Yep. When you look at the cost of processor/ram/ssd upgrades for the MBP, the base Studio costs as much as a Mac Mini would if it were able to be upgraded to those specs.
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Has Apple lost their mind? March 8th Event Disappointment
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Exactly. It costs $500 just to upgrade from a binned M1 Pro to the 24 GPU-core M1 Max, and after adding in the cost of an upgrade from 8GB to 32GB RAM (which would cost $600, if it were possible on the M1 Mini), you would sit at $2000. And that includes a theoretical upgrade from M1 to binned M1 Pro (which of course doesn't exist in the Mac Studio).
The entry-level Mac Studio is actually one of the best deals in the current Mac lineup. You're getting 4 times the RAM, twice the CPU, 3 times the GPU plus the encoders and high memory bandwidth for only a little more than twice the price of the M1 Mini (with identical 512GB SSD this costs $899)
It's a great deal in the opposite direction too. If you don't need the media engines or extra cores, 16GB in the Mac mini, you get the same day-to-day performance as the Mac Studio at half the price.
(Emphasis mine)
It's a perfectly valid concern, but I think it might be one that would matter a lot more 10 years ago than today if current trends continue. I'm almost certain I've posted this plot in here before, but here's the base RAM sizes (in MB) in all Mac SKUs released since 1984 (Y-axis is log-scaled). Note the plateau in growth that starts in the early 2010s:
View attachment 1971619
If that earlier rate of year-over-year growth had continued, Macs would have hit an average base RAM size of 32 GB in ~2018! Since OEM PCs have kept with this curve more-or-less over the same timeframe, I'd say that the "more RAM -> hungrier apps -> more need to upgrade RAM" cycle isn't what it used to be, either due to slowing in the development of cheaper high-density RAM, reduced need for more capacity, the influence of low-RAM smartphones on website/software design, or a combination of all three.
Unless something dramatic changes, 16 GB RAM in 10 years is going to be a much healthier than 4 GB RAM (the average base RAM in 2012) is today.
EDIT: Here's base storage over the same timeframe:
Of course, that doesn't help if you unexpectedly find yourself with a workload that requires more RAM or storage, but at least we don't have Moore's Law working against us the same way it used to. Plus, with Mac SSD speeds having DDR2-comparable bandwidth (not sure about the latency), swap is much less painful than it used to be.
Can you share your base ram data? If not, can you swap x and y axis and put x in log?
Both are excellent charts. Great job.
Thanks! A lot of the credit should go to Hadley Wickam and the rest of the ggplot2 team though, they make it easy to make nice-looking and highly-flexible data visualizations.
I can PM you the data if you’d like (not entirely sure the legality of sharing it publicly, otherwise I’d do so), but it would only take a minute to do the plot you’re asking: just to be clear, you want log(time) on the y-axis and base RAM on the x-axis?
So I took your advise and bought one (base M1 with 1 TB SSD). The monitor did not arrive yet so I hooked it up to a 24inch cheap samsung.
Am I happy? Hmm yes and no. To be honest I thought it would be faster. I tested exporting a Imovie file (my 2021 family movie) and compared the speed to the late 2015 intel I7 model. It's about 2,5 times quicker. Then I used handbrake to convert a movie and it's about twice as fast. Not that impressing considering it's should be crushing todays intel processors. I think it's primarily a software problem. Imovie only uses 10-15% of processor capability according to the task monitor while encoding the mp4. Handbrake uses almost a 100% but 0% GPU (I always thought the GPU would be used in these cases). Also you know that when you started up microsoft word the logo would be jumping up and down for a while before actually starting. The Mac Studio does exactly the same. The program is just as sluggish to start. The same goes for pages, keynote etc not really starting faster then on my 2015 intel iMac.
I did not test Lightroom, photoshop yet since I didn't install them yet. Photoshopping on this samsung monitor would be terrible. Just waiting for the Mac studio monitor to arrive.
Remember that when comes to doing handbrake mp4 conversion then if using the videotoolbox presets then on Intel would be using the quicksync hardware and in the M1 then the Media Engine.
If not using videotoolbox then handbrake just uses CPU, it won’t use the GPU.
iMovie again if using mp4 export then would use the quicksync / media engine, as opposed to using the CPU or GPU cores.
As such would not necessarily expect the GPU to be used much.
Why would anyone pay $1500 for a M1 Max gaming computer when a $499 Xbox Series X is 20% more powerful than the M1 Max?
Apple's gaming machines are the iPhone and the iPad btw.
Microtransactions > AAA games for a company like Apple.
Because they also want a desktop computer. Or because they want to play games with mods. Or because they want to play games that work better with a keyboard and a mouse. Or because they want to play many games, and console games are much more expensive on the average. Basically the same reasons as why someone would buy a gaming PC instead of a console.
But why go for a Mac over a gaming PC when the goal is gaming?
I’m so glad I (generally) don’t like games lol. I save a lot of money and time. But I got my other time suckers, like Macrumors.
Sometimes, I like the idea of putting a computer together, then installing a Linux distribution like Arch Linux, where, like the computer hardware, I’m assembling the whole graphical environment from scratch (using different packages available in pacman) with the pieces (of software) I want and need. I consider it the ultimate in PC building. But, considering that I have no actual use for the computer after I’ve made it (I just want to have built it for the sake of having built a computer, hardware and software, from scratch), it’s hard to justify the cost and time spent on it. So it’s just something of an idle fantasy.
I used to be more of a gamer, but it’s rarely ever the top choice for how I spend my time these days. (Mind you, I’ve never been a PC gamer, and my only game console is a Switch Lite. I don’t even really play smartphone games.) What games do you play that keep you into gaming, if you don’t mind me asking?
I started on the NES/PC, moved to Playstations, Xbox 360 then PC only. I enjoy building it I wish I could build a Mac and not have to deal with grey/legal issues.
Lately I've mostly just been playing Cyberpunk 2077, I don't play a LOT Of games but what I do I sink lots of time in. Previous to CP2077 was Fallout 4, some Fallout 76, and Sims 4. As much of the hate that 2077 got when it came out I personally had every little issues, and its REALLY beautiful with the graphics cranked up. The story does a great job IMO of making you feel like you ARE your character by forcing First Person till the very end of the game. I've honestly not had a game make me feel any kind of emotions during the story in a VERY long time. It's just a shame the great story telling/music/graphics were overshadowed by bug issues, and being rushed to market.
Never ceases to amaze me. I'm betting you are the first and perhaps only critic to dismiss the paradigm-changing Studio Ultra as same 'ol, same 'ol. Funny or Pathetic? You decide.
It's only "paradigm changing" (what is this 1987?) if the device matters to you at all. As I have 0 need for any Mini, let alone a Studio version, it has zero effect on my life personal or professional. It's not going to change how PC makers make gaming machines (Macs still suck at games), it's not going to change ML learning (as Cuda is still better), and it's not going to change for most people who barely do more than email/web/video streaming.
This really only impacts one user base. People that use Final Cut or very heavy Adobe work in a prosumer/freelance/consulting fashion, but rather have a smaller footprint than a Mac Pro. Which even then, making a person's desktop physically smaller has extraordinarily little if any impact on their workflow vs a larger tower with the same performance, and more upgradability.
I'm honestly more interested in what people manage to do with many Studio Ultras in a server farm setting.
I'm just very dissapointed by the Studio Display, the only good thing out of that package is the 5K resolution with good PPI and the speakers.
Camera is such a bad quality due to the ultrawide cam.. I'm sending mine back today. Will stick to my 2x Huawei Mateviews.
I do love the PPI of this thing but the camera does not justify 1000€ than the two monitors I got.
Camera is such a bad quality due to the ultrawide cam.. I'm sending mine back today. Will stick to my 2x Huawei Mateviews.
I do love the PPI of this thing but the camera does not justify 1000€ than the two monitors I got.
Depends on what you do, I have both the MateView and ASD in my house, depends on what you do, if you just doing office work, the Huawei is brilliant, but for graphic (photo) work the ASD is much better. Are you aware of the Huawei bandwidth issue of outputting full 10 bit colours? Basically due to the display port 1.2 and HDMI port don't have enough bandwidth to output full 10 bit colour for resolution higher than 4k (which the Mateview is higher than 4k).
Oh for sure I agree for Graphic Design I would stay with ASD or go for the LG5K.
I'm just doing infrastructure architecture in the cloud so for me the Mateviews are enough
There is a beta update just out yesterday that should fix some of the camera issues. Maybe you should wait just a little bit and see what happens
I'm still undecided. I've watched a lot of online reviews and the general consensus among reviewers is that neither the 16 GB Mac Mini or the 24 inch iMac is powerful enough if you are serious about photography and have a lot of pictures to restore or correct. But that assessment isn't universal, some say that either the iMac or the Mini is more than enough for 'pro-sumer' level work. At this point Im going to wait and see how the M2 version of the Mac Mini, which is rumored to be coming out this year, or at least announced, is reviewed by online mac-centered photo reviewers.
Thanks for letting me know what you did, and how you think it is working out. If WWDC announces new M2 chips and specs that will probably go a long way to pushing me into a decision, unless they won't be available this year. From what I am hearing online the 24 inch iMac is probably NOT going to see an upgrade to the M2. But the rumors haven't been terribly accurate lately about what Apple is about to release.
I'm glad you're not chopping off the apple's head and overthrowing his throne, just planning to leave.