The new 14-inch MacBook Pro has sparked controversy among tech enthusiasts, with many criticizing Apple's decision to include only 8GB of RAM as standard on the base model.

This is particularly galling when compared to laptops from other manufacturers that offer more RAM as standard. For example, some 13 and 15-inch laptops from Apple have higher resolution screens than the new 14-inch device, which means they require more pixels to be pushed, resulting in increased pressure on the system's RAM. As a result, there is a significant amount of shared memory, making it necessary for the system to rely on external storage to handle demanding tasks.

In contrast, Apple has opted to use this extra capacity for other purposes, such as the GPU, which benefits from increased performance and power efficiency. This strategy allows the system to deliver similar performance to the M1 chip but using half the power and up to 65% more performance at peak levels. The CPU also sees a significant boost in performance, with Apple claiming a 35% increase at peak levels.

However, some critics have argued that this increased performance does not make up for the lack of RAM on the base model. But we disagree with this assessment. With year-over-year increases in performance slowing down to around 10-20%, it's unrealistic to expect a 300% increase every single year. Apple has achieved an impressive feat by improving performance over the course of three years, given Intel's own struggles with their processor development.

Another feature that caught our attention was the new black color option and the supposed fingerprint-resistant coating on the "Razor BL" model. The company claims to have a special anodization process that reduces fingerprints, which is exactly what we want from this type of laptop. We can only hope that Apple will deliver on its promise.

The event itself was a strange affair, with many wondering why it was held at such short notice. We suspect that this may be a tactic by Apple to pad their earnings reports before the Intel chip launch in six weeks' time. The real reason behind the announcement remains unclear, but one thing is for sure: the new MacBook Pro has sparked a heated debate about RAM and performance.

As we delve deeper into the world of tech, it's essential to consider the latest developments and trends that shape our industry. Apple's decision to focus on energy efficiency and performance has put them at odds with Intel, who are set to launch their Meteor Lake chip in the coming months. The latter promises to be a revolutionary leap forward, with claims suggesting it will be the biggest architectural shift Intel has made in 40 years.

The timing of this announcement couldn't be more convenient for Apple, which is looking to expand its presence in the laptop market. By announcing their new M3 chip so early, they're attempting to demonstrate their capabilities and outdo Intel's latest creation. While it's unclear how the two chips will compare, one thing is certain: this is shaping up to be a fascinating battle between two tech giants that could change the landscape of laptops forever.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI wasn't going to make a video on this the news of Apple's M3 update uh it's Halloween it's my birthday but I just had so many thoughts about this thing that I just I have to do this um okay so the short of it is that Apple launched their new M3 chips these have been put into their 14-in and 16-inch MacBook Pros so those have been refreshed and those now have an option for a space black color and they've also updated their iMac the colorful all-in-one devices and fortunately on that iMac it still has the amazing lightning Port charged Magic Mouse thank God they didn't change that Masterpiece now I think this whole announcement could have just been a tweet or at best like a press release or something uh but Apple being Apple was more ambitious and they shot this whole event this Halloween themed event that was shot on the iPhone 15 Pro which is pretty cool uh they clearly have confidence in their camera systems there but there were three things that that kind of jumped out of me that I want to talk about the first is that 14-in base model MacBook Pro this new 14-in Macbook Pro replaces this device or a device very much like this the 13-in MacBook Pro that had just like the base M1 and M2 chips this product is now gone and it's been replaced with the new base model 14-in MacBook Pro which has pretty much the exact same chassis as the upper echelon 14in Pro Models except it has one less USBC port and it doesn't come in Black it only has the space gray and silver colors but it does have the 120 HZ screen still has an SD card reader which is great the thing is this new 14-in base model starts at $1600 now during the event Apple was like it previously started at $1 1999 and now it starts at just $15.99 and my immediate reaction I think for a lot of people is like oh did they lower the price it's not like they lowered the price they just introduced this kind of featur stripped economy model which is fine right because I think having a kind of lower price point entry model for this product line it's fine except at $1600 it has 8 gigs of RAM and this just does not sit well with me like I have made videos on this before where I've defended Apple's decision to include 8 gigs of RAM on their kind of entrylevel models because the way that Apple uses Ram 8 gigs is enough for a lot of people but on this new model A 14 in pro model that has the pro moniker it just does not make sense to me it considering the the price point the year that it is 2023 the type of product that it is a pro model 8 gigs of RAM is just it's so silly also this device it's got a higher resolution screen than any 13 or even 15-inch laptop that Apple makes and just by nature of having more pixels there's more pixels to push there's more vram required to do it which is shared so just the 8 gigs of RAM that's on that new 14-in device this has more pressure than any device they've had before with 8 gigs of RAM so it it just makes no sense to me I would have like when I think about this what they should have done is had a 16 GB model as the base and just given people 256 gigs of storage at the base but then what they're doing is they're just upselling right they know that anyone who's buying this product has a really high chance of purchasing that extra ram upgrade and therefore it's an $1,800 product and not $1600 product it bugs me it really does and again this is coming from someone who has adamantly defended their choice of 8 gigs of RAM on their entry Lev models I still believe in that except on this thing on a $1600 like pro model no man it it really shouldn't exist okay the second thing that kind of piqu my interest was their whole conversation about performance so M3 I think it's a pretty decent uptick in performance now they compared it to M1 a lot which is fine I guess but then they compared it to the Intel based MacBooks which are like 4 and 1/2 years old which is kind of weird uh but in general I think a decent bump in performance and again very focused on Energy Efficiency so the M3 GPU can deliver similar performance to the M1 GPU but just using half the power and up to 65% more performance at Peak this is Apple's claims and for the CPU it can supposedly push out 35% more performance at Peak but the biggest gains are in that GPU Department you also get Hardware R tracing Hardware mesh shading and there's also this new feature they call it Dynamic caching which is essentially variable memory allocation for the GPU which is wild like the idea of that there's very little documentation at this point at least from Apple as to how this is done and what it actually does for developers but the idea of it sounds really cool uh that needs to be something that we examine in a future review but I see a lot of commentary about how like this wasn't a big enough performance gain like I totally disagree with that obviously year on year we all want to see you know 300% increases every year but for Apple to get to a 3 nmet process while improving the performance Year onye all done in the span of three years time it's quite impressive if you consider what Intel's been doing for the past three years I mean come on you got to give Apple a break there uh I they they did mention this real quickly their whole black color and how they have a special anodization process that reduces fingerprints so I'm hopeful like I hope Apple does it properly cuz this right here this is uh the razor BL this has a coating that's supposed to reduce fingerprints on the black anodized aluminum and I mean you tell me is it working uh I think that if Apple's going to make this claim I think it's legit and there there's isn't coding there's is actually in the anodization process itself so I hope at least for the people that want black laptops that it is fingerprint resistant because that is something that plagues basically every black aluminum laptop that I've ever touched okay okay the last thing I want to touch on is the event itself it was a strange event right and as I sat there last night after dinner at 8:00 p.m. a PM for every gig of RAM that they're including I was like why is this happening right now it just felt so out of place for Apple the event itself it's just a themed event for a Macbook launch or a Macbook refresh strange uh so a couple things come to mind first they have their earnings call coming up in a couple days and I feel like this is something to kind of pad the meters a bit but there is something else in 6 weeks time Intel's supposed to be launching their new meteor Lake laptop chip and this thing is supposed to be revolutionary Intel's gone on record saying it's like the biggest architectural shift they've had in 40 years this product is supposed to be wild like super powerful super energy efficient on par with Apple has and a very powerful GPU like from all the leaks and rumors I've seen this thing looks crazy impressive but I think the existence of this upcoming chip that's like literally in a and a half I think Apple just want to get into this game and be like hey we got M3 and it's pretty good too uh but there you have it M3 happy HalloweenI wasn't going to make a video on this the news of Apple's M3 update uh it's Halloween it's my birthday but I just had so many thoughts about this thing that I just I have to do this um okay so the short of it is that Apple launched their new M3 chips these have been put into their 14-in and 16-inch MacBook Pros so those have been refreshed and those now have an option for a space black color and they've also updated their iMac the colorful all-in-one devices and fortunately on that iMac it still has the amazing lightning Port charged Magic Mouse thank God they didn't change that Masterpiece now I think this whole announcement could have just been a tweet or at best like a press release or something uh but Apple being Apple was more ambitious and they shot this whole event this Halloween themed event that was shot on the iPhone 15 Pro which is pretty cool uh they clearly have confidence in their camera systems there but there were three things that that kind of jumped out of me that I want to talk about the first is that 14-in base model MacBook Pro this new 14-in Macbook Pro replaces this device or a device very much like this the 13-in MacBook Pro that had just like the base M1 and M2 chips this product is now gone and it's been replaced with the new base model 14-in MacBook Pro which has pretty much the exact same chassis as the upper echelon 14in Pro Models except it has one less USBC port and it doesn't come in Black it only has the space gray and silver colors but it does have the 120 HZ screen still has an SD card reader which is great the thing is this new 14-in base model starts at $1600 now during the event Apple was like it previously started at $1 1999 and now it starts at just $15.99 and my immediate reaction I think for a lot of people is like oh did they lower the price it's not like they lowered the price they just introduced this kind of featur stripped economy model which is fine right because I think having a kind of lower price point entry model for this product line it's fine except at $1600 it has 8 gigs of RAM and this just does not sit well with me like I have made videos on this before where I've defended Apple's decision to include 8 gigs of RAM on their kind of entrylevel models because the way that Apple uses Ram 8 gigs is enough for a lot of people but on this new model A 14 in pro model that has the pro moniker it just does not make sense to me it considering the the price point the year that it is 2023 the type of product that it is a pro model 8 gigs of RAM is just it's so silly also this device it's got a higher resolution screen than any 13 or even 15-inch laptop that Apple makes and just by nature of having more pixels there's more pixels to push there's more vram required to do it which is shared so just the 8 gigs of RAM that's on that new 14-in device this has more pressure than any device they've had before with 8 gigs of RAM so it it just makes no sense to me I would have like when I think about this what they should have done is had a 16 GB model as the base and just given people 256 gigs of storage at the base but then what they're doing is they're just upselling right they know that anyone who's buying this product has a really high chance of purchasing that extra ram upgrade and therefore it's an $1,800 product and not $1600 product it bugs me it really does and again this is coming from someone who has adamantly defended their choice of 8 gigs of RAM on their entry Lev models I still believe in that except on this thing on a $1600 like pro model no man it it really shouldn't exist okay the second thing that kind of piqu my interest was their whole conversation about performance so M3 I think it's a pretty decent uptick in performance now they compared it to M1 a lot which is fine I guess but then they compared it to the Intel based MacBooks which are like 4 and 1/2 years old which is kind of weird uh but in general I think a decent bump in performance and again very focused on Energy Efficiency so the M3 GPU can deliver similar performance to the M1 GPU but just using half the power and up to 65% more performance at Peak this is Apple's claims and for the CPU it can supposedly push out 35% more performance at Peak but the biggest gains are in that GPU Department you also get Hardware R tracing Hardware mesh shading and there's also this new feature they call it Dynamic caching which is essentially variable memory allocation for the GPU which is wild like the idea of that there's very little documentation at this point at least from Apple as to how this is done and what it actually does for developers but the idea of it sounds really cool uh that needs to be something that we examine in a future review but I see a lot of commentary about how like this wasn't a big enough performance gain like I totally disagree with that obviously year on year we all want to see you know 300% increases every year but for Apple to get to a 3 nmet process while improving the performance Year onye all done in the span of three years time it's quite impressive if you consider what Intel's been doing for the past three years I mean come on you got to give Apple a break there uh I they they did mention this real quickly their whole black color and how they have a special anodization process that reduces fingerprints so I'm hopeful like I hope Apple does it properly cuz this right here this is uh the razor BL this has a coating that's supposed to reduce fingerprints on the black anodized aluminum and I mean you tell me is it working uh I think that if Apple's going to make this claim I think it's legit and there there's isn't coding there's is actually in the anodization process itself so I hope at least for the people that want black laptops that it is fingerprint resistant because that is something that plagues basically every black aluminum laptop that I've ever touched okay okay the last thing I want to touch on is the event itself it was a strange event right and as I sat there last night after dinner at 8:00 p.m. a PM for every gig of RAM that they're including I was like why is this happening right now it just felt so out of place for Apple the event itself it's just a themed event for a Macbook launch or a Macbook refresh strange uh so a couple things come to mind first they have their earnings call coming up in a couple days and I feel like this is something to kind of pad the meters a bit but there is something else in 6 weeks time Intel's supposed to be launching their new meteor Lake laptop chip and this thing is supposed to be revolutionary Intel's gone on record saying it's like the biggest architectural shift they've had in 40 years this product is supposed to be wild like super powerful super energy efficient on par with Apple has and a very powerful GPU like from all the leaks and rumors I've seen this thing looks crazy impressive but I think the existence of this upcoming chip that's like literally in a and a half I think Apple just want to get into this game and be like hey we got M3 and it's pretty good too uh but there you have it M3 happy Halloween\n"