MacBook Pro and iMac get major upgrade with M3 chip technology

Rumors of the Apple Event at the end of the month had been wild if it was happening or not. But at the end of the month, we’re glad Apple hadn’t decided to ghost us, as we’ve got a couple of pretty nice treats.

The finest treat we got, of course, is the announcement of the M3 series. It’s also 3nm, as expected from Apple, as they announced the new A17 Pro chips a few months ago. The M3 comes in three variants, which are the M3, M3 Pro, and the M3 Pro.

The M3 chips, of course, have been given a significant performance boost, including gaming, which falls in line with their current move toward games. It should be noted for the best experience of games, it requires some serious hardware, and with a highlight of gaming in the M3 chip, Apple is boasting how good their hardware is.

Apple said the M3 is 65% faster in graphic performance than the M1. They did not mention the jump between M2 and M3. Maybe it’s not that big? Shouting 65% has a better ring to it, after all. Apple.

The M3 chips also include hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading, fancy terms for nicer and faster graphics.

The M3 chip will ship in the new MacBook Pro models and iMacs slated for this year.

Speaking of iMacs and MacBook Pros, Apple announced new versions of those too.

The new 24-inch iMac with M3 gets a 4.5K Retina Display, Wi-Fi 6E, and a 1080p webcam. It will have 24GB of unified memory and comes in a bunch of colors to choose from.

Also, they’re using lightning.

Now, the new MacBook Pros will come in 14 and 16-inch models and will offer the M3 Pro and M3 Max chips inside them. The laptops will have Mini LED screens, 1080p camera, 128GB RAM, six speakers, and 22 hours of battery life – which is, of course, the bare minimum of usage, so expect that 22-hour batt-life to be a little bit lower depending on how hard to use the new MacBook Pro, but from my experience with Macs, performance is stellar.

There is a third MacBook Pro that comes with a standard M3, and this one doesn’t have a Touch Bar. It also uses only 8GB of RAM, and there are only two colors available. Apple tells you not to buy this model and focus on the M3 Pro and M3 Max models. I’m inclined to agree. And if I were to get this version of a MacBook, I’d probably wait for the MacBook Air with M3 instead (which isn’t part of the announcement; I just thought of making that clear).