Yep. Apple needs to clock and run hotter for Mac Pro. The fans and power supply support it. This will make Macs more competitive.
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New Desktop Macs With M2 Ultra and M2 Max Chips Could See WWDC Debut
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You said it won’t entice current owners to upgrade. Well I’m sure I’m not alone that will upgrade.
While I agree, I'm sure they don't want to add 3 more years of intel support to their Mac OS roadmap.
Also wouldn’t that project the image that intel is still better for pro users? I don’t think apple wants to do that at all. But I agree it might make the most sense for the big modular tower mac pro
I disagree. The M2 SoC supports up to 24 GB of RAM and up to ten GPU cores, which offers a good amount of performance increase over the M1 SoC. And because iMac case has two cooling fans, it means the M2 can run at full speed with far less chance of running into thermal throttling. That is unless Apple wants to wait for the arrival of the M3 SoC with its totally new CPU and GPU cores in October 2023.
*Sigh*
Last year I bought an M1 iPad Air 5. I seriously doubt I’ll upgrade to the forthcoming Air 6 with M2 or later Air 7 with M3. That said it goes without saying someone who did buy the same M1 Air 2 will upgrade to the Air 6 or Air 7.
In like manner those who already have an M1 Mac Studio are not likely the target customers for the forthcoming M2 Mac Studio, but some will upgrade nonetheless despite the moderate performance gain.
Based on everything we’ve been hearing that is the most likely scenario.
The RAM alone will entice a lot of pros. Even in my circle they are desperately waiting for something higher than 128. I don’t care about CPU and GPU. RAM is my bottleneck.
Apart from the likelihood that a new Air will bring in more cash than a new Pro, the Air will only need a regular M3 whereas the Pro will need a M3 Ultra (or equivalent). So far, there's been several months between the launch of the M1/M2 and the M1/M2 Pro/Max and another several months between the M1 Pro/Max and M1 Ultra (we don't know if there's going to be a M2 Ultra yet). Since the Mx Pro/Max uses a different die to the regular Mx, and the ultra needs the ultrafusion connector trick to be updated at least part of that is probably genuine development time, not strategy.
Also, if M3==3nm, the M3 Air could easily thrash comparable PC laptops on power/battery life vs. performance, whereas even a M3 Ultra Pro (unless Apple pull something completely new out of the hat) is still going to struggle to match the PCIe bandwidth & RAM capacity of Xeon/Threadripper and the power of discrete, workstation-class GPUs.
My response, to the comment I quoted, was tongue-in-cheek (with a dash of truth). 😉 I was leveraging a bit of hyperbole to help illustrate that "people might forget about Mac Pros because entry-level Macs have become shockingly capable." I even closed with the goofy emoji to help identify hyperbole for those that tend to be more literal. Of COURSE there are more capable Macs and configs than an entry-level MBA. 🙄
I’ve made a living, and carved out a career, on Macs for a couple of decades doing all manner of creative work on some of their highest-end configs available. I have watched creative studios move from desktop-only Macs to any number of Macs. Hell, even seeing iPad Pros in the mix! The M-series has completely changed the game. While technology always marches forward, the leap that M-series has ushered in has been eye-opening. To the point where something like an entry-level MBA has a much larger potential use-case than at any point to date - further blurring the line between consumer and prosumer. While I won't get into to here, it's part of why I believe Apple has a real opportunity to reimagine how they name and position their products. But that is a topic best saved for another day. Cheers.
I’m just desperate for more pro like system. This is a repeat of the 2013 Mac Pro situation where apple had to apologize for as much as any legal/PR team would allow. I’m sick of Apple treating us pros bad. And that directly affects the entirety of macOS as it impacts what software is available.
Any buyers of an Air won’t have as much to look forward to from M2 to M3 Yet where are our more pro systems? And can directly impact the success of the AR/VR headset as it requires beefy systems to code this stuff. Something you can’t really do on any Air. I tried and Cinema 4D didn’t perform well enough for my work with the latest Air.
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People still don't get that memory is integrated onto the chip dies. It can't be expanded like the old days. The tradeoff is better memory performance. It may be possible to bypass the integrated graphics for a dedicated external card. But I am uncertain of the place of a Mac Pro unless they can get their quad chip configurations up and running. We will see soon.
There was an old rumor about two types of memory. The faster integrated RAM and slower upgradeable RAM.
Apple needs to give customers some options on the price brackets.
A low-end $999
Mid $1600 (Studio Display)
High $3k (XDR 1.0)
Super high $5k (XDR 2.0)
That way people can get whatever fits their needs. I'm a pro designer but I can't justify paying $7k (stand/nano) for the current XDR. It's too much. I would love to pay half of that.
I just wish they had a monitor with higher refresh rates. It’s not just for gaming. It helps with my eye strain a lot. And their laptops have it.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Yes, while I'm no memory expert, I still believe this is plausible:
- As is: when memory is short, the relatively SLOW SSD kicks in as swap "ram"
- As I suspect it could be: when memory is short, swap to traditional RAM (much faster than SSD), then let SSD be last resort if both of those are loaded.
Implement this and the "pros" could still pay up that max Apple premium to buy as much fastest (Silicon) RAM and the biggest SSD Apple will sell AND also expand RAM beyond that Silicon maximum with traditional RAM. The latter will obviously not be quite as fast... but much faster than swapping to the SSD as implemented now. Pro buyers could then have their fastest cake and their "need more RAM" cake too. Apple could have their FAT fastest RAM margins and meet the (more RAM) needs of the Pro crowd too.
Again, I'm no expert but it seems quite plausible to me. Perhaps some actual expert could chime in and explain why this is impossible for Apple to implement in a fresh crack at a new Mac Pro.
This will be a day one purchase for me.
One of those will be the 15-inch MacBook Air,
Any idea if the mac studios would be available to ship right away in few weeks or would we have long shipping wait times for custom models. Curious about this.
I'm thinking they have a form factor that allows compatibility with the latest desktop GPUs before the VR HMD ships. They don't have anything that can power that HMD in a pro graphics app (assuming it will have some sort of tether for those high end apps).
Only thing that would pause it for me is my current studio has that whine to it. Essentially quiet fans, but a faint whine. I tried 5 different ones and they all faced the issue. I hope the new ones fix it.