The Mac Studio was a pretty cool piece of hardware, but it’s definitely not a machine for me. Since these new M-powered Macs have rolled out, I’ll either be switching to an iMac or MacBook Air (or entry Pro). These newer machines are targeted squarely at the professional who needs the flex of the Max and Ultra.
Whenever they offer an M2 or M2 Pro option for those consumer models, I’ll be upgrading my i7 mini and regulating that to server life. In the meantime, I’m getting that new iPad Air to replace my iPad 6.
And that’s fair. The M1 and M1 Pro, despite being “laptop class” chips, are heads and feet beyond the i3 and i5 chips that Apple had been using in its power and thermal constrained “laptop class” computers (MacBook Air, Mac mini, entry level MacBook Pro, entry level iMac). I used to wonder how anyone could get any work done on Apple’s entry level Macs, given their slow, lower performance i3 and low end i5 chips, but even the M1 is powerful enough that I feel like the “Pro” models just aren’t as necessary.
Apple’s current “desktop class” computers (high end MacBook Air, high end iMac, low end Mac Studio, anything with an M1 Max) are probably overkill for my needs. Prior to the Apple Silicon transition, this class of machines likely would have been the lowest end I’d consider, just on account of how poor the low end processor options were. Now, I’m not so sure I really need something with an M1 Pro, let alone an M1 Max.
And we’ve gotten a tantalizing first glimpse at Apple’s “workstation class” plans with the M1 Ultra (as well as an extension of Apple’s nomenclature beyond “Max”
). For pros in the macOS ecosystem, this is a pretty big deal (especially if you don’t need Apple’s display). Greater than current Mac Pro performance starting at $2000 (that’s a high end iMac price point, traditionally). And the design likely doesn’t suffer the same thermal constraints as the trash can Mac Pro or the iMac Pro (especially on Apple Silicon), which means that the Mac Studio is a far more future proof design and far more likely to receive upgrades in a timely manner than those models were.
People on MacRumors: “Apple needs to do more to focus on pro users!”
Also people on MacRumors: “Apple’s pro user machines more than outstrip my needs! What are they even doing?”
The consumer and prosumer class machines are more than adequate for the needs of consumers and prosumers, I don’t know what people in the market for a consumer machine were hoping to get from a “desktop class” or “workstation class” Mac that they weren’t getting from M1 based “laptop class” Macs like the Mac mini or low end iMac (or Apple’s laptops).
(Also, now we see that Apple goes Pro < Max < Ultra. I wonder what they’d do for an iPad Max or iPhone 13 Pro Max Ultra, or for AirPods Ultra, for that matter!)
