Apple Revamps Mac Lineup and Pricing with New Family of Chips 

This photo taken on October 30, 2023 shows people visiting an Apple store in Shenyang, in China's northeastern Liaoning province. (AFP)
This photo taken on October 30, 2023 shows people visiting an Apple store in Shenyang, in China's northeastern Liaoning province. (AFP)
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Apple Revamps Mac Lineup and Pricing with New Family of Chips 

This photo taken on October 30, 2023 shows people visiting an Apple store in Shenyang, in China's northeastern Liaoning province. (AFP)
This photo taken on October 30, 2023 shows people visiting an Apple store in Shenyang, in China's northeastern Liaoning province. (AFP)

Apple on Monday introduced new MacBook Pro and iMac computers and three new chips to power them, with the company saying it had redesigned its graphics processing units (GPU), a key part of the chip where Nvidia dominates the market.

The new computers and the M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips were unveiled at an online event heavily focused on professional users.

In the US, the 14-inch MacBook Pro laptop will start at $1,599 and a 16-inch version starts at $2,499. The new iMac desktop with the M3 family of chips starts at $1,299. Some will be available next week, while others will not ship until later in November.

Apple has seen a revitalization in its Mac business, roughly doubling its market share to nearly 11% since 2020 when it parted ways with Intel and started using its own custom-designed chips as the brains of the machines, according to preliminary data from IDC.

As part of the focus on business users on Monday, it showed off a new secure screen sharing feature that would let them on their machines from remote locations.

The company's custom chips, which use design technology from Arm Holdings, have given its Macs better battery life and, for some tasks, better performance than machines using Microsoft's Windows operating system.

Unlike other laptop makers that might combine a central processor unit (CPU) from Intel with a GPU from Nvidia, Apple has combined both parts in its Apple silicon chips, which the company claims gives it better performance than its rivals.

Apple's shakeup of the market has spurred Qualcomm to redouble its efforts to make Arm-based chips for Windows, announcing plans last week to release a chip that is both faster and more energy efficient than some Apple offerings. Reuters last week reported that Nvidia also plans to jump into the PC market as early as 2025.

Corporate buying

Apple aimed the new machines squarely at designers, musicians and software developers, at one point highlighting that the way it uses memory can be used by artificial intelligence researchers, whose chatbots and other creations are often constrained by how much data can be held in the computer's memory.

Apple also tweaked its overall lineup of computers in ways that could change the behavior of corporate buyers.

While slashing the US price of the new 14-inch MacBook Pro from $1,999 to $1,599, Apple appeared to have eliminated a cheaper $1,299 13-inch model of its MacBook Pro that was a big seller to businesses, said Ben Bajarin, chief executive and principal analyst at Creative Strategies.

That move will likely clarify the choice between the company's model lines, prompting choices between Apple's productivity-oriented MacBook Air models that top out at $1,299 or the new $1,599 starting price for MacBook Pro models.

At Apple, the Mac hit $40.18 billion in revenue for its fiscal 2022, or about 11% of its revenue. While that was up 14% from the previous fiscal year, sales this year have slowed along with the rest of the PC industry, which has suffered a post-pandemic slump.

Apple said the new chips would be the first for laptops and desktops that use 3 nanometer manufacturing technology, which will give the chips better performance for each watt of electricity used.

Apple did not name who is making the chips, but analysts believe it is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, which uses the same technology to make chips for the top-end iPhone 15 models.

Throughout the event, Apple executives compared the performance of the new MacBooks and iMac machines to older Apple machines with chips from Intel, playing up how much speed customers would notice by upgrading to devices with Apple's own chips.



Nvidia CEO Says Global Cooperation in Tech will Continue under Trump Administration

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang poses for a photo after receiving an honorary doctorate in engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, in Hong Kong on November 23, 2024. (Photo by Holmes CHAN / AFP)
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang poses for a photo after receiving an honorary doctorate in engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, in Hong Kong on November 23, 2024. (Photo by Holmes CHAN / AFP)
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Nvidia CEO Says Global Cooperation in Tech will Continue under Trump Administration

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang poses for a photo after receiving an honorary doctorate in engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, in Hong Kong on November 23, 2024. (Photo by Holmes CHAN / AFP)
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang poses for a photo after receiving an honorary doctorate in engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, in Hong Kong on November 23, 2024. (Photo by Holmes CHAN / AFP)

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Saturday that global cooperation in technology will continue even if the incoming US administration imposes stricter export controls on advanced computing products.
US President-elect Donald Trump, in his first term in office, imposed restrictions on the sale of US technology to China citing national security - a policy continued under President Joe Biden. The curbs forced Nvidia, the world's leading maker of chips used for artificial intelligence applications, to change its product lineup in China.
"Open science in global collaboration, cooperation across math and science has been around for a very long time. It is the foundation of social advancement and scientific advancement," Huang told media during a visit to Hong Kong.
Cooperation is "going to continue. I don't know what's going to happen in the new administration, but whatever happens, we'll balance simultaneously compliance with laws and policies, continue to advance our technology and support and serve customers all over the world."
The head of the world's most valuable company was speaking in the financial hub after receiving an honorary doctorate in engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Reuters reported.
During the visit, Huang participated in a fireside chat with the university's Council Chairman Harry Sham in front of an audience of students and academics.
Asked about the huge energy requirements of graphics processing units - chips behind artificial intelligence - Huang said, "If the world uses more energy to power the AI factories of the world, we are a better world when that happens".
Huang said "the goal of AI is not for training, the goal of AI is for inference". He said AI can discover, for instance, new ways to store carbon dioxide in reservoirs, new wind turbine designs and new materials for storing electricity.
He said people should start thinking about placing AI supercomputers slightly off the power grid and let them use sustainable energy and in places away from populations.
"My hopes and dreams is that in the end, what we all see is that using energy for intelligence is the best use of energy we can imagine," Huang said.
Earlier on Saturday, Huang told graduates that "the age of AI has started" in a speech after receiving the honorary degree.
"A new computing era that will impact every industry and every field of science."