All the New M3 Apple Macs Expected This Year 2024

M3 MacBook Air

Apple has two versions of the MacBook Air: a 13-inch model that includes the previous generation with the M1, and a 13-inch and 15-inch model equipped with the new M2. The question is if Apple abandons the M1 MacBook Air and replaces these machines with 13 and 15 pcs of compatible M3 devices?

The 15-inch MacBook Air will be available in June 2023, which will not last forever during the cycles of the Mac. Please note that Apple will release the MacBook Air M2 in 13 days in June 2022. If the Mac is more likely to use the Apple device, it will not be available for more than 550 days.

Selon Mark Gurman from Bloomberg, Apple The new M3 models ‌MacBook Air‌ are being developed because the exit is due March this year. In October, there was an indication that the models were available for verification technology (EVT) tests, a preliminary phase of production testing on the prototypes. The M3 device is used in the AirPods with a similar CPU and GPU number to the device M2 in the actual models.

Selon Gurman, Apple developer of the Mac version of macOS 14.3, one day after the meeting in late January and February, may the new matériel arrive later this March. The new MacBook Air models are programmed into the iPad Pro and iPad Air models due to arrive in March.

Mac Mini

Apple announced ‌M2‌ and ‌M2‌ Pro Mac mini models in January, which at the time of writing is just over 360 days ago, but Apple could be already testing an M3 ‌Mac mini‌, according to Gurman.

In August, signs of an unknown "15,12" Mac machine were found in developer code, with the Mac featuring an 8-core CPU (consisting of four efficiency cores and four performance cores), 10-core GPU, and 24GB RAM. Based on the similar specifications to the base ‌M2‌ ‌Mac mini‌ (bar the existing model's 8GB RAM as standard), Gurman believes it represents a next-generation ‌Mac mini‌.

Gurman previously said he was not expecting an M3 version of the ‌Mac mini‌ to launch until late 2024, but as it is already in testing, it could potentially be unveiled sooner.

Mac Studio, Mac Pro

Apple updated the ‌Mac Studio and Mac Pro with ‌M2‌ series chips in June 2023. ‌Mac Studio‌ models come with either the ‌M2‌ Max or ‌M2‌ Ultra chip, while the ‌Mac Pro‌ has adopted the ‌M2‌ Ultra.

Both Macs are considered to be in the middle of their product cycles, and Gurman believes Apple is working on a new ‌Mac Studio‌ that is likely to launch in the second half of 2024.

The next ‌‌Mac Studio‌‌ is likely to be offered with the as-yet-unannounced fourth variant of the M3 chip. Like previous generations, this will double the components of the "Max" version, meaning that it will feature up to 32 CPU cores and 80 GPU cores. Gurman says that Apple is also likely to refresh the ‌Mac Pro‌ with this new high-end chip.

Taiwanese research firm TrendForce claims that Apple will launch a new ‌‌Mac Studio‌‌ featuring the M3 Ultra chip at WWDC in June, so we could well see the new ‌Mac Pro‌ alongside of it.

13-inch MacBook Pro

Apple has discontinued the 13-inch ‌M2‌ MacBook Pro – and along with it the Touch Bar – replacing it with a 14-inch model that's equipped with a next-generation M3 chip. 

Apple says that the 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro is up to 60 percent faster than the 13-inch MacBook Pro with ‌M1‌. The M3 14-inch MacBook Pro also comes with a number of other benefits that make it worth the upgrade for anyone with the original 13-inch machine. So do not expect to see an M3-powered 13-inch MacBook Pro anytime soon, if ever.

M3 Chip Speed and Performance Gains

The M3 series of chips are built on TSMC's 3-nanometer process, bringing performance and efficiency improvements over Apple's previous ‌M2‌ chips, which are based on the earlier-generation 5-nanometer process. Since its transition to Intel chips, Apple's strategy has been as follows.

In the ‌M1‌ and ‌M2‌ series of Apple silicon, each generation has a baseline version, then a "Pro" chip with more cores for its central processing unit and graphics. Next is an even more powerful "Max" version that doubles the number of graphics cores. Lastly, an "Ultra" model doubles the number of main processing cores and graphics cores found in the "Max." Things are slightly different with the M3 series, as explained below.

In terms of the actual real-world gains, this of course depends on the M3 processor version, coupled with the particular Mac model and other component factors like RAM and thermal dissipation. Nevertheless, all of Apple's M3 chips also boast GPU improvements not found in the ‌M2‌ series, including Dynamic Caching, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and hardware-accelerated mesh shading.

M3

Apple's base M3 chip will likely feature in future ‌MacBook Air‌ models, as well as an updated lower-end version of the ‌Mac mini‌. At least in the MacBook Airs, the M3 chip is expected to have similar CPU and GPU core counts as the ‌M2‌ chip in the current models, but that could be true for the ‌Mac mini‌ as well.

 Based on Geekbench benchmarks, the M3 chip has single-core and multi-core scores of around 3,000 and 11,700, respectively. The standard ‌M2‌ chip has single-core and multi-core scores of around 2,600 and 9,700, respectively, so the M3 chip is up to 20% faster than the ‌M2‌ chip, which is what Apple claimed during its "Scary Fast" event in October.

M3 Pro

Going on what we know from the recently released 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro M3 models, the M3 Pro chip outperforms the ‌‌M2‌‌ Pro, but not by a lot. Based on Geekbench benchmarks, single-core speed is up around 16.7 percent, while multi-core speed is up approximately 6.7 percent. For context, the M3 Pro has 150GB/s memory bandwidth, while the ‌M2‌ Pro had 200GB/s. 

The M3 Pro and ‌M2‌ Pro chips in the 16-inch MacBook Pro have 12 CPU cores, but the ‌M2‌ Pro actually featured one additional GPU core over the M3 Pro. Despite that, Apple claims it is 10 percent faster than the ‌M2‌ Pro GPU and 40 percent faster than the M1 Pro GPU.

M3 Max

With the M3 series, Apple deviated slightly from the doubling strategy it followed with the ‌M2‌ Max by adding several more CPU cores to the M3 Max compared to the M3 Pro. Benchmarks indicate that Apple's M3 Max chip in the 16-inch MacBook Pro is around as fast as the ‌M2‌ Ultra chip used in the current-generation ‌Mac Pro‌ and the higher-end ‌Mac Studio‌. In other words, the ‌M2‌ Ultra ‌Mac Pro‌ is outperformed by what is on paper a lower-end machine, just four months after it was released.

 Note that the M3-powered 16-inch MacBook Pro starts at $3,499 in the U.S. when configured with the M3 Max chip, while the ‌Mac Studio‌ with the ‌M2‌ Ultra chip starts at $3,999, so you can effectively get the same performance for $500 less by buying a 16-inch MacBook Pro, which also includes display, keyboard, and trackpad.

Will this performance imbalance alone encourage Apple to bring forward the launch of M3-powered ‌Mac Studio‌ and ‌Mac Pro‌ models? Unlikely. But we can always hope.

M3 Ultra

Having not yet been announced, the M3 Ultra chip is something of an unknown quantity. The existing ‌M2‌ Ultra encompasses two ‌M2‌ Max chips for double overall CPU and GPU performance, as well as twice the memory bandwidth (800GB/s), so it would seem safe to expect Apple to follow the same strategy as it did with the M3 Ultra, with similar performance gains over the M3 Max from Apple's next-generation high-end M3 Ultra chip.

In a small deviation, Apple did add several more CPU cores to the M3 Max compared to the M3 Pro. However, if Apple continues to double both the CPU and graphics configurations with the Ultra, the M3 Ultra could end up having 32 CPU cores and 80 graphics cores.