This is an interesting article in The Verge about how the Mac Studio fulfills a decades-old wish:
https://www.theverge.com/22974998/apple-xmac-myth-midrange-mid-tower-mac-studio
Fun article!
I think the article just slightly misses the mark in over-weighing those xMac proponents that wanted slots. There's quite a significant percentage of the xMac crowd didn't care as much about the slots, as they just wanted a fast "consumer" CPU and fast "gaming" GPU and BYO monitor, without paying the exorbitant Mac Pro prices for Xeon CPUs, "workstation" GPUs, and ECC RAM.
With the mini, we've been stuck with intel graphics, which was unusable for heavy 3D design apps and video work. The iMac had a built-in screen, and aside from wastefulness, a glassy glossy screen was not what a lot of users wanted, and even worse if you wanted matching dual display setup.
I paid $3,300 for my 2013 MP 6,1 with a 2.7GHz Xeon quad core, 2 x D300 FirePro GPUs, 12GB RAM. What I really wanted, and would have been faster for my workflow, was that same cylinder with an i7 & GeForce/Radeon GPU, for $2,000. For me, the Studio fits the bill perfectly!
I thought Jason Snell wrote a very good article. I think the Mac Studio addresses a real hole in Apple’s lineup that has existed for years. I think the only major hole that remains is something to either sit between the Mac mini and Mac Studio (perhaps an M? Pro mini) or a 27” iMac with M? Pro.
I read the article as well and I disagree with the writer.
I remember the rumors and wishes surrounding the xMac. And the Mac Studio is definitely not the xMac.
While there were many different concepts on what the xMac should have been, it is generally thought to be an affordable, powerful, and expandable Mac. For one to understand what the expectation for an xMac was, context has to be taken into consideration.
The term xMac was probably coined somewhere during the early 2000s, and Ars Technica suggests it was in November 2001 (
https://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/10/1676/).
At the time, desktop Macs were the iMac G3 (sold for $799 and could reach up to $1499), and the Power Macintosh G4 (sold for $1699 and could reach up to $3499). The iMac G3 was a beautiful all-in-one that appealed to many customers, but it lacked the power of the Power Macintosh.
Laptops were far from being as popular as today. Laptops only exceeded desktops in sales by the mid-2000s. PC desktops were generally towers and it was far more common for users to build them with custom components (something that is still popular in gaming PCs in current days). Many users would shop for the components that offered the best price/performance ratio and would build a very powerful PC for a reasonable price.
I am not sure how the iMac performed back in the day, but this CNN article claims that the Pentium II was cheaper and faster than the G3 in 1998 (
http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9811/09/macvp2.idg/). In 2001, the Pentium III and the recently-launched Pentium 4 were certainly even faster.
Mac users could buy the Power Macintosh if they wanted a more powerful machine, but that would cost them a lot of money. And there was frustration around the fact that Mac users could not just build or improve a Macintosh for the cheap.
When Apple transitioned to Intel in 2006, the problem continued. The iMac and the Mac mini both used laptop-class processors due to thermal restrictions, and the Mac Pro used Xeon processors. The Mac mini was affordable at $599, but it was also weak, basically a screen-less laptop. And the iMac also carried low-voltage processors but sold for a higher price due to being all-in-ones. Mac Pros were powerful but sold for $2199 and up.
No Mac used regular desktop Intel processors, which offered the best price/performance ratio. And many users wanted a desktop-class Mac with a powerful regular Intel desktop processor and a video card to match, which they could manually upgrade, for a price similar to (or just slightly more expensive than) that of a PC.
That would be the xMac. The cost/benefit Mac. The very fast computer that runs macOS (or OS X at the time) and that is cheap and affordable like a PC. As Apple did not offer the xMac, many users built custom Hackintoshes to fill this gap.
The Mac mini and the iMac evolved a lot since then. They started to use desktop-class Intel processors, which made them a better cost/benefit proposition. In addition, the screen of later iMacs tended to be gorgeous and better than most cheap displays available. All of this reduced the claims for an xMac. The 27-inch iMac could fit that spot for some users. Or a Mac mini, perhaps powered with an external GPU. But it was not the xMac.
And the Mac Studio is not either. The Mac Studio is more affordable than a Mac Pro, but only because a Mac Pro became so expensive over the years. The Mac Pro released in 2001 sold for $2199 and up, while the Mac Studio sells for $1999 and up.
Of course, there is inflation. But the Mac mini sold for $599 back in 2001 and it sells for $699 now. The iMac sold for $999 back in 2001 and it sells for $1299. The Mac Pro went from $2199 to $5999, which is a far different thing. Regardless of whether inflation would mean that the Mac mini/iMac became cheaper or the Mac Pro got more expensive over the years, the fact is that this price difference generated a gap in pricing, which did not exist back in 2001, and which was filled by the Mac Studio.
Well, the Mac Studio does not fill the requirements to be the xMac. First, the lower-end Mac Studio is affordable considering its powerful processor, but not really so. A power user wishing for an xMac would be truly happy with a 512 GB SSD. And increasing storage to 1 TB would cost an additional $200, which is very expensive. Building a PC would result in a less powerful processor, but it could have a better video card, more memory, and more storage, for a much cheaper price. Apple will not let users insert more memory or more storage in the Mac Studio.
I am not saying that the Mac Studio is good or bad. It is just not the xMac.
