Apple’s Night Moves
Reading between the lines of the ‘Scary Fast’ event…
A flurry of Apple news, reports, and rumors hit in the past week — so much so that it’s hard to keep up. But you do have to wonder if many of them are related, hence the timing. If so, it likely all centers around the just-announced “Scary Fast” Apple event taking place next week.
It’s always fun (and/or funny) to delve into some Kremlinology around how Apple names their events. Often, they ultimately don’t seem to mean much of anything, or they’re simply cute ways to frame something obvious (i.e. “Spring Forward” for a spring event). Here, the naming seems very straightforward. “Scary” is clearly a reference to this being held the night before Halloween. And “Fast” would seem to indicate something in Apple’s product line is getting a speed increase.
The “night” part above is also unique and interesting. For as a long as they’ve been in charge of the schedule of their own events, Apple has made it a point of starting them at 10am PT. There have been a few exceptions, I believe — such as for events held in ET in New York City or the like. Or elsewhere around the world. To that end, given this event is being held at 5pm PT,¹ it seems one of two things is possible:
- They’re just having fun with Halloween timing, which is, of course, a holiday associated with the night time.
- They’re holding it in a way that lines up nicely with another timezone.
And actually, it’s entirely plausible that both things are in play here. Because this is a video-only event,² Apple is breaking their bounds and doing something more “fun” here. Joe Rossignol of MacRumors offers up the other element:
It’s possible that the release date lining up with the event is merely a coincidence, but it could hint at additional Mac-related gaming news to come from Apple and Capcom, and perhaps other game developers. A source informed us that Apple is holding its online event at the unusual time of 5 p.m. Pacific Time because it will fall during business hours in Japan, and claimed that the event will include a major tie-in with a Japanese game developer, but we have not independently confirmed the accuracy of this information.
This matters because this event would be a perfect time to formally release the new version of the Resident Evil series of videogames made by Capcom. The game coming to Apple’s devices was previously announced and slated for October 30, so… yeah. And you know what is also “scary”? Resident Evil is also scary. So… yeah.
And if there’s something to that, might it be a good time and event to also unveil some new Apple TV hardware, with a faster chip to better handle new games like Resident Evil? The device is due for an upgrade and now there are reports that a key aspect of tvOS is about to be altered in a meaningful way. From a report by Mark Gurman of Bloomberg:
As part of the overhaul, the company will discontinue its dedicated apps on the Apple TV set-top box that let users rent and buy movies and shows. It will also remove the movie and TV show sections from the iTunes Store app on iPhones and iPads. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on the move.
The idea is to steer more customers toward the main TV app, which sits at the center of Apple’s expanding video strategy. There, users are able to subscribe to TV+ as well as third-party video services like Starz and Paramount+. The app already lets customers rent and buy programs, making a separate iTunes option unnecessary.
Such a change makes sense and is overdue. The “Apple TV” app on Apple TV (yes, this is a bit ridiculous and hopefully changes as well with this revamp — but I wouldn’t hold my breath) allows you to do basically everything the “Movies” and “TV Shows” apps did. And that unified app manages to do it without the comically outdated “iTunes” branding. It’s finally time to clean that up a bit, it seems.³ And again, such an event, if some new hardware is ready to go would be a good place to do it — in “prime time” on the eastern United States, no less.
But any Apple TV changes would undoubtedly be secondary to the “main event”, which, in this case would seem to be about the Mac. OMG, a dark macOS Finder icon! Is this like the Darksaber?!⁴ There’s really only a question as to whether Apple is going to upgrade the iMac — something which is long overdue — or MacBooks, or both.
That would seem to hinge entirely on if Apple will unveil the M3 chip. If not, Apple could simply unveil new iMacs with M2 chips (and perhaps throw in some M2 ‘Pro’ and ‘Max’ options to actually be able to tout the “fast” of “scary fast” with a straight face), as John Gruber has predicted.
Still, more likely would seem to be an M3 unveil of some sort — again, “scary fast”.
While it’s undoubtedly true that Apple is having a hard time keeping up with the demand for their first 3nm chips just released inside the iPhones 15 Pro, those chips are weird in that they’re using a different 3nm process than the one Apple will likely use for the M3 chip, so I’m not sure it’s related. The real question is if that new process is ready to roll. It may very well not be just yet, but there’s some maneuvering Apple could execute here in announcing them on October 30 and shipping them (in undoubtedly limited quantities) in November.
That all feels right on the surface when you tie it into the reports that the Mac sales have been underperforming as of late. The M2 upgrade was a smaller hold-over one until the M3 was ready to roll. And the new processor should be a larger leap for portable devices in particular with the new architecture.
Have I mentioned that Apple announces their quarterly earnings just three days later on November 2 (happy birthday to me). The company has a history of announcing new products right before earnings and then referencing the new products in their opening remarks to analysts. Again, here any talk of new M3 Macs — new MacBooks, in particular — would give Apple some cover for any type of disappointing numbers on the Mac side.
Yes, yes, Apple ships products when they’re ready. That’s true. But they also clearly have some wiggle room when it comes to timing and making products ready. Certainly with announcing them! I think it’s entirely possible they decide to move up the release of at least some M3 Macs to paint a better picture for the lineup and get sales going again — even if most people won’t be able to buy one until 2024.
As for Gruber’s concern about launching M3 devices before shipping the Vision Pro with the M2 chip inside, I’m not sure how much of a concern this is. It’s a little weird, largely because the Vision Pro is being sold at such a premium price, but if that chip is fast enough to do what Apple wants the Vision Pro to do, I’m not sure how much the spec sheet matters here. There’s no reference point to know if it’s faster or slower than the last one. This is the first one. And if the Vision Pro isn’t actually shipping until the latest possible moment of “early 2024” — so, say, April or May — Apple was always going to have some M3 Macs out in the wild before then.
Lastly, is it crazy to think Apple could pull a last minute one-more-thing and give the Vision Pro an M3 upgrade before shipment? There’s nothing to indicate this now, but it doesn’t seem impossible. Especially since everyone expects the initial device to ship at low volume (and US-only to start)…
Anyway, I have no sources on any of this, I’m just trying to tie all these reports and rumors together in my head. I think it’s entirely possible at the “Scary Fast” event we see:
- A new, faster Apple TV box with a preview of the new, more unified UI coming later this year. Fast, indeed.
- The faster Apple TV box is also perfect for running Resident Evil, available today on Apple devices. Scary, indeed.
- A bit to talk up Apple TV+ on the heels of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon release (in theaters). Maybe we get a date for when it will be on Apple TV+ (also helping to blunt the new price increase just announced for the service). As well as previews of a few other bits of new content, like the new season of For All Mankind, coming back in November. Perhaps Masters of the Air, coming in January? Argylle? Scary good content, maybe?
- The first M3-powered Mac — the all-new iMac. Fast, indeed.
- The first M3 ‘Pro’ and ‘Max’ powered Macs — the all new MacBooks Pro. Fast, indeed.
The latter will be slightly awkward since Apple just released the M2 ‘Pro’ and ‘Max’ MacBook Pros in January of this year. But again, they apparently weren’t selling as well as hoped, as a smaller upgrade. And Apple has some history of releasing products and then upgrading them in under a year.
They could, of course, make it less awkward by just leaving the MacBook Pros out of this event. But Ming-Chi Kuo sure seems to think they’re coming and so do the shipping estimates, as Gurman has noted.⁵ And without the MacBooks, I’m not sure the iMac itself is big enough anymore as the showcase of an entire event — especially since they’ll apparently look the same as the previous models, just perhaps with new-ish colors.
It’s pretty easy to hear Tim Cook on the next earnings call:
“I wanted to take a minute to talk about the just-announced M3-powered iMac and MacBook Pros. These chips are incredible. The first 3nm chips to power personal computers. They showcase just how far ahead Apple is thanks to our hard work and dedication to Apple silicon. We think customers are going to love these products and will likely buy them faster than we can make them well into 2024…”
One more thing: there was quite a bit of smoke around new iPads being announced a few weeks back — which ended up yielding only a new, odd mid-range Apple Pencil with USB-C. The iPad mini, which tends to use the last generation of iPhone chips, would certainly seem poised… (though perhaps just wishful thinking on my part, as I’m an iPad mini diehard).
Update Post-Event 10/31:
¹ Not fun in London where it will be 12am!
² It sounds like some media is being invited to a “watch party” at various places, but it’s not a keynote with any sort of executive stage element.
³ The far larger deal here would be if Apple also further unifies a way to discover and browse content with the new UI. This has long been the holy grail of the space, but Apple (and others) have mostly failed to crack it largely because Netflix has historically refused to play ball, and allow their content to be surfaced anywhere besides inside their app. Maybe something is changing here? Or maybe Apple is pushing everything further into the main app to try to force Netflix to change their stance here?
⁴ Could this point to a new, black iMac? That would call back to the iMac Pro, of course…
⁵ Interestingly enough, both Kuo and Gurman previously thought there would not be new Macs at the end of the year. And both are usually very good about such things — which may again indicate that Apple shifted timetables a bit here…
