How to rewatch it and what was announced

Apple held another event following the iPhone 15 launch at the end of October and this time the focus was all on Mac. The company loves a little tease with its invites and the animation for the ‘Scary Fast’ event saw the Apple logo turn into the iconic Finder icon, all but confirming new Macs were on the cards, but it was still a little surprising when they did all appear.

There have been plenty of rumours about a new iMac, alongside new MacBook Pro models, and we’ve seen a number of conflicting reports about the M3 chips and whether or not they might make an appearance. Turns out, all of those rumours were true. Here’s everything that happened during Apple’s ‘Scary Fast’ event, including what treats we got and how to rewatch the event if you missed it.

How to rewatch the Apple ‘Scary Fast’ event?

Typically Apple holds its events at 10AM Pacific Time, but that wasn’t the case for the ‘Scary Fast’ event. In a break from tradition, the ‘Scary Fast’ event took place on the eve of Halloween and we suspect that’s no coincidence. It was bad news for those in Europe however, as it meant the start time for the Apple ‘Scary Fast’ event was significantly later than Apple’s usual product announcements would usually be, meaning you’d need to have stayed up past midnight if you wanted to see live what Apple meant by “Treat yourself” in its teaser of the event.

If you decided sleep was more important on the night before Halloween, you can still rewatch the event, so don’t worry.

You can rewatch the ‘Scary Fast’ event on Apple’s YouTube channel, as well as through the Apple Events page and via Apple TV and TV app too, if you check out the Apple Event category. We’ve also dropped the stream here for easy access. Hit play and you’ll be able to see everything that happened.

What was announced at Apple’s ‘Scary Fast’ event

The Apple iPhone 15 event had no shortage of devices announced and while the ‘Scary Fast’ event was much shorter – 30 minutes to be exact – there were still a number of announcements. This is everything that was announced during the Apple October event.

Apple

M3 chips

It’s probably no coincidence that Apple announced the ‘Scary Fast’ event was happening on the same day Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit revealed the X Elite platform for PC will reportedly be 50 per cent faster than the M2 chip. Apple’s silicone M series chips have been praised for their power and efficiency, so it was a big claim for Qualcomm to make for its latest platform. What better time to announce a new series of chips that should be even faster than the platform your competition just claimed to beat, hey?

Apple revealed the M3 chips during the ‘Scary Fast’ event, which include the M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max, all of which are built on a 3nm process, similar to the A17 Pro that recently debuted on the iPhone 15 Pro runs on. For reference, the X Elite platform from Qualcomm is built on a 4nm process and the M2 chips are built on a 5nm process so the M3 chips should offer quite substantial performance gains.

Apple said the M3 family features a next-generation GPU inside, which has a feature called Dynamic Caching that allocates the use of local memory in hardware in real time, meaning only the exact amount of memory is used for each task. Hardware-accelerated Ray Tracing also comes to Mac for the first time with the M3 chips, while in terms of speed, the M3 chips are said to be 2.5x faster graphically than the M1. The CPU has been redesigned too, as you might expect, with Apple claiming the M3 performance cores are up to 30 percent faster than those in the M1 family and the efficiency cores are up to 50 percent faster. It’s also claimed the M3 family delivers up to 35 percent more performance at peak power compared to the M1 family. When compared to the M2 family, Apple claims the M3 family is 30 per cent faster in terms of efficiency.

Apple

MacBook Pro (M3, 2023) 14-inch and 16-inch

No point in new chips without the hardware to utilise them, right? We’ve been treated to a mid-cycle update for the top-of-the range MacBook Pro models at the ‘Scary Fast’ event, with a 14-inch model running on the M3 chip and 14-inch and 16-inch models running on the M3 Pro and M3 Max chips. The M3 Pro models will be available from 7 November, while the M3 Max models will be available later in November and both come in a new Space Black colour (insert emoji with heart eyes here). It’s the base model running the M3 chip that might peak interest, however, as there was a surprising starting price of $1599.

Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (M3, 2023)

The latest MacBook Pro features the Apple M3 chip with an 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine.

There are some serious specs under the hoods of these models too and all feature a 1080p FaceTime camera, six-speaker sound system and studio-quality mics. All models also offer a Liquid Retina XDR display with 20 percent brighter SDR content. This contributes to better battery life, with the 16-inch model with M3 Pro said to deliver 22 hours. The 2022 MacBook Pros are exceptional laptops, but despite offering a decent battery life overall, they don’t match the MacBook Air in our experience and so here’s hoping those Mini-LED displays and performance enhancements from the M3 chips bump up that battery. The M3 Pro and M3 Max chips offer up to a 16-core CPU, 40-core GPU and up to 128GB of memory, which is slightly higher than the already impressive 12-core CPU, 38-core GPU and up to 96GB memory options offered on the M2 chips.

Apple

iMac (M3, 2023)

Apple redesigned the iMac in 2021 and it was glorious. It doesn’t offer as large of a display some might have liked (we’re still mourning the 27-inch iMac), but the overall design is delightful. It’s been a couple of years now though, and while the design is sticking, along with the 24-inch screen size, a new, more powerful iMac is one of the devices that was unveiled at the ‘Scary Fast’ event.

Apple/ Pocket-lint 

Apple iMac 24-inch (M3, 2023)

Apple revealed the new iMac running on the M3 chip and it is claimed to deliver a huge leap in performance compared to its predecessor with M1 chip – 2x faster performance in fact – while it is claimed to deliver 2.5x faster performance when compared to the Intel-based 27-inch model. The base model offers an eight-core CPU and 10-core GPU, along with support for up to 24GB of unified memory. Like the M1 model, there’s a 24-inch 4.5K Retina display on board, and it comes in seven bright and bold colours. There are some rumours about a larger iMac with a 32-inch display but it’s thought this will arrive next year as it definitely wasn’t at the ‘Scary Fast’ event.

What was missing from the Apple ‘Scary Fast’ event?

If you’re an Apple fan, you might be wondering where the iPads were at. There have been rumours of a new iPad mini and a redesigned iPad Pro and while in the past iPads have been revealed at an October event, it’s expected they will likely be next year instead given they didn’t appear at the ‘Scary Fast’ one. Apple recently announced the Apple Pencil (USB-C) and if new iPads were coming so soon after that announcement, it would surely have made more sense to announce at the same time so we don’t expect them this side of the holidays now.

Elsewhere, with Apple switching to USB-C and updating accessories like AirPods and the Apple Pencil, we were very surprised to see no new Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad and Magic Keyboard revealed alongside the iMac, upgrading them from Lightning. We were also hoping the upgrade would includes a better-placed port on the Magic Mouse too but alas, not this time.