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00:00Okay, I'm back. It is the morning after the night before. Apple just held their scary
00:04fast launch event here in, well, the Big Apple. Apple in the Big Apple, which we don't see
00:08very often. And we got new MacBook Pros, we got a new 24-inch iMac, still no 27, sadly.
00:14And of course, the real highlight was Tim Cook saying good evening.
00:17Good evening.
00:18But ahead of my reviews, which will be coming soon, I do have a few thoughts about the event,
00:22the new MacBook Pros, some buying guide tips perhaps, and also maybe there's a couple
00:26things that you may have missed. For example, did you know the Magic Mouse hasn't changed
00:30at all? The keyboard and mouse still lightning, no change there at all. Also, the event itself,
00:35all the A-roll Tim Cook was doing was all shot on iPhone, pretty impressive stuff.
00:39But first things first, let's pay our respects to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the M1 Pro, which
00:45has been discontinued. So no more touch bar in any of the MacBook lineup, but it has been
00:49replaced by the new entry-level MacBook Pro 14 with the base M3.
00:54The only downside of that nice new cheap entry-level model is that it only comes with
00:588 gigs of RAM, unless you spec it higher, which is a bit unforgivable for the price,
01:02but we'll come back to all that.
01:03And also RIP to the space grey colour. Well, except for the base model 14-inch with the
01:08M3, which does still have space grey, along with silver as the two colour options, however
01:12for 14-inches with the M3 Pro or Max and all 16-inches, it's now space black. Or silver.
01:18Which I must admit, I really do like. It kind of makes the laptop look more powerful, but
01:22also more understated and maybe even more professional, especially for the bigger 16-inch.
01:27And also, if you've ever used a MacBook, particularly the silver model, outside or
01:30by a window with the sun on it, it can actually reflect in the screen. The sort of bright
01:34aluminium chassis can reflect back, so space black should improve that.
01:38And yes, we do also get a colour-matched MagSafe cable. I am a little bit worried about fingerprints.
01:44Apple said that they added an extra anodised anti-fingerprinty layer, but only on the lid,
01:49not the keyboard or the palm rest, so we'll have to see.
01:51So except for the space black colour, the design is identical. Same as last year, same
01:55as the year before that. Which is fine, it's still a terrific looking laptop, one of the
01:58best on the market I'd say. I don't really mind the notch, I think we've all got past that.
02:02I would have liked maybe a small weight reduction, particularly on the 16-inch, but alas, no.
02:06Same speakers, same keyboard, same trackpad, same ports, of course including HDMI 2.1,
02:11which was added last year. And almost identical screens. We do have the same 14 and 16-inch
02:16Liquid Retina XDR displays, the same 120Hz ProMotion, same mini-LED panels, so no OLED yet,
02:22and also the same Max 1600-nit HDR brightness. The only change is they've bumped up the brightness
02:27from 500 to 600 nits, so a 20% boost, which is nice. And so it actually now matches the same
02:32brightness as the Studio Display, although not the same refresh rate, because the MacBook Pros
02:36have the 120Hz ProMotion, all Apple's displays are still stuck at 60Hz. But the extra brightness is
02:42certainly welcome, and that applies to the whole desktop, so everything in SDR, not HDR, which of
02:46course can still get brighter. Although I would still suggest downloading the Vivid application,
02:51which basically unlocks that full 1600-nit brightness across the whole desktop, regardless
02:56of whether you're watching or looking at HDR content, that sort of goes for everything.
03:00I'm not sponsored, I don't even have an affiliate link, I just think Vivid is definitely worth
03:03downloading. So this year, like last year, is really just a spec bump, although it's a pretty
03:08big one, and Apple's introduced the whole M3 family. Now normally we just get the regular one,
03:13say the M3, and then the Pro and the Max come later, although for now it is just the MacBook
03:18Pros and the iMac that have been updated, we'll have to wait for an M3-powered MacBook Air,
03:23and also probably an M3 Ultra, Max Studio and Mac Pro, probably next summer. But crucially,
03:28this family of M3 chips represent the first 3nm architecture design that we've had on a PC or
03:35laptop, so ahead of Intel or AMD or Qualcomm or MediaTek, and that 3nm smaller design means it
03:41can be more efficient and also more powerful. So we have the usual faster processor, faster neural
03:46engine for AI tasks, but the big story it seems is around the graphics, with a next-gen GPU,
03:51which they say represents the biggest leap forward in graphics architecture ever on their Apple
03:56Silicon. And a big part of this is thanks to their new dynamic caching feature, which allocates the
04:01graphics memory in real-time for each task, so only the exact amount of memory for each task is
04:06used, which leads to better utilisation of the GPU and therefore significantly better performance.
04:12Now I don't want to dwell too much on Apple's numbers and figures, I'll test all this for
04:15myself very soon, but they're promising some pretty serious, or should I say, scary fast speeds.
04:22Now they did seem to mostly focus on the improvements versus the M1 family from 2
04:26years ago, obviously the jump from last year's M2 is going to be less significant, but it still
04:30seems to be a decent upgrade. The top-spec M3 Macs can also now be spec'd with 128 gigs of their
04:36unified memory, previously topped out at 96, and it now matches what you can get in the Mac Studio.
04:41They're also really pushing gaming this year. They had a whole room dedicated to it, there's
04:45a specific game mode on Mac now, and they were showing off Baldur's Gate 3, Life of Pi, Stray
04:49and others, all running on M3, which does also now support hardware ray tracing, and other features
04:55like accelerated mesh shading which can improve performance. It just might even run City Skyline
04:59too smoothly, maybe. It's one thing to have a lot of performance, that's great, but doesn't really
05:04matter if the games don't actually run on Mac, and of course the Mac's game library is significantly
05:08smaller than a Windows PC, but with the significantly boosted graphics performance with the new tools,
05:12and with this focus on gaming, hopefully we'll see more developers actually optimize their games for
05:16Mac. So your very expensive and very powerful MacBook Pro can also be more of a gaming machine
05:21as well as a workstation, but it's still early days. Now my reaction is, you know, wow that
05:26performance seems fantastic, I can't wait to test it and benchmark it, but also there's nothing it
05:31can do that my M2 Mac can't do, or even my M1 MacBook Pro couldn't do really, just, you know,
05:37faster, because we've just hit this crazy level of performance with Apple, which is not a complaint,
05:43it's just like, do you need an M3 Pro or Max? And I think it's getting harder for Apple to really
05:48show us why you need this level of performance, unless you're rendering a game and running Blender
05:52and editing 8K and file cut all at the same time. But I guess the flip side is, yes, you can pay
05:57ludicrous amounts of money to get this crazy high-end performance, which is fantastic if you
06:01are a proper high-level professional or your business is buying it for you, but it also means
06:05that you can get away with just buying the cheaper versions, whether it's, you know, last year's M2
06:10discounted or just the base M3, and that'll be more than fast enough for most of us. Also, while
06:15Apple are promising roughly the same battery life as before, and it's worth noting that the M3 14-inch
06:20will get you 22 hours, whereas the M3 Pro will get you 18 hours, so going up to the higher
06:24performance will have an impact on the battery. Also, one thing you may have missed is that the
06:2814-inch now supports the high performance mode, which previously was only on the 16-inch models
06:33with the Pro and Max variants of the chip, now it's on the 14-inch as well, so you can go between
06:38low power, automatic or high performance, which basically allows the fans to run higher, therefore
06:43being louder, and also the temperatures increase a little bit, but it will give you better sustained
06:46performance, so that's one disadvantage of the 14-inch versus the 16-inch that's now gone away.
06:51So let's say you are tempted to upgrade to one of the new laptops, which one should you go for,
06:55what spec? Well, it all depends, A, on how much money you have in your bank account,
06:59and B, also what you're going to be using it for. Obviously, they're the usual questions you ask.
07:02What I would say is, looking at the different specs and configurations, that I think the base
07:06MacBook Pro 14 with M3, the cheapest one, is the one to go for. The downside of that, before you
07:11press play, before you press buy, what I would definitely do is pay the extra 200 to upgrade
07:17that to 16 gigs of RAM. Then you've got 16 RAM, 512 storage, an M3 MacBook Pro 14 for just over
07:23ÂŁ1,800 or $1,900, which I think will probably be the best bang for buck, unless you need the Pro
07:28or the Max chip, particularly for graphics performance if you are rendering games, doing 3D
07:33CAD design, or super high-end professional video editing. As I say, for 95% of us, the base M3
07:40should be enough. But I caveat that saying, I haven't tested them yet. We'll have to see just
07:43how much of a bump the Pro and Max do offer, and in what applications, to get a better understanding
07:48of what makes sense for you. Now, looking at the 14 versus the 16, it is quite a lot more expensive,
07:53but the difference is it starts with an M3 Pro. There's no base M3 for the 16-inch, so of course,
07:57it's a bit more expensive. It is definitely worth going on Apple's website and doing the model
08:01comparisons to see what each one can get, because it's also worth bearing in mind that if you want
08:04the crazy 128GB of unified memory, that is only if you go with a top-spec M3 Max. And I think a
08:11fully specced-out MacBook Pro 16 now costs like ÂŁ7,200, which is a good deal more expensive than
08:16last year's top-spec model, but that is because we do now have that 128GB of memory option. Although,
08:22quick tip, if you're not quite sure what model or spec to go for, maybe order, pre-order a couple of
08:26different options, and then when the reviews come out, you can see how they compare, you can cancel
08:30the one or return the one that you don't want. At least that way, you get ahead of the crazy
08:34shipping times, which have already started to push out to like the end of November. But what do you
08:37think? Are you tempted to upgrade, or do you think it's all just a bit overkill and far too expensive?
08:41Let me know what you make of the new MacBook Pros in the comments below. Thank you so much for
08:44watching, guys, and I'll see you next time right here. Well, no, not right here, not in my hotel
08:48room, back in the studio next time on The Tech Jam.