Apple introduces new MacBook Pro, iMac and M3 chip family

Apple has introduced new MacBook Pro and iMac computers and three new chips to power them, with the company saying it had redesigned its graphics processing units, a key part of the chip where Nvidia dominates the market.

The new computers and the M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips were unveiled at an online event on Monday.

In the US, the 14-inch MacBook Pro laptop will start at $1,599 and a 16-inch version starts at $2,499. The new iMac desktop with the M3 family of chips starts at $1,299. Some will be available next week, while others will not ship until later in November.

Apple focused the event on professional users, showing off a new secure screen-sharing feature that would let professional users work on their machines from remote locations.

The company's custom chips, which use design technology from Arm Holdings, have given its Macs better battery life and, for some tasks, better performance than machines using Microsoft's Windows operating system.

Apple said the M3 Max chip was aimed at artificial intelligence developers, who need huge amounts of memory to develop chatbots and other models.

It added the new chips would be the first for laptops and desktops that use three nanometer manufacturing technology, which will give the chips better performance for each watt of electricity used.

Apple did not name who is making the chips, but analysts believe it is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing which uses the same technology to make chips for the top-end iPhone 15 models.

Throughout the event, Apple executives compared the performance of the new MacBooks and iMac machines to older Apple machines with chips from Intel, playing up how much speed customers would notice by upgrading to devices with Apple's own chips.