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Mac Studio being obsoleted by new Mac Pro?!
- Thread starter Riot Nrrrd
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I just hope the Studio stays. It is perfect for my needs, but it will be a year before I need to upgrade. I don't want a tower.
I see no reason for the Studio to go away, it is perfect for users who need horsepower, but do not need PCIe slots...
If an end user has need of PCIe slots, then the Mac Pro tower is right for them...?
But what if a user needs the power of a Mn Extreme SoC, but not the PCIe slots...?
"Introducing the all-new Apple Mac Pro Cube, we think you're going to love it...!"
I don't see any logical reason the Mac Studio would go away. There will always be a large group of people that want more CPU/GPU/RAM than the Mac Mini (or MacBook Pro) can provide, hence the Mx Max and Mx Ultra SoC's. A Mac Pro will always have a substantial user price penalty for the larger case, power supply, and probably PCI slots and removable storage, which many users simply don't need/want to pay for. Apple has created a smart set of 3 headless-Mac pricing tiers with the Mini, Studio, and Pro.
Seems to me Apple committed to the Studio tier as a strategy when they decided to create a Mx Max chip. The Max chip isn't enough for the Mac Pro and is probably too much power to cool for the Mini or Notebooks. And yet they designed and introduced the Max (and Ultra) Studio before they new the Mac Pro would continue to be delayed. It wasn't a stop-gap because the Mac Pro has been delayed.
I think the Mac Pro will be the product more likely to eventually disappear if Apple can't justify the cost/difficulty of pushing AS far beyond an Mx Ultra to satisfy the needs of the Mac Pro market. The key reason for AS is power efficiency, which has little relevance to the Mac Pro, and will continue to make creating competitive AS for that market difficult to financially justify.
Seems to me Apple committed to the Studio tier as a strategy when they decided to create a Mx Max chip. The Max chip isn't enough for the Mac Pro and is probably too much power to cool for the Mini or Notebooks. And yet they designed and introduced the Max (and Ultra) Studio before they new the Mac Pro would continue to be delayed. It wasn't a stop-gap because the Mac Pro has been delayed.
I think the Mac Pro will be the product more likely to eventually disappear if Apple can't justify the cost/difficulty of pushing AS far beyond an Mx Ultra to satisfy the needs of the Mac Pro market. The key reason for AS is power efficiency, which has little relevance to the Mac Pro, and will continue to make creating competitive AS for that market difficult to financially justify.
I think you are correct to "fear" this, given what we have just seen with the M2 Pro-based Mac mini. Between this an an updated M3 Max and M3 Ultra (and perhaps more) Mac Pro, why is the Mac Studio necessary anymore? The iMac Pro may very well be the correct analogy. And people still think the iMac Pro was very solid, and find it useful today . . . at least as useful as any Intel-based iMac.
It is possible one (or both) of two things happened:
- Apple really did intend a wholly new form factor for the next Mac mini. And it would only have the M2, M3, etc. It would be smaller, and less feature rich (as it is now). And the Mac Studio would continue to be the tween-er. And then Apple decided for some reason . . . supply chain, SKU simplicity, whatever . . . they only wanted two desktops in the line-up after all.
- They knew where they were headed all along, and leaked out the new form-factor Mac mini to catch some leakers. And they knew they couldn't figure out the M2-based higher end chips for some time . . . perhaps as far back as a year plus, but not two years ago when they originally said the transition would be completed in two years.
At the end of the day . . with a higher end M2 Mac mini, what do you miss from the Mac Studio?
- SD card slot
- Two more USB-C (or Thunderbolt) ports
- More graphics cores
Is that enough of a delta to have a different SKU? And I don't accept that the one they would drop is the Mac Pro. There are too many professionals who need PCI expandability of some kind. For storage, add-in accelerators, or graphics. I think they have to provide something for that, and current Thunderbolt speeds wouldn't be sufficient.
in an m2 ultra format, the studio would max at at 192 MB RAM rather than 32.
that's just a little tiny bit bigger. the current studio maxes at 128 MB.
i also wouldn't be surprised if the next version of the mac comes equipped with TB5
Just watch a teardown of the 2020 M1 Mac mini, 2023 Mac mini looks to be the same layout...
For the users who need more horsepower than a M2 Pro Mac mini, but do not need the PCIe slots that the ASi Mac Pro will have...
M2 Pro = 200GB/s UMA bandwidth
M2 Max = 400GB/s UMA bandwidth
M2 Ultra = 800GB/s UMA bandwidth
The M2 Ultra Mac Studio would also have double the CPU cores, double the Neural Engine cores, double the Media Engines, and up to 192GB of RAM...
It might. The new Mac Pro might be quite scalable, and have all the new standards . . . TB5, PCIe5 . . . maybe it starts with 48GB or 64GB of ram, but goes up to a 256GB or 512GB. If they decide to go this way, Mac Pro could be very highly scalable. SOC interconnects are going to be the key, and those are clearly hard to get right (Apple, Intel, Nvidia, and AMD have all tried and had different levels of success).
Just pure speculation of course. Anyway, Apple fully admitted they boxed themselves into a corner with the 2013 Mac Pro (i., the trash can). Lots of people wanted them to update the iMac Pro, and they just never did . . . and never explained why. And now there is this rumor: https://wccftech.com/mac-studio-getting-replaced-by-mac-pro/ . If I were Apple, and I could design a Mac Pro that could hold one--either in a monolithic fashion or in modules--a M3 Max, M3 Ultra, and M3 Extreme (or whatever)--I would to simplify the lineup. Outside of the obviously-not-long-for-this-earth 13" MacBook Pro, they have done this with the laptops. I'm not sure what they are planning for the all-in-ones. Maybe the 24" iMac isn't getting an update because they are waiting for the M3 series and plan an update to the form-factor. And then there are two versions for the Mac mini, and maybe two (or three) versions of the Mac Pro.
All true. But, would the typical person who needs those things be unwilling to pay for a Mac Pro? Provided that the price started nearer to where the Mac Studio currently starts with he M2 Max? I don't think it would start in the M2 Pro territory . . . I think they would leave that for the M2 Pro Mac mini.
If I need the horsepower of a Mn Ultra, but I do not need PCIe slots, why would I get a Mac Pro over a Mac Studio...? I would be paying for slots I do not need...
And it is highly doubtful the ASi Mac Pro is going to be priced anywhere near the $1999 entry price of a M1 Max Mac Studio; the Mac Pro will come with a M2 Ultra and will be priced accordingly...
Mn Ultra Mac Studio ($3999) + 7.1 chassis, 1.4kW PSU, & six PCIe slots = $5999
I’m pretty convinced we won’t see an M2 ultra. I don’t think ROI makes sense to do a new studio/ultra every generation. More likely they will resort to updates every other generation.
This tracks with how Apple has updated products in the past that were less popular.
So I think M1, M3, M5, etc will get ultra variants and a Mac Studio and/or Mac Pro to go along with it.
Not sure why the
1) The Mac Pro could start with the M3 Max.
2) I don’t thinks these bits about would need to cost $2k.
3) 1.4k psu wouldn’t be needed for the reason immediately below but also the power hungry processors and dimms are not there.
4) The leaks so far indicate far fewer PCI slots, but we’ll see.
I could see that starting at $2499 and maxes to $10k or whatever. So basically near to the entry Mac Studio but with more “internal“ expansion from the jump.
You might be direct but:
1) The Mac Pro could start with the M3 Max.
2) I don’t thinks these bits about would need to cost $2k.
3) 1.4k psu wouldn’t be needed for the reason immediately below but also the power hungry processors and dimms are not there.
4) The leaks so far indicate far fewer PCI slots, but we’ll see.
I could see that starting at $2499 and maxes to $10k or whatever. So basically near to the entry Mac Studio but with more “internal“ expansion from the jump.
That makes no sense, because now here in the UK you can get the new M2 Pro Mac Mini with 32GB RAM and a terabyte SSD for 1999, which is the same price the Studio starts from. So current.t the pricing is a bit daft. I expect the Studio will get the M2 chip very soon, and a price increase too.
Also on the topic of the thread, no the Studio won’t be replaced with the next Mac Pro.
If it’s like that then the Mini is MUCH easier to take apart to clean out then the Studio is. And your not exposing yourself to a naked PSU board either.
Mn Max SoC would not have the available PCIe lanes for a six slot Mac Pro...
All signs point towards the ASi Mac Pro debuting with the M2 Ultra SoC; one would assume botht the binned & full-die variants...
But I would not mind seeing the ASi Mac Pro debuting with the M3 Ultra, that would most likely give us a SoC on a 3nm process and hardware ray-tracing; it would also probably push any sort of preview to WWDC 2023 and actual release sometime afterwards, a severe overshoot of the two year transition...
Who knows though, if Apple pushes a preview to a Spring 2023 Mac Event, and actual release around WWDC 2023, we could see the M2 Ultra SoC debut on 3nm...
No, they would not, at least for Apple; but once they are properly marked up for the consumer...
The 7.1 chassis requires a good bit of machining front & rear for those 3d airholes, and the aluminum slabs are not cheap...
A custom 1.4kW PSU is also not cheap...
If Apple plans to keep the 7.1 chassis around for a few refreshes, sticking with the 1.4kW PSU would make sense...
It is a component that is already in production, and would cost Apple less than developing & sourcing an all new PSU...
A 4-way SoC (Mn Extreme) will draw a good bit of power; double that of a Mn Ultra Mac Studio for the SoC alone, and 75W for each PCIe slot, even more if Apple retains a variant of the MPX PCIe slots...
The power would also be needed if Apple goes with Apple silicon MX GPGPUs; viewport(s)/workspace powered by the "iGPU" on the SoC, and compute/render jobs sent to the ASi MPX GPGPU(s)...
The most believable leaks here consistently point towards six PCIe slots...
At $2499 it would not matter what SoC Apple placed within, the ASi Mac Pro would be losing money on every sale...
Mac Mini
M2 Pro 12-core CPU & 19-core GPU
512GB SSD & 32GB Ram
$1,999
Mac studio
M1 Max 10-core CPU & 24-core GPU
512GB SSD & 32GB ram
$1,999
The Mac Studio still has more GPU cores, more ports, plus a few additional bonuses like a second ProRes encoder, and SDXC card reader.
I don’t see how this is that odd? If you’ve ever followed mac products there are plenty of times where upgrades make Mac lines overlap in some ways, and that’s just how it is. There are good times and bad times to buy Mac products. Apple isn’t going to spend the money to make Ultra chips every year. They’re just not going to do that.
Well we need to firstly wait and see if those extra GPU cores actually mean anything, the M2 Pro could perform the same or better with its fewer cores, we will have to wait for tests on that.
As for the pricing yes its pricing makes no sense, because it makes the Studio appear cheap.
You seem to be suggesting that it’ll remain this way till next year. Or do you think Apple will just put the Max chip in the Studio, put its price up and ditch the Ultra chip until the following year? That literally makes no business sense.
Have to say I’ve no idea why you believe they won’t release an Ultra M2 chip. That will be in the Studio and Mac Pro and if they make one iMac Pro. That line of thinking doesn’t really have any justification.
My thinking is the M2 line is done. They’re now moving on to M3. I don’t think they’re updating the studio until the M3 generation.
The reasoning is the ROI on creating the Ultra chip doesn’t make sense for a niche product like the studio if they do it every single year. Just how the intel iMac was consistently on a two-year update cycle for years because the ROI on making a new iMac update every year wasn’t enough to justify the cost.
That’s why I think the Ultra chip will only be made every 2 years. And sure there will be times where the lower-tier models will start to overlap. Just how the high-end iMac started to overlap with the iMac Pro.
However the big question mark is the Mac Pro. We have yet to see what their plan is with this and that could change things (for example if the Mac Pro comes with the Ultra chip, what makes that different than a studio? Do they have both a studio and Mac Pro with the same chips? Or does the Mac Pro get an extreme variant?)
I think your logic makes no business sense at all. You honestly believe every 2 years Apple will create a huge overlap in its products. We shall see though.
Its not a huge overlap. You're comparing the TOP mini to the BOTTOM Studio. And yes Apple has done this before with niche products. Over the last 20 years there have been various overlaps in products as they release things at different times. It makes more business sense to not spend the ROI on a niche product that sells 1% of all Mac sales.
Another addition: Apple is behind on their silicon roadmap. The pandemic I think set them back by a year or more. We should be on to M3 at this point: Fall 2020 = M1 | Fall 2021 = M2 | Fall 2022 = M3 - I think M3 is closer than people realize. M2 is just a stopgap generation. It's nothing revolutionary compared to M1. I think a Mac Studio with M3 Ultra is closer than people realize.
EDIT: also GPU benchmarks are coming in, and based on this one (which I know is just one data point so time will tell) it seems the M1 Max GPU is better than the M2 Pro GPU:
- M1 Max: 64,708
- M2 Pro: 52,691
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PCIe slots...
M-series SoCs actually look to be on an 18-month refresh cycle...?
But which GPUs...?
M1 Max = 24-core base or 32-core full-die
M2 Pro = 16-core base or 19-core full-die
Apple will be right to cease development of Studio and concentrate on Mac Pro. These are generally overlapping products and Mac Pro will be priced higher than Studio (read bring in higher margins), so the decision is very clear. Studio will not be updated (just as iMac Pro) and will be supported for 10 years or so, but no new Studio will come. Instead, a monster new Mac Pro with ultra M3 chip, Wifi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 will come, priced accordingly. That may actually reuse Studio's form or have a completely new form (I think latter) and will be very productive and pricey. Apple will want Studio users to move to new Mac Pro.