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Apple Unveils M2 Pro and M2 Max Chips With 20% Faster CPU and More
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Maybe. If it can support three monitors, Definitely. The M1 Mini can't without external GPU. Until I know, the Studio still holds center stage on my want list.
I just noticed in a corner of one of the announcement slides: Supports Up to Three Displays. Yes! I think I'm in love. 😍
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"Don't talk to me about inflation and currencies. Apple is simply greedy. I hope the sales figures really collapse in Europe."
No, it is both currencies and the ridiculously high VAT of 20%.
Blame the European Govts for their high 20% sales tax. That is the price differential between US and Europe.
1 GBP to USD = 1.23
1 EUR to USD = 1.08
Do the math and don't call Apple greedy when it is your governments which are greedy with the excessive VAT.
No AV1 hardware encode/decode still...and other oddities:
www.macworld.com
Before you buy a new M2 Pro or M2 Max Mac, here are five key things to know
We know they will be faster, but what else did Apple deliver with its new chips?
www.macworld.com
The M1 Max has 2 video encode engines and 2 ProRes encode and decode engines while the M2 Max claims to only have 1 for each. Did they really downgrade the M2 Max from the M1 Max in this regard? Hopefully a channel like MaxTech (or maybe even MacRumors) will test this thoroughly out and let us know what impacts this really has on those of us taking advantage of these engines.
So a £2699 base 16”, without 20% VAT is £2249.
£2249 today is $2749
The same model is being sold pre tax in the USA for $2499
OR $250 more in the UK before any taxes are applied. That is Apple screwing Europeans over.
I thought that was a bit odd too, looking forward to comparisons. But to be honest I don't see anything that would make someone using a M1 Max now have to go to the M2 Max aside from 30% faster/96 GB RAM on the 12/38 SoC. Everything is pretty much the same unless WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, or that HDMI 2.1 port is important to you.
I would suggest Apple does the conversion factor 1 time per year which would be around the time of the iPhone launch in late Sept of each year.
On Sept 26, the GBP to USD is 1.07
Over the past year the average is 1.18
£2249 today is about $2400 (1.07)
£2249 today is $2650 (1.18)
The GBP in 1 year has gone from 1.07 to 1.24 compared with USD.
Much of your overpayments which I believe are really unfair are from the huge currency swings and the excessive VAT tax which are both from poor UK Govt policy.
The problem is that in Europe tax is their favorite word, they should tax luxuries such as the Rolex watches, those $1,000 handbags and $1,000 shoes, £100,000 cars at 30%, and have no taxes on computer equipment up to £5000 annually which is often used for jobs and education for work skills.
Now that UK is no longer part of EU, they can dump the VAT for computer equipment / phones up to £5000 per year and increase the tax on these useless luxuries.
British Pound (GBP) to US Dollar (USD) exchange rate history
British Pound (GBP) to US Dollar (USD) exchange rate history
www.exchangerates.org.uk
Starts at $799 in Canada, today's exchange rate $599US = $801.9673CAN. so pricing works.
32GB, 1TB storage $2499 CAN ... cheapest Mac Studio $2749 with 1TB SSD, 32GB RAM but you get 8 more GPU cores and M1 Max.
Compute comparison ... let the games begin.
I would suggest Apple does the conversion factor 1 time per year which would be around the time of the iPhone launch in late Sept of each year.
On Sept 26, the GBP to USD is 1.07
Over the past year the average is 1.18
£2249 today is about $2400 (1.07)
£2249 today is $2650 (1.18)
The GBP in 1 year has gone from 1.07 to 1.24 compared with USD.
Much of your overpayments which I believe are really unfair are from the huge currency swings and the excessive VAT tax which are both from poor UK Govt policy.
The problem is that in Europe tax is their favorite word, they should tax luxuries such as the Rolex watches, those $1,000 handbags and $1,000 shoes, £100,000 cars at 30%, and have no taxes on computer equipment up to £5000 annually which is often used for jobs and education for work skills.
Now that UK is no longer part of EU, they can dump the VAT for computer equipment / phones up to £5000 per year and increase the tax on these useless luxuries.
British Pound (GBP) to US Dollar (USD) exchange rate history
British Pound (GBP) to US Dollar (USD) exchange rate history
Maybe, it seems when the pound drops against the dollar Apple is quick to up the prices. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them come back down.
Regarding tax, as an EU member the rule is a minimum of 5% same tax. So it could have dropped from 20% to 5% as a member and not dropped the pound from the $1.40-1.50 it was pre 2016. But my opinions on the idiocy of brexit will make this too political. The currency swings were also called by the idiots who brought us brexit.
I can’t see me paying nearly £1000 more than I paid for my 2018 model in early 2019, which is a shame as it’s starting to show its age.
I’m wondering if the M2 Pro in the Mini will be clocked higher than in the laptops, given it’s ample room and fan. It struck me at odd when the Mac Studio didn’t show improved performance over laptops with equivalent chips- was it an M1 thing only, or does the M2 remain locked at the same top clock rate no matter the form factore?
Come and visit my city of NYC for a vacation and pick one up at the 24 hour Apple Store that never closes (or any of the other 6 Apple stores in Manhattan) if it is a stock unit, or if a custom-built, order it ahead of time for in-store pickup. You still have the NYC 8% tax, but.... or you can have a buddy on their way to London from the US pick one up for you.
Added AV1 support as experimental in the Technical Preview 161 Safari I saw.
My experience with owning Macs, even during transitions from Motorola 68000 family to PowerPC to Intel, hasn't left me feeling "cheated" by having an unusable machine. When Apple moves to another CPU architecture or stops upgrading the OS on your machine it doesn't suddenly stop working. I used my 2011 Mac mini for over 10 years and it's still going strong with a family member. I sold a 2006 MacBook Pro about 5 years ago and got a fair price for it. Before that I used PowerPCs that were still good enough to cross-platform development, and then doubled as a Linux box using Yellow Dog Linux. My 68040 Mac Quadra worked as an audio workstation for many years after Apple had moved to PowerPC....you get the picture.
I don't know why you think an old machine is "worthless". Eventually no-one will release or support old software for it, but barring hardware failure, it will still work. Think of it as an appliance.
Unfortunately it was heat through the chassis. It was my first m series Mac, so I was expecting dead cold but it got pretty warm with just basic tasks. I can’t just write it off as a dud, befause I did then catch up on some of the talk about heating with the m2.
So rather then try to say it was a dud and get a replacement I went andgot an m1 Mac Pro and this thing is bullet proof and just stays cold no matter what I throw at it. And I have been throwing a lot at it. I would say doing react coding isn’t throw much at a laptop, graphics work is where some brute force is needed
The eras are not comparable. The era you're talking about, Apple sold the OS's on CDs and DVDs for what, $49 or $99 a pop (I wasn't on the scene so i'm guessing). These days OS updates are free. Literally the only way they can make money from people like me who were happy with our Macs (and phones) is by finding ways to obsolete our hardware, so we'll buy something new. You can believe otherwise, but that's the reality.
I saw it coming the second they announced MacOS Mavericks would be free to download. Everyone at the keynote applauded and whooped, and I thought, ok, if the updates are free, how the #### are they going to make money if I don't ever need a more powerful computer? Answer = they obsoleted my 2011 computer by brickwalling it at High Sierra. Then after a while, the apps I used became obsolete because the current versions wouldn't install on High Sierra. My machine also became incompatible with even certain new hardware like my current 8-channel audio interface whose drivers won't install on High Sierra either. I ended up 'frozen in time' on multiple fronts, just because Apple brickwalled the OS to 10.13, which was a deliberate decision.
I know that on the other hand there's a thriving community of users who enjoy making the most out of older hardware in innovative ways. They enjoy the challenge. But they're a minority, even in the Mac community, which itself is already a minority. For most people, the minute your Mac can no longer install the latest OS, the death-clock starts ticking, especially if you use the machine online (which potentially becomes unsafe after the security updates for the OS dry up). Who the heck in 6-7 years' time is going to want to install something niche like Asahi Linux on their fully-loaded M1 Mac Studio Ultra, and be only able to run lame third-rate apps like Gimp and Libre Office.
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I mean I have a friend who lives in Indiana which is 7% sales tax. He comes backwards and forwards between the US and UK once or twice a year. But that's a position I am fairly lucky to be in. It still doesn't justify the additional cost for the UK over the US. But to be honest I don't need to spent £2500 on a laptop right now with living costs as they are. I mean I am currently paying £400 ($496) per month for my home energy and my property isn't huge.
Well, prepare to have your ears blown off. The 2015 iMac acquired a 4 Lane PCI bus but was saddled with a 2 Lane AHCI SSD at about 1/3 the potential speed. A simple m2 SSD upgrade (NVMe 3 x4 blade + adapter) gives a healthy boost to that 2015 if you're going to keep it—just sayin'. Apple put the correct SSDs in the 2017 model, BTW. Anyway, the M2 will be way, way faster than the 2015 or 2017.I know I'm going to be perfectly fine with an M2, but why do I want the M2Pro?!
Coming from a late 2015 4Ghz iMac.
Back to your question. The M2 Pro Mini has four TB4 ports vs the M2's two. That's enough reason for many of us. Both have a pair of USB–A ports supporting USB 2/3.
If you are doing AV (including Photoshop, video creation etc.) and/or Gaming, you'll want the M2 Pro. For just about everything else, the M2 will be more than fine. Is it worth the $500–$800 difference? None of us are you so we can't answer that.
For me, it's a bit different as I create a lot of AV content. There's exactly $1,500 difference between the M2 Pro 32 I need and the M1 Ultra 64 Studio that I'd like. I'm waiting for certain benchmarks and real world comparisons to be released. Only then will I decide.
Single AV1 (M2 Pro) vs Twin AV1 (M1 Max) may or may not affect real world performance. Waiting on app tests to see.
Sorry, but I was on that scene, and they didn’t support every previous Mac even when they charged for upgrades.
I too have a 2011 MacBook Pro and it still works well, but I need to use one of my newer Macs if I need to run newer software. The industry has been that way for almost 50 years and the obsolescence speed is much, much slower than it was at the beginning. Most costs are actually lower now, too, as I recall paying $100 for a MB of RAM and $800 for a 105 MB Quantum SCSI hard drive in the 80’s… and those MBs are not typos. One thing nicer about those days, though, was there were fewer conspiracy theories.
M2 Ultra is not ready yet, plus they like to stagger releases so that they get more press.