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Apple’s October 2023 Scary Fast Event: By the Numbers

Today’s Scary Fast online Apple event was packed with facts, figures, and statistics throughout the presentation and elsewhere. We’ve pulled together the highlights.

M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max Chips

  • These are the first chips built on a 3-nanometer process.
  • This process can fit up to 2 million transistors in the cross-section of a human hair.
  • The M3 architecture grants up to 2.5x faster performance than the M1 generation.
  • The M3 CPU’s performance cores are 30% faster than M1 and 15% faster than M2; the efficiency cores are 50% faster than M1.
  • The Neural Engine is faster and more efficient in M3 as well. Specifically, it’s 60% faster than M1 and 15% faster than M2.
  • The M3 Max chip is up to 80% faster than the M1 Max.
  • The M3 has 25 billion transistors, while the M3 Pro has 37 billion, and the M3 Max has 92 billion.

MacBook Pro

  • The M3 Max MacBook Pro supports up to 128 GB of unified memory and 8 TB of storage, with a maximum 16-core CPU and 40-core GPU.
  • The M3 MacBook Pro can run for up to 22 hours on one charge, playing movies using the Apple TV app.
  • The new MacBook Pros are up to 11x faster than the last Intel-based models.

iMac

  • The M3 iMac is 2x faster than the M1 model, 2.5x faster than the 27-inch Intel model, and 4x faster than the 21.5-inch Intel-based iMac.
  • The M3 iMac has a 4.5K Retina display and features a 6-speaker sound system.
  • Apple offers up to 24 GB of unified memory and 2 TB of storage in the M3 iMac.

You can follow all of our October 2023 Apple event coverage through our October 2023 Apple event hub or subscribe to the dedicated October 2023 Apple event RSS feed.

Apple Introduces the New MacBook Pro in Three M3 Chip Configurations

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed about the rollout of Apple silicon Macs is that the old rules don’t apply, and the new ones are still being written. The cadence of releases is still settling in, and today, in the face of speculation that Apple was struggling to release M3 Macs, Apple made it clear that not one, but three 3 nanometer process-based chips are ready to ship. Along with the M3 iMac, the company refreshed its entire lineup of MacBook Pros, computers that gained the M2 chip less than a year ago.

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Apple Reveals New M3 iMac

The new iMac.

The new iMac.

Just over two years ago, I spent the summer with a 24” M1 iMac on my desk and loved it. The elegant simplicity of an all-in-one Mac with just a couple of cables trailing off the back side of the computer is wonderful. The all-in-one design of the M1 iMac wasn’t new, but it was a stunning departure from its predecessor, with a slim, flat design that wasn’t possible in the Intel era. Plus, it came in a variety of vibrant, fun colors, which is all too rare in Apple’s product lineup.

Today, Apple announced the successor to that iMac that features an all-new M3 chip that, by Apple’s account, is ‘scary fast.’ Just how fast the new iMac is compared to other models will require hands-on testing, but from the specs alone, the new iMac is impressive.

Let’s take a look.

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Apple Announces Pricing and Availability Dates for New MacBook Pros and iMac with M3 Chips

Spooky Ternus.

Spooky Ternus.

At this evening’s ‘Scary Fast’ Apple event, the company announced the new generation of M3 chips – M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max – that will power three new models of MacBook Pro and the updated iMac, which is getting a refresh for the first time since its redesign featuring the M1 chip was introduced in 2021.

We’ll have more detailed overviews of the new computers up on MacStories soon, but in the meantime, here’s a breakdown of when you can expect to be able to get your hands on these new machines:

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Apple’s October 2023 Scary Fast Event: Replay Today’s Keynote

If you didn’t follow the livestream of today’s ‘Scary Fast’ Apple event, you can replay it on Apple’s Events site or YouTube.

The keynote video can be streamed here and on the Apple TV using the TV app. A high-quality version will also be available through Apple Podcasts as a video and audio podcast. An American Sign Language version of the event keynote is available on the Apple Events page too.

You can watch the videos for the new MacBook Pros and ‘You Think That’s Hard Work?’ opening sequence after the break.

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Astropad’s Rock Paper Pencil Delivers A No-Compromise, Simple Paper-like Experience on iPad

It’s been years since I took a serious run at handwritten notes on the iPad. However, that changed with my recent experiments with the Boox Tab Ultra, which led me back to the benefits of jotting down handwritten notes as a quick capture system while I work. That’s why Aspropad’s new Rock Paper Pencil bundle of a nano-textured iPad screen protector and replacement Apple Pencil tips that mimic the feel of paper caught my eye. I’ve had bad luck with screen covers that feel like paper in the past, but as I’ll explain below, Astropad has created a unique package that offers the closest experience to writing or drawing on paper that I’ve ever tried while also being easy to use.

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The Dirty Secret of OS Updates [Sponsor]

Getting OS updates installed on end user devices should be easy. After all, it’s one of the simplest yet most impactful ways that every employee can practice good security. 

On top of that, every MDM solution promises that it will automate the process and install updates with no user interaction needed.

Yet in the real world, it doesn’t play out like that. Users don’t install updates and IT admins won’t force installs via forced restart.

Let’s talk about the second problem first. Sure, you could simply schedule updates for all your users, and have them restart during non-work hours. But this inevitably leads to disruptions and lost work. This, in turn, leads to users (especially executives) who simply demand to be left out of your update policy. The bottom line is: any forced restarts without user approval will lead to data loss events, and that makes them so unpopular that they are functionally unusable.

There is another class of tools that claim to get users to install updates themselves, through “nudges.” These reminders pop up with increasing frequency until users relent or the timer runs out. This is an improvement, since it involves users in the process, but users still tend to delay updating as long as possible (which for some tools can be indefinitely).

At Kolide, OS updates are the single most common issue customers want us to solve. They come to us because we have a unique (and uniquely effective) approach to device compliance.

With Kolide, when a user’s device–be it Mac, Windows, Linux, or mobile–is out of compliance, we reach out to them with instructions on how to fix it.

The user chooses when to restart, but if they don’t fix the problem by a predetermined deadline, they’re unable to authenticate with Okta. (At present, Kolide is exclusive to Okta customers, but we plan to integrate with more SSO providers soon.)

If your fleet is littered with devices that stubbornly refuse to update, then consider these two principles:

  1. You can’t have a successful patch management policy without involving users.
  2. You can’t get users to install patches unless you give them both clear instructions and real consequences.

Installing OS updates is a top priority for both security and IT, and when you make it part of conditional access, you can finally get it done without massive lists of exemptions or massive piles of support tickets.

To learn more about how Kolide enforces device compliance for companies with Okta, click here to watch an on-demand demo.

Our thank to Kolide for sponsoring MacStories this week.

MacStories Unwind: Don’t Bend the Fiber

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This week on MacStories Unwind, Federico and I discuss the Ecobee HomeKit doorbell, an obscure USB-C adapter Federico discovered, and BBQ. Plus, with my Internet out for part of the week, we learn that my Internet service Plan B is rather ordinary compared to Federico’s, which involves a picnic table and getaway car.

Gadgets

Food

We deliver MacStories Unwind+ to Club MacStories subscribers ad-free and early with high bitrate audio every week.

To learn more about the benefits of a Club MacStories subscription, visit our Plans page.

watchOS 10: The MacStories Review

In my watchOS 9 Review last year, I spent the introduction reminiscing on the more exciting days of watchOS yore. Those early years were full of whimsy and foolishness, with many wild and ambitious new features that failed far more often than they succeeded. By my count, it took until watchOS 4 for Apple to find its footing, and by watchOS 6 the predictable pattern of iteration that I laid out last year had begun.

As I said last time, it’s hard to argue against the slow and steady march of watchOS. This software joined with the Apple Watch hardware has resulted in a years-long market domination that shows no sign of stopping. Yet, market be damned, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Health and fitness features were flourishing, but the rest of watchOS never quite felt fully baked.

As it turns out, Apple seems to have agreed.

In watchOS 10, for the first time in years, the iterative update pattern is broken. Rather than the usual handful of minor app updates, new watch faces, and health and fitness features, Apple has instead dropped another major rethink of Apple Watch interaction methods. The side button has been reassigned, the Dock has been demoted, apps have a new design language throughout the system, and widgets have made their Watch debut.

This is the largest year-over-year change to watchOS since version 4, and I am here for it. Let’s jump in and see if Apple has hit the mark this time, or if they’ll be back to the UI drawing board again in the years to come.

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