The M3 Pro is awesome but keep in mind it has less performance cores than the M1 Pro and M2 Pro chips—in exchange for more efficiency cores. Most of us already knew this, but if you figured all apps are coded to utilize both efficiency cores and performance cores when doing multicore processing—understandably but unfortunately you would be mistaken. Depending on the core app you use to make a living—upgrading may mean worst performance—yes, even on Apple's own applications.

As you can see here, Apple's own Logic Pro won't touch those six efficiency cores. Thus, for Logic Pro users, the M3 Pro is a bad upgrade path; and even those coming from Intel Macs would be better served buying a used or refurbished M1 Pro Mac (which plays 79 tracks vs M3 Pro's 64 tracks—a significant drop in performance two years later).

Apple sells 25 million Macs per year, so its guaranteed there are a few thousand people buying an M3 Pro that may realize disappointment in their respective core apps. I hope this post can inform a few to not waste their money this year (I'm sure the M4 Pro and M5 Pro will pick up the slack, or just jump to M3 Max—although that's something Mac mini fans can't do).

It's not all bad news. Any app coded to include efficiency cores—also—will beat the M1 Pro / M2 Pro. You just gotta do research on your specific app and not simply rely on Apple marketing vaguery. We need more reviewers to specify app performance and to be evidence based instead of squealing about new colors.

Fortunately this video helped put the M3 Pro in an app-specific context for audio recording. I hope there are similar reviewers doing that in your industry.