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Is The Apple Mac Studio The Mini Mac Pro That Was Rumoured?
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Actually what we've been given is a MacMini Max and a MacMini Ultra (Studio Max, Studio Ultra).
What we don't have yet is a MacMini Pro, but I'm kinda thinking that's not going to happen now, because Apple haven't left a big enough window between the price of a pimped MacMini and a base Studio Max.
What we don't have yet is a MacMini Pro, but I'm kinda thinking that's not going to happen now, because Apple haven't left a big enough window between the price of a pimped MacMini and a base Studio Max.
False. The studio most definitely is that rumored "mini pro." The m1 ultra is the last of the m1s. The interconnect only allows for 2 chips and can't scale any higher currently. There was never intended for "pro" apple silicon to be put in the studio as those chips will come with the m2. The studio is targeted at creatives who are pros or "prosumers."
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Understood, does that mean the Mac Studio is the mini Mac Pro that was rumoured or not? lol
Dude doesn't know what he's talking about. See my response to him.
Yes I guess so. What I was hoping for though was a MacMini Pro...but instead they gave us a cut-down Mac Pro. Which is great in its own way, I just wanted something a little more powerful than the basic M1 MacMini, but like I said, the introduction of the Mac Studio doesn't really leave a window for that.
For me it's a Mac Mini Pro because if it was a Mac Pro Mini, it would be internal expandable.
I wouldn’t call this a cut down Mac Pro: to start with it doesn’t have the expansion options.
fair point: I guess what I was meaning it is standalone unit with a high-end chip (certainly in Ultra form), rather than say a 'mid-fi' unit with something one step up from a basic M1.
Never mind the chips, if you look at the Studio from above it looks like a mini. The same measurements, actually, 19,7 cm either way. And it is a non expandable package, just like the mini. So, the Studio could just as easily have been named the mini Pro (or mini pro, if you want to adhere to lower case letters).
It is basically an updated Mac Pro 2013 - the trash can. That Mac Pro was not upgradable aside from the RAM, but worse because it supported only the fairly new TB2 for external connectivity when adoption of thunderbolt was super low. Now the Studio has TB4 and USB-C and a plethora of device support.
I think we still may see an "M2 Pro" Mac mini that slots in at around $1500 because there is a pretty large price gap from the M1 Mini to the Studio.
Then the future Mac Pro will be $6000+ top end starting with an M1 Ultra and hopefully keeping some form of expansion slots...
You could also upgrade the SSD on the 2013 Mac Pro, it just wasn’t a standard part.
Never mind the chips, if you look at the Studio from above it looks like a mini. The same measurements, actually, 19,7 cm either way. And it is a non expandable package, just like the mini. So, the Studio could just as easily have been named the mini Pro (or mini pro, if you want to adhere to lower case letters).
Maybe the Mac Mini Pro and Mac Pro Mini are one and the same = Mac Studio 🙃
That aside which is not really my point. An Apple Silicon Mac Pro was mentioned by Apple earlier last year, rumours from the same time circulated about a cut-down, smaller version of, mini Mac Pro. Is the Studio it, is it coming, or never going to appear?
Probably have to wait and see what they announce at wwdc this summer. I presume that’s where the Apple Silicon Mac Pro is unveiled and can then see if it’s a natural step up from the Studio or if there is a gap in the pricing and specs that seems could be filled be a midway machine.
but I suspect whatever the new Mac Pro looks like, there’ll be a configuration with Max chips that is the step up from a Studio Ultra and then there’s the bananas configuration with Ultra chips for the serious top end performance
but I suspect whatever the new Mac Pro looks like, there’ll be a configuration with Max chips that is the step up from a Studio Ultra and then there’s the bananas configuration with Ultra chips for the serious top end performance
Accidental Tech Podcast has a good discussion of this question: https://atp.fm/474
("ARM Mac Pro worst-case scenarios" chapter)
There were rumors of both a "half size Mac Pro" and a "G4 Cube"-like device. The Mac Studio clearly fulfills the "Cube" prophecy. Whether the Studio is ALSO the "half size Mac Pro" is not yet clear. The forthcoming Apple Silicon Mac Pro could be a half size Mac Pro if they reduced the height of the case, but kept the depth for compatibility with some number of MPX PCIe slots.
Personally I would be surprised if Apple went through all the trouble of engineering the MPX module interface, knowing Apple Silicon was coming, if they were only going to be a one-off for the 2019 model. Since M1 Macs do work with PCIe cards via Thunderbolt, I'd bet that a future Mac Pro retains some MPX / PCIe slots, for SSDs, audio cards, Afterburner type accelerators, etc. And probably a slotted RAM expansion option for 1.5TB+ capacities to match the current Mac Pro spec.
As far as the currently missing GPU support, maybe they're still working on M1 + AMD GPU drivers to be released in macOS 13 along with the new Mac Pro. Since they'll have to maintain GPU drivers as long as they continue to support any Intel CPUs, why not continue to support AMD GPUs on Apple Silicon too, until the day when Intel support is fully dropped and Apple GPU options have truly matched or surpassed all others.
("ARM Mac Pro worst-case scenarios" chapter)
There were rumors of both a "half size Mac Pro" and a "G4 Cube"-like device. The Mac Studio clearly fulfills the "Cube" prophecy. Whether the Studio is ALSO the "half size Mac Pro" is not yet clear. The forthcoming Apple Silicon Mac Pro could be a half size Mac Pro if they reduced the height of the case, but kept the depth for compatibility with some number of MPX PCIe slots.
Personally I would be surprised if Apple went through all the trouble of engineering the MPX module interface, knowing Apple Silicon was coming, if they were only going to be a one-off for the 2019 model. Since M1 Macs do work with PCIe cards via Thunderbolt, I'd bet that a future Mac Pro retains some MPX / PCIe slots, for SSDs, audio cards, Afterburner type accelerators, etc. And probably a slotted RAM expansion option for 1.5TB+ capacities to match the current Mac Pro spec.
As far as the currently missing GPU support, maybe they're still working on M1 + AMD GPU drivers to be released in macOS 13 along with the new Mac Pro. Since they'll have to maintain GPU drivers as long as they continue to support any Intel CPUs, why not continue to support AMD GPUs on Apple Silicon too, until the day when Intel support is fully dropped and Apple GPU options have truly matched or surpassed all others.
Interesting and informative post. Thanks.
This line here nails my curiosity.
"There were rumors of both a "half size Mac Pro" and a "G4 Cube"-like device. The Mac Studio clearly fulfills the "Cube" prophecy. Whether the Studio is ALSO the "half size Mac Pro" is not yet clear."
I ask because I have a Studio Ultra on order, and if there were strong rumours about a half size Apple Silicon Mac Pro, I would cancel said order. Even if they were just rumours.....
I can't see them introducing another machine. At WWDC they'll announce the Apple Silicon Mac Pro. It'll probably have several M1 Ultras in it. The base configuration will probably cost twice the cost of Studio Ultra.
Are you just hoping for a Mac Pro in a smaller case than the recent cheesegrater one?
Are you just hoping for a Mac Pro in a smaller case than the recent cheesegrater one?
I would expect a M1 Ultra-powered (20/64/64/1T) Mac Pro to start at the current $6k, M1 Extreme model (40/128/128/1T) may start at $10k...
( ...these could also be M2 Max-based SoCs, rather than M1 Max-based SoCs...? )
Four PCIe slots; "You got your Pro Tools HDX cards and a quad M.2 RAID card, now piss off kid..."
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The future direction of the Mac Pro really has me wondering. I just rewatched the WWDC 2019 keynote where they announced the Mac Pro, and the WWDC 2020 keynote where they announced Apple Silicon.
It just makes no sense for them to say “we’re bringing back PCIe slots to the Mac” in 2019 when every Apple employee on stage knew that Apple Silicon was coming one year later.
The Mac Pro announcement was clearly aimed at the needs of Hollywood-level industries with multimillion dollar budgets and infinite performance needs. They bragged about how you could put two Vega II Duo cards inside for 4 GPUs, or 6 Avid HDX audio interface cards. The Pro Display XDR was also compared directly against $43,000 professional reference monitors used in Hollywood. They bent over backwards to show how committed they were to keeping the business of the highest end entertainment industry customers.
If they didn’t want to continue down that expandability road knowing the Apple Silicon transition was coming a year later, they could have just released the Mac Studio instead, back in 2018 or 2019. Match the specs of the iMac Pro in a large Mac Mini case. Xeon CPU plus integrated Vega 64 GPU, up to 128 or 256GB of RAM, lots of Thunderbolt 3 ports for expansion, it would have been the natural heir to the 2013 Mac Pro. No new Mac had featured *any* real PCIe card slots or 12! RAM slots since 2012. It wouldn’t have surprised anyone back then if they released a Mac Studio type product and called it the 2019 Mac Pro. That would have given them a very smooth transition to today’s Apple Silicon with no expectations of multiple AMD GPUs on cards and gobs of RAM. But they didn’t do that, even though it was obvious thing.
What did surprise everyone is how hard they doubled down on the expandability story for the Mac Pro. They never once talked about “performance per watt”, rather they bragged about the “1.4 kilowatt” power supply. After they made such a bold statement in 2019 about how expandable, powerful, and expensive the Mac Pro was going to be in their product lineup, I really can’t see them changing directions again after the Apple Silicon announcement a year later.
Especially now after the release of the Mac Studio, they’ve already satisfied the computing needs of 99% of their “pro” customers. Mac users are complaining about them not offering more midrange M1 Pro computers in their lineup, more than complaining about a lack of powerful options on the high end. Plenty of people are happy with the M1 Max and don’t even think they need the M1 Ultra.
Who’s left to buy a new Mac Pro then? To even justify its existence, and to please the Hollywood-level customers they clearly stated they were targeting in 2019, it’s going to have to continue on the 2019 trajectory of eyeball-melting 3D rendering performance and insane configurability, power bills be damned. They continue to release new MPX GPUs even this month. They’ve got to release something that would make Pixar happy, the people at the extreme end of “technology meeting the liberal arts.”
I’d guess it’s more likely they would release an updated Intel Mac Pro with next-generation Xeon CPUs and retain all the extreme expansion abilities they promoted, rather than reduce the amount of PCIe, RAM, and GPU expansion options in order to migrate the Mac Pro if it would be limited by current Apple Silicon. The 2019 Mac Pro was all about giving Hollywood what it wanted, and that’s the customer they have to continue to please and delight with any new Mac Pro as well. If the new Mac Pro won’t fit those 6 Avid audio interface cards they promoted, I don’t think the current extreme high-end Mac Pro customer base they just courted would consider it an upgrade.
If we get the Jade 4C dual M1 Ultra in the next Mac Pro, that should at least be able to support those 6 Avid HDX cards (PCIe x4). M1 Ultra has 6 Thunderbolt controllers so a dual M1 Ultra should have 12? That should be able to at least support 6 internal PCIe 3.0 x4 slots and 6 external Thunderbolt ports.
Whether a dual M1 Ultra plus some other secret sauce could scale up to handle the four x16, three x8, one x4 PCIe slots, plus the 1.5TB of RAM of the current Mac Pro, I don’t know. Maybe the Apple Silicon Mac Pro is the “half size Mac Pro” we heard about, and they retain a full size upgraded Intel Xeon option as well to please the most demanding customers.
But they knew where they were heading in 2019 when they announced the expandable Mac Pro, and so I really can’t see any other option but fully matching and exceeding those abilities with the next Pro.
It just makes no sense for them to say “we’re bringing back PCIe slots to the Mac” in 2019 when every Apple employee on stage knew that Apple Silicon was coming one year later.
The Mac Pro announcement was clearly aimed at the needs of Hollywood-level industries with multimillion dollar budgets and infinite performance needs. They bragged about how you could put two Vega II Duo cards inside for 4 GPUs, or 6 Avid HDX audio interface cards. The Pro Display XDR was also compared directly against $43,000 professional reference monitors used in Hollywood. They bent over backwards to show how committed they were to keeping the business of the highest end entertainment industry customers.
If they didn’t want to continue down that expandability road knowing the Apple Silicon transition was coming a year later, they could have just released the Mac Studio instead, back in 2018 or 2019. Match the specs of the iMac Pro in a large Mac Mini case. Xeon CPU plus integrated Vega 64 GPU, up to 128 or 256GB of RAM, lots of Thunderbolt 3 ports for expansion, it would have been the natural heir to the 2013 Mac Pro. No new Mac had featured *any* real PCIe card slots or 12! RAM slots since 2012. It wouldn’t have surprised anyone back then if they released a Mac Studio type product and called it the 2019 Mac Pro. That would have given them a very smooth transition to today’s Apple Silicon with no expectations of multiple AMD GPUs on cards and gobs of RAM. But they didn’t do that, even though it was obvious thing.
What did surprise everyone is how hard they doubled down on the expandability story for the Mac Pro. They never once talked about “performance per watt”, rather they bragged about the “1.4 kilowatt” power supply. After they made such a bold statement in 2019 about how expandable, powerful, and expensive the Mac Pro was going to be in their product lineup, I really can’t see them changing directions again after the Apple Silicon announcement a year later.
Especially now after the release of the Mac Studio, they’ve already satisfied the computing needs of 99% of their “pro” customers. Mac users are complaining about them not offering more midrange M1 Pro computers in their lineup, more than complaining about a lack of powerful options on the high end. Plenty of people are happy with the M1 Max and don’t even think they need the M1 Ultra.
Who’s left to buy a new Mac Pro then? To even justify its existence, and to please the Hollywood-level customers they clearly stated they were targeting in 2019, it’s going to have to continue on the 2019 trajectory of eyeball-melting 3D rendering performance and insane configurability, power bills be damned. They continue to release new MPX GPUs even this month. They’ve got to release something that would make Pixar happy, the people at the extreme end of “technology meeting the liberal arts.”
I’d guess it’s more likely they would release an updated Intel Mac Pro with next-generation Xeon CPUs and retain all the extreme expansion abilities they promoted, rather than reduce the amount of PCIe, RAM, and GPU expansion options in order to migrate the Mac Pro if it would be limited by current Apple Silicon. The 2019 Mac Pro was all about giving Hollywood what it wanted, and that’s the customer they have to continue to please and delight with any new Mac Pro as well. If the new Mac Pro won’t fit those 6 Avid audio interface cards they promoted, I don’t think the current extreme high-end Mac Pro customer base they just courted would consider it an upgrade.
If we get the Jade 4C dual M1 Ultra in the next Mac Pro, that should at least be able to support those 6 Avid HDX cards (PCIe x4). M1 Ultra has 6 Thunderbolt controllers so a dual M1 Ultra should have 12? That should be able to at least support 6 internal PCIe 3.0 x4 slots and 6 external Thunderbolt ports.
Whether a dual M1 Ultra plus some other secret sauce could scale up to handle the four x16, three x8, one x4 PCIe slots, plus the 1.5TB of RAM of the current Mac Pro, I don’t know. Maybe the Apple Silicon Mac Pro is the “half size Mac Pro” we heard about, and they retain a full size upgraded Intel Xeon option as well to please the most demanding customers.
But they knew where they were heading in 2019 when they announced the expandable Mac Pro, and so I really can’t see any other option but fully matching and exceeding those abilities with the next Pro.
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