Has Apple lost their mind? March 8th Event Disappointment

[cheesygrin]

To be honest, the prices and specs of the Studio products didn’t really surprise me. The clue is in the name - they’re designed for the studio, not the average home.

Most studio users will have external or network/server based storage anyway, so won’t rely on the internal storage that much.

What hurt me much more was the iPad Air storage. This is a mid-range consumer device, starting at £569 in the UK, or £719 with cellular. The fact you can pay that much money and still be given 64GB non-upgradable internal storage is absolutely unbelievable. The fact the only upgrade option is an additional £150 for 256GB makes it even worse, when clearly 128GB would be the sweet spot for most people. That really does feel like an unashamed money grab by Apple.

As regards the 27” iMacs, they have always bothered me a little bit. I had one, and it just struck me how the amazing screen was ruined by a computer inside it that aged so much faster than the display did. Seemed a waste that the lovely premium screen became unusable simply because the computer attached to it slowed down after a few years. Replaced with a Mac mini and high end Dell UltraSharp panels for that reason. Can upgrade the mini as often as I like without having to throw away the screens every time. Maybe the same could apply with the Studio Displays and the days of the larger screen iMac are gone.

 

[Belifant]

Is it actually heartbreaking to see. You think Steve would approve of this behavior? Now that they’ve got such a big share of the market and users knowing how to use the devices, we are hooked END users with no choices except their choices. They know this and abusing it. This is really a sad day. I never thought Macintosh/now Apple would stoop to such tactics, just like everyone else. There’s nowhere else to go, and I refuse to be a PC user at home, although it has been crossing my mind of late. The last few hours at least.
Tab key out Tab key out of curiosity, what will be the course of action as far as purchases will be for the folks here for the most part? Best, Seth

Agree it's not really surprising, Apple will charge absolutely as much as they possibly can for any given product (doubtless backed up by huge amounts of market research) and seemingly with less and less holistic thought put into the product offerings as a whole. What did raise a bit of an eyebrow for me is that the Mac Studio + Studio Display is seemingly positioned as a replacement for the 27" iMac, which, however you cut it was a drastically less expensive computer. The Apple Silicon products really seem to accelerate a trend of squeezing out the middle. You're either getting an entry level vanilla M1 product, with very limited actual choices for these machines, or paying a small fortune to get into the higher end stuff.

Isn't that just how every company on the planet operates? They are not charities and no company is looking to sell as cheap as possible.

 

[cp1160]

This prices make the 14/16” MacBook Pros look cheap…

There’s just a huge huge gap now. Between the almost 2 years old M1 macs, and these ultra expensive macs. Nothing in between. Literally the new MacBook Pros become the “in-between” at this point since you at least get a full computer With display keyboard for $2000.

Wow...M1 is old. Since it launched in November 2020 it is 16 months old. Thats pretty distant from 24 months. Nothing in between? For the Mini? Upgrades are often slow. Is your M1 Mini not up to the task? What task is that?

Do you expect a Mini with a M1, M1 Pro, M1 M1 Max and M1 Ultra Max configuration?

 

[JMacHack]

Isn't that just how every company on the planet operates? They are not charities and no company is looking to sell as cheap as possible.

Apparently Steve Jobs stuffed nicely equipped iMacs in their stockings if they were good little boys and girls. Ol Tim Cook from his mountain above Whoville just decided to ruin it for them though.

 

[darngooddesign]

...What did raise a bit of an eyebrow for me is that the Mac Studio + Studio Display is seemingly positioned as a replacement for the 27" iMac, which, however you cut it was a drastically less expensive computer.

I thought the Mac Mini and Monitor replace the 27" iMac; and the Studio and Monitor replace the iMac Pro.

 

[HiVolt]

I was bummed they didnt drop the M1Pro into the mac mini, but i bought the studio for $2599 32gb 2tb. It is a little overkill for me, dont need the gpu that the max has. On second thought maybe i should cancel my order and grab the macbook pro m1Pro...

It's too bad they also didn't make a M1 Pro available on the studio, for those who don't quite like the I/O limitations of the mac mini, but don't need the Max or Ultra.

 

[kc9hzn]

Isn't that just how every company on the planet operates? They are not charities and no company is looking to sell as cheap as possible.

And users are just the other side of the coin. No one ever discusses how users seek to maximize their value and minimize what they pay. Everyone wants to get the maximum they can for the minimum they can do, that’s human nature.

 

[darngooddesign]

It's too bad they also didn't make a M1 Pro available on the studio, for those who don't quite like the I/O limitations of the mac mini, but don't need the Max or Ultra.

Apple probably heard everyone FUDing about too many SKUs causing a 1990's-style meltdown and decided to eliminate all the M1-Pro variations. Good job everyone. ?

 

[dandeco]

I was bummed they didnt drop the M1Pro into the mac mini, but i bought the studio for $2599 32gb 2tb. It is a little overkill for me, dont need the gpu that the max has. On second thought maybe i should cancel my order and grab the macbook pro m1Pro...

Same. But I now have my eyes set on the Mac Studio, specifically an M1 Max model with a 1 TB SSD. (This is because it'll be replacing my 2012 quad-core i7 Mac Mini that has 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD installed in it.) And it'll cost me around $2200, but given how at least I was able to save up for my M1 MacBook Air I bought almost a year ago, it probably won't be too hard.

 

[Jonathan.T.Harpur]

I do think apple will make a bigger size iMac for consumers and not just keep that size screens for just pros and I would like to see the air dropped from MacBook Air and jus call in MacBook and offer it in the same size as the pro laptops and let this how need a pro machine get and let us consumer have the same size laptops offers to us consumers as the pros are getting

 

[Kaptajn Haddock]

Wow, so they can build a laptop with M1pro/max, but for the so called high end mac mini they make this oversized, ugly beast? Seriously?! Maybe for the M1ultra edition, but why not make a mac mini sized power house for the M1pro/max ? And for less. This price is horrendous.

 

[darngooddesign]

Wow, so they can build a laptop with M1pro/max, but for the so called high end mac mini they make this oversized, ugly beast? Seriously?! Maybe for the M1ultra edition, but why not make a mac mini sized power house for the M1pro/max ? And for less. This price is horrendous.

Wouldn’t be that much less. The 32GB/1TB M1-Max is an $800 upgrade over the 16GB/1TB M1-Pro. IMO it’s no better or worse looking than the Mac Mini and the size is due to stacking the big fans over the guts and air intake below, instead of everything being spread out horizontally in the laptops. Putting even the M1-Pro in the Mac Mini without increasing its size for a better cooling system would mean throttling and loud fans.

 

[ahurst]

The external monitor situation is still an absolute mess with m1 based devices. I have 2 m1 airs and as good as they are in most other aspects, I have contemplated getting rid of them simply due to how bad m1 has been with (some) external monitors. Insane issues like constant flickering, vertical lines/bands and even image retention issues. No fix from day 1 until now. Possibly hardware level issue with the m1s.

See for examples - https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/m1-air-ghosting-flickering-with-external-display.2271670/

Yeah, that's what I was talking about regarding growing pains: from my understanding, the issue is that there are a lot of subtle ways monitors deviate from the specific HDMI/DisplayPort spec and that the M1 has trouble dealing with that, given it's the first time Apple's been responsible for that piece of the puzzle themselves.

I haven't tested my 14" MBP much with external monitors (my few brief experiences have been fine), but have people reported improvement with the M1 Pro/Max chips? I'd imagine that the display management hardware would have changed from the base M1 given their major differences in multi-monitor support.

 

[darkpaw]

People are saying Apple aren't going to bring out a new 27" iMac, but the list of Macs on Apple's website when you click "Mac" at the top shows the iMac 24". If that were the only iMac, they'd have renamed it to simply "iMac", right?

MacBook Air
MacBook Pro
iMac 24"
Mac mini
Mac Studio
Mac Pro

 

[Tomassverak]

They are doing this for the brand. The product - Mac studio is niche product. I can name none other computer with that price range and same goes with the monitor. Knowing Apple’s products makes the brand as something luxury.

Crazy, but very clever.

 

[Xand&Roby]

What I love of Wintel Apple users is them lack of point, every time.
If Apple show a new iMac 27”: “WTH is that?! We want a cheap modular Mac for work, we are Pro (wannabe, at least they are a skilled consumer), we need a Mac Pro for real people, or we’ll go on Hackintosh!”.
Apple show a new Mac mini with steroids, 3,5X performances of Intel Mac Pro at half price and them: “we need an iMac 27” or a iMac Pro (the ones they laugh about for years), WTH is this absurd Mac with 3~4k price target?!”.
Ehy “Pro”, it’s time for you to grow up: there weren’t cheap Apple Macs from decades, Wintel Polycarbonate MacBooks are trashware also when Apple sells them, that target price don’t return.
If you want an Apple cheap desktop replacement there are cheap iPads, Mac mini or MB Air.
Them aren’t enough for your work? Spent your money or do your best with what you own.
Apple is here to sell, nothing more.

 

[ADGrant]

So, what affordable display shall I buy for the Mac mini?

A Studio display and an M1 Mac mini aren't less affordable than the lower speed 2020 Intel 27" iMacs. Except for the RAM of course.

 

[Ethosik]

Quite in contrary, this is an impressive technological leap. Multi-chip technology is the future and Apple has demonstrated they can execute it better than anyone else up to date. AMDs chiplet tech offers a fraction of inter-die bandwidth at much higher power cost.

What is the bandwidth of the AMD/Intel/others? I heard someone complaining why did Apple do their own thing instead of using the new standard.

 

[Ethosik]

Yeah, it's a mac mini upgrade that we didn't get, but at Mac Pro prices....

As someone that spec'ed out a 2019 Mac Pro and compared it to a 2019 i9 iMac, no these are not Mac Pro prices. Not even CLOSE.

 

[kc9hzn]

What is the bandwidth of the AMD/Intel/others? I heard someone complaining why did Apple do their own thing instead of using the new standard.

Why would it matter to the person complaining that Apple’s doing their own thing instead of using a new standard, when you’ll never be able to use an Apple Silicon processor in anything other than a Mac and when the Mac will only ever take an Apple Silicon processor? What’s the point in doing something in a standards compliant way if you can’t replace the part or use the part in another computer, and what’s the harm of doing it in a proprietary way when you couldn’t replace the part or use it in another computer even if it were using the standard? In other words, proprietary multi-die technology seems like a silly thing to complain about when the whole processor and computer are proprietary in the first place.

 

[Ethosik]

Serious question, who’s using these things? I can’t find any business online that uses MacOS as its primary ecosystem let alone one that would need this much computing power. Most corporations that do require this type of computing use Windows.

Apple always shows us music artist, photographers, designers, etc using $10K setup but why on earth would any of these people need this? And if you’re an indie developer or solo artist you probably can’t afford it.

Apple’s hardware is at the point they need to focus on software that can actually take advantage of their devices.

I plan to use one. I do a lot of video editing, graphic design, motion graphics and 3D modeling work. Video editing is the biggest area for me as I could go for some faster encodes especially on my 5+ hour videos.

 

[johngordon]

I agree. They should not bother with the low end display market. But if they want to play around in the high end display market they should not charge an extra 400 for height adjustment on a 1300USD display. That stand is a joke compared to other monitor arms with far better adjustment options. I really fail to see the value for that for any users apart for something that iJustine can lick.

The XDR Display stand is hands down the best stand I've seen on a display. Considering the size and weight of the display, its (cliché I know) as smooth as butter. So genuinely interested what displays have better stands for adjusting the height and tilt?

 

[Ethosik]

The general attitude is - if its too much to ask or be concerned about, you are not the target audience for this. Even the maxed out Mac Studio (which I will NOT get as 64GB of RAM and 2TB SSD are enough for me), I can make the money back very quickly with a few jobs.

 

[Ethosik]

There are people whose work depends predominantly on usage of Apple’s MacOS-exclusive professional apps and exporting projects as fast possible means money. For these people a Mac Studio will pay for itself.

Its not just macOS exclusive apps that benefit from this. I just time tested Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder and it is about 40% faster on my M1 Max 16" Macbook Pro vs my $2,500 custom build gaming PC. And when dealing with 5+ hour videos, the time REALLY adds up.

 

[kschendel]

What is the bandwidth of the AMD/Intel/others? I heard someone complaining why did Apple do their own thing instead of using the new standard.

The new interconnect standard is completely unsuitable for high performance memory, at least as it stands now. It's not even up to the performance of the AMD Infinity Fabric. It's really meant for gluing together various bits and co-processors. "Someone" needs to better inform themselves.

I understand that the M1 Ultra ends up with a 1024-bit wide interface to memory. That's pretty impressive.