If you’ve been speccing out a new MacBook Pro this week and have poked around Apple’s configuration tool, you might have noticed that the options for the M3 Pro and M3 Max chips are... kinda weird. Memory is limited to certain configs, you can’t get the best CPU without also springing for the best GPU, and so on.

Quinn Nelson at Snazzy Labs has a compelling theory why: it’s due to the process node Apple is required to use for the 3nm chips TSMC is building and the necessary binning that results. It’s a good watch.