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Anyone else disappointed by the Mac Studio?

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Ethosik said:
This is typical with professional grade systems. 512GB here on a Dell that’s over $5,000.

www.dell.com

Precision 7920 Workstation Desktop Tower with Xeon Processor | Dell USA

The Precision 7920 Tower workstation provides ultimate performance and scalability to grow alongside your vision.
www.dell.com
Click to expand...

True... but you can easily upgrade the storage in the Dell.

Want more storage later? No problem!

?

dell-upgradable.jpg
 
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ceraz said:
Totally agree, forking out 2000$ and then have to plug in in ugly TB4 disks over time is ridiculous. At least allow users add a second internal SSD drive and present them as a single fusion drive within macOS. It's a desktop not a laptop!
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I would buy 2x8 or 1x16 or more TB SSD inside the MacBook Pro.
 
mectojic said:
Not the specs or price. The specs for the Mac Studio are great value for the price (except the 512GB storage...) The price itself is perfectly reasonable. These Macs will easily last 10 years, so long as there is no failure of components.

No, what I'm disappointed by is the design. Frankly I think it looks very ugly, just as bad as the renders predicted, if not worse. A height-stretched Mac Mini has none of the elegance of the Mac Mini form factor, and is rather ridiculous.

I'm disappointed because Apple had a real chance to showcase a bold new design, like the M1 iMac, but instead they played it very, very safe, because of "pros hate colour" or "pros hate risktaking" or whatever.

This could've been a chance to do something like the G4 Cube – heck, I bet enthusiasts are already planning to mod a Mac Studio into a G4 case. To quote Steve Jobs, Apple could've had the power and the sex. They've got the power now... just not the beautiful design they once pioneered.

Who knows where Apple design language will go in future, but what I'm seeing now is just Jony Ive-style aluminium chassis, minus Ive-style thin design. I'm not asking Macs to be ultra-thin, I'm asking them to be cool. Cool like the Cube, iMac G4 and iPod. Today, Apple's design team seems only capable of creating products that look like an iOS app. They're not pushing the boundaries anymore.
Click to expand...
From the beginning of Apple the engineers and designers have had an obsession to make sure what you can’t see is just as amazing as what’s on the outside and the Mac Studio is no exception. I am glad they were smart enough to mix it up and give more weight to function over form when the need arises. This choice has given us a very powerful appliance that doesn’t need to recoup months of design work. Bravo Apple.
 
ceraz said:
Totally agree, forking out 2000$ and then have to plug in in ugly TB4 disks over time is ridiculous. At least allow users add a second internal SSD drive and present them as a single fusion drive within macOS. It's a desktop not a laptop!
Click to expand...

I now have an external NVME and a DAS with 4x8TB disks, in addition to a NAS with 10TB disks.
This of course will increase in the future (this setup is now 4 years old).
Maybe some people need more storage than you do.
 
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ceraz said:
Totally agree, forking out 2000$ and then have to plug in in ugly TB4 disks over time is ridiculous. At least allow users add a second internal SSD drive and present them as a single fusion drive within macOS. It's a desktop not a laptop!
Click to expand...

My 2010 Mac Pro has 5 SSD/HDD's inside, 4 HDD enclosures connected by USB-C, and a NAS. I think of it as a desktop.
 
My only disappointment is the use of same performing chips as the ones in MBP.
I mean this is a desktop, and they should offer some kind of turbo mode (for those instances that the fan noise doesn't matter) offering higher clock speed.

I'm still wondering if M1 Ultra performance scale problem is due to a bug or lack of optimization. If it's a bug, it will be fixed and no more worry for me, but if it's due to a lack of optimization, it would be another disappointing factor.
 
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I must say after seeing the max studio in person, it looks fugly to me. I know that does not matter much since the performance is what really matters, but seems like Apple took a very lazy approach to basically use a design over a decade old and just make it taller.

Could they not have done something, anything with the overall look to make it at least a little more unique looking? How about a black matte finish?
 
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icemantx said:
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I must say after seeing the max studio in person, it looks fugly to me. I know that does not matter much since the performance is what really matters, but seems like Apple took a very lazy approach to basically use a design over a decade old and just make it taller.

Could they not have done something, anything with the overall look to make it at least a little more unique looking? How about a black matte finish?
Click to expand...
Yeah, at least they could have put something on the front to say whether it is a max or an ultra.
 
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icemantx said:
Could they not have done something, anything with the overall look to make it at least a little more unique looking? How about a black matte finish?
Click to expand...
Black is a bad idea. If the sun hits the office and falls on the Mac Studio it would get way too hot being black. Silver is much better in that case!
 
mectojic said:
No, what I'm disappointed by is the design. Frankly I think it looks very ugly, just as bad as the renders predicted, if not worse. A height-stretched Mac Mini has none of the elegance of the Mac Mini form factor, and is rather ridiculous.
Click to expand...
I couldn't disagree with you more. I love the design of my Studio Ultra. I like the design of my previous M1 MacMini also. The Studio design is simplistic and beautiful.

Regarding the noise, what noise. If I put my ear close to the Studio, I can hear very faint fan noise. It doesn't distract or bother me at all. Far and away, the best Mac I've ever owned.
 
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JohnnyWalker said:
I never said it was what's important. I said it looks BLAND. Which it does. It looks like something any other company could come up with. It looks only a little better than any other minor company's tech.

Eg.
www.wexphotovideo.com

Sandisk Professional G-DRIVE 12TB | Wex Photo Video

www.wexphotovideo.com

Of course, I guess it all looks the same to you, so it doesn't matter.
Click to expand...
Looks are a matter of taste, I think it looks fine and mine performs like a champ.
 
mectojic said:
Not the specs or price. The specs for the Mac Studio are great value for the price (except the 512GB storage...) The price itself is perfectly reasonable. These Macs will easily last 10 years, so long as there is no failure of components.

No, what I'm disappointed by is the design. Frankly I think it looks very ugly, just as bad as the renders predicted, if not worse. A height-stretched Mac Mini has none of the elegance of the Mac Mini form factor, and is rather ridiculous.

I'm disappointed because Apple had a real chance to showcase a bold new design, like the M1 iMac, but instead they played it very, very safe, because of "pros hate colour" or "pros hate risktaking" or whatever.

This could've been a chance to do something like the G4 Cube – heck, I bet enthusiasts are already planning to mod a Mac Studio into a G4 case. To quote Steve Jobs, Apple could've had the power and the sex. They've got the power now... just not the beautiful design they once pioneered.

Who knows where Apple design language will go in future, but what I'm seeing now is just Jony Ive-style aluminium chassis, minus Ive-style thin design. I'm not asking Macs to be ultra-thin, I'm asking them to be cool. Cool like the Cube, iMac G4 and iPod. Today, Apple's design team seems only capable of creating products that look like an iOS app. They're not pushing the boundaries anymore.
Click to expand...
I agree with you, I think also i'ts ugly. Famous Apple aesthetics is gone. It looks better from the back than from the front by my opinion. But the performance is mindblowing, really out of the charts. I was able to get up to 120% more performance on the Ultra vs Max.
 
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ceraz said:
Totally agree, forking out 2000$ and then have to plug in in ugly TB4 disks over time is ridiculous. At least allow users add a second internal SSD drive and present them as a single fusion drive within macOS. It's a desktop not a laptop!
Click to expand...
512GB was a tempting option for me. My rationale is that I only host apps, system files, and large Logic projects that I'm actively working on internally. Everything else goes on an external NVMe drive--it reads/writes way slower but that doesn't really matter with small/moderate size files. For me, this is a far more practical setup than paying $400 for that second TB of storage. As of today, the internal drive on my new Studio is >256GB. So it's possible that 512GB will be enough for the life of this machine though I did spring for 1TB just in case. All of that is to say that I can easily see some users wanting to save $200 and going for the 512GB storage.
 
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