Gurman: Mac Studio Isn't One-Off Stopgap Product, New Models Planned

WOW! the only Apple silicon Mac I am interested in before leaving Intel Macs and I have to wait until 2024 for the M3 Max.
The future of Apple for the next year is about to get very boring as far as Mac products.
 
WOW! the only Apple silicon Mac I am interested in before leaving Intel Macs and I have to wait until 2024 for the M3 Max.
The future of Apple for the next year is about to get very boring as far as Mac products.
October for plain M3 maybe but more likely during 2024 for their more advanced SoC’s related to arrive as you said.
 
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Please read my statement. Gesh. It says "Intel" not "ARM". Windows ARM is still not universal.
 
Most consumers don't need or want a tower with wheels, dual Ethernet, and space for storage expansion.
Yeah, same was said for the iMac Pro, and look what Apple did with that. Really, I don't see what niche the Mac Studio fills that couldn't be filled with a Mac Mini (or two).
 
I just want an ASi machine that can meet or exceed the 3D graphics performance of my current iMac Pro with a high-end AMD eGPU. So far, they have released nothing that can do that. Perhaps the Mac Pro will but at what cost? The least they could do would be to update the low end of the Mac Studio to the M2 Max. Perhaps they are waiting to release both machines at the same time next year.
 
I don't think anybody in the world thought it was a stopgap.

Mac mini tops out at $1,299. Mac Pro starts at $5,999. Having a product in between makes sense.
Mac mini tops out at well over $2500. I know cause I recently bought the M2 Pro with 1TB drive and AppleCare cost me over $2500 with tax on the 32GB model and 12 core model and 10G Ethernet.
 
I agree with that. The Mac Pro will have to offer something far beyond what the Mac Studio offers. "The same as the Mac Studio, but with upgradeable storage" like some of the recent Gurman rumors have suggested is not going to happen. That isn't enough to justify the higher price and the separate product category.

Of course.

The new Mac Pro will offer PCIe slots, a much larger power supply, and an optional rack-mount version (a completely different chassis at +$500). Similar to what the current Intel Mac Pros (floor standing and rack mount versions) offer.

And that's more than enough to justify the separate product category and higher price.
 
Please read my statement. Gesh. It says "Intel" not "ARM". Windows ARM is still not universal.

the Article predates the more recent links, but shows how a lot of Intel software just works even surprisingly when that’s what’s your looking to run.
 
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My Mac Studio sits on top of an Apple CD/DVD player. The location is right of center under a Studio Display that's its bottom edge is about 6.5" off of the desk. Due to all the wiring and the through the desk wiring hole being on the right, the Studio is orientated with the front with the two ports facing left and all the wires are on the right. The unit itself has its right side against the wall. Thus the large rear vent is sending sound away from me to the right rather than bouncing off a wall directly behind it and reflecting towards me.

I did not see a specification for 0db noise from the Mac Studio. I believe the subjective term was whisper quiet.

My 2013 trash can Mac Pro had vertical air flow and sat immediately to the left of the 27" main display of the day on my desk. They both do/did not make intrusive noise. At age 78, my heating is not that of a younger person, but I can hear my wife call me from three rooms away that is around two corners in a conversational level.

My desk is built-in and we have lived in this home since 2022. My Mac Pro G5 tower was under the same desk by my left knee. It was against the side panel of the storage cabinet. It was a space like a cave. There was lots more noise from the tower than either the 2013 trash can or the Mac Studio sitting on top of the desk.

No photos I have seen for a sound proof location seem to have a bunch of electronics in there generating heat and needing cooling. So if the faint Studio noise is a problem, the simple solution is to punch a hole through the wall and put the Studio in another space and plug the hole to stop the "noise". :)
 
This remains the one and only point of differentiation anyone can think of, and I hope it's true. But I kind of doubt it. Unified memory kind of rules out RAM modules. Apple's feud with nVidia rules out any RTX cards. The architecture makes video cards as a whole questionable. What's left? USB add-in cards, sound cards, network cards, etc. Nothing exciting, but better than nothing. Highly niche though, even more than it was.

I hope I'm wrong but it seems like the modularity might be much more limited than it used to be, at which point why pay so much more?
Architecturally speaking there’s nothing that would prevent expandable RAM or third party graphics cards.

The graphics cards are a matter of driver support. If you plug an eGPU into an A-series Mac and open up the System Profiler the system can still see the card, it just doesn’t have the drivers to utilize it. Intel Macs and most Windows x84 machines have the ability to flip between the integrated and discrete GPUs despite the fact that they use different pools of memory.

There’s also nothing stopping Apple from devising a system there unified memory and DRAM memory can work as one pool, with the OS at a low level moving data between the faster unified memory and slower DRAM (or just eschewing unified memory altogether and using high speed DRAM as the unified memory pool, sacrificing a slight bit of bandwidth for expandability - though I consider this unlikely).
 
With Apple computer sales plunging comparatively more than competitors, the Mac Studio is in some ways in competition with Mac Mini.

So contrary to Gurman's assertion it may make more sense to have a common platform of either Mac studio or Mac mini, but not both. That makes production cheaper, and where personally having both I prefer the Mac mini, as it can be used as plug in servers, and fulfils most of the needs for most users.

I would not put too much weight into the drop in Mac sales. The entire PC industry took a beating and while yes, Apple took more of a beating, Apple also saw stronger sales the previous span of quarters than the rest of the industry's OEMs. So Apple was able to better meet the surge in demand than the PC OEMs (Apple was not as constrained by parts shortages, for example) and therefore they have sated said demand fully whereas PC OEMs still have some trailing demand they can fill.

The significant majority (over 80%) of Mac sales are portables so it is not surprising that Apple desktop models are on longer refresh cycles than the portables are. Hence the iMac and (likely) Mac Studio skipping the M2 generation of SoCs (and if Mac Pro had shipped with an "M1 Extreme" as planned, it likely would have skipped M2, as well). Mac mini was refreshed with M2 because Apple saw demand for a "pro" model with a more powerful SoC option and more expandability and M2 Pro was ready so it was easier to just release it with M2 instead of M1. But I would not at all be surprised if Mac mini skips M3 (at least the "pro" model).

So Mac Studio still has an important place in the line-up and will continue to be upgraded going forward, IMO, even once Mac Pro arrives to anchor the top-end of the line.

Of course if they make the decision to drop the Studio, then they can change the form of the Mac mini, but then know it will be the common hardware platform and can make that available in multiple configurations with very little production overhead.

With the best of both Mac Mini and Mac Studio into one unit with heat sink considerations being less of a problem in the M3, the variations would still be there without significant extra cost, so it would appeal to first user and high end users alike, based on the respective configuration.

With a common platform but much greater performance variations within it, makes more sense than two separate products competing against each other.

As Apple has noted in the past, Mac mini is in many ways a "catch-all" product that fits the market niches no other Apple desktop can. It's dimensions are important for many applications (data centers, HTPCs, etc.) and making it significantly larger to accommodate Max and Ultra class SoCs and (OEM) expandable storage modules would impact those markets. It would also raise the base price of the unit (Apple will charge more for a platform with more optional capability), which would impact it's desirability for niches where the current base model (which actually went down in price) is sufficient to task.

So Apple and its customers, IMO, are better served with the mini and the Studio existing.


Tim Cook flapped his gums about another intel based mac pro.. That was 3 years ago.
That is still a possibility even though we tend to think no more Intel macs (as) its recognizing businesses require several years of software support.

I think if Apple was serious about updating the Intel Mac Pro, they would have done so last year when Intel announced the W-3300 Ice Lake series of Xeons. We did have rumors to that effect at the time and the CPUs did appear in the Xcode 13 beta.
 
Of course.

The new Mac Pro will offer PCIe slots, a much larger power supply, and an optional rack-mount version (a completely different chassis at +$500). Similar to what the current Intel Mac Pros (floor standing and rack mount versions) offer.

And that's more than enough to justify the separate product category and higher price.

That will work provided there’s something to fill those PCIe slots. The rumors have not been encouraging (citing only storage as an option). I guess we will just have to wait and be wowed.
 
That will work provided there’s something to fill those PCIe slots. The rumors have not been encouraging (citing only storage as an option). I guess we will just have to wait and be wowed.

There are loads of cards out there that are being used by music producers/sound designers, cards for laboratory/industrial data collection and analysis, medical research, aerospace/defense applications, signal processing accelerators, and on and on.

That's why Apple included card slots on the current Intel Mac Pro - for both floor-standing and rack mount models.

Here's just one example by music producer Neil Parfitt:

 
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There are Sonnet expansion chassis for the Mac Studio that can support various graphic cards.
I don't believe that's true. Apple doesn't support eGPU's on AS, and the products I looked at on the sonnet site said Intel Mac's, not Mac Studio.

Got a link for one for the Studio?
 
Has someone put a good microphone and an oscilloscope near a studio to see what frequency it's putting out?
Of course, there are 2 "whines", some have both 2.2kHz and 2.6kHz, some just have the 2.6kHz.

There's been many measurements posted in the Studio forum here and one even in the last day. And like the poster of that analysis, mine only has the 2.6kHz peak. Very annoying.
 
Of course.

The new Mac Pro will offer PCIe slots, a much larger power supply, and an optional rack-mount version (a completely different chassis at +$500). Similar to what the current Intel Mac Pros (floor standing and rack mount versions) offer.

And that's more than enough to justify the separate product category and higher price.
No, it really isn't. Doing this would just make Apple look bad and show that Apple Silicon can't scale.
 
There is an overlap in price and performance between MacBook Air and MacBook Pro and between Mac Mini and Mac Studio. So why is an overlap between Mac Studio and Mac Pro seen as impossible?

Depending on needs, users can choose the higher end configs of a model or the entry level config of the next model.
 
I see no reason that the new Mac Pro and the Mac Studio can't use the same CPUs. The two models are (expected to be) very different form factors. It would be wise for Apple to have a three model line of desktop Macs (Mini, Studio, Pro), with some overlapping capabilities.

That provides choices to customers to chose a device that best meets their needs, and ultimately leads to more sales - as long as they KISS and not go nuts with countless undecipherable models like back in the Performa days.
 
This Sonnet enclosure for a Mac Studio includes an expansion capability for up to three PCIe cards


So in the real world there is expansion for external cards for the existing 2022 Mac Studio. I am sure more will come along to join the show as all the talk about a "M" powered Mac Pro up to now is about "vaporware" and not real "hardware".

As I have no interest in this expansion as my fully loaded Mac Studio does what I need, I lack the knowledge about the range of these extra boards and their mechanical requirements. But a chassis that can support a road ready system is operational now.
 
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