News

Apple Scary Fast Event: New M3 MacBook Pros And iMac

The latest chip upgrades promise huge power and efficiency increases.

Published

3 years ago

October 31, 2023

Nour Nasir

Apple

Apple unveiled its latest Mac refresh at its “Scary Fast” live-streamed event on Monday, which, incidentally, was the first of its kind to be shot entirely on an iPhone (specifically, the new iPhone 15 Pro Max).

“We’ve got something special for you tonight. No tricks, just treats,” teased Apple chief executive Tim Cook on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, before the event.

The “Scary Fast” moniker turned out (rather unsurprisingly) to be a reference to the company’s M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips, which promise huge increases in power and efficiency while reducing the system’s reliance on memory.

“M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max are the most advanced chips ever built for a personal computer,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technology.

“Apple silicon has completely redefined the Mac experience. Every aspect of its architecture is designed for performance and power efficiency”, he added.

The New 24-Inch iMac

24 inch apple imac

Since its 2021 launch, the iMac hasn’t benefited from a single spec bump. That situation has now been rectified, with Apple boosting the tired M1 processors inside the colorful all-in-one PC for its latest M3 chip, doubling the already speedy device’s performance in the process.

Although the rest of the iMac 24 is largely unchanged, Apple claims to have tweaked the display quality, which now offers 11.3 million pixels and more than a billion colors, as well as adding faster wireless connectivity.

apple m3 chips

“We are excited to give iMac a big boost in performance with the M3 chip,” said John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering.

“The new iMac with M3 is incredible for anyone, especially those who have not yet upgraded from Intel, providing a giant leap in performance and capabilities,” he added.

Online pre-orders for the new iMac are already being taken, with prices starting at $1,299 and deliveries expected to start from November 7.

The Latest MacBook Pros

Apple also announced a new MacBook Pro line-up with an M3 chip upgrade to both the 14 and 16-inch versions of the laptop, offering “phenomenal sustained performance” for machine learning programmers, 3D artists, and video editors.

Also Read: MENA Online Electronics Sales Grew By 7% In 2023

Starting at $1,599, the new MacBook Pros are now available for pre-order. Customers will begin to take delivery from November 7 to coincide with the laptops’ arrival in Apple stores.

News

Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget

The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.