I forget which thread we were discussing this topic, but I called it back then, and now some proof 
Apple to Buy TSMC’s Entire Supply of 3nm Chips for 2023 - MacRumors
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One of the reasons I begrudgingly passed on a recent discount on buying an IPP 11" is because the iPad Mini 7 is rumored to have the new A17 3nm chip, and I kind of want to see just how many changes it’ll bring to the iPad Mini. Will it bring some of the previously M only restricted capabilities? IDK, I don’t know enough about hardware to know how this all works really. But if I could just get hover in the iPad Mini, I’d hold on to my 12.9 longer and get a mini for all my on the go sketching.
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When your cash position ($62.48B as of 06/30) is nearly ONE-HALF of the total cash balance of all the US states ($134.5B - PEW as of 03/31) you can pretty much control any supply market you face…
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I never thought of it like that. On the other hand, *TINFOIL HAT ON* that also gives me the stark realization that were Apple to tank as a company and really tank, it would have serious downstream repercussions on every contractor, company, and perhaps even country who survives off their steady cashflow. All of sudden, people blindly hating Apple isn’t necessarily a good thing. You might slit your own throat if your wish for them to go belly up all of a sudden came true. *TINFOIL HAT OFF*
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Hey now, I blindly hate all companies! 
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My Apple “hate” doesn’t go that far =P
They make good products. I just don’t want to get stuck in an ecosystem where the design philosophy seems to differ so much from my own. I prize compatibility and customizability more highly than I do a highly tailored and integrated system (even with the trade-offs in efficiency and reliability that come with it). MANY users have the opposite inclination, and I’m glad they have a company that tailors to them.
My “hate” comes mostly from annoyances over their “traps” like sucking users into iMessage and Facetime and making those apps exclusive to their ecosystem.
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This is exactly where I stand. I do not hate their company as a whole and Apple’s microarchitecture had an amazing beginning though I do not share the same thoughts about its current state since they do not appear to have a game plan or performance trajectory (specifically IPC) that is anywhere near self-sustaining. I am more in the “dislike” and “quibbles” camp of their walled garden and a prime example is…
…which is public enemy one to me. It is the worst especially for communicating in text message groups when Apple users use the reactions on text messages. I have the good sense to not be noisy with it in SMS and MMS but almost every non-techie Apple user does not know the nuance and it is infuriating to see the trail of messages on the Android end. Speaking vicariously for Android users, it is a load of fun when you have that crazy coworker or friend who compulsively reacts to every message in the group so you cannot even see the actual conversation flow. Apple should not allow reactions in SMS and MMS and the other industry giants should give major pushback for them allowing this by default if at all!
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Wow, they really want Intel MacBook users out there to upgrade. There must be quite a few.
Anybody else find that announcement kind of disappointing?
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A bit disappointed; a bit confused; and a lot of “why”?
Base M3 MBP14 replacing MBP13 - AND ONLY SUPPORTS ONE EXTERNAL MONITOR, with base RAM only 8gb.
The M3 Pro dropped $100 and upped base ram to 18gb - what’s with that…
UPDATE - more than anything it makes me want to either take a closer look at Snapdragon X OR EVEN go back to an eBay refurbished M1 Pro MBP14 with 1 year Allstate warranty for $1325…
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Agreed, on both of those. If I did need to go back to that world, I would look into an M1 Pro 14" for CHEAP now. But the Snapdragon idea intrigues me, it does…I guess I’ll hang on to the SP9 for a while for now.
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Why? Why would they do that?
Poor yields on 3nm leading to higher costs from their enormous monolithic designs and it will only get worse and worse with 2nm and smaller. In other words, AMD and Intel were right to transition to chiplets and Apple will need to do the same to stay in the game.
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So why is the M3 Pro MBP14 $100 less than the M2 Pro was this morning?
That can be summed up like this: it is less chip, or less P cores, a mere 6 instead of 8, than its predecessor M Pro. The M Pro tier was the most negatively impacted and has officially become the proverbial odd man in the middle.
Interesting analysis though I’m not sure I’m totally on board. It is true that yield are currently quite low on the 3nm node process, but that was also initially true with 5nm and 7nm when they were the “new thing”
It’s possible spin given the sources involved that I’m hearing from, but improved efficiencies in the interconnect speeds within the chip AND more importantly a desire to improve power efficiency are the likely reasons behind this move.
And finally, while it’s new to the M series chips which were a remarkable jump out of the gate, Apple is like Intel and AMD before them moving towards a tick tock model of chip improvements. And don’t forget that the M1 was allegedly nearly 10 years in the making prior to it’s official debut (work on it allegedly started after the release of the iPhone 6 plus)
And, I’m almost 100% certain that the Oryon chips will follow a similar path eg. a big jump over the SQs with initial launch and then incremental (small) improvements in gen 2, gen 3 etc.
TLDR The 1980’s to mid 90’s phenomena of each succeeding generation being significantly more performant than the prior generation are long gone.
And in fact with the current love of all things AI, additional functionality of the chipsets will be the coin of the realm such as with things like the security enclave or on board Siri processing that Apple has done with later generations of the iPhone a series chips.
My $.02 anyway
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And BTW, the more cores is automatically better has been a false dichotomy for a good bit now and that’s down to a much more intractable issue which is that developers both OS and app struggle to make effective use of additional cores beyond a practical point (around 4 at the moment according to our analysts).
It’s a basic issue of how do you spread/partition the work across all those cores effectively
And that’s why, for a long time, Apple focused on the performance of single cores to get the gains they did with multiple successive iterations of the A series
Yeah I get all that, but why have fewer cores and smaller busses then? This is more of the same. If you love Macs then I guess you are happy, but if you were looking for a reason to switch or switch back, I certainly didn’t see one.
With the new snapdragon, that intrigues me more…
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