This is the only solution. Sad part is, no matter how crappy MacOS is these days (so many bugs and features moved or removed for no reason lately), it’s still so much easier for me to use than windows. The answer is likely switching to a good Linux distro, but I’m not sure when I’ll have the bandwidth to figure out how to make that leap effectively.
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Apple May Not Launch Updated Mac Studio With M2 Ultra Chip Due to Similarity With Upcoming Mac Pro
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There aren’t really technical hurdles, at least not chanllenging ones. There were x86 cards from Apple for Macs in the 90s. Basically run a “virtual machine” on real hardware, assign all the x86 or Cuda or Vulkan or whatever code to the non-AS hardware and let the AS machine handle things like finder, web browsing and native apps. Seems easier than making an app like parallels work, but I’m not at all an expert
Never really thought about it but dual Apple Silicon and Intel chips would be amazing lol.
that will need to be on an card in an slot and it may need its own ram and it's own GPU / on card video chip.
68K and ppc macs did have X86 cpu cards in the past for that.
The interesting thing is that the single thread for any future Apple Silicon system is going to be 90%+ available on Apple’s low end Air. Imagine that, for any single threaded processes that aren’t long running (>10 minutes), users of Apple’s lowest end systems will be within a stone’s throw of the high end.
And, rather than being amazed at that reality, folks will still wonder why Apple doesn’t intentionally create less performant mobile processor solutions (like the competition does) so that the performance difference appears bigger.
Mobiles just aren’t supposed to provide any performance metrics close to the high end! That’s what Intel/AMD’s been telling us for years, it MUST be right… right?
The Apple Silicon chips are revolutionary and the computers Apple is coming out with are awesome and very good values. Their laptops are the best at actually being portable computers. The Mac mini m1 and now M2 are the best small desktops. Go find some benchmark tests of Apple's current computers and run them against the Intel based computers they were making five years ago. I just don't think you realize how much has been changed.
Grading everything in comparison to the iPhone is just setting the bar way too high. If you use that as your standard, then I'm not sure ANY piece of consumer electronics except the iPhone would count.
It's really just speculation at this point. No worries tho – I'm still very happy with my M1 Ultra Mac Studio and I don't expect to replace it for many years.
No, they are not. "Best small desktops" compared to what?
Suppose you want something compact for light desktop usage and for gaming.
You could be served by something as small as the Beelink SER5, which costs $349: https://pt.aliexpress.com/item/1005003888635005.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2bra
You might argue that the Mac Mini is faster, but faster means nothing if it doesn't run the applications you want (and at a cheaper price to boot).
Yeah I'm sure the people shopping for Mac Minis are also buying the lowest cost PC alternatives on AliExpress....
But it was you who said the Mac Mini is the "best small desktop". That's a vague claim.
Can you define what you mean with "better"?
Even that very compact PC can run Photoshop and do some light video editing.
Will it suffice for video editing professional in Hollywood? No.
But for an amateur video editor, it absolutely might.
But if you want something in the PC world that is more performant while keeping the small size, there are much pricier and fancier alternatives.
Well definitely "best small desktop" compared to that device.
Here is M2 Mac mini "competition" from Dell:
OptiPlex 3000 Small Form Factor PC : OptiPlex Computers | Dell USA
View Dell OptiPlex 3000 Desktop Small Form Factor desktop computer with new Hybrid Core technology or shop all Dell Optiplex Desktop Tower PCs at Dell.com.
www.dell.com
Mini blows it away.
Nothing that apple produces will equal the performance of a dedicated GPU. The M1/2 chips aren't even close to a high-end discrete GPU card.
Remove the ability to use real GPU's, and you lose a big chunk of the benefit of using a pro. Add in (which we know) the loss of memory expandability, and that's another chunk. The only thing that's really left is expandable internal storage (and TB4 makes that marginal for a lot of the use cases), and niche PCIe cards for very specific purposes.
That doesn't make for a very big market. Apple's painted themselves in a corner on this. Their chip architecture is amazing for 'canned' computers, but for high-end pro equipment, the design itself creates serious constraints (unless they surprise us all with a socketed machine where you can add multiple Mx chips after purchase).
Except for all the content creators that can now edit 4k video seamlessly on $2,000 machines (including unplugged or while traveling) when they used to need $6,000 Mac Pros. There is that news for Pros.
Well, yes and no. Yes, it's lpddr5. The memory itself is the same. And yes, the unified nature means that for workloads that run across CPU and GPU it's materially faster because you're not moving data around. For CPU only or GPU only workloads though, the only advantage is that the system can shift usage back and forth as needed, so you don't have a issues with having too much of one kind and not enough of the other.
But no, moving memory across the motherboard bus absolutely makes a difference in performance vs on the SOC.
That comes with a price - it really does preclude memory upgradability.
Some guys here want to paint a picture that Apple Silicon is the best option on the market ever.
I get it that they want to make Apple Silicon look good – this is an Apple forum, after all – but some claims are so disconnected from users / reality that it sounds like cheap PR.
Very fair point. A big chunk of the 'pro' workload is now accessible via laptops.
And a bunch of the rest can be handled by the studio, especially with TB4 external storage. But thermal limitations will prevent the Mx chips from ever catching up to high-end graphics cards - that's a must-have for a macpro.
100%. It's an amazing piece of work, and for a laptop where weight/battery/thermal are important, it's insane. I can enecode 60 minutes of 1080p video in handbrake in 5 minutes using h265...and the fans never start. My 2019 would sound like a jet engine and take almost an hour.
But to your point, if you need raw processing or GPU power - don't care about battery life, cooling, or watts - there are absolutely better options.
Apple only have themselves to blame here.
Do you really think that this is an inherent limitation for their ARCHITECTURE?
I don't think so.
If the freaking Raspberry Pi can support external GPUs (and all that done by a single guy: https://www.electromaker.io/blog/article/the-raspberry-pi-now-supports-external-gpus), then Apple Silicon can support eGPUs too.
Now, his drivers are very limited, of course. But Apple, a trillion dollar company, absolutely can pull the strings to make it happen.
Agreed, the lack of eGPU support in the M1/2 machines has been a serious disappointment. I ended up subscribing to shadow.tech because games that I could run either natively or under Fusion/Parallels/Crossover on my 2019 intel no longer had remotely acceptable performance on my m1. Yes, some of that is either rosetta on the mac, or the intel emulation in windows 11, but the vast majority is the lack of real GPU options.
Before others chime in, metal isn't the answer. Yes, it's impressive, yes it's cool. Yes it's a niche market when it comes to AAA games that no developer is going to invest in porting to. If Apple wants to get serious about gaming they either need to fund the port, buy a game company (looks like activision might be available again), or port directx to the mac. The same is true for ML btw. If you're a scrappy startup, or an open source project, are you going to build for the small Mx market, or the large nvidia/amd market? It's no contest.
I have hope that the Pro will give us eGPU support back on the macbook pro's...not much hope, but hope.
The architecture limitation was around expandable memory more than GPU btw - that's not easily fixed.
The Studio was barely likable when launched and now seems like it has almost no place or purpose.
Many people had been waiting for a Mini refresh that didn't come so bought this instead but it was too overpriced and overkill for them.
Others were the ones that needed multiple monitor support but for a lot of those people it may look underpower compared to Intel and Apple's software handling of multiple monitors has been ****.
Intel 13th gen is now here and considerably faster than the studio for about half the price with 4 monitor support and other upgradability.
14th Gen will be here next year with a whole new architecture and will be a big leap forward making things even harder on Apple with workstation/power users.
M2 Mini is now here and is in most ways faster than the Studio, much cheaper in the base config and what most wanted in the first place.
I think the need to do a few things.
- Increase the wattage in the Studio chips so they are at least treating it like a power user machine and attempting to compete with Intel. That would mess up their precious naming structure though so unlikely. More likely the need new naming for the higher watt chips and time to develop those.
That would raise the bar further for the pro though which they seem to be having show stopping trouble with.
- Improve software. We saw in benchmarks just how negligible the M1 Ultra was compared to the Max. Must have been mostly software not written to take advantage of it.
They're in a pickle for sure.
A lot of things reek of incompetence lately. Plus some external factors they didn't account for.
Was going to buy a Studio but not now with Intel 13th Gen looking good and even the new Mini beating it.
Will wait for next year and see.
The chip wars are just starting to get interesting.
If you like to buy at peak performance/dollar value and keep a system for at least 5 years being happy with your purchase then we're not quite there yet.
Many people had been waiting for a Mini refresh that didn't come so bought this instead but it was too overpriced and overkill for them.
Others were the ones that needed multiple monitor support but for a lot of those people it may look underpower compared to Intel and Apple's software handling of multiple monitors has been ****.
Intel 13th gen is now here and considerably faster than the studio for about half the price with 4 monitor support and other upgradability.
14th Gen will be here next year with a whole new architecture and will be a big leap forward making things even harder on Apple with workstation/power users.
M2 Mini is now here and is in most ways faster than the Studio, much cheaper in the base config and what most wanted in the first place.
I think the need to do a few things.
- Increase the wattage in the Studio chips so they are at least treating it like a power user machine and attempting to compete with Intel. That would mess up their precious naming structure though so unlikely. More likely the need new naming for the higher watt chips and time to develop those.
That would raise the bar further for the pro though which they seem to be having show stopping trouble with.
- Improve software. We saw in benchmarks just how negligible the M1 Ultra was compared to the Max. Must have been mostly software not written to take advantage of it.
They're in a pickle for sure.
A lot of things reek of incompetence lately. Plus some external factors they didn't account for.
Was going to buy a Studio but not now with Intel 13th Gen looking good and even the new Mini beating it.
Will wait for next year and see.
The chip wars are just starting to get interesting.
If you like to buy at peak performance/dollar value and keep a system for at least 5 years being happy with your purchase then we're not quite there yet.
100% legit as it’s registered via Microsoft’s website by myself. Not everything is a scam one has to look around for bargains especially in this economic environment 😉
I'm looking harder, more and for longer than you.
That's why you haven't seen it.
I never said it was huge numbers but if you really were tracking it then you'd see just what I said.
I have also seen people say they are switching to the M1 MacBook Pros since it's the same performance and portable.
I imagine that will only increase now with the M2's.
Huh, laissez-faire hypercapitalism sounds just like regular capitalism. Where companies make things/provide services that folks either buy or don’t. I guess hands on capitalism would be the government telling companies what to make and what to charge for it? Has that ever been tried?
Editing 4k in 2023 is a super low bar. I’ve been working with 4k footage for over a decade, and have managed to do so on mobile devices since 2015 (iPhone 6s shot and edited 4k30 video just fine)
It’s great that the prodiction quality of a YouTube video has increased given the same budget and time of production, but it’s not fair to say that 4k editing needed a $6k Mac Pro until recently. I edited plenty of 4k projects on hardware from the 2009-2012 era. Things took a bit longer, proxies were very nice to have, but it wasn’t like 4k footage was unplayable on mobile until Apple Silicon.
Not to discount the work, but most video projects have long since dropped out of the range of needing “pro grade” hardware.
Also, anyone whose job is ”content creator” isn’t a ”pro” at anything other than chasing the social media algorithms.
There was a time theatrical films and TV were edited on Final Cut on Mac, but try to find any major project since about 2011 that admits they used Final cut. I’ll wait. Final Cut X and the 3 years of almost no upgrades to the 4,1/5,1 Mac Pro were the death knell for truly “Pro-level” video work on Mac. It‘s great that the laptop I use to browse the web can also crank out some high quality video projects, but let’s not pretend Disney is handing out Macs to editors on the latest Marvel film like they did for John Carter in 2011.