More from All the news from Apple’s ‘Scary Fast’ Mac event
Coming soon to a MacBook Pro (and I’m betting some other stuff) near you.
Apple’s chip speed charts are improving every year, but they’re still not nearly as functional as they could be.
We’re getting the traditional “deep dive into the weird specs of the new chips with Johny Srouji,” and one of the things he’s talking a lot about is ray tracing, which is crucial for drawing high-res and realistic virtual spaces. That matters for gaming, the metaverse... and the Vision Pro.
They’re on 3nm technology, which should mean a whole heckuva lot faster than the current M2 family of chips.
The M1 and M2 were both launched many months ahead of their Pro and Max, but Apple’s dropping the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max together this time. Fascinating!
And they’re coming to the MacBook Pro, according to Tim Cook. Fingers crossed we get an iMac announcement tonight as well.
We’ve been to Apple Park a lot in the light, but in the dark, it has a real... “supervillain lair slash college campus from a horror movie where no one survives” vibe?
A minute ahead of time, even, at least on my stream. We’re expecting Macs, chips, who knows, but so far, it’s just a squiggly hello.
Apple’s pre-event music can often be described as Banana Republic-core, but tonight’s event has a slightly different mood. There was some monk-like chanting going on when I started the stream, and now it’s a song called “Dark,” by Goldie, James Davidson, and Subjective.
The best way is to follow us along here, where myself, David Pierce, and Richard Lawler will be live blogging the event.
But if you want to watch the keynote, I’d recommend watching it here on a Safari browser. That’s what I’ll be doing. It tends to be the stream that starts earliest.
Alternatively, you can sit back on the couch and watch it on Apple TV.
And if none of those options work for you, there’s always YouTube.
I really can’t decide! On the one hand, Apple (specifically Craig Federighi, the Action Hero himself) loves being right on the edge of incredible cringe. But also, doing a whole Halloween bit during tonight’s event means a lot of meme risk and bad looks and congressional hearings where they show Tim Cook as a vampire and they’re like, “Yes, this, Apple is bad.” You know? I don’t know!
I think my ultimate guess is Craig in costume and only Craig in costume. But I might be more excited about this than new Macs.
We’re expecting M3 chips, a new iMac, and some updated MacBook Pros. And if Apple really leans into the spooky theme, maybe an updated Magic Mouse with a USB-C port on the bottom.
You can follow along live right here:
Stay tuned to our live updates — the event kicks off at 8PM ET / 5PM PT. We’re expecting the M3 chips and a handful of new Macs. Get your predictions in now.
An evening event from Apple is an unusual setup, but we’ll be right back here at 8PM ET to find out what the “Scary Fast” event has in store. Until then, The Vergecast crew runs down some of what we’re expecting to see tonight.
The Bloomberg Power On newsletter sees Mark Gurman as sure as he’s been about Apple’s “Scary Fast” event tomorrow. Here’s a summary of the chips expected in the new iMacs and high-end 14- and- 16-inch MacBook Pro models:
• Base M3 chip: 8-core CPU / 10-core GPU, likely with “improved memory configurations.”
• M3 Pro chip: Gurman mentions a 12-core CPU / 18-core GPU configuration, but with a likely upgrade to a 14-core CPU / 20-core GPU.
• M3 Max: 16-core CPU / 40-core GPU, and he mentions a 32-core GPU option. (The M2 Max is currently available in 30-core / 38-core GPU configs.)
What to expect from Apple’s ‘Scary Fast’ Mac event
