Get the matchsticks ready – it’s gonna be a late one for us in the UK – but it will be worth it
Apple has caught us on the hop several times this year – and they continue to do so.
From all the booty that dropped in the first few weeks of January, through to keeping the name of Vison Pro under wraps, Apple have been one step ahead of us the whole year – and they were not in the mood to rest on their laurels just yet.
As much as there had been some rumours of another Apple event this year, no one anticipated what we got wind of yesterday.
An Apple Night to remember
There is quite a lot to take in with the announcement of Scary Fast, Apple’s latest and we assume last event of 2023.
For starters, the event is back to being on a Monday and is to be held on the eve of Halloween – thus the link to the event’s name Scary Fast. We’ll get to the ‘fast’ part in a bit, but it’s the time of the event that has set the cat among the pigeons.
For as long as I can remember Apple’s events have always gone out at 10 a.m. PST which means in the UK we get to join events at a very respectable 6 p.m. But with Apple feeling a bit ‘peppy’ this year they’ve decided this online-only event (no live press will be in attendance) will stream at 5 p.m. PST. This means to watch it live in the UK next Monday (or technically Tuesday) we’ll have to stay up until 1 a.m.!
I almost thought I should do a live watch party on my YouTube channel for the insomniacs out there – hit me up if that sounds like something you’d be interested in – if I get enough interest I could make it happen…
Scary Fast
As per normal, the latest invite has been pulled apart looking for clues as to what Apple may have in store for us on 30th October – and this time the clues are staring us in the face.
The Apple logo on the invite morphs cleverly into the Finder icon you find on every Mac – so I think it’s pretty obvious that this will be a Mac-centred event – which brings us to the fast part of the invite.
M3 is coming!
Let’s put some flesh on those bones then.
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iMac time
There is no way that Apple would put on a special invite this late in the year and at such an unusual time for a minor spec-bump event – nope, they have something meaningful in mind.
The obvious money goes straight to the 24-inch iMac. That Mac has now been untouched for over 900 days. It was a massive moment when that M1 iMac dropped in 2012 and pretty much set the scene for everything that has followed. I’m writing this on an M1 Max MacBook Pro and every day it still dazzles me as to how fast & quiet it is.
But you have to ask yourself would they have waited this long to now only place an M2 chip in it – which is already nearing the end of its cycle? The event is called Scary Fast for a reason – it’s gonna be all about the next iteration of Apple silicon.
M3 will be even faster and more power efficient than its predecessors and we are about to see what a TSMC 3 nanometer chip can deliver. This will be the first time that a 3nm chip will have been used in a Mac and I cannot wait to see just what it’s going to be capable of.
Apart from the chip though these new iMacs are all about colour and Apple having some fun. We saw that in April 2021 with the first gen of the 24-inch iMac and it looks likely they will be given a new lick of paint this time around.
Remember the leaked image of coloured cables earlier this summer that we assumed were going to ship with iPhone 15? Well of course that never happened which leads me to wonder if those colours are a giveaway to the colours we’ll get for the 2023 iMac range.
For the most part, they are all very pastel colours – pink, blue, purple but you’ll also notice a black cable in that picture. If these cables are a clue to new iMacs then we could get a black iMac. How bloody sexy would that be?
We also think that Apple will be updating their Mac Magic accessories – the trackpad, keyboard and mouse to USB-C as another part of their transition – so again the timing would be perfect for these cables to tie in with those items. You have to admit a backlit, black keyboard sounds gorgeous right?
It’s all starting to come together – but there’s more to come…
MacBook Pro
But not satisfied with just showing us what the entry M3 Apple silicon chip can do it looks as if we’re getting the full suite of M3 in a few days.
Yesterday Mark Gurman confirmed that on Monday Apple will release M3 Pro and M3 Max MacBooks at the event. These Macs will have up to 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores making these the most powerful laptops to date.
Also lending weight to Gurman’s thoughts is that stock levels of the higher-end MacBooks are at much lower levels than would normally be the case both online and at retail stores – that is always a classic Apple sign that things are about to change.
I know you could counter the argument that we’re about to get M3 Pro & Max MacBooks because they were only updated in January this year. It was pretty clear though that those MacBooks were supposed to be released late last year but for whatever reason got bumped to early 2023 instead. If that was the case, then the annual upgrade again sits well enough.
Apart from the chip, these new MacBooks will also likely get mini LED displays Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3.
We may not yet be at the point where Macs are about to become serious gaming & 3D rendering workstations, but there’s a good chance that M3 Apple silicon will move them ever closer.
That’s all you get!
There are no signs of an M3 Pro Mac mini or iPads.
A new base-level iPad 11, Air and mini are all in the later stages of development but won’t be released next week – neither will we see an M3 MacBook Air at the Scary Fast event.
Nope – Apple already has its sights set on a March 2024 event where those bits will be released – the same event where they’ll more than likely give us full release details of Apple Vision Pro. Updates to the Mac Studio and Mac Pro will happen much later – possibly in the summer of 2024.
All in all though – this has been quite the year for Apple, a year full of surprises…and the last surprise of the year could well be when Tim Cook walks on stage next Monday and says Good Evening rather than Good Morning!
Apple truly has shaken things up in 2023 – let’s all just hope there is no repeat of the Mother Nature sketch at this event – please god no!
So, who gonna stay up late with me to watch Scary Fast then?
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