Apple teases 'Scary Fast' event for M3 chip, new desktop M3-powered iMac would be nice

Apple has been steadily making fantastic improvements on its in-house M-series processors, starting out as the M1 family, evolving into the M2 family, and on October 30 at Apple's just-announced "Scary Fast" event, we'll see the next-gen M3 family.

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The company only recently held its iPhone 15 announcement, unleashing tens of millions of new iPhone 15 smartphones into the market. We had updates to the Apple Watch, AirPods Pro with a USB-C charging case, and more. But now, we're getting another event -- Scary Fast -- where we should see the new M3 chip unveiled... and used in a new Apple product, of course.

Apple could also unveil a new M3-powered iMac as well as an M3-powered MacBook Pro, both utilizing Apple's next-gen M3 in the best way possible: the highest-end Mac products that Apple sells. The iMac and MacBook Pro can be configured into higher-end specs and be quite damn powerful -- especially with the M2 Max + lots of RAM + lots of SSD -- so the M3 is only going to amplify that. We should see refreshes of the MacBook and MacBook Air in 2024 with the M3 processor, but this event should see the new iMac and MacBook Pro getting M3 upgrades.

• Read more: Apple working on next-gen M3 chip for 'future iMac' and other products

The original rumors that I remember reporting on from June 2022 that were from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, where he said Apple was "already working on an M3 chip destined for a future iMac and other products". I said in the article over a year ago now that I would love to see a next-gen Apple iMac desktop system powered by the new M3 chip.

At the time, Bloomberg reported that a next-gen M3-powered iMac was already in the works, but it wouldn't be launching "until the end of next year at the earliest", and now, now we're at that time. We're in very late October now, which is "the end of the year" and at the earliest means Apple could unveil it, and begin shipping its new M3-powered iMac in 2024.

• M3: unknown
• M2 Max: 12-core CPU, 38-core GPU, 67 billion transistors on TSMC next-gen 5nm
• M2 Pro: 12-core CPU, 19-core GPU, 40 billion transistors on TSMC next-gen 5nm
• M2: 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU + 20 billion transistors on TSMC second-gen 5nm
• M1 Ultra: 20-core CPU, 64-core GPU + 114 billion transistors on TSMC first-gen 5nm
• M1 Max: 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU + 57 billion transistors on TSMC first-gen 5nm
• M1 Pro: 10-core CPU, 16-core GPU + 34 billion transistors on TSMC first-gen 5nm
• M1: 8-core CPU, 14-core GPU + 16 billion transistors on TSMC first-gen 5nm