Typical Apple Innovation… - Scary Fast Event 2023
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2024-05-04
·
1,893 words · ~9 min read
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Mesh shaders, ray tracing, and space black finish?
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No, believe it or not, you didn't just travel back to 2019.
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You watched Apple's scary fast event announcing, among other things, their latest M3 chip lineup.
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But, while some of what they talked about felt a little...
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yesterday's news, but magical this time, typical Apple,
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the rest of it was full of some pretty big dunks on the rest of the computer industry,
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which is also becoming kinda typical Apple.
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I mean, here, think about all the variety in the world of PC laptops.
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Apple's, by contrast, are downright boring.
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They don't even have touchscreens, for crying out loud.
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And yet, they deliver time and again on what matters,
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so effectively that I can't even blame folks for flocking to them.
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Say it with me, PC industry, nothing else matters until you get these things right.
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Power efficiency, performance,
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and portability.
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Come to think of it, now that they've got a new process node, the number three is everywhere here.
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Three nanometer on the M3 chip with three main M3 SKUs.
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The announcement video is 30 minutes 31 seconds long, held on October the 30th in 2023.
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What is next? Are they gonna make me write three segues to today's sponsor?
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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.
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I mean, why would you make a new one that isn't better?
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But after all those years of Intel missing their tick-tock development cycle and rehashing the same 14 nanometer chips,
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it kind of makes sense that Apple feels the need to rub some salt in their teeth.
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Or rub some salt in their exes' wounds and clarify that, yes, generational improvements are actually a thing.
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Let's start with the GPU.
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They're claiming that their new three nanometer hotness is the biggest leap forward in graphics architecture ever for Apple Silicon.
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And considering what they had before, they're probably right.
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Hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shaders, while nothing new to PC gamers, are
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certainly going to be a key part of their path toward making games look incredible on the Mac.
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Alan Wake 2, for example, just came out to rave reviews over their implementations of these key technologies.
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But while the game looks amazing, older 10 series NVIDIA cards struggle with it due to Alan Wake 2's
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requirement for mesh shaders having dropped support for vertex shaders altogether.
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So, while Apple's announcements might not sound impressive if you've been hearing these words for almost half a decade,
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in typical Apple fashion, they're showing up to the party just in time for their implementation to
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actually be useful.
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Kind of smart, really.
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But they've also got some outright new stuff, like dynamic caching.
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In a nutshell, mSilicon Macs use unified memory that is shared between the CPU and the GPU, and
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normally, some portion of that memory would be reserved for the GPU by looking at the
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maximum amount it could possibly need for the most intense parts of a game or a video editing workload, and then
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holding that all the time.
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But now,
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M3 can dynamically determine exactly
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UND EXACTLY
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how much memory it actually needs in any given moment and allocate that to the GPU.
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It's on all three of the new chips,
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there's that number again, and it supposedly
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dramatically increases the average utilization of the GPU.
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We're gonna have to wait and test it for ourselves, of course,
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but if it's done well, this is a major benefit of a tightly integrated system.
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Though you'll be paying a major premium for it, especially if you shell out
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for the 40-core GPU version of the M3 Macs rather than the 30-core base one.
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Cutting-edge costs though, and if they're vague and nebulous slides are to be believed,
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M3's performance per watt is about to put even more pressure on the likes of Intel, who recently resorted to rehashing old CPUs
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again with their 14th gen desktop processors.
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14 is really not Intel's number, hey?
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Speaking of Intel and CPUs, this whole event had major jilted ex-lover vibes.
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Am I right? Like, how many times did they mention Team Blue?
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Intel, Intel, Intel, Intel, but be that as it may, the CPUs on these new chips look very, uh,
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so long, see you later, don't need you, impressive.
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First, not only are the P-cores and the E-cores 30 and 50% faster than the M1 respectively,
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but they've improved the branch prediction on both and
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strategically juiced up core counts, so the regular M3 in the now entry-level
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14-inch MacBook, buh-bye 13-inch model, is an 8-core CPU with a 10-core GPU and support for up to
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24 gigs of unified memory. The M3 Pro sports 12 CPU cores,
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18 cores for graphics, and up to 36 gigs of unified memory.
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That is a pretty good amount of memory for a laptop, and it's not even close to the Max,
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the M3 Max that is, that offers up to a whopping 16 CPU cores, up to 40 GPU cores,
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and up to 128 gigabytes of unified memory, a feature that previously was only seen on desktop Macs.
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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.
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See, this generation, it's not a problem yet, because only the Max SKU deviated from their previous
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one-to-one ratio of performance to efficiency cores, and it did so in a positive way, with a three
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three-to-one ratio of performance to efficiency cores, and it did so in a positive way, with a three
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three-to-one ratio of performance to efficiency cores, and it did so in a positive way, with a three
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three-to-one split.
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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
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the other way in the future.
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But that's for future Linus to complain about. For now, the M3 lineup has more going for it than just a new chip.
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Apple continues to lead the way on laptop displays, with their Liquid Retina XDR display peaking at up to
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sixteen hundred nits in HDR, and six hundred nits in SDR, all while running at
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120 hertz. That is astonishing for a machine that runs on battery. And speaking of, they couldn't
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resist taking some shots at Intel over their crummy battery life, boasting that an M3 machine
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will give Intel Mac owners up to an additional 11 hours of battery life alongside the up to 11x
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performance uplift. An uplift that is consistent whether you're plugged into the wall or running
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on the aforementioned battery. That's really cool because now if you feel the need to step outside
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for some fresh air or just to change the scenery, you don't have to worry about a worse digital
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experience because of it. Just unplug, pop your M3 MacBook into an LTT backpack, which has lots
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of space for even the 16-inch in there, and an air tag in the hidden pocket, and walk away.
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LTTstore.com. But hey, maybe you like having a stationary computer. Where's the love for you?
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Well, the good news is the new iMovie.
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iMac, which comes with a 4.5K display now, is getting the regular M3 chip. The bad news is
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that's all the love you get. Apple, where the heck are the Pro and Max models, guys?
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Oh wait, I get it. They probably could have done that, but launching three dyes across three
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chassis, that seems like it was the right number today. But more will almost certainly follow if
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Apple's to keep hold of their efficiency crown. The just-announced Snapdragon X,
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Elite looks poised to make the competition a lot more interesting, and Microsoft's decade-plus
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long slog to make Windows on ARM a reality feels like it's finally on the cusp of bearing fruit.
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Of course, most of the comparisons I saw Qualcomm making were to M2, and you can't actually buy any
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of that stuff today. So if you're looking for something to compete with a MacBook,
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you'll have to check the links below where we'll have, um, MacBooks.
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Don't expect them to be cheap. The 14-inch M3 MacBook is $400 less than the old 14-inch MacBook,
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so that's cool, but it's also $300 more expensive than the previous entry-level model
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now that the 13 option doesn't exist anymore, and you'll be paying that price for just 8GB
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of unified memory and a wimpy 512GB SSD. Once you start specking out the 16-inch versions with the
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M3 Pro and the M3 Max, well, it doesn't take long to start hitting $3, $4, or even $7,000,
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and that's nothing compared to what they've done with the iMac. Sure, it starts at $1,300,
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but that is with a 256GB SSD. By the time you put a terabyte of storage in it, you've spent
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$1,700 on a machine that just has the most basic M3 silicon in it. Man, do these guys ever charge
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Thanks for watching. If you guys like this video, make sure to check out our iPhone 15
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coverage from earlier this year. That A15 Pro chip is something else.