The shortest press conference in history, Apple is not "alive"?

In 25 minutes, Apple had the shortest press conference in history.

Apple dubbed the event a Halloween party, which it called "Scary Fast." CEO Tim Cook walked through the fog on a dark night, and the atmosphere was in perfect shape. There was no familiar "good morning", Cook said "good evening" to everyone, and opened the press conference.

The whole conference focused on the new chip and the new iMac and Macbook series. Chip processors, Apple released three in one go: M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max. For personal computers, Apple officially announced the new 24-inch iMac with M3 chip and the 14-inch and 16-inch Macbook Pro. Among them, the Macbook Pro equipped with M3 Pro and M3 Max chips has a new space black color.

Speculation that the new iPad did not arrive as scheduled and could be scheduled by Apple for release in the spring of next year. At the end of the press conference, small print appeared on the screen: "This event was filmed by an iPhone and edited by a Mac." ”

The interest in Apple's conference is still high. This morning, a number of entries related to Apple's press conference appeared on Weibo's hot search, including "Apple press conference", "no iPad", and "Apple M3 series chips". Cook posted a Weibo preview of the press conference at 6 a.m., and there were already more than 500 comments in two hours.

But people's disappointment also came to an abrupt end in less than half an hour after the press conference, and the press conference ended, and the entry of "the shortest press conference in history" rushed to the fourth place in the hot search on Weibo. The digital blogger who spoke to the live broadcast was surprised, saying that his on-site explanation exceeded the total duration of the press conference.

Is Apple not "alive"?

A

Let's take a look at what was specifically said at this Apple conference.

The first is the M3 series chips, which are the highlight of this press conference and are arranged in the first part of the press conference. This is the first time that a Mac chip has adopted a 3nm process, and the overall performance and graphics processing power have been significantly improved compared to the previous two generations.

Nanoscale process technology means that smaller transistors can be manufactured to accommodate more transistors in the same area, ultimately achieving higher chip performance and better power control. At present, the mainstream is 7nm and 5nm technology, and this year's Apple began to officially move towards 3nm, and the previously released iPhone 15 series was equipped with 3nm chips for the first time. Chip iteration has increasingly become the top priority of Apple's product upgrades.

The base version of the M3 chip includes an octa-core CPU, four performance cores, and four efficiency cores, and Apple says its CPU performance is 35% faster than that of the M1. It is speculated that productivity apps like Safari or Microsoft Excel will run up to 30% faster. For creators, the new chip can support up to 12 4K video streams, and photo-processing with Photoshop can provide twice the speed. In addition, the M3 Pro is equipped with a 12-core CPU, an 18-core GPU, and 36GB of unified memory. Whereas, the M3 Max comes with a 16-core CPU, a 40-core GPU, and 128GB of unified memory.

The second is the product, Apple announced the launch of the new iMac and Macbook Pro series this time, all using the latest chips.

Among them, the update of iMac all-in-one is really rare, and the last iMac update was in 2021, using the M1 chip. After two years, iMac has leapfrogged from M1 to M3 step by step, priced at 10999 yuan, and will be available for order at 9 am on November 1, and will be on sale on the 7th. Apple says that compared to the M1 version of the iMac, the new model has 4 times more performance. Apple has not forgotten to "step on", saying that compared with the 27-inch top-of-the-line iMac with Intel chips, the new performance is increased by 2.5 times.

The iMac only uses the basic M3 chip, while the Macbook Pro covers the entire new M3 series this time. The size is available in 14-inch and 16-inch options, and the previously speculated 13-inch version did not appear. In terms of color, the new space black color scheme has been added, which is very in line with the Halloween theme, and the Macbook Pro with this new color scheme is also used in the video display.

Among them, the 14-inch Macbook Pro starts at $1,599 (about 11,700 yuan), and the 16-inch starts at $2,499 (about 18,300 yuan). If you want to have Apple's most advanced M3 Max chip 14-inch Macbook, the price starts at 24999 yuan, if you choose the highest configuration (16-core CPU version, 128GB unified memory, 8TB solid-state drive), the price is more than 50,000 yuan.

It's worth noting that during the press conference, Apple mentioned games several times, including the first support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing. Triple-A gamers probably understand the importance of ray tracing, which can simulate Guangxi's performance in the scene, greatly improving the graphics of the game. and dynamic caching, which Apple calls "industry firsts", where most graphics cards can multitask in parallel, but don't always maximize GPU resources, while dynamically allocating resources can improve performance and increase GPU average utilization.

The stereotype of "playing games without Mac" is something that Apple is eager to shake off. With games like Resident Evil 4 coming to the iPhone, it's no secret that Apple's ambitions to get into gaming are no secret. The next most important thing is to fill the Mac game library, and even if the new games are released this year, most of them don't have native Mac ports yet.

The above is basically all the content of this press conference, just 25 minutes, exclusive M3 chip. As for computer products, they are more like carriers of new chips.

B

Back to the question at the beginning, is Apple not "alive"?

25 minutes, not only is it the shortest press conference in Apple's history, even if all the "friends" are brought in, it is difficult to find a shorter press conference.

However, this is mainly due to the monolithic content. Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June last year lasted almost two hours, but if you look closely, it is not difficult to see that 40 minutes were given to iOS 16, 15 minutes to watchOS 9, and 20 minutes to iPad OS, M2 chip and Mac in just 35 minutes. A year earlier, Apple's press conference in October 2021 took 50 minutes, of which the Mac-related part took only 36 minutes, and the rest was divided between HomePod and AirPods.

Judging from the official announcement and introduction of chips and Macs, the duration of Apple's press conference is not much different from the past.

And the singleness of the content, Apple probably has its own helplessness. In other words, the launch of only new chips and Macs this time does not mean that Apple's product research and development capabilities have declined, but may be a conservative choice under the supply chain problem.

The "fruit chain" is a highly complex system involving many suppliers and manufacturers. Global trade tensions have created raw material shortages or rising costs for some suppliers. In August this year, Jeff Pu, an analyst at Haitong International Securities, predicted that the iPhone 15 would reduce production due to possible supply problems with parts such as new displays, Sony's camera sensors and titanium alloy frames used in iPhone Pro models.

Before this press conference, in mid-October, Tianfeng International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that Apple may not launch new products in the fourth quarter of this year, the key reason is that Apple's production in that quarter is very small, a total of less than 400,000 to 500,000 units. So he believes that if Apple releases a new Macbook Pro in November-December, "unless demand is weak, supply tightness could continue into the first quarter of 2024." "At this stage, Apple is eager to clear its inventory and reformulate its new product and sales strategy for 2024.

According to Ming-Chi Kuo, then the launch of iMac and Macbook Pro at this conference, Apple itself has been under pressure to continue the tight supply until next year, compared with previous years, this year's new product release rhythm is "conservative", but at the moment, it is already a "radical".

To some extent, Apple has to withstand that pressure. Ming-Chi Kuo has pointed out that it is estimated that the shipments of Macbook supply chain in the fourth quarter will drop sharply by 25% to 35% year-on-year, which may be due to the fact that M2 chips are not much higher than M1 chips and cannot stimulate demand.

Demand is still weak, and Apple has to think differently; Demand is strong and supply pressures continue. The release of the M3 chip and its related products, whether the market performance is good or not, will bring problems to Apple.