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MP 7,1 7,1 Bros: We're headed into 2025. How are we feeling?

Mac3Duser said:
Personally, I will not buy a Mac Studio. I don't like the latest macOS Tahoe and Liquid Glass at all, and I don't want to spend €10,000 for a closed box, non-upgradeable machine. However, I will buy a ThinkStation P to replace my Mac Pro, with Linux, dual-boot Windows for a few apps.
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If you're a 3d person, I don't see why you would want a Mac anyway. CUDA is where it's at. No contest.

Once the M5 Ultra comes, I am going to see how low the market goes for M3 Ultra/M4 Max Mac Studios, and if it makes sense I'll go that route. Will retire the 7,1 and sell it off to someone worthy. But I may throw in a 5090/5080 and just have it run Windows for gaming and put the Mac Studio on top of it as main machine 😀 (Currently sitting on the floor).
 
Mac3Duser said:
Honestly, the Mac Studio is very good in the lower-priced configurations. But above a certain price point, I want at least the ability to upgrade the SSD, keep my data if I resell the machine, or replace it if it's worn out or too small. Basically, simple freedom. I don't see what's so extraordinary about just being able to install a basic NVMe drive. I want it to be my machine.
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The constant lament with the mac Studio - once you get to workstation levels of RAM, it costs as much as a serious CNC mill, lathe, or other commercial plant & equipment - and those devices are built to last for 50 or more years, and with spare parts, can be made to work almost indefinitely.

Your Studio, you'll be lucky to get 7 years out of, before there's no software available for it. Not just security updates, but the sheer number of developers now who refuse to provide versions of their apps, which have previously been available, for anything other than the latest operating systems.
 
Unless they make a new Mac Pro, unfortunately I think the Mac Pro era is dead as Intel Macs are going to be killed off from official support this year as far as I understand.
 
ClaraStahlbaum said:
Unless they make a new Mac Pro, unfortunately I think the Mac Pro era is dead as Intel Macs are going to be killed off from official support this year as far as I understand.
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I still successfully use macOS Monterey on one of my old computers. I use it for video editing with Adobe Premiere. So you can figure out the rest yourself regarding support for new systems and Intel-based computers 😃
 
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bombardier10 said:
I still successfully use macOS Monterey on one of my old computers. I use it for video editing with Adobe Premiere. So you can figure out the rest yourself regarding support for new systems and Intel-based computers 😃
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Here is the real hope for these systems - they have such large memory capacity, that you'll be able to set them up as Proxmox stations, and run multiple macOS instances, for whatever workflow and OS version is best suited to the task at hand.
 
Mac3Duser said:
Personally, I will not buy a Mac Studio. I don't like the latest macOS Tahoe and Liquid Glass at all, and I don't want to spend €10,000 for a closed box, non-upgradeable machine. However, I will buy a ThinkStation P to replace my Mac Pro, with Linux, dual-boot Windows for a few apps.
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Proxmox it bro.
 
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mattspace said:
The constant lament with the mac Studio - once you get to workstation levels of RAM, it costs as much as a serious CNC mill, lathe, or other commercial plant & equipment - and those devices are built to last for 50 or more years, and with spare parts, can be made to work almost indefinitely.

Your Studio, you'll be lucky to get 7 years out of, before there's no software available for it. Not just security updates, but the sheer number of developers now who refuse to provide versions of their apps, which have previously been available, for anything other than the latest operating systems.
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I bought a Mac Studio last year and right now I'm working on buying an external SSD for it.

It vexes me to no end that Apple couldn't be bothered to put a couple of m.2 nvme slots on the bottom. Somehow the old Mac Mini had a 2.5" hard drive AND an optical drive at one point. How can this big silver brick not have room for some m.2 blades?!

Even nicer would have been a couple of little slide-in m.2 trays like ubiquiti uses on some of their routers and NAS units now.
 
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JoeG4 said:
It vexes me to no end that Apple couldn't be bothered to put a couple of m.2 nvme slots on the bottom. Somehow the old Mac Mini had a 2.5" hard drive AND an optical drive at one point. How can this big silver brick not have room for some m.2 blades?!
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Someone will have a reason why Apple’s proprietary storage is so much superior in speed and every other way, but I agree with you. And that thing is a very big brick, we have some at work. They are notably larger than a 6,1 Mac Pro for instance.

I guess Apple wants you to throw out your existing computer and spend big money on another one when you want more internal storage.

That’s where the 7,1 shines - internal storage upgrades, RAM upgrades (excepting AI boom silly prices) and in Windows, modern GPU upgrades.
 
JoeG4 said:
I bought a Mac Studio last year and right now I'm working on buying an external SSD for it.

It vexes me to no end that Apple couldn't be bothered to put a couple of m.2 nvme slots on the bottom. Somehow the old Mac Mini had a 2.5" hard drive AND an optical drive at one point. How can this big silver brick not have room for some m.2 blades?!

Even nicer would have been a couple of little slide-in m.2 trays like ubiquiti uses on some of their routers and NAS units now.
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That's the reason why I will never buy this machine. I loved Mac OS until Sequoia.
But now, there are a lot of good computers (Minisforum, thinkstation, ...) and steam with linux allows to game without windows.
I want to decide what I need for my machine. With what I need.
And even with laptops, or Mac Mini, I think it would be better to have a regular M2 slot
 
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JoeG4 said:
I bought a Mac Studio last year and right now I'm working on buying an external SSD for it.

It vexes me to no end that Apple couldn't be bothered to put a couple of m.2 nvme slots on the bottom. Somehow the old Mac Mini had a 2.5" hard drive AND an optical drive at one point. How can this big silver brick not have room for some m.2 blades?!

Even nicer would have been a couple of little slide-in m.2 trays like ubiquiti uses on some of their routers and NAS units now.
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That's not in Apple ethos to do anything like a real M.2 slot.

I use a 96TB NAS for work anyway, personally never cared for internal storage for work. I do usually get a 2-4TB main OS SSD for Apps and cache files for Adobe and then move stuff over to the NAS, or work directly off the NAS if they are big projects (I have a 10GbE connection)

If you want external storage on the Mac Studio without a NAS get a Thunderbolt drive or a USBC drive.
 
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Imagine a world where the 6,1 was called the studio. Today we could be looking at max M5 configuration with built-in Apple SSD and maybe 4-8 NVMEs. Yeah?

That would run plex / media / backups / automation / security everything silently and efficiently. Fun playing what if. 😂
 
Flint Ironstag said:
Imagine a world where the 6,1 was called the studio. Today we could be looking at max M5 configuration with built-in Apple SSD and maybe 4-8 NVMEs. Yeah?

That would run plex / media / backups / automation / security everything silently and efficiently. Fun playing what if. 😂
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I think Apple stopped caring for miniaturization after Jony Ive left that's why the MacBook Pro's are so thick. Even the Air is thicker than the original Air introduced by Steve.

At this stage, I don't see why Apple will even renew the Mac Pro. The case is bulky, the PSU is overpowered, I think the M2 Mac Pro was just a bandaid and not well thought out. You can't even use a GPU in the M2 Mac Pro, so the PCIe cards that it does accept (NVME, Networking, Audio cards, Video capture cards) don't even use that much power.

If Apple ever redesigns the Mac Pro (big if) then they have to make it smaller most likely. That means less PCIe slots. There just isn't enough PCIe lanes with the M class chips for Apple to have this many PCIe slots. Perhaps M5 Ultra and beyond will change that idk.
 
It's strange that such a large company struggles to create products when you see everything Dell, HP, and Lenovo can produce.
Is it really so complicated to create products for every type of user? The Mac mini is really great, but why isn't there a Mac mini Plus with NVMe ports, a Mac Pro with an M5 processor, and a Mac Pro with a Xeon or Threadripper processor, and so on?
When I visit the Minisforum website, I see that there are many possibilities. Why can't Apple create macs for everyone? It's always up to the users to find workarounds and adapt to what's offered. And what does this whole system rely on? Mac OS versus Windows. If Mac OS becomes less good, then many people will leave Apple.
 
Mac3Duser said:
It's strange that such a large company struggles to create products when you see everything Dell, HP, and Lenovo can produce.
Is it really so complicated to create products for every type of user? The Mac mini is really great, but why isn't there a Mac mini Plus with NVMe ports, a Mac Pro with an M5 processor, and a Mac Pro with a Xeon or Threadripper processor, and so on?
When I visit the Minisforum website, I see that there are many possibilities. Why can't Apple create macs for everyone? It's always up to the users to find workarounds and adapt to what's offered. And what does this whole system rely on? Mac OS versus Windows. If Mac OS becomes less good, then many people will leave Apple.
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You’re attempting to use incompetence to explain a malevolent conspiracy. The simplest explanation is that Apple’s current vision of the Mac is an iPad running a more complicated operating system, and so that’s the only products they’re offering the Mac customer.
 
Mac3Duser said:
No, no 🙂
I just think it would be better if we had the choice, customers for Mac Os, with a lot of machines on the table.
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Yes, but when you’re a company whose primary emotional motivator is abject cowardice, providing choice to customers means they could make choices that threaten your pre-planned sales trajectory. Eliminating choice maximises predictability, which is a coping mechanism for the chronically fearful.
 
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mattspace said:
Yes, but when you’re a company whose primary emotional motivator is abject cowardice, providing choice to customers means they could make choices that threaten your pre-planned sales trajectory. ....
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I bet Apple have done a lot of market analyzes. Their main target have for long been the upper parts of "mainstream". Not specialized or ultra high end. Not the budget segment. Just the wealthy part of mainstream.

The last 15 years they have launched 3 to 11 (2009) Mac models per year. In the mid 90s it was 13 to 23 per year, and that is not counting the clones. I guess which period they count as the better one.

Too many models often confuse the market. Do not get me started on choosing an Intel CPU the last 10 years.
 
Mac3Duser said:
What was your installation process ?
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pretty similar to a regular workstation. Set up a bootable USB with the installer. The only different thing I did was install a separate nvme drive (not the apple one) and then installed my linux partition on that. Otherwise should be relatively straight forward if you have installed linux using a bootable USB on another computer.
Flint Ironstag said:
Pick a distro, slap the installer on a USB drive and boot from it. I hear good things about Ubuntu 'just working', but I'll defer to the Linux folks.
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For earlier versions of the kernel, i had to manually load the kernel using GRUB, however that randomly changed one day after I rebooted my computer. As of now ubuntu is pretty rock solid on the 7,1 even moreso than macos.
 
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