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Every M-series Apple silicon chip, device, and release date

Apple Silicon chip arm iPhone iPad Mac

M-series Apple silicon chips tout impressive performance but unpredictable release cadence. That makes it hard to keep up with which chips are in which devices. Apple currently has three generations of M-series chips, up to four variations of each generation, and three product categories that use M-series chips. Here’s the data to make sense of it all.

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M3 MacBook Pro vs M1: Worth upgrading?

M3 MacBook Pro vs M1 MacBook Pro

The new M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max Apple Silicon power the latest MacBook Pro laptops. Along with more powerful and efficient CPUs and GPUs, these MacBook Pros enable up to 128GB of memory, have brighter screens, improved battery life, and a new space black finish. Join along for a detailed comparison of what’s different and new with the M3 MacBook Pro vs M1 MacBook Pro lineup and some help answering the question, is it worth upgrading?

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Qualcomm’s latest CPU for PCs beats Apple’s M1 and catches up with M2

Qualcomm's latest CPU for PCs beats Apple's M1 and almost catches up with the M2

Apple has been doing a great job with its Apple Silicon “M” chips for computers, as they deliver more performance without consuming too much power. On the other side, Qualcomm and Microsoft have been trying to develop a competitor to the Apple Silicon Macs. While the first attempts were unsuccessful, it seems that Qualcomm’s latest CPU has finally beaten Apple’s M1 and is catching up with M2 in terms of performance.

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Are Apple Silicon Macs so good we’ll need fewer upgrades?

Apple Silicon Macs | MacBook Pro

The launch of Apple Silicon Macs back in 2020 was one of the longest-awaited developments in the history of Macs. The rumors date back to at least 2014, and with hindsight, the writing was already on the wall when Apple developed its own chip for the first-gen iPad and iPhone 4 back in 2010.

Apple’s hardware chief, Johny Srouji, said last year that the company itself had been working on the project for 14 years

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M1 Mac Linux 6.2 support for MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac Studio, Mac mini

M1 Mac Linux 6.2 | MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini

M1 Mac Linux 6.2 support is now available – an achievement that Linux creator Linus Torvalds originally saw as an impossible task. It can be run on the M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra chips.

Torvalds had long wanted an ARM laptop capable of running Linux, and when the M1 MacBook Air came out said that it would have been the perfect machine but for the fact that Apple wouldn’t allow another OS to access the GPU and other elements …

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2023 Mac mini Geekbench scores show dramatic multi-core improvements over M1 model

2023 Mac mini Geekbench

We didn’t have long to wait for 2023 Mac mini Geekbench scores, for both M2 and M2 Pro variants. As you’d expect, they show pretty dramatic performance gains over the M1 model launched back in November of 2020.

The base model M2 machine gets a relatively modest bump in the single-core test, but a much larger one for multi-core …

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M2 speed compared to every other recent Apple processor

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It wasn’t long after the new(ish) MacBook Pro went on sale that we got to see some M2 speed benchmarks. These confirmed Apple’s claims in terms of improvements over the base M1 chip, but also confirmed that, as expected, the M1 Pro, Max, and Ultra chips still leave the M2 in the dust.

A new comparison table shows how the M2 speed compares to every other recent Apple Silicon chip, from the A13 Bionic in the iPhone 11, through to the M1 Ultra – and it makes for interesting viewing …

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Stage Manager controversy won’t go away, and Apple can still fix it

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The Stage Manager controversy doesn’t look to be going away anytime soon, despite Apple’s attempts to explain its reasoning for limiting the feature to M1 iPads.

I expressed my own disappointment that my 12.9-inch 2018 iPad Pro won’t get the feature, but it’s an even bigger blow to those who bought a 2020 model, only to discover that it is excluded from the headline iPadOS 16 feature just two years later …

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PACMAN M1 chip attack defeats ‘the last line of security’

PACMAN-M1-chip | Purely decorative graphic

A so-called PACMAN M1 chip attack created by MIT security researchers succeeded in defeating what has been described as “the last line of security” on Apple Silicon.

When designing the M1 chip, Apple created various layers of security, each designed to protect against an attacker who succeeded in penetrating the previous ones. Its final layer is a security feature known as PAC – and this has now been defeated …

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M1 versus M2 chip: Here’s everything we know so far

M1 versus M2 chip | Side-by-side illustrations

AnandTech has taken a deep dive into the new M2 chip announced yesterday, focusing in particular on the M1 versus M2 chip performance. These chips are available in the all-new MacBook Air, and in an updated version of the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro.

The site says that while Apple has been as coy as ever when it comes to specifics on the chip (for example, the clock speed), we do know quite a few things already …

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New MacBook Air imminent? Current inventory only M1 Mac with delayed shipping

While we’re almost to WWDC 2022, customers are still facing long shipping estimates for their Apple devices. Supply chain issues have been plaguing Apple for months and will continue throughout the summer. Currently, the M1 MacBook Air is the only M1 Mac with delayed shipping. Most of the M1 MacBook Pro and M1 iMac models will ship this week.

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M1 Ultra benchmarks with real-life usage tests: 40% to 100% faster than M1 Max

We didn’t have long to wait after the launch of the Mac Studio to see a bunch of M1 Ultra benchmarks. These ranged from comparisons to the 28-core Intel Mac Pro to a comprehensive set of tests by Macworld.

A new set of tests not only aims to see how the M1 Ultra and M1 Max compare in real-life usage, but also when performing tasks specifically suggested by pro app users …

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Intel Meteor Lake chips may be made by TSMC, as it seeks to rival Apple’s M1 chips

Intel presentation slide on Meteor Lake chip plans | Intel Meteor Lake chips may be made by TSMC

Intel last week provided an update on its 14th-generation Meteor Lake processors due to launch next year, but it seems that there may have been a crucial change to the company’s plans.

Intel has said as recently as last week that it would fabricate the chips itself, using a 7nm process, but a supply-chain report today claims that the company will instead outsource the work to TSMC, so it can benefit from the same 5nm process used for Apple’s M1 chips …

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Most M1 Mac Thunderbolt 4 ports don’t support the 10Gb/s transfers of USB 3.1 Gen 2, show tests

Photos of M1 MacBook Pro ports | Most M1 Mac Thunderbolt 4 ports don't support 10Gbs transfers

Pro users of M1 Macs have reported disappointing transfer speeds with external SSDs, and tests appear to show that most M1 Mac Thunderbolt ports don’t support USB 3.1 Gen 2 – which means they don’t offer the maximum 10Gb/s transfer speeds that would be expected from Thunderbolt 4.

The tests were conducted on a 2021 16-inch MacBook Pro M1 Max, and a 2022 Mac Studio M1 Max …

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From Intel to Apple silicon, here’s the successful story of the M1 Mac

With the two-year transition completed from Intel to its own silicon, Apple just unveiled all the M1 family chips to its main Macs. With that, the company is now readying the next wave of computers with the second generation of its processors.

In a new story from the Wall Street Journal, the publication writes a profile of Apple’s Johnny Srouji, a former Intel engineer and IBM executive that led Apple’s semiconductor division to ditch Intel for its own silicon.

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