Mac Studio may never get updated, because new Mac Pro is coming

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  • Reply 21 of 66
    DAalsethDAalseth Posts: 2,783member
    It would be a surprise. There is precedent though. The iMac Pro was a stopgap to buy time for them to finish the current Mac Pro. Still, the Studio is the headless midrange unit that a lot of people have been clamouring for, for ages, and they put a lot of money into designing it. Seems odd that they would just let it languish. I’m still betting on WWDC and a dual announcement of an updated Studio, and AS Mac Pro.
    watto_cobrabaconstangradarthekatTRAGFileMakerFellerh2pargonaut
  • Reply 22 of 66
    thadec said:
    dennyc69 said:
    I don’t buy it, Hollywood types use Mac Pro, the  Mac Studio fills the gap for lower prices groups of people who still want pro power. This a click bait article? Don’t make stuff up 
    This is 15 year old stuff. "Hollywood types" switched to Linux ages ago. As dinosaurs are no longer roaming the earth, Mac Pro is most often used as a general purpose workstation that happens to run macOS. Such people have no use for a Mac Studio, which is engineered for audio, video and photo professionals and actually performs worse than similarly priced hardware for anything and everything else. If Apple is going to retain the general purpose workstation crowd, they are going to need to put out a competitive product for engineers, architects, simulators, medical etc. Or else all of those people are going to migrate to Linux workstations running AMD Threadripper and Xeon W. 
    Even Steve Job’s old company Pixar mainly relies on Linux machines although they also use some Macs and Windows machines.
    designr
  • Reply 23 of 66
    jdwjdw Posts: 1,324member
    The only way it "doesn't make sense" is if the new Mac Pro is priced similarly to the Mac Studio.  In other words, they would be to bring the Mac Pro back into the realm of a somewhat reasonable price.  That's not the case for the current Intel Mac Pro, which starts at a crazy $6,000, versus the Mac Studio, which starts at a more realistic $2,000.

    Sorry, but you aren't going to upsell a $2,000 Mac buyer to a $6,000 Mac.  And the argument saying, "the Mac Pro is for Pros" is nuts if indeed the rumors are true and the Mac Studio is left to die, only because Apple is coming out with a $6,000+ M2 Mac Pro.  Targeting only "Pros" while killing off the Studio?  How does that make sense?

    There's a night-and-day difference between $2,000 and $6,000.  As a result, the sales numbers of the Mac Studio are no doubt far higher than the current Mac Pro.
    watto_cobramacike
  • Reply 24 of 66
    rob53 said:
    So why release the Mac Studio in the first then? 
    To try and pacify Mac Pro users. If I remember correctly, the Mac Studio outperformed the current Intel Mac Pro for much less money. You could build a faster Mac Pro but by the time you did, you could have purchased 2-3 Studios. Apple engineers couldn't come through with a chip(s) that would justify the Mac Pro product line--and still haven't. Mac Studio introduced in March 2022 (thought it was older than this) and now it appears the Mac Pro might be released in Spring, which would put it a year after the Studio. From other reports, the Mac Pro will use the same, oversized box as the Intel Mac Pro, which I hope isn't the final Mac Pro product. Stack two Studios on top of each other and that should be enough room for a Mac Pro with 2-4x the power of the Studio. 

    Geekbench scores still put the Studio above the fastest Intel Mac Pro in single and multi-core benchmarks. Metal benchmark still gives the Ultra a score just under 100K with several faster AMD Radeon graphics cards, mainly used in the Mac Pro. 
    The problem is that the current Intel Mac Pro performs about at what an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X currently does and what an Intel Core i7-14700K (coming 4Q this year) soon will. And that doesn't even get into what current Ryzen 9 and Threadripper chips (and their Intel counterparts) do. Or what they will in 2024 when AMD hits TSMC 3nm and Intel hits what is equivalent to TSMC 5nm. 

    See, that is the thing. In 2020 you were comparing Apple Silicon to chips in $799 and $999 devices that had been released a year or two prior. So folks were impressed. Nobody is going to be impressed that a $6000 machine released in 2023 has a CPU that beats the Xeon W-3235 from 2Q 2019. By comparison, 2019 is when the A13 for the iPhone 11 came out. You all know what iPhone 15 and its A17 is going to do to the iPhone 11. To put it another way, beating the Xeon W-3235 is not going to prove that Apple is capable of making a competitive workstation with their own chips. You will be able to get Xeon W-3235 (and similar AMD Threadripper 3960X) workstations on eBay from people who will want to get the AMD Threadripper 7000 in a few months. I am going to restate this: nobody cares that there are not a few AMD and Intel chips that outperform the M2 (including the Pro and Max) because the Mac Mini starts at $599. That is why DigitalTrends is able to call the Mac Mini "the best mini-computer ever" in an article that acknowledges that there are faster machines available https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-mac-mini-review/
     (and only gives as an example an Intel-based mini PC, knowing full well that the 6nm AMD Ryzen R9 6900HX mini PCs crushes the 10nm Intel Core i9-12900K in performance, graphics and power per watt). But for a machine that will cost 10 times as much as the Mac Mini, the fact that there are a number of faster options available that cost way less won't be nearly as easy to brush aside.

    It is going to be interesting to see how Apple deals with this issue. Maybe they will be able to get away with a first gen Mac Pro that isn't competitive - and yes they do need to get it out the door this year in order to finally declare the transition from Intel "done" as they are already behind schedule and, as mentioned earlier, AMD and especially Intel workstation (and upper echelon desktop) chips are going to make huge leaps in performance between now and 2025 - but 2nd gen and going forward is going to have to be. And as I said in the comment directly preceding this one, no, the Mac Pro isn't primarily for Hollywood people who don't care about having the very best performance. Hollywood shifted to Linux server farms for rendering, 3D animation etc. ages ago. Anything that Hollywood would do on a Mac Pro today would make more sense to shift to the cloud. Instead, Mac Pros are used mainly by the workstation crowd who prefers macOS to Linux and Windows workstations. But if the Apple Silicon Mac Pros aren't competitive, then those folks are going to be forced to ditch their preferences, and the only ones left will be those who simply can't migrate their workloads from macOS to Linux or Windows (or the cloud).  
    radarthekatmuthuk_vanalingamh2pmacike
  • Reply 25 of 66
    mattinozmattinoz Posts: 2,299member
    If Apple add AMD GPU support to the MacPro (or other accelerators as options) then it could make the MacStudio a very appealing machine to indeed not have an ultra option but use the additional thermals of that model to pair the M2 Max with a Radeon closely spaced to share a combined heat sink.

    Yer, Yer, i get lots of people are convinced Apple aren't going to use 3rd party GPU's again, but that ignores Apple have said Apple Silicon must offer a better product to the customer so clearly they aren't closing any doors. MacPro and MacStudio would be the times to me that doors needs to open. 

    Edit to add:
    Apple could it seems add a lower end Mac Desktop as well. 
    AppleTV in Aluminium or more blade like Mx model and make the MacMini Mx Pro exclusive. 
    edited February 2023 h2p
  • Reply 26 of 66
    It's inane to even suggest that Mac Studio v1.0 is the end of this product line. A company like Apple has a hardware roadmap laid out YEARS in advance. Do you think that after launching the Mac Studio a year ago they were somehow "caught by surprise" that a new M2 Mac Mini and new Mac Pro were launching this year?! Do you figure Tim is now reaming someone out for not telling him that the M2 Mini and new Mac Pro were coming? The costs of creating and launching a new computer like the Mac Studio are MASSIVE and would never be undertaken without understanding how it fits into the overall product line, not just at the time of launch but for years to come, based on the hardware roadmap. 

    Before you jump in with HomePod being EOL'd after v1.0 (at least temporarily), that's a different story. The HomePod was Apple's first venture into a whole new category of products: smart speakers. It didn't have to fit in with an existing roadmap of similar products. And they got it wrong with the price/performance ratio compared to competing speakers, so it made sense to pull it and re-strategize about an Apple smart speaker. 
    foregoneconclusionradarthekatFileMakerFellerh2pargonautmacike
  • Reply 27 of 66
    danoxdanox Posts: 2,804member
    Old man yelling at cloud here.
    Can I just get a 27-inch iMac?
    Any Apple Silicon with a screen larger than 27 inches don’t care if it’s an M2, M3 SOC/CPU in a Studio Display or Pro Display XDR enclosure with a Mac inside it price is no object. Apple has already payed for it.
  • Reply 28 of 66
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    Mac Studio seems like a product without a purpose now that the M2 Pro mini is out.  Maybe it was always a stopgap device because the MacPro with ASI was so far behind schedule. 
    I hope that's exactly how it's perceived, with a price-drop because of it. I've been wanting a Mac Studio for my photography work, but waiting for the right time to buy. There's no urgency, just a want. 
  • Reply 29 of 66
    I posited on this forums right after the studio came out last year that the Mac Studio was a stopgap product - taking the place of the old iMac Pro in thst it creates an outlet for Apple to deliver high horsepower without the high expectations of a Mac Pro or iMac Pro. 

    Since then, I’ve seen that idea all over Mac websites. 

    I still hold that view. 

    However, I’d be surprised if Apple doesn’t upgrade to an M2 based Stidio lineup before retiring it. 

    As the M2 Max is theoretically only a decent spec bump form m1, the real world testing shows it whooping patooty. But the M2 is still a 5nm SOC without ray tracing. Switching to 3nm and/or adding ray tracing to the M2 at this point would cause market confusion. And yet, a simple M2 Ultra (with fixed bottleneck) would be too little for the Mac Pro given that 

    a) certain Intel CPUs will be faster 
    b) certain Nvidia GPUs will be WAY faster
    and
    c) it will be seen as an artificial upgrade to the studio m1 ultra due to everyone knowing why the m1 ultra was handicapped. So a “twice as fast” chart doesn’t mean anything when last years model was cut off at the knees. 

    So I expect that the Studio will be updated once before going extinct. It will allow the M2 Ultra to shine while buying Apple time to:

    a) offer the M3 ray tracing ultra and extreme chips at 3nm and destroy everyone else 
    b) reveal a desktop specific x series chip that is freed from mobile constraints
    or
    c) offers M3 chips with an “infinity fabric” that allows the addition of multiple slotted SOCs after sale. This will either be done by the consumer or handled via the Apple Store with a free service for Mac Pro customers. 

    The Studio and it’s absurd pricing can then quietly go away while all the shine is on this incredible new machine that destroys it anyway - along with its own absurd pricing. 
    williamlondon
  • Reply 30 of 66
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    charlesn said:
    It's inane to even suggest that Mac Studio v1.0 is the end of this product line. A company like Apple has a hardware roadmap laid out YEARS in advance. Do you think that after launching the Mac Studio a year ago they were somehow "caught by surprise" that a new M2 Mac Mini and new Mac Pro were launching this year?! Do you figure Tim is now reaming someone out for not telling him that the M2 Mini and new Mac Pro were coming? The costs of creating and launching a new computer like the Mac Studio are MASSIVE and would never be undertaken without understanding how it fits into the overall product line, not just at the time of launch but for years to come, based on the hardware roadmap. 
    Apple's track record with their pro desktop lineup is one of constant change and misunderstanding the market. They already have 2 one-off models in the 2013 Mac Pro and the 2017 iMac Pro. So, the idea that the Mac Studio is a one-off isn't that far fetched. They have some kind of perpetual weakness in not understanding the pro desktop market since 2012 (1). The Pro Workflow team is even something they still trot out as a positive, when it really is not.

    If the "Extreme" SoC comes out, it all makes sense:

    $600 Mac mini with the base M version
    $1300 Mac mini with Pro version
    $2000 Mac Studio with Max version
    $4000 Mac Studio with Ultra version
    $6000 Mac Pro with Extreme version

    Or, something like this. It's a continuous line of increasing performance and features for increasing dollars.

    Gurman thinks the Extreme SoC has been cancelled, leaving Apple with only the Ultra for the Mac Pro. If so, the Mac Pro will be moving down in price tier since its performance can't justify the current Mac Pro pricing. This threatens the Mac Studio because product lines with overlapping prices is a big no-no. The only way out is perhaps this:

    $600 M2 Mac mini
    $1300 M2 Pro Mac mini
    $2000 M2 Max Mac Studio
    $4000 M2 Ultra Mac Pro

    If the Extreme SoC can't be shipped, Apple should really support AMD and Nvidia GPUs, whichever one allows them to write Metal drivers.

    (1) It's more that the performance of laptops have taken over Apple's primary Mac Pro market of developers and content creators. With workstations moving further into HPC where macOS doesn't have the software to compete. So, Apple is wondering in the woods. They need to throw some money towards getting high performance computing workflows onto macOS. There is a lot of open source software they to could contribute to working well on macOS.
    tenthousandthingsFileMakerFeller
  • Reply 31 of 66
    With "it is reckoned" in the first paragraph, one can surmise that this particular piece was written by someone in the UK.

    Now, I have nothing against the UK ... I've lived in England.  However, I also know that Brits are often desperate for a bit of free entertainment.

    And that's what this piece is ... free entertainment.  Frankly, I'd rather envision an updated 27" iMac than worry about whether the Studio has had its day.
    baconstangmacike
  • Reply 32 of 66
    DAalseth said:
    It would be a surprise. There is precedent though. The iMac Pro was a stopgap to buy time for them to finish the current Mac Pro. Still, the Studio is the headless midrange unit that a lot of people have been clamouring for, for ages, and they put a lot of money into designing it. Seems odd that they would just let it languish. I’m still betting on WWDC and a dual announcement of an updated Studio, and AS Mac Pro.
    The studio didn’t cost a lot of money to design at all. It was a short development that took the Mac mini cad files and added height and then some MacBook Pro style speaker holes added to extruded the bottom ring for cooling. It literally would take an hour to m  as me this from a Mac mini starting point. Usb snd SD card cutouts in the front are trivial matters. The cooling unit was where all the development went and even that wasn’t some major project. 

    The Studio was an easy answer for a Mac Pro delay. It is likely a stopgap product as well as free research for Apple to see how people are really using it in order to apply features or remove them in future macs. 

    The mac mini is now the entry AND midrange headless Mac. the Mac Pro will be the e high end Mac. There wil soon be no need for a Mac Studio. 

    Apple now has a lock on mobile superiority and entry level computing. The Mac Pro has the opportunity to own high end computing. Once the Mac Studio goes away, the big dog iMac can make a return snd reinvent the quintessential Mac. 
    williamlondon
  • Reply 33 of 66
    thadec said:
    dennyc69 said:
    I don’t buy it, Hollywood types use Mac Pro, the  Mac Studio fills the gap for lower prices groups of people who still want pro power. This a click bait article? Don’t make stuff up 
    This is 15 year old stuff. "Hollywood types" switched to Linux ages ago. As dinosaurs are no longer roaming the earth, Mac Pro is most often used as a general purpose workstation that happens to run macOS. Such people have no use for a Mac Studio, which is engineered for audio, video and photo professionals and actually performs worse than similarly priced hardware for anything and everything else.
    Hollywood is not a monolith, there's a lot of people using basically everything.  I know a production company that ran on Macs with FCP7 up until it stopped making sense to do so, and then switched to Windows and Premiere, and now may switch back to Mac again at least partially, they're presently testing the waters.  Windows is used by many, Linux is used as well in certain places, most render farms are probably Linux, but not everyone is on a render farm.  One place I know uses a custom fork of Linux, but not many companies do that kind of thing.  
    A lot of Hollywood is freelancers, so a lot of editors on Adobe Premiere or Avid use Windows or Mac, a lot of people are switching to Resolve which pairs well with a Mac but also does runs on Windows and has a Linux version.  VFX artists are the same story.  Sound people same story.  What makes Macs appealing to Hollywood types is reliability, ease of use, and ProRes compatibility.  There's also a consistency to them.  Power / capability also matters a lot, I wasn't able to really do my job on a laptop before, but now I can thanks to M1 Max.  So Hollywood types not using Macs is simply not true, I use one every day and there's a lot of people like me.  And they also bought the 2017 iMac Pro in droves, so it's nothing new.

    Everyone in Hollywood who knows about computers is aware of and talking about Apple's chips and what they're up to, and a lot of us are buying them.

    citpeksradarthekatwilliamlondonFileMakerFellerh2p
  • Reply 34 of 66
    citpekscitpeks Posts: 246member
    elliots11 said:
    Hollywood is not a monolith, there's a lot of people using basically everything.  I know a production company that ran on Macs with FCP7 up until it stopped making sense to do so, and then switched to Windows and Premiere, and now may switch back to Mac again at least partially, they're presently testing the waters.  Windows is used by many, Linux is used as well in certain places, most render farms are probably Linux, but not everyone is on a render farm.  One place I know uses a custom fork of Linux, but not many companies do that kind of thing.  
    A lot of Hollywood is freelancers, so a lot of editors on Adobe Premiere or Avid use Windows or Mac, a lot of people are switching to Resolve which pairs well with a Mac but also does runs on Windows and has a Linux version.  VFX artists are the same story.  Sound people same story.  What makes Macs appealing to Hollywood types is reliability, ease of use, and ProRes compatibility.  There's also a consistency to them.  Power / capability also matters a lot, I wasn't able to really do my job on a laptop before, but now I can thanks to M1 Max.  So Hollywood types not using Macs is simply not true, I use one every day and there's a lot of people like me.  And they also bought the 2017 iMac Pro in droves, so it's nothing new.

    Everyone in Hollywood who knows about computers is aware of and talking about Apple's chips and what they're up to, and a lot of us are buying them.

    I've heard of places that were using the old Cheese Graters until not that long ago, and supplanted them with Trash Cans and iMacs Pro.

    And then there are the innumerable users running Final Draft or screenwriting software on their Mac/Windows laptops.  They surely think of themselves, and count as "Hollywood types," who don't need the heavy machinery, but are a vital part of the biz and not running Linux.
    radarthekatdanoxh2p
  • Reply 35 of 66
    chasmchasm Posts: 3,274member
    Interesting speculation all round up above me here (including Gurman’s speculation), so here’s my own:

    I think Apple is positioning the Mac Studio as the creative’s Mac solution, and will position the next Mac Pro as the technician’s machine. Science, Medicine, simulations, that sort of stuff.

    There’s nothing stopping them from reconfiguring an M2 variant to have fewer of this and more of that. Less graphics whizziness and ProRes decode/encode, but many more cores instead, that sort of thing. Not for visual artists, not for music making, not for video encoding. It’s the M2 Extreme HardCore (or whatever superlative hasn’t been used yet), similar to an Ultra but all number-crunching all the time.

    Hey, it could happen!
    baconstangtenthousandthingsFileMakerFeller
  • Reply 36 of 66
    This sounds like pure speculation on Gurman's part — i.e., no based on any sourced information — particularly based primarily on the rationale that, "it wouldn't make sense."

    Seems like an enormous, blundering waste of resources for Apple to have developed the Mac Studio, only to abandon it after a single generation. I think it makes more sense that Apple does something unexpected with both the Mac Pro and Mac Studio.
    Of course, it’s Gurman. He was also running his mouth when they announced the iPads in October, saying that there’s no reason for the iPad Air to exist.  Which is funny, because if I remember correctly, when the Air was announced, he said something along the lines that the 11 in iPad Pro shouldn’t exist. He’s good when he’s actually reporting legit rumors, but when he’s talking about what he thinks is going to happen, he can be really off.
    tenthousandthingsh2p
  • Reply 37 of 66
    DuhSesame said:
    Better wait and see what the Mac Pro looks like.  Also, I don’t expect a 4-die version, and the M2-series is pretty lame in performance.

    I’m betting all for the M3, though I was concerned that Apple might give up the performance on Macs.  I hope not.
    Lame in performance? Are you basing it on the clickbait hot takes that Max Tech have been spouting?
  • Reply 38 of 66
    keithwkeithw Posts: 140member
    I think Gurman is dead wrong. It makes no sense.  Why would Apple spend the money to create the Studio only to kill it in a single product iteration?  If they haven't sold enough Studios over the last year, that's one thing.  Killing a product that would sell 10 times (or more) the number of units would be a stupid move on Apple's part. Also, the Studio is currently in "suspended animation."  Who is going to buy an M1 Max or M1 Ultra-based machine (especially the former) when the M2 Pro and M2 Max are out on different platforms and perform very well?  Certainly not me.  Time will certainly tell.  In the mean time, I'll keep using my "ancient" iMac Pro with a very fast AMD 6900XT eGPU (that still works in MacOS 13.2.)

    edited February 2023
  • Reply 39 of 66
    Old man yelling at cloud here.
    Can I just get a 27-inch iMac?
    Old men, young men, women of all ages yelling out this question every day for the past couple of years. 

    Just launch the quintessential Mac already. 
    king editor the gratedanoxwilliamlondonVermelho
  • Reply 40 of 66
    rob53 said:
    So why release the Mac Studio in the first then? 
    To try and pacify Mac Pro users. If I remember correctly, the Mac Studio outperformed the current Intel Mac Pro for much less money. You could build a faster Mac Pro but by the time you did, you could have purchased 2-3 Studios. Apple engineers couldn't come through with a chip(s) that would justify the Mac Pro product line--and still haven't. Mac Studio introduced in March 2022 (thought it was older than this) and now it appears the Mac Pro might be released in Spring, which would put it a year after the Studio. From other reports, the Mac Pro will use the same, oversized box as the Intel Mac Pro, which I hope isn't the final Mac Pro product. Stack two Studios on top of each other and that should be enough room for a Mac Pro with 2-4x the power of the Studio. 

    Geekbench scores still put the Studio above the fastest Intel Mac Pro in single and multi-core benchmarks. Metal benchmark still gives the Ultra a score just under 100K with several faster AMD Radeon graphics cards, mainly used in the Mac Pro. 
    Comparing new Apple Silicon to Any Intel Mac Pro is a pretty disingenuous thing to do. Those are 5 year old processors. 
    williamlondonmuthuk_vanalingammacike
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