In Pictures: Apple talks up the M3 as it unveils new iMac, MacBook Pro lineup

The new Apple MacBook Pros are out – but to get a full measure of what they pack, one will need a deep dive into the device itself. And home in on the M3 chip that powers it.

This is what Apple itself has to say about the latest iteration of its own chip – “The M3 family of chips continues Apple silicon’s tremendous pace of innovation” as the new line up of MacBook Pros were unveiled in the US.

The M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max are – indeed - the ‘first chips for a personal computer built using the industry-leading 3-nanometer technology’. Apple introduced its M1 chip late 2020 and then followed up with the M1 Pro and M1 Max additions the next year.

The new Apple line up hits the market just in time for the peak retail season around the Black Friday late November, as well as the potentially heavy holiday buying spree thereafter.

“As against the worldwide drop in demand for laptops, that in the UAE has remained resilient, and even in these times the market shows a small increase of 6 per cent,” said Rajat Asthana, Chief Operating Officer at Dubai-headquartered Eros Group. “The massive improvement due to M3 processors will stimulate demand for MacBook Pros. The addition of a premium space grey color too is a welcome addition.”

In the UAE the 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M3 will start at Dh6,899 and go all the way to Dh16,799.

Going back to the M3 chip, the GPU inside it ‘represents the largest leap forward’ on the graphics architecture for Apple silicon, says the manufacturer. Featuring a new technology of ‘Dynamic Caching’, this allows the use of ‘local memory in hardware in real-time’. Which, Apple says, means only the ‘exact amount of memory is used for each task’.

“This is an industry first - and the cornerstone of the new GPU architecture,” Apple adds. “It dramatically increases the average utilization of the GPU, which significantly increases performance for the most demanding pro apps and games.”

The M3 series also gets into the 24-inch iMac. Apple claims that this iMac will be 2.5x faster ‘than the most popular 27-inch models’.

“The new iMac with M3 is incredible for anyone, especially those who haven’t yet upgraded from Intel, providing a giant leap in performance and capabilities only possible with Apple silicon,” says John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering.