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Mac Studio line's future

StoneJack

StoneJack

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Dec 19, 2009
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Good to see Mac Studio line to expand with new machines.
As a former LC630 and BW G3 350 user, always happy to see headless Macs to be on market. I have upgraded 1998 BWG3 350 and used until 2007.
Hope that Studio line will continue in future with upgrades in future as well. Once the line is established, at least 10 years of future Studio probably will be made. The reason is that Mini, iMac, MBA lines are continuing for at least 15 years.
 
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I'm thinking that at least right now, even Apple may be unsure of "the future" of the Studio model.

If it sells well enough (perhaps enough to overshadow the new Mac Pro), they may just keep it around...
 
Fishrrman said:
I'm thinking that at least right now, even Apple may be unsure of "the future" of the Studio model.

If it sells well enough (perhaps enough to overshadow the new Mac Pro), they may just keep it around...
Click to expand...
I think if you compare the Studio to the Mac Pro it will outsell the Pro by a large margin. Don't get me wrong, I would love to the a Mac Pro, but just having some slots is not enough, it needs to have expandability beyond that, memory and graphics come immediately to mind.

My 2012 Mac Pro worked for me for 10 years (I upgraded to the Studio Ultra the minute it shipped), because I was able to upgrade graphic cards, USB 3.0 ports, memory and even the processor, I had four internal hard drives, one SSD mounted on a PCI card for my startup drive, a card that allowed me to connect SATA Raid drives, etc. If the new MacPro allowed me to change graphics capabilities as they improve and add more memory I would be all over it even at the 7K price, but from what I seen and heard it does not appear that we will ever be allowed to make changes to the graphics and RAM (I understand the trade-off in using Apple chips). So the Studio is the next best thing, I hope that I will get 5 years of life out of my Studio, but I don't think Apple will provide me another computer that will last 10 years.
 
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Fishrrman said:
I'm thinking that at least right now, even Apple may be unsure of "the future" of the Studio model.

If it sells well enough (perhaps enough to overshadow the new Mac Pro), they may just keep it around...
Click to expand...

Think you'll find the Max Studio has easily outsold the Mac Pro by a significant margin since it launched. I think its future is fairly safe for now. People on here were swearing Apple would never update the Studio and they it was a stand in product till the Pro launched. I argued against that and was right, which is nice.
 
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Pezimak said:
Think you'll find the Max Studio has easily outsold the Mac Pro by a significant margin since it launched. I think its future is fairly safe for now. People on here were swearing Apple would never update the Studio and they it was a stand in product till the Pro launched. I argued against that and was right, which is nice.
Click to expand...
There were several of us that thought the next Mac Pro would sell for less as to grow its marketplace, also represent a roomer expandable chassis compared to the smaller Mac Studio. For awhile we even suspected the Mac Studio was just a placeholder until the Mac Pro arrived. When Apple showed us the larger Mac Pro started at $6999 USD, all those thoughts evaporated. :D

Apple has now clearly separated the two Mac desktop models by pricing and size/placement orientations. So both the Mac Studio and Mac Pro are here for the long haul.
 
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Realityck said:
There were several of us that thought the next Mac Pro would sell for less as to grow its marketplace, also represent a roomer expandable chassis compared to the smaller Mac Studio. For awhile we even suspected the Mac Studio was just a placeholder until the Mac Pro arrived. When Apple showed us the larger Mac Pro started at $6999 USD, all those thoughts evaporated. :D

Apple has now clearly separated the two Mac desktop models by pricing and size/placement orientations. So both the Mac Studio and Mac Pro are here for the long haul.
Click to expand...

Think you’ll find the Mac Pro scrapped in a couple of years due to poor sales. What are people going to plug in those PCIE slots? No afterburner card, no GPUs, seems only peripherals for audio production will fit, if compatible with ARM, I guess an SSD drive card can be made but you can use an enclosure for that too. If an audio pro can find an alternative to a plug in card and a Mac Studio for less then the Pro, then logic dictates they wouldn’t buy the Mac Pro.

The ENTIRE point of the Mac Pro is expandability and upgradability, and as we know Apple has killed off the upgradability stone dead.
 
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Pezimak said:
Think you’ll find the Mac Pro scrapped in a couple of years due to poor sales. What are people going to plug in those PCIE slots? No afterburner card, no GPUs, seems only peripherals for audio production will fit, if compatible with ARM, I guess an SSD drive card can be made but you can use an enclosure for that too. If an audio pro can find an alternative to a plug in card and a Mac Studio for less then the Pro, then logic dictates they wouldn’t buy the Mac Pro.

The ENTIRE point of the Mac Pro is expandability and upgradability, and as we know Apple has killed off the upgradability stone dead.
Click to expand...
Populate it with expensive PCIE cards they own. Look first at how you won’t need a PCIE expansion chassis. Heres a new OWC card for the Mac Pro.

www.owc.com

OWC Accelsior 8M2 PCIe SSD Available for the New Mac Pro with Apple silicon

Featured during Apple's keynote, OWC's Accelsior 8M2 PCIe SSD is the only way to unlock the performance potential of the new Mac Pro.
www.owc.com www.owc.com

Six slots, big storage​

You can read our full breakdown of the Mac Pro with M2 Ultra here, but the important thing to know about the enhanced capability of this new Mac Pro is that it is the first and only Mac that combines the power of Apple silicon — in the M2 Ultra chip — with Gen 4 PCI Express expansion.

The Mac Pro boasts six Gen 4 PCIe slots: two x16 slots and four x8 slots. That means you can outfit a new Mac Pro with M2 Ultra with up to 384TB of light-speed-fast internal NVMe SSD storage with Accelsior 8M2.

Obviously this getting away from the threads topic but the Mac Studio requires more external expansion boxes to act in the same manner. At least we can say Apple has given the marketplace more latitude to which to utilize.
 
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Realityck said:
Populate it with expensive PCIE cards they own. Look first at how you won’t need a PCIE expansion chassis. Heres a new OWC card for the Mac Pro.

www.owc.com

OWC Accelsior 8M2 PCIe SSD Available for the New Mac Pro with Apple silicon

Featured during Apple's keynote, OWC's Accelsior 8M2 PCIe SSD is the only way to unlock the performance potential of the new Mac Pro.
www.owc.com www.owc.com

Six slots, big storage​

You can read our full breakdown of the Mac Pro with M2 Ultra here, but the important thing to know about the enhanced capability of this new Mac Pro is that it is the first and only Mac that combines the power of Apple silicon — in the M2 Ultra chip — with Gen 4 PCI Express expansion.

The Mac Pro boasts six Gen 4 PCIe slots: two x16 slots and four x8 slots. That means you can outfit a new Mac Pro with M2 Ultra with up to 384TB of light-speed-fast internal NVMe SSD storage with Accelsior 8M2.

Obviously this getting away from the threads topic but the Mac Studio requires more external expansion boxes to act in the same manner. At least we can say Apple has given the marketplace more latitude to which to utilize.
Click to expand...
Still can be done externally.
Anyway I'm stoked Apple made the Studio, if gives us enthusiasts or people who want a Mac desktop that's headless, and has enough power to last several years with an option, and that IMO for a Mac is priced pretty well. Got my eyes set on one for sure.
 
I'm betting the M3 Mac Studio shaves about 1.5cm off the top of the chassis and will make everyone groan at the site of their old thicc boys lol
 

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Mac Pro is not finished. Apple will not kill its flagship MAC. It will get a M2, M3 or even a M4 Extreme Chip at the end of this year or early next - i.e. 2 (or more) Ultra chips together and at least 386G of memory and a minimum of 152 GPU cores. At least this powerful and probably a lot more so. The recently refreshed Mac Pro is a holding pattern product to tick a box that all MACs are now apple Silicon, probably as a slap to Intel.

I almost guarantee this will be the case. There is plenty of market for such a powerful machine; design houses, medical imaging, manufacturing, 3D modelling, complex image manipulation, game development (that Apple is getting into) and other power user cases. We have such powerful computers at work and we'd love to have MAC's that powerful and displace the Frankenstein PC's we built.
 
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I am not sure why anyone would care about the future of a particular Mac model. I can understand wanting to make sure the ecosystem has a future, but not a particular model. I am someone who came from TRSDOS->MSDOS->Windows->Linux->MacOs, and that's just my personal life. I still use Linux, and I still fire up Windows 10 when the Steam Sales are on, but since I slowly got drawn into the Apple ecosystem, I like the way all my devices work together. I don't think there is any single device I own or software I use that is so much better than what is available elsewhere, it's just that everything works together nicely. As the owner of a new M2 Max Studio, I really don't care if the next time I am ready to buy a new computer (> 5 years) if the Mac Studio exists or not. BTW, I expect, most likely the next computer I purchase (or build) will be using the RISC-V architecture.
 
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