[developerDan]

Sure it might be faster but in context it doesn’t feel like a significant improvement. The base M3 and the M3 Max have fairly large gains over their predecessors, but the M3 Pro doesn’t have nearly as large of a gain (this is all mentioned in the article). It stands out and it’s pretty clear that Apple wants people to “upgrade” to the Max which comes with a +$800 margin.

I’m holding judgement until I see real world performance benchmarks vs synthetic but I fully understand everyone’s reservations with the M3 Pro.

[JohnBooty]

    Sure it might be faster but in context it doesn’t feel
    like a significant improvement.

So they can't just make things faster in an objective way. They have to make you "feel" a certain thing.

    It stands out and it’s pretty clear that Apple wants 
    people to “upgrade” to the Max which comes with a +$800 margin.

Few thoughts there.

1. Well, they certainly won't mind if you buy the Max. No argument there.

2. As for Apple's intentions I think they were extremely honest during the initial presentation itself. The market for these machines are primarily M1 and Intel Mac users. Very few people upgrade their laptops every single year.

3. The M2 lineup was a bit weird, right? If I am remembering correctly there was not a clear case for the M2 Max versus the M2 Pro. I think the M3 lineup is a bit of a correction there. While I certainly wish every chip got like, a million times faster... the product tiers here seem less confusing.

[rsynnott]

> It stands out and it’s pretty clear that Apple wants people to “upgrade” to the Max which comes with a +$800 margin.

Eh? Someone who was previous going to buy an M2 Pro would very likely buy an M3 Pro, not an M3 Max.

This is likely Apple managing yield. If they'd stuck with the same core count, the M3 Pro would be faster, sure, but it would probably also be more expensive.