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Mac Studio Reviews: Faster Than a $13,000 Mac Pro

I think i have to wait a bit for some "real" reviews. Dont get me wrong, but most of these YouTube reviewers... are just not more than that. They create YouTube video's and are crumbling on top of eachother about export times of there awesome 4k video's and fancy studio's with purple and blue Hue lights.

I am missing everything about snapy Experience in the OS, productivity in Photoshop or lightroom. What about illustrator and a crazy vector illustration with tons of schadows and effects wich is a REAL pain in the ass beachball loader if u move things. This all needs to be rendered again. Wich cost TIME. Time cost money. Is this machine killing the M1 mini?

I guess i have to wait for a content creator that works in the creation industry for REAL, and hear his or here judgement. And not using Photoshop for creating a YouTube thumbnail (lol). I want to know how this machine handles high ress Photoshop files, and adding effects, maniuplating photo's, using big laggy brushes in high ress documents, doing digital paintings, etc etc.

So far.. excited about the Studio. But with many creative programs still leaning heavy on Single Core performance.. i think many of us (Adobe / Affinity) creators (if you are), will do fine with a Mac Mini M1 with 16GB. Because the Single Core performance is the same. And with the M1 you still have 8 cores.

Cant wait for those serious reviews!! And if you have spot one, let me know!
 
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Pressure said:
Frankly the uniformity of the backlight also looked like ****. Apple haven’t really done enough with this monitor compared to the Mini-LED displays used in the iPad Pro 12.9”, MacBook Pro 14”, MacBook Pro 16” and the 6K XDR Display.

Hopefully QD-OLED will soon hit higher resolutions. The Dell AW3423DW is a 34” QD-OLED (3440x1400@175Hz) that goes for $1299. It does GSYNC Ultimate and HDR1000.
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The Verge’s unit has IPS glow / backlight bleeding / uniformity all looking worse than the average iMac. And this is already a cherry picked review unit.
 
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Roykor said:
I think i have to wait a bit for some "real" reviews. Dont get me wrong, but most of these YouTube reviewers... are just not more than that. They create YouTube video's and are crumbling on top of eachother about export times of there awesome 4k video's.

But i am missing everything about snapy Experience in the OS, in Photoshop or lightroom. What about illustrator and a crazy vector illustration with tons of schadows and effects wich is a REAL pain in the ass beachball loader if u move things. This all needs to be rendered again. Wich cost TIME. Time cost money. Is this machine killing the M1 mini?

I guess i have to wait for a content creator that works in the creation industry for real. And not using Photoshop for creating a YouTube thumbnail (lol). I want to know how this machine handles high ress Photoshop files, and adding effects, maniuplating photo's, using big laggy brushes in high ress documents, doing digital paintings, etc etc.

So far.. excited about the Studio. But with many creative programs still leaning heavy on Single Core performance.. i think many of us (Adobe / Affinity) creators (if you are), will do fine with a Mac Mini M1 with 16GB. Because the Single Core performance is the same. And with the M1 you still have 8 cores.

Cant wait for those serious reviews!! And if you have spot one, let me know!
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Agreed, these ones are all paid by apple
 
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canonical said:
Apparently the reason the Display sits so high is so that people can fit the fat Mac Studio computer underneath the monitor.
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It's lower than my 27" iMac :confused:
When I sit at my desk, the top of my iMac is just above eye level.
 
Roykor said:
I am missing everything about snapy Experience in the OS, productivity in Photoshop or lightroom. What about illustrator and a crazy vector illustration with tons of schadows and effects wich is a REAL pain in the ass beachball loader if u move things. This all needs to be rendered again. Wich cost TIME. Time cost money. Is this machine killing the M1 mini?
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Unless you are considering the M1-Ultra version, you can get this info from MBP reviews.
 
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darngooddesign said:
Unless you are considering the M1-Ultra version, you can get this info from MBP reviews.
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Out of the entire Adobe Suite, probably only Premier and After Effects could see significant performance difference on Ultra vs Max. For 2D / static stuff the M1 Pro is already plenty, let alone the Max. What matters more is the RAM amount if your files and assets are not small, the 16GB RAM cap on M1 is a limiting factor, where the M1 Pro and Max on 14” 16” can go 32 to 64 but they are not stock. With this Mac Studio, even the base comes with 32GB.
 
darngooddesign said:
Unless you are considering the M1-Ultra version, you can get this info from MBP reviews.
Click to expand...
I have seen them all (well.. many, many.. way to much haha)

I am interested in the Studio. But so far, all we have are video editors (aka YouTubers) and 8k video exports in 30 seconds. Yeah.. nice. I wonder if this machine is a beast vs the M1 in the rest of the content creating world :)

Photoshop, Illustrator, Affinity, Indesign, Webdesign, Lightroom, etc.

There is a difference in a benchmark test for a YouTube video.. and someone really working with it for a few weeks. Finishing work for clients. Doing heavy lifting in these programs. So the real reviews will cost some time to come.

I think (my 2-cents) that the Mac Mini M1 with 16gb will do all this work, feeling as the same user experience. I dont think you will notice a 2 sec faster effect render in real world. And when you save 2 minutes in a hour.. will that be a difference? :D


I really hope.. that Apple will release a M1 mini Pro so the mini has acces to 32gb. I think this will be the sweet spot for ALMOST everyone, that is not hardcore in video editing
 
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krspkbl said:
it would suck to be someone who spent $13,000 on a mac pro ? well i suppose if you have that much money you probably wouldn't care or maybe you just have more money than brains.
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Hi, my $13,000 mac pro is currently updating to 12.3 and I'm bored - tell me why it sucks?

I think the thing most people forget is that there will always be newer and faster stuff (and sometimes the faster stuff is cheaper, or better in some other fundamental way) but in the time before the better thing comes out, people still need to get work done, and so when I bought this computer I needed something faster and more expandable than a Macbook Pro / iMac and the Mac Pro was it.

I can't put an exact dollar amount to it, but if it were destroyed right now I would still say I got my monies worth, and unfortunately would buy another one as I need expansion cards.
 
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It's amazing how blind people are to CPU performance while ignoring GPU performance. At least the 13, 000 Mac Pro could support a GPU. Does everyone who wants a Mac just edit video? There isn't a single app I use professionally that doesn't require massive GPU power.
 
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If you haven't yet had your fill of slick motion control footage of the Mac Studio and Studio Display, here's something you might enjoy:

 
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Scovious said:
It's amazing how blind people are to CPU performance while ignoring GPU performance. At least the 13, 000 Mac Pro could support a GPU. Does everyone who wants a Mac just edit video? There isn't a single app I use professionally that doesn't require massive GPU power.
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If i look in the corner of Adobe and Affinity, this is not the case. Most of the content creating programs are leaning on the CPU and RAM. Few things will be renderd on the GPU like zooming and panning. Few effects will be renderd on the GPU too. But still.. the rest is on the CPU. Also.. there is a flipping point where cores are not adding any profits. With intels, it looks like the 8-core is the sweet-spot. Everything above cost way more than it benefeits you.

What programs do you use where the GPU kicks in heavy?
 
I still think the resale value of Mac Pros will be high for most that want to use them for running VMs and other Intel related tasks. They may drop in value but I am sure they will be several thousand dollars even at a massive loss.
 
Roykor said:
I have seen them all (well.. many, many.. way to much haha)

I am interested in the Studio. But so far, all we have are video editors (aka YouTubers) and 8k video exports in 30 seconds. Yeah.. nice. I wonder if this machine is a beast vs the M1 in the rest of the content creating world :)

Photoshop, Illustrator, Affinity, Indesign, Webdesign, Lightroom, etc.

There is a difference in a benchmark test for a YouTube video.. and someone really working with it for a few weeks. Finishing work for clients. Doing heavy lifting in these programs. So the real reviews will cost some time to come.

I think (my 2-cents) that the Mac Mini M1 with 16gb will do all this work, feeling as the same user experience. I dont think you will notice a 2 sec faster effect render in real world. And when you save 2 minutes in a hour.. will that be a difference? :D


I really hope.. that Apple will release a M1 mini Pro so the mini has acces to 32gb. I think this will be the sweet spot for ALMOST everyone, that is not hardcore in video editing
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While I think the low-end Mac Studio is the absolute sweet spot for Mac Desktops right now, you aren’t wrong. My Mac Mini is fantastic and does everything I need quickly at a relatively low price. Apple has created a problem in some respects in that their low-end chip is more than enough for a vast majority of users. It will take years for a lot of software to catch up with their high-end chips. I would advise anyone in the market for a new Mac to seriously consider what they really need to do. In reality, the M1 Pro in a Mac Mini will be the new sweet spot for me if Apple ever does that. The Pro is the only chip not in a desk top at the moment, and it should be.
 
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TheYayAreaLiving ? said:
She’s got one but she has to return it back to Apple by next week and Apple will make her purchase one using her own money. I wonder if she’s going to buy it.
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do they really have to return their testing units? she always shows off her RECENT generation collection of iPhones / iPads and I am like ... why would she buy all versions of iPads for her own unless its one of those "eat the rich" moments
 
Roykor said:
Photoshop, Illustrator, Affinity, Indesign, Webdesign, Lightroom, etc.
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I just searched quickly and saw a few reviews about the MBP M1 Max and problems about Illustrator lagging. Since, from what we know, the performance of the Mac Studio with M1 Max will perform a lot like the MBP one does with single threaded apps, I wouldn’t think the Mac Studio M1 Max would provide much better performance.
 
Mr. Dee said:
The only review you need to watch for this is The Verge. Thorough and balanced.
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Indeed, the review from The Verge is thorough and balanced... but only from the viewpoint of video, audio and graphics workloads. I am missing the following scenarios and aspects:
  • consistent comparison between Macs with M1 and Intel CPUs
  • consistent comparison between Mac and PC hardware
  • developer benchmarks
 
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