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Good morning! ☀️ *Tim Cook voice*

Today, we’re discussing the new Macs coming out next week, Apple’s controversial earnings, the latest software, and more!

Estimated reading time: 3.4 minutes

📊 Poll

In the last poll, I asked: When do you plan to buy your next Mac?

Here were some of my favorite replies:

This week: If Apple made an 18-inch MacBook, would you want one?

💻 M3: Not as Good as it Seems

Earlier this week, Apple announced new MacBook Pro’s and a new 24” iMac with the all-new M3 chips. They were available to pre-order after the Scary Fast event and will be releasing next week.

Btw, that entire Scary Fast event was shot on an iPhone 15 Pro Max. How insane is that!? You can watch Apple’s behind-the-scenes footage from the event here.

Anyways, here’s a brief recap of what is being released next week:

• 24” iMac with M3 chip

• 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 chip

• 14 & 16-inch MacBook Pro with M3 Pro & M3 Max chips

So yes, the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar is officially dead!

But the new entry level MBP that’s replacing it is… not as good as it seems.

The base 14-inch MacBook Pro is $1599 and while that might seem like a good price for a MacBook Pro, you might want to look closer at the other options. Here are my thoughts:

• The M3 MacBook Pro only has 2 Thunderbolt ports, the M3 Pro/Max models have 3

• M3 can only output to 1 external display, M3 Pro supports 2, and M3 Max supports 4 external displays.

• M3 comes with 8GB of RAM, so once you upgrade to 16GB, you’re at $1799 - only $200 away from the M3 Pro machine that comes with more CPU cores, GPU cores, and 18GB of RAM. Easy decision!

And that was my exact thought process when trying to determine which MacBook Pro I was going to order as my new main laptop.

So, if you need more than 8GB of RAM, which I believe most professionals do, skip the M3 MBP and go for the base M3 Pro MBP this year. Minimum.

And if you can’t justify an extra $200, you likely aren’t the target market for a MacBook Pro, so you might benefit more from the 15-inch M2 MacBook Air.

On the other hand, the 24” iMac with M3 will be a decent upgrade over the previous M1 version, but unfortunately it comes in the same colors and Apple did not give it the M3 Pro chip like I was hoping for.

Meanwhile, the M3 Max is insane. Leaked GeekBench scores show it performs similar to the M2 Ultra chip! If you can afford it, the M3 Max MacBook Pro seems like a solid upgrade no matter which Mac you’re coming from.

Anyways, I will have all of the new Macs in the studio next week and compare them in real-world scenarios, so stay tuned!

💰 Apple Earnings - Are They Dying?

Apple announced their Q4 2023 earnings on Thursday and man, there was a lot of doom & gloom headlines floating around. We’ll address that in a moment, but first, here are the results:

• Revenue: $89.5B vs $89.35B (expected)

• EPS $1.46 vs $1.39 (expected)

• iPhone revenue: $43.8B vs $43.73B (expected)

• Services revenue: $22.3B vs $21.36B (expected)

• Mac revenue: $7.6B vs $8.76B (expected)

• iPad revenue: $6.4B vs $6.33B (expected)

• Wearables revenue: $9.3B vs $9.41B (expected)

Now the reason there were a lot of “Apple is dying” headlines plastered all over X after this report, is being Apple’s sales decline for the 4th straight quarter. That hasn’t been done since 2001!

But here’s why that statistic is essentially irrelevant:

• Net income increased 10.8% YoY

• New all-time revenue record for Services

• New Q4 record for iPhone revenue

• New all-time high for active devices

So, yeah, Apple is not dying. Don’t believe everything you read on X/the news.

Per Apple’s press release:

Let's Talk Software

Apple skipped the week for software updates, but things will pick back up next week. Here’s what to expect:

• iOS 17.2 Beta 2

• watchOS 10.2 Beta 2

• macOS Sonoma 14.2 Beta 2

• tvOS 17.2 Beta 2

We could also see a double point update (iOS 17.1.1) in the coming weeks before the final release of iOS 17.2, which I’m expecting in December.

Other iOS-related tidbits:

• Resident Evil Village is now available on iPhone 15 Pro & M1/M2 iPads. It plays very well and still shocks me that these graphics/scenes are possible on a smartphone

• A new AirTag firmware update dropped this week. Build number is 2A61

• 8 new games will be added to Apple Arcade in November and December, following the first ever price increase

📰 Quick News Bites

• iPhone 16 Could Feature Extra Button, Relocated mmWave Antenna and Haptic Action Button

• 2024 Apple Watch to Gain Blood Pressure Monitoring and Sleep Apnea Detection

• Apple quietly kills off Siri-only Apple Music Voice Plan

• Tim Cook again says Apple is working on generative AI ‘responsibly’