APPLE INVENTS BLACK COMPUTERS

[Mercutio]

Finally and at last, computers are available in a new computer, which has apparently only recently been discovered.
Prior to today, Apple laptops have been available in silver, white and briefly in grey and translucent candy colors. Today, after decades of research, Apple has finally developed a new color, "Space Black." This color is somehow different from every other kind of black, and has heretofore seen in eyes of neither man nor god. Other, lesser, computer manufacturers could only look on in shame as their pale imitations of the absence of light were revealed as falsehoods: "Ours is just a bit of dark grey now, innit?" said one Dell representative, clearly shocked that the could be considered remotely relevant in face of the stifling lack of aesthetic technology.

Also there's apparently some kind of new SoC with hardware ray tracing and 4GB more base RAM and shit, but who cares? NEW COLOR.

 

[LunarMist]

Is it April 1?

 

[Mercutio]

It's not. I just saw three tech articles on the different sites that put the color front and center over anything else.

 

[LunarMist]

I almost bought one of the black rounds computers they had like 10-12 years ago.

 

[sedrosken]

Right? This isn't even the first time Apple's made a black computer. The coverage is ridiculous.

 

[Handruin]

Agreed, the coverage is super silly on the color. I am interested to see how the generational improvements of the M3 pan out once reviewers put it through some tests. I hate the charts Apple puts out there to try and convey info, they're also terrible.

 

[Chewy509]

The only items to really note, was the unusual RAM size for the M3 Pro based MacBooks, eg, based installed size is 18GB, and that the M3 Pro has 25% less memory bandwidth compared to the M2 Pro (150GB/s vs 200GB/s).

Mind you, having colour matched keyboards on the iMac is a nice touch...

 

[Chewy509]

Right? This isn't even the first time Apple's made a black computer. The coverage is ridiculous.

The Powerbook 100 came in black, didn't it? Or is that more of a very dark grey? Otherwise one of the G3 based models was certainly black...

 

[Mercutio]

I remember dark grey Mac portable in the early 90s but never actual black.
I saw the drop in bandwidth but increased RAM. I figured they did that more to provide some extra capacity for a video framebuffer moreso than hedging against the bandwidth drop. It's probably both.

Both Xeon and Threadripper/Epyc Zen 4-class DDR5 platforms should be able to match or exceed M3 Max memory bandwidth, nominally one of the strong suits for the Apple SoC. IMO, the tradeoff gets right back to how much a user needs I/O vs low power operation.

 

[sedrosken]

The Pismo and Wallstreet G3s were black. Apple had a black polycarbonate Macbook in 2006-7 I believe, though that may have just been a black display and white under-case.

 

[LunarMist]

I remember dark grey Mac portable in the early 90s but never actual black.
I saw the drop in bandwidth but increased RAM. I figured they did that more to provide some extra capacity for a video framebuffer moreso than hedging against the bandwidth drop. It's probably both.

Both Xeon and Threadripper/Epyc Zen 4-class DDR5 platforms should be able to match or exceed M3 Max memory bandwidth, nominally one of the strong suits for the Apple SoC. IMO, the tradeoff gets right back to how much a user needs I/O vs low power operation.

All those workstation/server AMD and Intel power hogs may be fine for the server room or enthusiasts at home, but MAC does that in a laptop. It's very impressive.

 

[Mercutio]

... as long as your external I/O ambitions can be satisfied with a Thunderbolt port and you don't care about internal storage even a tiny bit.