Apple’s first M3 MacBook Airs may appear at WWDC – report
9to5Mac sources have apparently confirmed Apple intends to introduce the first Macs equipped with M3 processors this year, potentially in summer.
Possibly at WWDC 2023?
These claims follow earlier reports in the same vein from Bloomberg. The latest report tells us to expect new 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air models with M3 chips, and adds that a refreshed 13-inch MacBook Pro is also in development.
The new M3 chip will be an 8-core CPU just like the M1 and M2 processors, the latest report claims. It also speculates that other Macs scheduled to appear this year, principally the iMac, will skip M2 chips entirely to upgrade to M3 processors.
When can we expect the new machines?
The latest report speculates they may make their debut at WWDC in June.
That would be 12-months since the introduction of the M2-powered MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro, which is interesting as it shows an accelerating processor upgrade cadence that’s more in step with the iPhone, which also sees a core processor upgrade every 12-months. There is also a possibility the new Macs may be made in Vietnam.
It does seem a long time since we met MacBook Air
How long until Intel support is abandoned?
If that’s true, and Apple is now in position to deliver processor upgrades at this kind of frequency it’s a move that propels the company forward considerably on where it was in the past. When it relied on processors from the AIM alliance chip progressed at a snail’s pace, and Intel, too was unable to keep the pace. It also suggests that progress to the point at which Apple will abandon support for Intel Macs is accelerating.
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The 3nm M3 chip with a 40-core CPU will definitely deliver more visible power vs M2 generation. I think with the M3 chips Apple will enter the gaming space, and the newer generation Macs will have much better gaming benchmark scores and the overall FPS rates and performance vs prior gen M2 and M1 chips. M3 Macs will close gaming performance gaps vs Windows OS based platforms and RTX series gaming graphics cards. The current M2 has already made substantial progress in this regard, so M3 with 3nm chip infrastructure will again raise the bar very high.
There will be other performance improvements too that the M3 will offer if you are going to perform GPU-demanding tasks such as 3D graphic rendering or modeling, video and audio production, etc. Here too the next-gen M3 3nm process will offer up to 15% higher performance and 30% lower power draw versus N5. By comparison, N5P is a 7% improvement with 15% less power draw vs prior gen.