Apple hosted a dark themed product launch event on the evening of October 30th, 2023, the night before Halloween. The Scary Fast event focused on new Mac products, with the next-generation chips. Apple announced the first three chips in the M3 chip family the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max and two devices for them to go in.

The iMac was updated with the M3, while the MacBook Pro received all three chips. A new entry-level version of the 14-inch model has the M3, while the Pro and Max chips are reserved for the more expensive 14 and 16-inch models, which also get an exclusive black finish.

The lightning cable isn’t gone fully

The Magic Mouse, Magic Keyboard, and Magic Trackpad still have Lightning ports. This was abit frustrating for a lot of users. It shouldn’t be too shocking that Apple didn’t update the crucial accessories.

The end of the Touchbar

The Touch Bar was too ahead of its time, and it’s now no longer available on any Mac sold by Apple. It was a really cool idea, executed pretty well, and never embraced by everyone fully as a useful or loved part of the MACs.

It was an OLED strip that recognized touch and replaced the function row of keys on the 2016 MacBook Pro. You could easily scrub through video and audio files in QuickTime. You could choose nice bookmark buttons in Safari. Preview had a lot of useful buttons, too.

The New M3 Chips

Apple has announced M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max, which will be included in Apple’s new 24-inch iMac and MacBook Pros. This time, Apple has placed an emphasis on graphical horsepower, with hardware-accelerated ray tracing, mesh shading and Dynamic Caching. These new chips were compared to the M1, with Apple claiming the M3 renders at 2.5x the speed of the M1 and its CPU is 30% faster than the M1.

New MacBook Pro models

The new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros come with upgraded internals, but the first thing you might notice is the new color: Space Black. They have the new line of M3 chips. The 14-inch MacBook Pro can contain any of the three, while the 16-inch model will only come with the M3 Pro or M3 Max chips.

Apple also boasts that both sizes battery can last 22 hours on a single charge. Both are available for preorder, with the 14-inch MacBook Pro starting at $1,599 and going to $1,999 with the M3 Pro. The baseline 16-inch MacBook Pro goes for $2,499 and the M3 max MacBook Pro with a 16-core CPU has a starting price of $3,999

New M3 iMac

Apple’s iMac line is getting a colorful refresh, with an added M3 chip to add horsepower to the colour change. Apple is sticking with the 24-inch display, and upgrading the screen with a 4.5K retina display, 1080p FaceTime camera and a six-speaker system supporting Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio. The new iMac will be available for preorder with green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue and silver options. The $1,299 baseline comes with an 8-core GPU and 8-core CPU, with a $1,499 version upgrading you to a 256 SSD.