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When did I say nobody needs the power of the i9? But also, how many people actually need the i9 and 4090?? That’s my point. And to be honest, why is this even a discussion? Since when is Apple ever the affordable or best value option? I remain unconvinced that the high end of the MacPro level lineup is that substantial, thus it’s a low priority for them vs the lower end and non-MacPro professional markets.
How about anyone doing any 3D work? Blender is so much better with NVIDIA and there are A LOT of workflows that run faster with CUDA.
 
How about anyone doing any 3D work? Blender is so much better with NVIDIA and there are A LOT of workflows that run faster with CUDA.
I know, but again, we aren't debating whether or not there is a market for something higher end than the 2023 MacPro. There certainly is, and I'm not arguing against that. What I am saying is that Apple has beautifully addressed just about the entire market below the very highest end professional work flow, where 192GB of RAM isn't sufficient. There are a very small number of users who truly need more than 192GB of RAM. I also don't think Apple is shutting the door to that, but I think because it is such a small market share, Apple's hasn't rushed to find a solution around using their M series SoCs for higher RAM and GPU requirements.
 
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Ok, now do the comparison when it’s being bought for a company that needs to deploy 1,000+ of them, needs to have easy access to support, and needs to not have their IT dept spending their time piecing together workstations instead of orchestrating and managing the fleet.

Apple’s been more and more aiming their pro side of things at actual pro users again instead of prosumers, and in large part that means corporate buyers. IT depts dont deploy custom workstations that the IT dept has to build and support part by part unless they have a *deeply* compelling reason to
This is true. But apple doesn’t have that market in smaller businesses or even most large corporations. Dell and HP have that market cornered. And it saved these companies serious dough. The creative industry surprisingly in the rendering and design segment are dominated by PCs. More and more school systems are leaning away from the apple ecosystem because of its enormous cost. In my area all school systems were all apple for the last decade. And now everything is chromebooks. Chromebooks have overtaken the educational segment nationwide.
Apple dominated the college segment because it’s hip and cool and apple heavily markets towards students.
Well, I actually hope they don't die that easily.

My 2015 Retina MBP is still working just fine, after 8 years of almost daily use, and it has soldered in RAM. Sure, it's not integrated onto the main chip, but then again, every CPU under the sun has had multiple levels of integrated cache RAM for the last how many decades?

I'd be more than happy if my 16" M1P MBP is still kicking along in 8 years. Even if I get a good 4 years out of it before it starts showing signs of degradation, I'll be happy. I normally upgrade around then anyway, I only held off with my 2015 rMBP because every 2016+ laptop was a dog until the M1 came along.

Well, I actually hope they don't die that easily.

My 2015 Retina MBP is still working just fine, after 8 years of almost daily use, and it has soldered in RAM. Sure, it's not integrated onto the main chip, but then again, every CPU under the sun has had multiple levels of integrated cache RAM for the last how many decades?

I'd be more than happy if my 16" M1P MBP is still kicking along in 8 years. Even if I get a good 4 years out of it before it starts showing signs of degradation, I'll be happy. I normally upgrade around then anyway, I only held off with my 2015 rMBP because every 2016+ laptop was a dog until the M1 came along.
the cool thing about the 2015 model is IF the ram or CPU do fail third party repair shops could easily replace them. Not an easy task but it's done every day. With the new M series those components are serialized to the board. Making those repairs impossible. Thus chewing away at the longevity of these devices. These new apple silicon machines will have a 1/3rd the life span of the older more simply designed systems.
 
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I mean… starting a Hackintosh project now seems silly to me. We're three years into ARM Macs. Two or three years from now, macOS flat-out won't run on Intel.

You can do it as a hobbyist project, but it won't be future-proof.
Exactly, starting a hackintosh project right now makes no sense, maybe starting an ARMhintosh, but there's no project to run OSX on ARM right now.
 
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If apple is thinking that they can improve sales by increasing CPU/GPU performance then they are wrong.
99% of the people don't need any more CPU/GPU power than what M1 MacBook Air offers.
This is for the M3 Max, which is Apple's highest end standalone chip. (Ultra is two Max's.)

For the people that DO care about performance, this is a big deal.
Also, it sounds like we might get higher RAM limits, since the rumors had them testing 48 GB. (The M3 Max only allows 32, 64, and 96; so we might be looking at 48, 96, and 144 GB.)
 
Exactly, starting a hackintosh project right now makes no sense, maybe starting an ARMhintosh, but there's no project to run OSX on ARM right now.
I don't think an ARM Hackintosh will ever be a thing. Apple has special features on chip, so for example, Rosetta will never function on an off-the-shelf ARM chip.

You might be able to get by without the media engine since the original M1 chip didn't have one, but it'll be way worse than the Apple equivalent. Worse, there's almost no decent laptop-level ARM chips that can compete with even the original M1.
 
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This is for the M3 Max, which is Apple's highest end standalone chip. (Ultra is two Max's.)

For the people that DO care about performance, this is a big deal.
Also, it sounds like we might get higher RAM limits, since the rumors had them testing 48 GB. (The M3 Max only allows 32, 64, and 96; so we might be looking at 48, 96, and 144 GB.)
I'm curious if this implies that 24GB might be an option for the Pro. If so, I doubt they'd be offering both 24GB and 16GB, so they'd probably bump up the base spec to 24GB for the 14" and the 16".

In my opinion, that's still pretty unlikely this generation, but it's an interesting thing to speculate on.
 
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I'd bet one more, seems likely they'll give the 2019 Mac Pro a final update in 2024 given they only just replaced it in in the lineup, likely will include the 2018 Mac Mini and all the 2020 intel machines as well.
It's crazy to me that we're this close to what will likely be the end for the Intel models. It feels like just yesterday that Apple Silicon was released.

Time flies.
 
I'm curious if this implies that 24GB might be an option for the Pro. If so, I doubt they'd be offering both 24GB and 16GB, so they'd probably bump up the base spec to 24GB for the 14" and the 16".

In my opinion, that's still pretty unlikely this generation, but it's an interesting thing to speculate on.
I'm betting base bumps to 12 for the M3 and 24 for the M3P
 
You are ignoring that Apple has process tech advantage.

Can we compare anything on 3 nm process to anything on 3 nm process, and then brag about perf/watt?

On 5 nm node, Apple does not have that huge perf/watt advantage, in some cases straight up losing to AMD(in sheer perf) which products are on the same node.
Not really ignoring that. 3nm advantage would still be part of Apple's benefit. You don't just use the scale tool on a 5nm chip to shrink it to a 3nm chip, it needs to be redesigned specifically for 3nm architecture.

If AMD/Intel wants to do 3nm, sure, let's compare it. If AMD does a magical 2nm process, it's only fair AMD gets handed the crown, assuming it wins performance per watt metric. Until then, Apple wins.
 
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I always, happily, provide sources upon request. 🙂
I personally think it's better to include sources with the post, especially for something that's potentially controversial, both to make it more convenient for the reader (look at all the unnecessary back-and-forth posts about the provenance of your numbers that could have been avoided), and also to give sources proper attribution (i.e., credit).

An exception would be "generic" info.—e.g., there's no need to link Apple's website when quoting a product price.
 
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I actually more or less agree with both of your points

The point remains that apple is not making the fastest chips so to comment, as someone here did based solely on m3 chips existing that intel and amd are “in shambles,” is ludicrous
But your assumption is that people only care about performance which isn't the case. If it was, Apple wouldn't be selling as many devices as they are, at the premium Apple commands.

As has already been shown earlier in this thread, the PC market share is dropping and Apple's market share is increasing and by a substantial amount which is mirrored across all western countries. Sure, you can pull out a stat showing some third world country is using WinTel boxes over Apple, but that's by necessity - they don't have the resources of the western population.

It seems when people have the cash to choose their platform, there is a real shift going on towards Apple's laptops/ desktops despite:

1) There's way cheaper alternatives
2) There's more performant alternatives
3) Apple's premium pricing


By not addressing that, there will be a real possibility that the products using AMD/ Intel will be relegated to the really cheap end of the market (by definition, a small market share) and the very niche end of the market (also, a very small market share).

The average desktop/ laptop PC doesn't contain the top end AMD/ Intel processor and RTX4090.

Apple is killing it both in that middle ground by offering a demonstrably superior product which consumers are willing to pay a premium for.
 
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If you destroy your pro market, applications and third party support will drop. This will cause a domino effect to eventually impact the low end “popular” devices. They are trashing the Mac name but again not focusing on the pro market.

I mean in 90% of cases it is NO CONTEST an i9 with a 4090 beats the best Apple could do? By a massive margin? This isn’t good. They dropped the ball HEAVILY with the 2023 Mac Pro. $3,000 just for the same performance of a Mac Studio? Macs will become even more of a joke than they are now. Which will affect marketshare. Which will affect how useful it can be used by consumers.
What Apple is doing is lowering the barrier to entry into the prosumer market. There is nothing in the middle ground that Apple is operating in that can be rivalled by a WinTel box. Sure, you can get a ridiculously performant desktop PC that will beat out an Apple machine, but I'll guarantee Apple will sell multiple machines to the prosumer market vs that one top end device. It's a game of numbers.

This video sums it up well:
 
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Yeah, so? AMD GPU's support Metal.

Also the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT draws up to 335W for that score of 243,000

Whereas, the M2 Ultra GPU tops out at ~120W with a score of 208,000.

I was merely pointing out that amd's gpus outperform apple's. I made no claims about efficiency and no value judgement one way or another

it begs the question though, can apple throw another hundred watts at it and have a super fast gpu in the studio or the pro?
or are they just topped out performance wise?
 
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I remain unconvinced that the high end of the MacPro level lineup is that substantial, thus it’s a low priority for them vs the lower end and non-MacPro professional markets.
It surely is small, but it has a significance beyond its size, because many important professional creatives, who have inflence across their fields, use it. Indeed, even if they lost a small amount on it, that could be considered part of their marketing budget.

And Apple clearly does care about the Mac Pro market, in spite of its small size, since they brought in a Pro Workflow team to help them design better pro products, and both the 16" MBP and the the 2019 Intel Mac Pros resulted from that:

"That team is really a deep investment on what we're doing here in the pro space," Brooks told Mac Power Users. "And it goes well beyond just Mac Pro to MacBook Pro and even iPad Pro. You're going to see the benefits and the implications of that team across all of our Mac products and our pro products."


They also had an "apology tour" in which they acknowledged the delay in replacing the 2013 MP.

So the issue isn't that the MacPro market is small and thus unimportant to Apple. The issue is that, with Apple Silicon's scaling limitations, it's become very difficult for them to make a workstation-level machine without enormous investment that doesn't make sense for them. For instance, there's a consensus among the rumors that Apple did try to make an "Extreme" (4 x Max) M2 chip for the MP, but were unsucessful. If so, that's not the actions of a company that doesn't care about the MP. Thus, if AS scaled better, you'd see a more capable Mac Pro, in spite of the small market size.
 
it begs the question though, can apple throw another hundred watts at it and have a super fast gpu in the studio or the pro?
or are they just topped out performance wise?
That applies to the CPU clocks as well. They certainly have the thermal headroom to increase both the CPU and GPU clocks on the Studio, and even moreso on the MP.

And the answer is: We don't know. We don't know whether the M3's uarch is so specifically optimized for mobile devices that its clocks can't be pushed much higher than what they use for the laptops, or if it does have some frequency headroom—and whether, if so, Apple will take advantage of it on their desktop devices.
 
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