So, it will be prime time on the east coast, which might be a first for Apple. Bring on those M3 chips!
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Any thoughts on why Apple is doing this event so late in the day (in the U.S.)? Did they want it AFTER the stock market closed? Is it an attempt to get more U.S. eyeballs? This event is still pre-recorded as far as I know, just like they have been since covid shut everything down, so scheduling should not be an issue.
5 PM Pacific is 2 PM Eastern, two hours before the market closes, so that can’t be the reason.
Wrong direction: 5 PM Pacific is 8 PM Eastern. Pacific time is 3 hours behind Eastern time.
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Some more conjecture from 'Scary Fast' adds watch parties and gifts to an unusual event
But it’s really the time of day that is most unusual about “Scary Fast.” Typically, Apple holds its events at 10:00 A.M. Pacific Time, although famously the iPhone launch was earlier.
Nonetheless, 10:00 AM PT, is the norm, with that being 1:00 PM ET, and 6:00 PM in the UK. “Scary Fast” is instead happening at 5:00 PM PT, meaning a late evening for the East Coast, and a midnight feast for the UK.
It may also mean a convenient 9:00 AM in Japan, though. That fact alone has sent rumors flying that there will be some live element to the event, with games developers in Japan.
That does feed into rumors that “Scary Fast” could concentrate on games. It is expected, for instance, that new M3 Macs that may be announced will feature advanced ray tracing, which is a particular boon with gaming.
Yeah, I screwed that up but good! Thanks for the correction.
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The music is Up!
“Snazzy Labs” has some pretty convincing deductions about why there are so many configurations of M3 chips with differing CPU and GPU core counts: excessive binning due to the less than optimized TSMC “n3b” (‘b’ for baseline) process node.
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Interesting, as is the presenter, and that someone is that deep into the internals. I suspect they’ve dedicated a ton of time into this sort of tech, me, I’m still nearly back in the electromechanical days back at WeCo! 
Great to see the advances, my last purchase was the M2 Mini Pro, but now looking at a replacement for DW’s Intel 27" iMac, so the 24" M3 may be the next… Surprised to see it is still shilling with a Thunderbolt cable, and no need for fingerprint security, DW’s prints flunk even TSA’s readers, so facial recognition might have been better, but here at home, no need for that sort of security anyway…
Adding up some bump-ups, a decent iMac will be around $2200 with a 1 Tb SSD… 16 Gb RAM… +AppleCare?
Anyway interesting video, made me subscribe to his channel…
weco
Yes, the SnazzyLabs guy sure knows his stuff. He’s been at it for 10+ years I think.
This is very common with leading edge chip geometries. It’s takes a while to get over 90% of the dies on a wafer to pass all final tests. Those that don’t pass, if only certain segments fail (let’s say 5/6/8 out of 40 GPUs or similar) then those dies that fail can still be packaged and used for lesser spec chips.
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Yup, I’m familiar with the issue. Apple seems to have had to accept the less refined process node in order to meet their product schedule. Hopefully they got a great price from TSMC, which they probably did since I think they’re their largest customer.
Just a little side note, years ago, in earlier chip times, my DW worked for a small, local company that made the tiny inkers used in the chip testing machines of the day, as they were tested, and faulty chips were marked so the could be ‘binned’, so a long time back, and I imagine the process has changed greatly today… Somewhere here, she has sample inker, imbedded in clear plastic of what was an interesting job at the time… Interesting people, the owners, family, Persian, beautiful ladies, great parties, and at lest the folks I got to know, were pretty open to discuss their political plight, they still had family in Iran, a lot of their wealth was tied up there, but they had enough connections to visit from time to time… We’ve lost track of them, but it put a different perspective on that part of the world, back in the '90s…
( I had a power outage for a couple hours from when I started the post, but the above text was still here when it all came back on!! )
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I suppose some might need it, want it, toss in all the software to go with it, PS, and beyond, it could get to be real money! Maybe make money!
I never got hooked on laptops, other than for travel…
Here I go, OT again.
I’m a PC/Windows guy who assembled his own tower systems from components for years. Case, power supply, motherboard, video card, hard drives, and so forth. Last time I was due to upgrade I bought a laptop, but you’d hardly know it. I sit at a full size keyboard, looking at a 34" ultra-wide monitor with speakers mounted on either side. The laptop sits in a stand to the left, screen open and facing me, but I never look that way. It has a single cable connected to it, nothing more. That Thunderbolt cable connects it to a Kensington docking station, and that is connected to power, printers, speakers, external drives, keyboard, and anything else that has to connect. When I do travel - not often yet, but I have intentions - unplug that one cable, put laptop and mouse in the bag where its original power supply lives and I’m off! I’ve not one regret over going this way, and love the potential to take everything with me.
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A bit more info on the M3 chips… Pretty awesome to this wecoguy, after seeing the early transistors come out of Bell Labs, and the later IC chips way back…Billions of 'em! And a big investment in R&D by Apple…
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Yes, the M3 line of chips is impressive. It boggles the mind to think where the chip industry will be in another 10 years, let alone another 20 or 30! With a lot of luck and medical advancement, I just might live another 30 years. Or perhaps by then, my mind could “live” on indefinitely as a neural map imprinted on an advanced NPU (neural processing unit).
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I’m trying to imagine the advertising for the competing systems. A good SF author might make a good story of that.
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