This does not make sense to me. What makes more sense: I could see them offering only a M2 Max Mac Studio, and then a M2 Ultra Mac Pro. That would cover all the price points from $2k and up. The M2 Pro Mac mini covers $1200 to $2k, and the Mac mini below that. Or, if they do have a M2 Ultra Mac Studio, the Mac Pro had better stand out from it in substantial ways.
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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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Maybe the mac studio and mac mini line should be under one category and mac pro should be kept separate with same m2 ultra chip but with whatever slots they want add on. However, buying a massive heavy case is not going to sway me and the studio was just the right portability size for most ppl. I was hoping for an upgraded studio to the next gen.
Plus paying extra for wheels on the. mac pro and also monitor stand for the Xdr is laughable. Those mini itx cases are looking pretty good right about now.
Plus paying extra for wheels on the. mac pro and also monitor stand for the Xdr is laughable. Those mini itx cases are looking pretty good right about now.
Perhaps. But we are many that has yelled for an “xMac”, which this basically is, for many years and have finally gotten it. Perfect machine for me for instance.
They would likely get a lot of bad PR for that, since it is a clear sell up to a more expensive machine, as the M1 Ultra is already in the Studio now.
Hmmm… now I have a decision to make. I was waiting for the M2 update for the Max Studio before I upgraded my 2018 Max Mini. Mac Pro will most likely be priced above what I’d like to spend.
Yep, probably the one most people got. Including myself. For the price, I thought it was a great value.
Sure it does - the Mac Pro is a niche product targeted at high level professionals that require massive amounts of RAM and GPU capability, something that goes beyond the needs of even most professionals. Hence why it costs $6000, in part to offset the development costs. The customers buying these machines were rarely consumers who would add their own RAM and upgrade the hard drive after purchase to save some money - they were typically large companies who bought the machines specced out as needed (paying Apple's premiums since they view it as an operating expense). Thus the Pro is a small but lucrative part of Apple's business.
The issue with the Mac Pro today is Apple silicon itself. The advantage of being a customer of Intel is that they did all the legwork in designing the chips. If Apple wanted a workstation class chip they could just pick whatever Xeon chip made sense for the unit. Part of the reason Apple decided to venture off and make its own chips is precisely because Intel and AMD weren't making the chips they wanted, namely high performance, energy and thermally efficient chips for their notebook and non-Pro desktop lines. Apple in some ways boxed themselves into a corner with their mobile-first, SoC design for the M-series because an SoC is the antithesis for what the Mac Pro stands for. They're fantastic mobile and low power desktop chips but not really designed with workstation-class computing in mind.
To be clear, there is nothing preventing Apple from solving this from a technical standpoint. They could design a dedicated CPU/Neural Engine/Controller chip using the existing M2 core designs, a discrete GPU using the M2's GPU core design, and a separate memory bus. But they won't because they likely won't recoup the R&D cost for the amount of product they'd sell, to say nothing about the manufacturing cost. Indeed the rumored M2 Extreme (4x M2 Max) chip could easily be made and could be cooled with the space a Mac Pro chassis provides, but it would be incredibly expensive to manufacture. For Apple it's not worth their while for the market impact, not when a large swath of professionals could be satiated by the Mac Studio.
That doesn't mean Apple can't solve this with existing products. They could offer a dual M2 Ultra configuration (seeing as how the Mac Pro already supports dual GPUs and dual CPUs). They could work with AMD to make drivers available for third party graphics cards to be used in tandem with the M2's integrated graphics, much like how Intel's integrated graphics coexisted with AMD discrete graphics on several Intel Mac systems. They could rejigger the memory system to support expandable memory as a supplement to the unified memory; macOS already supports different tiers of memory in the form of utilizing on-chip cache, system memory, and swap memory so it could treat expandable memory as a step between unified RAM and swap. The question is will they bother, or will they just slap an M2 Ultra in the machine with all of its limitations and call it a day?
i hope that the mac pro is some sort of hybrid between an intel xeon w chip and the high end apple silicon chip. something like this would ultimately be extremely expensive, but it would actually be considered a "pro" computer because "pro" is supposed to mean "professional" and many legacy professional gear are still used today but not compatible with apple silicon.
because the mac studio is thicc enough to handle the heat output from the ultra.
I can live with this.
Need to add a new Mac Pro to keep par with the 2019s for high-end work here.
When I mentioned a Mac Studio, the upper foreheads started questioning why we just don't use those for the edit suite.
No thanks, the edit suite relies on a ton of PCI cards.
Need to add a new Mac Pro to keep par with the 2019s for high-end work here.
When I mentioned a Mac Studio, the upper foreheads started questioning why we just don't use those for the edit suite.
No thanks, the edit suite relies on a ton of PCI cards.
Since this wasn't mentioned in my free email version of the PowerOn newsletter, and based on the quotes I've seen, this sounds like a Gurman Guess and not actually reporting from a source.
I've made this guess myself too, that M2 Ultra will launch inside Mac Pro and they won't immediately update Mac Studio, to better differentiate the Mac Pro with M2 Ultra as the clear top performer compared to the M1 Ultra Mac Studio.
But I don't see the Mac Studio being discontinued, they'd be crazy not to offer a desktop option in between the $1300 M2 Pro Mac Mini and the $6000 M2 Ultra Mac Pro. I'd bet the Mac Studio will get M2 Ultra by the end of 2023 in a quiet press release spec bump. I could see a scenario where they wait until M3 Ultra, but I highly doubt it. That's a long way off.
The Mac Studio is taking the place of the high end iMac 5K 27" / iMac Pro in the lineup, the very powerful desktop computer that is still within reach for most people. Unless they bring back a 27" pro iMac to replace the Studio, or unless the new Mac Pro is substantially cheaper than the 2019 Pro, the Mac Studio is not going anywhere.
But hey if the Mac Pro costs about the same as Mac Studio, then go ahead and take away the Studio, I'd much rather have the Pro!
I've made this guess myself too, that M2 Ultra will launch inside Mac Pro and they won't immediately update Mac Studio, to better differentiate the Mac Pro with M2 Ultra as the clear top performer compared to the M1 Ultra Mac Studio.
But I don't see the Mac Studio being discontinued, they'd be crazy not to offer a desktop option in between the $1300 M2 Pro Mac Mini and the $6000 M2 Ultra Mac Pro. I'd bet the Mac Studio will get M2 Ultra by the end of 2023 in a quiet press release spec bump. I could see a scenario where they wait until M3 Ultra, but I highly doubt it. That's a long way off.
The Mac Studio is taking the place of the high end iMac 5K 27" / iMac Pro in the lineup, the very powerful desktop computer that is still within reach for most people. Unless they bring back a 27" pro iMac to replace the Studio, or unless the new Mac Pro is substantially cheaper than the 2019 Pro, the Mac Studio is not going anywhere.
But hey if the Mac Pro costs about the same as Mac Studio, then go ahead and take away the Studio, I'd much rather have the Pro!
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The more I think about it, the more I think that Apple didn't really think this through. I miss the long term concept from Apple. Why did they even bring the Mac Studio to market if they are not going to update it regularly?
Maybe Apple should just wait and release a Mac Pro when the Apple Silicon technology allows for a tower, expandable in every conceivable way. In the meantime , the Mac Studio should continue getting updated with Max and Ultra processors.
I just don't see the benefit in bring a Mac Pro out, that doesn't really do its name and the expectations justice.
I guess we will see what happens, but these are not good rumors. I hope they will not come true.
Maybe Apple should just wait and release a Mac Pro when the Apple Silicon technology allows for a tower, expandable in every conceivable way. In the meantime , the Mac Studio should continue getting updated with Max and Ultra processors.
I just don't see the benefit in bring a Mac Pro out, that doesn't really do its name and the expectations justice.
I guess we will see what happens, but these are not good rumors. I hope they will not come true.
It was in response to a question asked in the Q&A session, not the main body of the newsletter.
That's odd. There are plenty of Studio Ultras in stock at B&H, in many different configurations.
That's where I purchased mine. Easy peasy. Nice that they pick up the sales tax, especially if you live in California.
Not necessarily... I would say the MacPro, in both regular and rack-mount versions, are for people who need PCIe slots because they have various cards to plug into them. The MacPro also has a beefy power supply to power them.
Don't have or need PCIe cards? Get the Mac Studio.
If you want high performance graphics with lots of bandwidth, you need PCI-e. If you need advanced audio/video in or out, you need PCI-e. (I get that you can take the files to the editing computer in a digital form from the point of capture.). If you need lots and lots of super fast storage, you need PCI-e.
The new Mac Mini would be faster in single threat or apps that require only a few. In massively threaded apps or ones that need lots of RAM, not so much.
It's complicated. It comes down to the number of fast interconnects on the chip. If you are linking up insane numbers of cores, you don't have the external bandwidth for lots of fast PCI-e ports.
The place on the roadmap was something to fill the gap while they were coming up with a good Mac Pro. Once they have the Pro, there will be less need for it. Think of the IMac pro.
The PCI-e is for connecting lots of high bandwidth video cards.
But the rumors are that you won't be able to expand the Mac Pro at all, so...
The hope here would be if the rumors are wrong. But there's evidence that they aren't.
My Mac Studio remains the best Mac I've ever owned and has paid for itself. I've no idea how an M2 Mac Studio existing or not would have any impact on that.
Not since California passed a law requiring every online retailer who ships to CA to collect CA sales tax, sadly!
There is the xMac Studio Thunderbolt chassis from Sonnet, that’s basically what you’re imagining. Although it just uses regular Thunderbolt, sounds like you’re wishing for more like full bandwidth PCIe 4.0 x16.
There’s also the OWC ThunderBay Flex 8, that’s PCIe slots plus HDD bays. I haven’t seriously considered either, as the price/performance doesn’t seem worth it for me, but I’d be curious to hear from anyone who’s tried them!
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Apple should just release the Mac Studio with an M2 Max chip and call it a day. No need to include the Ultra option anymore since for the majority of the people who want this type of product, the regular M2 Max chip would be more than sufficient. So Apple, you have my blessing to keep your Ultra chips exclusive to the Mac Pro whenever you finally get around announcing it.
That is a plain stupid idea both from technological and marketing standpoint.
Closest thing to that would have been an Amiga1000+Sidecar (or A2000 with A2088/A2286) which sucked as a PC and diminished the host machine.
By that "logic" Apple would have added PPC CPUs to the MacPro till at least 2010....
The issue is that your are suggesting to fix a symptom (which may or may not exist) instead of fixing something that shouldn't be much of problem in the 1st place.