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Apple Developing 'Mac Studio,' Described as a Mac Mini and Mac Pro Hybrid

Mac Pro ($5,999)... Baby Mac Pro ($3,999 and unconfigurable). Oohs and aahs follow from the complacent crowd.
 
I wonder if they will keep the current Mac Pro on Intel a bit longer with this Mac Studio/mini being the Apple Silicon Pro desktop device. I am sure a lot of professional users still need Intel compatibility.
 
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Spock said:
I wonder if they will keep the current Mac Pro on Intel a bit longer with this Mac Studio/mini being the Apple Silicon Pro desktop device. I am sure a lot of professional users still need Intel compatibility.
Click to expand...

Rumors are there may well be a final refresh for the 2019 Mac Pro:
  • New motherboard (because new Xeon demands new socket)
  • Ice Lake Xeon CPUs
  • Faster RAM (3200MT/s...?)
  • W7000-series (aka RDNA3) MPX GPUs
  • PCIe Gen5 expansion slots
 
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So… don’t expect to buy a new generation Mac for under $1k again? “Pro level quality at an affordable (+$1k) price” ? Maybe I’m just being cynical. :)
 
laurim said:
That’s why Apple provides options. I need the power of a Mac Pro in a size I can travel with. I design motion graphics for live events with huge LED walls. So my movie files are huge, take a lot of power to edit/render and I need to edit wherever the show is as conditions change. Will buy it already loaded up so other than upgrading the graphics cards, I’m not that concerned about being able to add stuff later. If it and the OS works with an eGPU, I’m not even that concerned about being able to upgrade the gpu cards.
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Similar situation. Do audio work on different countries, used to be able to fit a trashcan and thunderbay in a duffel bag and put it in the overhead compartment. The latest machine…I love it, but costs a ton to ship or put under a plane and is subject to alot and handling abuse, judging by how screwed up the box gets every time.
Anyways, portability and maximum power is a perfect combo for me, but we’re obviously a very small minority.
 
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Spock said:
I wonder if they will keep the current Mac Pro on Intel a bit longer with this Mac Studio/mini being the Apple Silicon Pro desktop device. I am sure a lot of professional users still need Intel compatibility.
Click to expand...

It sounds like the MacPro7,1 will see an update to the Intel Xeon CPUs based on what is in Xcode.

As such, launching the "Mac Studio" first as a kind of successor MacPro6,1 could make sense, as MacPro7,1 would still be available for those who need the full expandability (and are willing/able to pay for it).

Then in a couple of years as apps and peripherals update to fully support Apple Silicon we then we get a "full tower" ASi Mac Pro that maintains the full expandability - and the full price.
 
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I bought last year the MBP Max but I would seriously consider the Studio if it is more powerful and gives an expandable lane and more RAM/Storage upgrades. This could be interesting. Obviously, in a similar price range to the MBP.
 
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Unregistered 4U said:
For most enterprise customers that have their own displays, most of those displays are connected to PC laptops of varying capability that the employee can take with them and easily work remotely if they’d like. Another large chunk are connected to Mac laptops of varying capability. Very few of enterprise machines are desktops.

COULD enterprise customers utilize it? Yes. But, Apple’s sales (as provided by analysts as Apple doesn’t report breakdowns by product) show that desktop headless systems make up a sliver of Apple’s sales. Are there a few enterprise customers buying thousands of headless Macs for their server rooms or other purposes? Surely. But, a few thousand Macs in server rooms are still dwarfed by the millions of just MacBook Air’s in use.

Apple doesn’t focus a lot on desktops outside of iMacs because the numbers of those systems sold are tiny in comparison to everything else Apple sells. It’s not a “mentality” that iMacs and laptops are adequate for all needs, it’s a fact that, of the systems that Apple sells (that’s across consumers, education, and enterprise), over 80% are mobile systems.
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For most enterprise customers......life is controlled by enterprise rules and configs. I am the chief engineer in a fortune 500 finance corporation video facility, we are highly limited as to what computers can be used on the house network...they have to be ordered and configured by the IT department and require "exemptions" to have apps/builds out of spec. our editing facility (which is isolated from the house network) is an Avid based world with 750TB of server storage over 10gb/s optical fiber using HP Z8 workstations @ $26k each and some legacy 5,1 Mac that when purchased in 2011 were 12K each. Now ordering new 7,1 Mac Pros...looking like $23-27k each.
 
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The challenge I see with the Mac lineup at the moment is there’s no solution for people who earn their living in consumer-level A/V production plus a whole lot of other stuff but don’t have studio money behind them.

With 4 folks on staff I can’t justify $75k to outfit every desk with a MacPro. I brought one in but, seriously, it’s overkill for editing 2-5 minute videos—even with 4 or 5 cameras in each scene.

So we have long-in-the-tooth 2018 i7 Mac mini’s, an old (sad) trash can Mac Pro, and some nice 4K monitors. Plus a couple of MBPs for travel. We just don’t see the products ready for us to transition to M series chips yet.

But! If there is a premium version of the Mac mini with M1 Pro and/or Max chips? It will probably be time to make the move to M chips.
 
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jakebrosy said:
The challenge I see with the Mac lineup at the moment is there’s no solution for people who earn their living in consumer-level A/V production plus a whole lot of other stuff but don’t have studio money behind them.

We just don’t see the products ready for us to transition to M series chips yet.
Click to expand...

The M1 Pro and M1 Max seem to be an excellent platform for this type of work based on user reports and testing sites so hopefully Apple expanding this class of SoC to the desktop form factors (Mac mini, iMac, Mac Studio) will improve their suitability to task for such enterprises.
 
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Hopefully 'Mac Studio' is the replacement for and final nail in the coffin for Mac Pro, so much time and effort wasted on a product that literally makes up 1% of Mac sales.
 
R3k said:
Similar situation. Do audio work on different countries, used to be able to fit a trashcan and thunderbay in a duffel bag and put it in the overhead compartment. The latest machine…I love it, but costs a ton to ship or put under a plane and is subject to alot and handling abuse, judging by how screwed up the box gets every time.
Anyways, portability and maximum power is a perfect combo for me, but we’re obviously a very small minority.
Click to expand...

Seems like a M1 Pro Mac mini & some Sonnet Tech gear might fit the bill for you...?

www.sonnetstore.com

DuoModo xMac mini/Echo III Desktop System (Pre-configured System)

DuoModo Thunderbolt Expansion System with Dual-Module Desktop Enclosure pre-installed with xMac mini and Echo III Modules.
www.sonnetstore.com www.sonnetstore.com

Holds a Mac mini, two M.2 NVMe SSDs, an iLok dongle, and three Pro Tools HDX cards...!
 
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SpotOnT said:
Sounds good to me. There is currently a huge gap in their desktop lineup between the $1k Intel Mac Mini and the $6k Mac Pro.

I also kind of wonder if the M1 Max could even fit into a slimmed down Mac Mini without significant thermal throttling.
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The M1 Max doesn't fit into a 16" MBP case without thermal throttling. It needs beefier heat solutions. Otherwise, you may as well just have the M1 Pro or M1.
 
ThisBougieLife said:
It would be nice to have a modular desktop with the power of M1 Pro/Max. Not everyone who wants upgradeability and modularity wants to pay $12K+ for a desktop setup. You certainly don't need to pay that much in the PC world. I know Apple has lessened their modularity/expandability over the years, but the desktop is the one area where it could still work and still be justified.

It would be nice to see a non-iMac desktop in between the power of the M1 and whatever the new Mac Pro is going to be. This could be it (or Mac Mini Pro, I suppose).
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Expandability is justified everywhere. What makes you think us MBP users are any happier with fixed SSD and RAM than desktop users? Somehow because we want the portability, we therefore don't want expandability?
 
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I'm hoping they also come out with an affordable monitor and that the combined cost will be something the semi-pro consumer can easily afford.
 
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coolerkid said:
I'm hoping they also come out with an affordable monitor and that the combined cost will be something the semi-pro consumer can easily afford.
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A well-equipped (full-die M1 Max, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD, & 10Gb Ethernet) M1 Max Mac mini & 27" 5K Apple Display for US$5k or less would be AMAZING...!
 
Spock said:
I wonder if they will keep the current Mac Pro on Intel a bit longer with this Mac Studio/mini being the Apple Silicon Pro desktop device. I am sure a lot of professional users still need Intel compatibility.
Click to expand...
I think they almost have to. They created this super high-end market for the new Mac Pro and while Apple Silicon is very impressive they don't seem quite ready to scale nearly as high as Intel just yet. Not to mention the flexibility of the Intel Mac Pros. That's too much to bite off on one release I think. Seems like a smooth transition here will benefit everyone better.
 
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Boil said:
You sure you don't mean the 14" MBP...?
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I'm not 100% sure, but I thought I remembered seeing video reviews, and the answer was that the M1 Max throttles worse in the 14", but still does throttle a bit with prolonged use under full on loads in the 16". There's a reason they hard out beefed up the heat solution on these things, including making them thicker than the 16" Intel MBP.
 
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