With just the weekend to go before Apple’s Scary Fast event, Mark Gurman has provided a final (?) roundup of everything he expects to be announced.
The headline news, of course, is expected to be new MacBook Pro models with M3 Pro and M3 Max chips, as Apple continues to push ahead of competitors still trying to catch up with the capabilities of the M2 line-up …
MacBook Pro
The Bloomberg report says that we’ll see two new MacBook Pro models, code-named J514 and J516, and it doesn’t take a genius to decode these into 14-inch and 16-inch models.
Gurman says these will “probably” include M3 Pro and M3 Max chips, which seems an unnecessarily cautious phrasing!
In terms of the performance we can expect from the new chips, the report says that Apple has been testing different versions of both the M3 Pro and M3 Max. For the former:
One baseline version in the works has 12 main processor cores, made up of six high-performance blocks and six high-efficiency cores. Generally speaking, the more cores you have, the more powerful the chip. The product also has 18 cores for processing graphics […]
Another M3 Pro chip seen in testing by developers has 14 main processing cores, including 10 for high performance and four for efficiency, and 30 graphics cores.
For the M3 Max, Gurman reports only the top-end version tested:
There are multiple versions of the M3 Max in testing, including a top-end version with 16 main processing cores — 12 for high performance and four for efficiency — and 40 graphics cores.
New memory options tested include 24GB and 48GB configurations.
Finally, the report says that the new chips will offer improved gaming performance along the lines of the iPhone 15 Pro’s A17 Pro chip – a clear reference to hardware ray-tracing.
iMac
A new iMac has been a long time coming, and Gurman expects Apple to skip an M2 model and jump straight from the M1 to a pair of new M3 models.
The external design is expected to remain mostly unchanged, but he’s expected a “revamped” stand, and says that although the color options will be similar to the M1 model, we may see a few changes.
The M3 chip tested is said to have four high-efficiency cores, four efficiency ones, and 10 graphics cores.
USB-C accessories
We said earlier this week that leaked colored USB-C cables originally rumored to be for the iPhone 15 are almost certainly instead for accessories to go with the new iMac models.
The M1 iMac comes with color-matched peripherals (Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad or Magic Mouse) and a USB-C to Lightning cable for pairing and charging. We can probably expect to see these cables and the USB-C version of the Magic Keyboard, Magic Trackpad, and upside-down charging Magic Mouse on Monday.
Gurman agrees.
As part of a broader shift to USB-C connectors, the company will likely roll out updated versions of accessories — including its trackpad, mouse and keyboard — that ditch the old Lightning ports.
That’s it, folks
Gurman reiterates that we won’t see a new version of the 13-inch Touch Bar MacBook Pro at the event, though he does expect it to launch later (why, Apple, why?).
Similarly, no new MacBook Air models, iPads, or AirPods.
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