“Scary Fast”: Apple will stream a new product event on October 30

Rare evening presentation is most likely to focus on refreshed Macs, say rumors.

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[caramelpolice]

Why do people KEEP believing the 'fast' 'performance' narrative from Apple?

In some special tests, their M? can be impressive, but in NORMAL computing, they are slower than AMD or Intel designs..

Even Apple, when introducing the M1, didn't say the were 'scary fast' - they said they were 3-4x faster than the current Macbooks, which at the time were using a 3 year old+ Intel entry level class processor. Meaning, at the time of shipping, even Apple didn't say the M1 was faster than the current Intel and AMD mobile CPUs.

In normal computing they are perfectly competitive with AMD and Intel (while also being more efficient), and Apple was using either current or one-generation-old Intel CPUs in every MacBook at the time M1 launched. (edit: The 2-port 13" MBP was two generations old - the 4-port model and the Air were using latest-gen chips.) You have made up this entire scenario.

 

[SeanJW]

I'm still the only person that wants a 4/5G modem in a portable computer.

Congratulations! Apple has you covered in a variety of form factors, from handheld to large touch screen tablets. So does Samsung and others.

Typed from my iPad Mini 6, on a gosh-darned real keyboard, and sent over LTE….

 

[fellow human]

I'm still the only person that wants a 4/5G modem in a portable computer.

No, you’re not. I use cellular while at work and futzing with the hotspot is a pain. I’d rather just open and use it immediately like with my phone and iPad, edit: and get notifications while it’s sleeping

 

[panton41]

Why do people KEEP believing the 'fast' 'performance' narrative from Apple?

In some special tests, their M? can be impressive, but in NORMAL computing, they are slower than AMD or Intel designs.

I have a Ryzen 9 3900X with 64GB of RAM and at times it is painfully slow for normal computing compared to my 16GB M2Pro MacMini. Like just opening a new window and basic file management can be glacial in comparison. (It doesn't help that Windows 11 isn't exactly fast for those tasks, which is damning of Microsoft as well.)

 

[Geebs]

This is kind of unrelated, but I want Apple to formally endorse a kind of apple each year. Mac - Honeycrisp Edition would be the kind of fun, playful nonsense we don't see much of anymore.

I mean, Macintosh is already a kind of apple.

Then they did the same with the Pippin. Which probably explains why they they gave up on that naming convention

 

[panton41]

Spoiler

"Scary Fast",

Spoiler

indeed! — Ready, set, go!
1. Start "Stopwatch" in iPhone Clock app.
1. Choose all the just-announced Apple product(s) needed for your Dream Setup.
2. Place all items in "Bag."
3. Scroll down "Options" on every item. Add maximum RAM. Add maximum SSD size. Add maximum M2-Super-Duper-Mad-Max® Silicon Chip. Add a bazillion Dongles® and adjustable stands for Nit-picky Apple Monitors and don't forget the Apple Cleaning Cloths!
4. Add AppleCare+ for all items, including Apple Cleaning Cloth!
5. Total it all up!
6. Add State Sales Tax!
7. Grand total -- More than you make in 2 years in underpaid and unappreciated job. Decide for 3 seconds as to whether you can afford 12 interest-free payments on Apple Card. (Hey, wasn't it just a few weeks ago any Apple Card purchase could be stretched out to 24 payments? Now it's just the iPhone! --Go figure!)
8. Bite the bullet. Select Apple Card. Place order.
9. Stop the "Stopwatch" on your iPhone.
10. WOW! And, as promised:
"Scary Fast!"
** Post-shock Bonus at No Extra Charge! Receive immediate e-mail or on-screen notification that, due to supply and demand issues in the Bering Strait, it will take Apple 6-9 months to deliver and complete your Dream Setup.

Username checks out...

 

[qazwart]

This is kind of unrelated, but I want Apple to formally endorse a kind of apple each year. Mac - Honeycrisp Edition would be the kind of fun, playful nonsense we don't see much of anymore.

They released a Pippin game console back in 1996. After that experience, Apple has been very shy about using Apple cultivars for names.

 

[Chuckstar]

I'm still the only person that wants a 4/5G modem in a portable computer.

My computer can use my cell phone’s data connection with just a single menu command. Why would I pay for extra hardware and an additional device on my cellular plan?

 

[barktrees]

My computer can use my cell phone’s data connection with just a single menu command. Why would I pay for extra hardware and an additional device on my cellular plan?

In an ideal world, the hardware in your computer would cost $30-50, and would not cost any extra at all over your current data plan.

Companies only charge more than that because they can, and so the market is stifled.

Apple is able to offer an LTE modem in the apple watch for just a $50 upcharge, and Verizon can provide data access for $5/month on a watch or iPad. $60/year is actually almost reasonable as an administrative fee for adding data access to a second device, although you have to already be on Verizon's most expensive phone plans to qualify for this rate.

 

[zogus]

No, you’re not. I use cellular while at work and futzing with the hotspot is a pain. I’d rather just open and use it immediately like with my phone and iPad, edit: and get notifications while it’s sleeping

My guess is that laptop makers including Apple are hamstrung by Qualcomm’s practice of demanding a radio technology license fee, calculated as a percentage of the total price of the end product. FTC sued Qualcomm over this practice in 2019, but lost on appeal in 2020.

 

[gnasher729]

So the middle of the menu bar, which contains absolutely no usable space, can instead contain absolutely no usable space but its pixels and the screen is smaller?

If someone really hates the notch on a mac, go into “Display Settings”, turn on “show all resolutions” and you can pick every available width either with or without notch. You obviously lose some pixels in height. Maybe apple should have a setting “menu bar is white text on black background”.

 

[Numfuddle]

It would be pretty scary if we saw a multi-M3 Mac Pro. Scary for my bank account, that is.

Please don't, Apple. I could barely hold myself back from buying last time

 

[Numfuddle]

It would be pretty scary if we saw a multi-M3 Mac Pro. Scary for my bank account, that is.

Well seems like it's a no on the desktop Macs.

"
Gurman maintains that Apple will not refresh the MacBook Air models, Mac mini, Mac Studio, or Mac Pro at this time, which leaves the iMac, 13-inch MacBook Pro, 14-inch MacBook Pro, and 16-inch MacBook Pro for the October event. As Gurman has previously pointed out, these are the machines that are facing extended shipping times in Apple's online store.

According to Kuo, if the M3 models don't end up boosting MacBook shipments, there is an increased likelihood of an "all-new design MacBook Pro in 2025" and also a chance Apple will consider a "more affordable MacBook model.""

 

[panton41]

Well, time to go cancel the M2Max MBP order I placed last week. Wasn't scheduled to ship until November anyway.

For all we know they might be announcing new colors of USB-C cables. I'd wait until they've actually said something.

 

[The Big Picture]

If your Mac is serving your needs, it isn't time to upgrade.
Just because faster new Macs are released doesn't mean you have to buy them. My M1 Air and M1 Mini are almost 3 years old now and will probably meet my needs for at least several more years.

Yeah I too have the M1 Air and I love this thing. It's just sorta weird to see new Macs being churned out at the same cadence as iPhones.

 

[Chuckstar]

In an ideal world, the hardware in your computer would cost $30-50, and would not cost any extra at all over your current data plan.

Companies only charge more than that because they can, and so the market is stifled.

Apple is able to offer an LTE modem in the apple watch for just a $50 upcharge, and Verizon can provide data access for $5/month on a watch or iPad. $60/year is actually almost reasonable as an administrative fee for adding data access to a second device, although you have to already be on Verizon's most expensive phone plans to qualify for this rate.

Why would I even want to pay an extra $30. There is no scenario where the solution I use doesn’t work. I don’t know who it is that has to “futz with” a hotspot, but it ain’t me.

Also, USB cell modems are available. As a bonus, they can typically also act as a WiFi hotspot. That is, you can plug into USB on your laptop and have it be a wired modem (and optionally also a WiFi hotspot) or just plug into any powered USB port and it’s a cellular/WiFi hotspot.

 

[The Big Picture]

You do the same thing you probably do with everything else you buy: You balance need and budget. If you have low budget and low need (the computer/dishwasher/car you have is doing everything you want, and still does it well), you do not need to have any action or reaction to some corporation’s marketing announcement. If you have high need and high budget, you get the new thing because you genuinely need it and you can afford it. If you have low need and high budget, you can get the new thing just because you want to, because you can afford it.

Of course it’s hard if you have increasing need and decreasing budget. Then you must wait it out as long as you can while you save up for as long as you can.

But the nice thing is, if you have no current need, you do not need to give Apple Marketing any more of the attention they wish to harvest from us. Sure, maybe it’s 1000x faster today, but if I wait until I really need it and that’s 2 years down the road, you know what’s great about waiting? What’s available then will be even faster, for the same price or less!

Everyone has a different balance point. For me, it’s 5-6 years between phones, 5-7 years between Macs, and at this point 15 years between cars. You don’t have to care about any flashy new announcement from any company. I am a bit of an Apple fanboy, but still…my gear works great, so Apple makes hype-filled announcements every few months and until I actually need to replace something, my reactions are a series of “don’t care” then “don’t need it yet” then”maybe next time” until the one day I decide “I need it.”

But on the other hand if your business lives and dies by video rendering times, then of course you buy the latest thing more often because that $4000 might make your business a lot more money than you spent.

Yeah I mean I have the 2020 M1 Air right now, and a 2020 iPhone SE (2nd gen). I got the M1 Air last year after deciding it should be a perfectly suitable replacement of my previous 2015 MBP, and it absolutely is. The iPhone's getting a bit long in the tooth, but I may not upgrade to a 15, I might just go for a 13 or something.

I just wonder if, going forward, there's just going to be this long "tail" of years-old Macs and iPhones that are perfectly suitable for average people. I mean that's always sort of been the case even when Macs were Intel, but I really feel that will be especially true now that it's Apple silicon.

 

[Chuckstar]

Yeah I mean I have the 2020 M1 Air right now, and a 2020 iPhone SE (2nd gen). I got the M1 Air last year after deciding it should be a perfectly suitable replacement of my previous 2015 MBP, and it absolutely is. The iPhone's getting a bit long in the tooth, but I may not upgrade to a 15, I might just go for a 13 or something.

I just wonder if, going forward, there's just going to be this long "tail" of years-old Macs and iPhones that are perfectly suitable for average people. I mean that's always sort of been the case even when Macs were Intel, but I really feel that will be especially true now that it's Apple silicon.

My 2014 MBP and iPhone XR agree with your long-tail theory.

In both cases, the batteries now noticeably hold less of a charge and the MBP will drop out of getting security updates, soon. But I’ve never felt that either was too slow for the stuff I do on them.

 

[gnasher729]

Why do people KEEP believing the 'fast' 'performance' narrative from Apple?

In some special tests, their M? can be impressive, but in NORMAL computing, they are slower than AMD or Intel designs..

What you see on the internet are the latest and greatest AMD and Intel CPUs. That’s not what 98% of customers buy. Four years ago someone tested that a new iPhone had a more powerful CPU than 90% of laptops sold. Not 90% of different models, but 90% sold.

The slowest M1 laptop would be in the top 10% of Intel/amd laptops sold.

 

[Benji XVI]

If your Mac is serving your needs, it isn't time to upgrade.
Just because faster new Macs are released doesn't mean you have to buy them. My M1 Air and M1 Mini are almost 3 years old now and will probably meet my needs for at least several more years.

I have the same setup, M1 Mac Mini plugged into a 27 inch monitor for most of my work (development, mostly javascript). M1 Air for personal use and when I feel like working from the sofa. I'm still blown away by how fast they are compared to everything else I've used.

I bought both from a chain of second hand IT stores called CEX that we have in the UK for about £1000 in total. When you buy second hand, you really appreciate if the product was made from good materials, with build quality and longevity in mind in the first place.

We're at the point now where used computers can be had that are so good and so fast that I see myself repeating a similar purchasing pattern from here out, quite frankly.

 

[danan]

Tethering is so fn tiring when you're working with large files, not huge, a < 9 Gigabyes. For work there is no such thing as a local WiFi. BT tethering is unreliable. Think inserting your credit card for gas 6 times.

Sure, I have a watch, two iPads,2 phones, but why should I have to tether? Including work, I dunno, six lines or so.

After tethering for 6 years, I really fucking despise it.I'm MOBILE.

Why are you using Bluetooth to tether? Don’t your phones do WiFi tethering? Or the iPads (I’m assuming they’re cellular models based on the context you put them in). Done right, the slow link should be the cell connection, not your local tethering.

 

[spindizzy]

My 2014 MBP and iPhone XR agree with your long-tail theory.

In both cases, the batteries now noticeably hold less of a charge and the MBP will drop out of getting security updates, soon. But I’ve never felt that either was too slow for the stuff I do on them.

I've gone from a quad core 2007 Mac Pro (7 years), to a Hackintosh (8 Years) to a Mac mini M2Pro (fully expect minimum 5 years out of this probably longer.) In each case it to until after 5 years for it not to feel blazingly fast, let alone be challenged by my workloads. They've also all been reliable.
I also have an iPhone 11 and I'm agonising over whether to finally upgrade that as it still does everything fine (though a camera lens has a crack which causes flares in some images.)

I usually keep them until OS/Security updates stop.

 

[mrsilver]

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes that Apple will focus on M3 MacBook Pros at the event, although as recently as two weeks ago he didn't think Apple had anything left to announce this year.

Could it be that two weeks ago Ming-Chi Kuo's sources were deliberately told wrong information?

If so, then I suspect we might see some loose-lipped people at Apple losing their jobs.

 

[TenThousandThings]

This has got to be M3. I was sure it was going to be M2 (and maybe M2 Pro) for the iMac, plus new iPad Air (and maybe iPad mini). Happy to be (probably) wrong.

If so (M3) then they’ll have a lot to talk about, mesh shading and hardware ray tracing in games with scary themes! It would be great news on several fronts: first, vindication for Apple and TSMC’s alliance, with N3B as an Apple-specific (if not exclusive) process, while N3E is a more efficient and flexible starting point for 3nm than would exist otherwise. Apple may not use N3E at all, they will have the first consumer product on N3P with A18 next year. Second, it means the initial launch of Apple Silicon for Macs, with the A14 and the M1 only a month apart, wasn’t a fluke. If they go even further and release the M3 Pro/Max now then that’s unprecedented.

Edit to add that it’s not a live event. No one is getting invitations. It’s a video launch with press release(s). So that argues against M3. But still…

Most exciting possible new product is a redesign of the 13" MacBook Pro. M3 MacBook Pro in black?

 

[fellow human]

My guess is that laptop makers including Apple are hamstrung by Qualcomm’s practice of demanding a radio technology license fee, calculated as a percentage of the total price of the end product. FTC sued Qualcomm over this practice in 2019, but lost on appeal in 2020.

Maybe, but iPhones and iPads are priced up into similar ranges as my MBA and they have them…

 

[panton41]

Maybe, but iPhones and iPads are priced up into similar ranges as my MBA and they have them…

At least the iPhone can't function without them.

 

[till213]

'm sure they'll be the fastest things since the last fastest things, for a given subset of things.

But will it be amazing? The best evah(tm)?

 

[zogus]

Maybe, but iPhones and iPads are priced up into similar ranges as my MBA and they have them…

I hope you agree that it's kind of silly to question why all iPhones have cellular built in. For iPads, you get a substantial discount if you forgo the cellular modem. The base 9th gen iPad without cellular is $329, with cellular is $459. On the other end of the scale, a decked out 12.9" iPad Pro without cellular is $2199, with cellular is $2399. Extrapolating, if Apple does add a modem to MacBooks in an analogous fashion, it'd start at something like $200 and go up to $300. Yikes. Apple has been complaining for years that Qualcomm licensing is the biggest line item on their BOM for iPhones, and it shows.

 

[Jupitor13]

Congratulations! Apple has you covered in a variety of form factors, from handheld to large touch screen tablets. So does Samsung and others.

Typed from my iPad Mini 6, on a gosh-darned real keyboard, and sent over LTE….

Typed on an M1 iPad with a keyboard. I did see on Amazing a keyboard for my Mini 6. I *think it was about $140 (?). It looked Sierra Hotel, backlit, trackpad, etc.

If my M1 MBP had a modem, I could have skipped the iPad Pro for mobile use. A cellular modem on an iPad looks to be about a $110 upgrade. I would have bought it for the MBP.

Idealize I’m sounding like the people that wanted a 3.5 mm phone jack, but horses for courses.

 

[Sostène Cambrut]

I am in the market for a 14" MBP so this is great timing. When the rumors from the weekend hit, I started to think that it wasn't likely we'd get an M3 chip, but its looking more and more like it. I can finally get rid of my final-gen intel 13"MBP. Hooray!

I bought a 14" M2 Max this summer, thinking "it's only 6 months old, they won't release M3 Max until one year" so I wouldn't be super happy for me... But I would be glad for you, in a nightmare of mixed feelings.

Now, to be honest I hope we'll see some M2 Extreme and a dedicated GPU (you read it right) for the tower Mac Pro, allowing Apple to brag about putting Mac Pro level RT GPU cores in the incoming M3.

Scary fast is a bold statement to make when there are faster CPUs and faster GPUs on the market, so I'm eager to figure out if it's another Apple's scope of reality statement, or a true game changer like the M1 was in its time.

 

[Jupitor13]

Why are you using Bluetooth to tether? Don’t your phones do WiFi tethering? Or the iPads (I’m assuming they’re cellular models based on the context you put them in). Done right, the slow link should be the cell connection, not your local tethering.

You’re right, I have no idea why I said BT tethering. My work PC is USB tethered as WiFi tethering disconnects a few times a day.

But it also has a modem but I think the company cheaped out on subscribing.

 

[thehardcard]

Could it be that two weeks ago Ming-Chi Kuo's sources were deliberately told wrong information?

If so, then I suspect we might see some loose-lipped people at Apple losing their jobs.

Also, people at companies, including Apple executives change their minds.

The animation of the Apple and the Mac Finder face logos heavily imply hardware ray tracing coming to the Mac. Also remember, the M1 Pro was “scary fast” and the M1 Max was “scary faster” in 2021.

 

[SeanJW]

Typed on an M1 iPad with a keyboard. I did see on Amazing a keyboard for my Mini 6. I *think it was about $140 (?). It looked Sierra Hotel, backlit, trackpad, etc.

If my M1 MBP had a modem, I could have skipped the iPad Pro for mobile use. A cellular modem on an iPad looks to be about a $110 upgrade. I would have bought it for the MBP.

Idealize I’m sounding like the people that wanted a 3.5 mm phone jack, but horses for courses.

Using keyboards with a mini is one of two compromises…. Sized for the mini in a matching case, and so too damned small. I’ve got one of those, and it’s annoys me no end.

Completely separate and foldable to reduce the carrying burden, but better sized. I’ve switched to one of those and are giving it a bit of a try. I got one with a trackpad, and regretting that somewhat as I keep brushing the track pad. Just take some getting used to I expect.

 

[ZippyPeanut]

Still got my 2015. Brilliant form factor. Terrible keyboard.

Form over function.

 

[instant classic]

So... What does an "analyst" do, exactly?

You know that phrase "even a broken clock"? Same idea.

 

[RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha]

It would be pretty scary if we saw a multi-M3 Mac Pro. Scary for my bank account, that is.

Why? Use an Applecard and finance for 0% interest for 12 (or even 24 if Apple decides it) months. That's less than a mortgage payment at todays rates!! /s

 

[RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha]

You mean, reanimated Macs?! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!

Nah. Tim decided no necromancing when Apple hardwired RAM and SSDs to the main logic boards. BUT if they brought back the Time Capsule integrated into the Home Pod as a wifi router/access point.... nah. Tim wants you to invest your hard earned money into the iCloud of things.