M2 Plaid would be a great way to poke fun at Tesla (although I love Teslas).
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Apple Had M1 Mac Pro Ready to Ship Months Ago, Mac Mini Redesign Unlikely
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M2 Pro is what I’d like to see - as long as it doesn’t get too close in price to the Studio.
Because Apple had a monopoly on podcasts for a decade it was just assumed podcasts belonged to iTunes and Apple.
Renaming it “Apple Podcasts” after Spotify and Google began to catch up, made it look like an original to a “me too” product.
Throw in the fact there’s about 15 years of people literally saying “download on iTunes” that cannot be re-recorded, it’s a fu**ing mess.
Kind of like Apple renaming iPhone to “Apple Smartphone. It’s corny.
M1 Ultra is terrible because “Max” assumes it’s maxed out like how big iPhones went from “Plus” to “Max”. Apple made the rules now they fragmented them.
Better naming would have been
M1
M1 pro
M1 Ultra
M1 Max
So the name isn’t so bad, it’s the confusing order.
Now if they throw in Extreme it will be confusing among the average Joe. Imagine asking the average consumer which version of Mac they want?
“Yes Ma’am, will that be the M2, M2 Ultra, M2 Extreme or the M2 Max?”
Especially if the customer has an iPhone 13 Pro Max they’re gonna assume “Max” is the highest caliber.
I used to name products and it’s basic 101 knowledge you need to keep the name short and sweet. So I would count syllables.
Example for a bleach product
Sheen Bleach and Shine Safe Color Extreme
(9 syllables)
A better name:
Sheen
(1 syllable and easy to remember)
Terrible name:
Apple TV Plus
(5 syllables)
Good name:
Netflix
(2 syllables)
A better name for Apple TV+ would have been:
TV+
(3 syllables. Easy to remember)
AirTV
(3 syllables)
Apple is too stuck on having their name in front of everything now which works if the product is one syllable long:
Watch
Books
Car
Apple should have sacrificed the “Apple” for their streaming service and named it something short and sweet:
Glass
Cinema
Even something goofy like:
Barker
Pixel Box
CityBoy
Even something terrible but shorter sounds better:
iTunesTV
(4 syllables)
TVtunes
(3 syllables)
AirTV would have been my choice as it matches AirPods, AirPlay, iPad/MacBook Air. Without saying “Apple”, you kind of know it’s from Apple. I call it “TV+” because telling people “It’s on Apple-T-V-Plus!” is embarrassing. What was Apple thinking?!
Judging by M2 Air prices/configurations, my excitement for any new Apple Silicon machines is decidedly restrained.
I think it'll be amazing though. Amazing but out of reach for nearly everyone.
I think it'll be amazing though. Amazing but out of reach for nearly everyone.
Generally, workstations are bad long-term investments for individual customers. The performance edge is short-lived and the types of upgradability and expansion reserved for the future don't really make economic sense as newer systems will offer better performance. A Mac Pro is something you really need to spec and buy specific to a current project (or type of projects) you are working on and move on to the next model when your new work requirements impact your ability to maintain your profit margins. I know a lot of people that spent small fortunes coddling cheese-grater Mac Pros for nearly a decade when they would have been better served by buying new high-end iMacs every few years. But sunk-cost reasoning would not let them let go of a machine they spent $5K+ on even when it's pointed out that the thousands of dollars in upgrades to keep them usable over the years still left them with an underperforming machine.
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That is a non-sequitur.
You said "I think in terms of value for money, the Mac Pro has had a good run" - this is clearly not true since:
- A, it was slower and more expensive than what it replaced (iMac Pro)
- B, it was released right before the Apple Silicon transition
👏
Much respect to Gurman for acknowledging that Apple should have mentioned the performance dips on the 256GB M2 Air SSDs regardless of how little it impacts overall performance.
Despite what we may or may not want to acknowledge about the various M2 Air benchmarks, fact remains that read/write speeds to the 256GB SSDs are much slower.
Apple should be transparent about the latter when you're spending $1199+ on these machines.
Much respect to Gurman for acknowledging that Apple should have mentioned the performance dips on the 256GB M2 Air SSDs regardless of how little it impacts overall performance.
Despite what we may or may not want to acknowledge about the various M2 Air benchmarks, fact remains that read/write speeds to the 256GB SSDs are much slower.
Apple should be transparent about the latter when you're spending $1199+ on these machines.
If it’s really arriving early next year, I’d expect the new MacBook Pros are coming this fall. Doesn’t make sense to release the most powerful chip in the lineup and then release less powerful ones after. Also, Gurman keeps making it seem like the M3 generation is not far off. It seems like the M2 generation will be rather short.
I have a 11-yo, who spends most of his Mac-time on Steam, desperate to upgrade from dad's old 15" MBP to a new M1 Mini. My question: ha other been any scuttlebutt about timing an M2? We ar likely looking at the holiday shopping timeframe. Thanks.
P.S. - Sorry, question #2 (as I'm not up on gaming): is an M1 capable of navigating Steam games as sent to an external monitor? What headaches am I likely missing? And sorry, a Windows-based PC is not an option in this household. 😜
P.S. - Sorry, question #2 (as I'm not up on gaming): is an M1 capable of navigating Steam games as sent to an external monitor? What headaches am I likely missing? And sorry, a Windows-based PC is not an option in this household. 😜
I'd get the Midnight Mac Studio and Studio Display!Apple needs to release M2 Extreme Mac Pro in color Mid-Night.
Was it really a replacement for the iMac Pro? Not really. the iMac Pro 2017 was mainly a replacement for the folks who thought the Mac Pro 2013 was "OK". About the same power supply limit. Swaps a better GPU and screen for a second GPU (which many didn't really get much utility out of. Some folks but not most).). There were a number of folks left "uncovered" by the iMac Pro ( hard core modular monitor folks), but mainly the iMac Pro was following the general trend of folks shifting over to upper end MBP and iMacs.
MP 2013 and iMac Pro 2017 left loads of folks still clinging to Mac Pro 2009-2012 systems still circling the airport.
The iMac Pro could be "faster" or " less expensive" than the Mac Pro 2019, but not both. A 16 Core MP with a Duo Vega II would be vastly more expensive than a iMac Pro , but would also 'smoke' it on anything that required a GPGPU workload that could scale to multiple GPUs. Anything that needed an over 512GB RAM footprint... again would smoke any iMac Pro that was 'swapping to disk' to keep up. Would 1TB RAM be cheaper than a iMac Pro? No. But it would have the performance mark.
At the top 25 percentile of the iMac Pro pricing scale with top end BTO options the Mac Pro was a better deal. Even more so if swap in 3rd party RAM and GPUs. It is no contest.
The entry-midrange iMac Pro versus the entry 8CPU/580X MP 2019 had problem with CPU/GPU bendmarks but in terms of doing doing high level aggregate I/O over bulky data, not as much if could put the data inside the box. A/V io inside the box has a value price point also that isn't capture by tech porn benchmarks. That latter is exactly the point that would move the folks squatting on Mac Pro 2009-2012 stuff.
That would be useful if Apple doesn't intend to cover the 8 internal slot territory anymore. Folks squatting from late 2012 to 2018 already was indicate that a decent chunk of folks have highly elongated update cycles. Some folks who bought in 2019 had waited 6 years or so to upgrade. 2019 --> 2025 who knows what Apple will have around at that point.
The primary customers for a 2022-23 Mac Pro are folks who bought the Mac Pro 2013 went it was stale (2016-2018 era ) or some used Mac Pro 2009-2012 in that timeframe. And also a small subset of the folks still holding out on pre 2013 models ( if Apple could slide back to $4999 then might get some of them. entry Ultra studio price + $1,000 gap ( Mac Pro with an "ultra" class SoC and $1K of modularity stuff the Studio doesn't have. ) .
Decent chance Apple sells both. Just chop off the 8-12 CPU core options for the Intel ( probably the 580/5700 options on the MPX modules. So 6000's series. ). That opens up the "bottom" range of current price range for another "Mac Pro" and the super duper , hardcore modularity folks can still buy a Mac where can swap out the CPU. Has even more legs of Apple releases a AMD 7000 series support later to limp the 2019 model into 23-24 timeframe.
There are indications that Apple is done with 3rd party GPU cards with macOS on M-series. If so then the new Mac Pro is going to leave some folks unhappy even if it has 1-3 PCI-e slots that are useful for non-firebreathing GPU cards ( e.g., 75W-max cards that are useful to many others.)
For the folks who needed 2-3 double wide cards that used lots of AUX power the MP 2019 is still going to have lots of utility even after the "half sized" Mac Pro comes out.
Yes, that's my theory. The M1 Ultra had really bad scaling because of that bandwidth roadblock that was overlooked when they were originally designing the M1 family of chips.
(Chip engineers built the M1 Ultra/Extreme expecting the software to be properly optimized. Most developers took the easy route and never optimized their apps to properly manage the bandwidth and memory)
Because of that, I believe the M1 Extreme suffered from very bad scaling, so they scrapped it and are holding off until the M2 Ultra/Extreme are ready for the Mac Pro.
-Vadim from Max Tech
https://www.macrumors.com/guide/2022-mac-mini/
The major change from that would be if Gurman isn't "guessing" or 'expecting' and Apple is on track to keep the current Mini chassis and put an M2 in it. In that case, holiday season would seem reasonable. The initial demand bubble for the MBP and MBA should be over by October and it is largely a swap to a new board from the factory for the same chassis.
The "M2 Pro" version would slide to 2023 if M2 Pro is pragmatically a 2023 chip.
M1 (and likely M2) are still a bit finicky about external monitor support. If looking for some mega high framerate monitor driver , then the Mini probably isn't it.
can an apple silicon even take advantage of the chassis of the current Mac Pro? it won't (and shouldn't) use those ram sticks. pcie cards may not even be compatible. i was hoping that apple would give intel one last go before they just leave it on the store for years like they did with the mid 2012 Macbook Pro 13". i suppose the sooner they kill intel compatibility, the sooner apple silicon computers would be more compatible
Since a good number of Mac mini's get installed in server farms and their racks slots set up for the current design, I think there will always be some resistance to changing the design. There is wasted space in the current box because the M1 chip takes up so little room and there is only limited cooling needed. But it must help just a tad with any thermal issues to have that space. If you just have one Mac mini sitting on your desk (like I do), the mini being 1/4 thinner won't make your life any different. The inputs need space in the back so there isn't a lot of extra room that can be minimized there either. So the footprint can't get much smaller either.
I'm definitely going to consider replacing my 2018 Mac mini if an M2 mini comes out. I don't need an M2 Pro chip for my work either.
I'm definitely going to consider replacing my 2018 Mac mini if an M2 mini comes out. I don't need an M2 Pro chip for my work either.
My comment was not in reference to the base model, its in reference to the product line. If you bought a Mac Pro and kept it for 5 years, you've had a good run with it. On top of the fact, its not going to go out of support if and when Apple does bring its Apple Silicon successor to market. I said Apple is likely to continue providing support for it up to 2028. Thats gonna be almost a decade of support. At work, a department has a HP Z210 Workstation from 2011 and its still being used for serious work and that system likely cost as much as 2019 Mac Pro. Yet you could buy a cheap $1000 HP with way more performance. Lets not forget, your Mac is not just gonna stop working. I have a vintage 2006 MacBook Pro that still works.
