Apple homepage counts down to this evening’s M3 Mac event

The Apple homepage has a little easter egg today: If you hover over the Apple logo with your mouse, it changes to an animated countdown.

Apple doesn’t normally show a count down on the homepage ahead of events, but it’s quite useful in this case due to the unusual start time: the event today starts in the evening at 5PM Pacific Time, whereas most Apple events kick off at 10 AM PT. A 5PM start means the stream will start in about nine hours from now, as seen in the screenshot of the countdown above.

The interactive countdown only shows on hover, so you can’t see it on iPhone or iPad easily. Apple Pencil hover or an attached trackpad will do the trick though on iPadOS. Perhaps fitting for a Mac-centric event, the easiest way to see this easter egg is with a mouse on a macOS computer.

Although this online-only event is a little mysterious, what we are expecting to see Apple announce is a new lineup of Macs, specifically ones running on next-generation M3 Apple Silicon chips.

The 24-inch iMac is expected to be refreshed. Having launched with the M1 chip in 2021, the iMac is set to skip M2 entirely and jump straight to the new M3 chip, offering a significant performance boost.

Outside of the chip, don’t expect too much else to be new. The external design should remain mostly identical to the M1 iMac.

We are also anticipating new M3 Pro and M3 Max MacBook Pro models, in 14 inch and 16 inch sizes. This will represent the new high-end of Apple’s laptop lineup. The M3 chip is expected to be fabricated using a 3-nanometer process and will share similar core architecture to the A17 Pro chip inside the iPhone 15 Pro series.

The performance jump from M2 to M3 is expected to be substantial, perhaps hinted at by Apple’s slogan for this event, “Scary fast.” Of course, 9to5Mac will bring full coverage of all the announcements as they happen, so stay tuned.