips like intel if theres no more room to add more magic trinkets. Imagine selling a plug-in portable AIO cooler for the M(x) mac power users. Ez moneys.

 

[Lakados]

Apple can always pump more wattage into the chips like intel if theres no more room to add more magic trinkets. Imagine selling a plug-in portable AIO cooler for the M(x) mac power users. Ez moneys.

I’m not so sure, TSMC seems to be running into issues there. The smaller you get the tighter the tolerance, electrical resistance is a big issue here and we’re quickly reaching a point where even minor increases result in traces just vaporizing.

But I’m sure TSMC has an AMD/Apple/NVidia think tank on it maybe a cross deal with Lennox for furnaces?

 

[SomeGiantIdiot]

I’m not so sure, TSMC seems to be running into issues there. The smaller you get the tighter the tolerance, electrical resistance is a big issue here and we’re quickly reaching a point where even minor increases result in traces just vaporizing.

But I’m sure TSMC has an AMD/Apple/NVidia think tank on it maybe a cross deal with Lennox for furnaces?

I've seen people stick/connect thermal pads from tiny macbook air heatsink to the aluminum bottom shell for more passive cooling. Claims that the internal temps go down by upto 5C. Cooler add-on is a untapped market atleast for apple.

 

[DukenukemX]

More support for my idea that Apple's leaked M3 "rumors" aren't really leaked. Apple lost more sales than anyone else, so me thinks Apple's solution is to release the M3 faster.

Apple’s Mac shipments fall more than 40%, worse than major rivals
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/10/app...an-40percent-worse-than-major-rivals-idc.html

 

[Aurelius]

More support for my idea that Apple's leaked M3 "rumors" aren't really leaked. Apple lost more sales than anyone else, so me thinks Apple's solution is to release the M3 faster.

Apple’s Mac shipments fall more than 40%, worse than major rivals
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/10/app...an-40percent-worse-than-major-rivals-idc.html

This doesn't add any support, you know that, right? There were M2 leaks months before that arrived, and Apple's sales were great compared to the competition at the time. I'd add that many people were already expecting M3-based Macs around WWDC in June; that's not really early. The MacBook Air M2 was unveiled at WWDC last year, so it's about due for a refresh.

Besides, the leaks so far are mainly being snapped up by... a fraction of Bloomberg readers, and some tech enthusiast sites. Those aren't large-enough audiences to significantly move the needle on sales. And while the Osborne Effect is overstated, Apple doesn't really want to tell customers to hold off when it's trying to boost sales in the immediate quarter, does it?

The boring reality is that Apple targets the premium market, and the premium market is more susceptible to economic downturns. Apple also had an unusual cycle where there was a huge surge in 2020/2021 prompted by the M1 and the pandemic, and propped up by the M2 MacBook Air in mid-2022. The 40% drop is still worrisome, but it's also coming on the back of an epic run. I'd be more worried if sales are still in the pits as of Q3 (when the M3 is likely to have a full quarter of sales under its belt).

 

[Algrim]

People who have M1-based Macs really had no reason to upgrade. I have a non-Mx iPad Pro and I’m not upgrading it until the M3 is released. Same with wanting to buy an Mx-based Mac for my personal use; I’m holding out until the M3.

 

[Lakados]

More support for my idea that Apple's leaked M3 "rumors" aren't really leaked. Apple lost more sales than anyone else, so me thinks Apple's solution is to release the M3 faster.

Apple’s Mac shipments fall more than 40%, worse than major rivals
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/10/app...an-40percent-worse-than-major-rivals-idc.html

From 2020-2022 they saw more than a 60% increase in system sales, their falling 40% still puts them ahead of where they were pre covid. I mean the articles back in 2021 were about how Apple was selling more machines than all their rivals, it makes sense that they would have the furthest to fall.
Apple, PC, Mobile, not many people buying much right now, they either replaced it during lockdown so it is still basically new, or they are broke, or afraid they will soon be broke so spending money on extras is a luxury not many are partaking in.