Detnator

opinion said:

I was hoping for a display with a reasonable price to go with a Mac mini or let’s say a Macbook air. This was not it. I just don’t get how Apple thinks sometimes.

Yeah. They've always been "premium".  Except in the 90's when they nearly went bankrupt. It was a big thing for Steve that they compete on performance etc. not price.  And obviously it's worked, better than anyone else's plan, more or less.

There's always cheaper stuff than Apple. You get what you pay for, but not everyone needs the "premium" tiers they cater to. If you don't need 5K resolution, 600 nits, the fancy A/V, the fancy coating, etc. then you're right, this isn't it for you.  But the market is full of great alternatives below that, right?

Mind you, they often enter (or re-enter) a new (to them) market near the higher end, grab the early adopters willing to pay more, and then start moving down (in price and features).  The iPod before the iPod mini, nano, etc.  The HomePod. The watch.  And now their first display in almost 10 years was the $5,000 XDR with more features than most people need or want.  This Studio display is a fraction of that catering to a much wider market.  Chances are cheaper ones are coming.

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

What's missing?
No upgradeability. At all. None. Zero. Nada.
No way to upgrade the RAM, SSD or any other components.
What you get is what you get. Forever. You are welcome.
Not even a M.2 slot for when the built in SSD seems very slow and small two years from now.

Those GPU speed/power charts were missing the name of the discrete GPUs they used for comparison. The charts shown when the M1 Pro and Max when the MacBook Pro was released ended up being very misleading. How exactly does the M1 Ultra stack up to a RTX 3090 when ray tracing in Blender? Who knows? Guess we have to wait for a real review to find out. We do know that that the M1 Max hash rate is around 10.7 MH/s while a 3090 gets 121 MH/s so even if the M1 Ultra is twice as fast, it is still 1/6th the speed of the 3090.

I agree re: RAM/GPU, but please drop the SSD. They are so easy/cheap to expand with fast storage later on, it just isn't inside the case.

As for the GPU, yes, we'll have to wait and see. But, keep in mind they should be fast on-paper. A lot of the issue is just software compatibility. Your hash-rate is a great example. While the Max isn't going to match a 3090 due to memory bandwidth, it would probably be close if the mining software were Metal. People currently getting that 10 MH/s are essentially doing an emulation hack. That's actually pretty good considering.

If I had to take a guess, I think with a Metal miner, we'd see like 70-80% of like a 3080 for the Pro and then given more memory bandwidth, faster than a 3090 on the Ultra (would need to do more math than I care for right now to find out by how much ).

I am not sure I understand your point about the SSD being external. A M.2 is a SSD. Externally you can get about 1GB/sec on a USB C 3.2 and about 2GB/sec on thunderbolt (although I have yet to see one get that much when tested). A M.2, on the other hand, can currently get as much as 7 GB/sec. The one I have in my PS5 is 6 GB/sec and costs about $220 for 2TB currently. SSDs have been getting a lot faster recently at reasonable prices. Even if the M.2 speed is limited, you can expect to see a lot larger ones in a couple of years (unless China invades Taiwan in which case all of this is moot anyway).

A M1 Max gets a compute score of 61256 on GeekBench 5 for OpenCL. A RTX 3090 gets 205005. Apple's performance graphs are a complete fantasy.

I don't get it. Why are you going on about OpenCL?  See here:  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202823.  OpenCL and OpenGL are not supported on any Apple Silicon Macs.  Modern Macs use Metal: (bottom right https://developer.apple.com/opencl/  ;"If you are using OpenCL for computational tasks in your Mac app, we recommend that you transition to Metal".

Meanwhile, there hasn't been any Metal (or even Mac) support for NVIDIA cards since around the GTX1080 -- years ago.

So there's no sensible "benchmark" comparison tests with NVIDIA cards. Apple's tests are based on Metal, and where they're comparing to NVIDIA cards they're doing real world tests with actual apps, on PCs with the 12th gen Intel chips and NVIDIA cards.  I expect it's probably similar to the Photoshop and other shootouts Steve used to do in keynotes.  What you're saying makes about as much sense as people who used to try to say a Pentium chip is faster than a G5 because it has a higher clock speed.

Your failure to understand their testing procedures doesn't make the results a fantasy.  If you want to mine cryptocurrency, or do anything else with NVIDIA cards, you don't want a Mac.

Regarding SSDs.  Unlike a small vocal few here, the vast majority of Mac users DO NOT CARE about adding hardware inside their Macs.  I'm sure you know there's a limited supply of PCI lanes that can be managed by any chip.  You want to take some of the available lanes and dedicate them to an internal SSD slot that almost no one will use, crippling the potential Thunderbolt and other peripheral access available to the rest of us. If there was nothing to lose, you'd have a case, but Apple is not going to take away functionality from the vast majority of their users to appease the tinkerers like you, when there are perfectly reasonable other solutions available to you.

1. Just buy what you need up front.  
2. Or add to it externally later.
3. Or wait for the Mac Pro.

I stripe three M.2 NVMe drives over the three Thunderbolt 4 ports in my M1 Max MBP, and I get about 5500MBps.  You get up to SIX TB4 ports in the Studio.  Stripe your beloved M.2 drives over four of them and you'll get your 7000.

Imback said:

docno42 said:

Finally!  Apple produces a reasonable display.

It is just 60Hz, reasonable it is not.

-ib

Hreb said:

It does seem like a lot of money for a 60Hz display with no gsync/freesync (and so much for ProMotion).  It may be a great display but if it can't take the place of a PC gaming monitor it won't end up on my desk.

Are you people serious? What 5K/3K or more display exists on the market from anyone that is more than 60Hz?  At any price?  I'm pretty sure it's not physically possible through TB3/4 (or any other connection today)?

This is not even remotely trying to be a gaming monitor.  The needs, specs, requirements, priorities, are all different. This is prioritizing resolution, brightness, some degree of color accuracy, etc. -- for work.  It's not going to compromise any of that for gaming.

Here's an idea.  Let's complain that the Ford F150 doesn't typically win sports car races, or have a convertible roof.  Or float.  And at that price?  Good grief. What were they thinking? Ford is doomed.

auxio said:

fastasleep said:

auxio said:

forgot username said:

Needed: way to use an old 27-inch iMac as a display for the Mac Studio. 

What model is it?  You might be able to use target display mode.

Not with an Apple Silicon Mac. 

Thanks for the info.  I guess Apple had to forgo some features to get the ASi transition going, and TDM didn't make the chopping block.  Not many people really knew about it outside of us power users.

Not sure if someone else said this.  

As far as I'm aware they stopped Target Display Mode when they doubled the resolutions to retina displays in 2015.  I am fairly certain that no 4K or 5K iMac has ever been able to be used as a display for another Mac via TDM. (D= Display, not Disk).

Because of this, the other comment confused me for a moment: 

• "The other Mac that you're connecting it to must have been introduced in 2019 or earlier and have macOS Catalina or earlier installed."

I now realize the "other" Mac means the Mac that's not being used as a display -- ie the Mac you want to add an iMac as a display to.  So, Mac mini, for example. Interestingly, it specifically says 2019 or earlier, which doesn't necessarily tie it to Apple Silicon...?  Nor to the T2 chip (since that first showed up in 2017's iMac Pro I believe.

The link again.  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204592

So... needless to say TDM not an option here.

Other ideas... So this is actually something I've been wondering about.  This probably won't work for you since it sounds like you're looking to use your old iMac as the only display for the Mac Studio. That seems a bit of a waste (of the Mac Studio).  Have you seen how much more awesome the retina displays are?

Still just something to consider if you were to use the iMac as a SECOND display for the Mac Studio:  

With the new Universal Control feature (coming any day now in macOS 12.3), you might be ok with the iMac as another Mac, beside your PRIMARY display.  For the most part you could use them as if they're one machine, but actually distribute the load a little.

For me for example, I'm a developer as much as other things.  I currently use my MBP as a second screen beside my LG 5K connected to it as main screen. I'll usually have my IDE full screen on the main 5K display, and then other subsidiary things like web browser looking up documentation, Messages, Email, etc. on the MBP display beside it.  

But I've been thinking I really want a bigger second screen, but don't like any of the options (at least until this ASD came along).  But even then I don't know if I want a full size 27" display when it's only secondary, but I still want it bigger than 16".  The 24" iMac might be perfect...  

But if I can control the other Mac from the primary Mac's keyboard and Mouse just by moving it over (as Universal Control promises), there's really no reason all those other things I do have to be running on the primary Mac, when they could be on a second Mac, beside the screen for the main Mac.

In fact, there's something to be said for offloading those other things (especially web browsing that likes to chew CPU sometimes) to another CPU (as well as another display) and have my main Mac do nothing but that primary work at hand (code, building, etc.).  But I can still control the second Mac from the primary Mac's keyboard and mouse as a fairly seamless experience.  The only thing I really can't do is drag windows between them.  But with everything synced up over iCloud and with the Coherence and Handoff features, I could start an email on the secondary Mac, and continue it on the primary Mac if I want to.

There's a lot to be said for a configuration like this.  I have a fully loaded M1 Max MBP.  I put my order in for the ASD as soon as the store came online after the event (to replace the LG 5K which I hate and will sell). Then run the MBP in clamshell mode, and have a 24" iMac on the right as the secondary screen instead of the MBP.

Just waiting for Universal Control to arrive to try it out before I go all in on this.  Not sure if anything like that might be an option for your old iMac, but thought I'd share in case it's of any use.

lkrupp said:

jamoses66 said:

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

What's missing?
No upgradeability. At all. None. Zero. Nada.
No way to upgrade the RAM, SSD or any other components.
What you get is what you get. Forever. You are welcome.
Not even a M.2 slot for when the built in SSD seems very slow and small two years from now.

Those GPU speed/power charts were missing the name of the discrete GPUs they used for comparison. The charts shown when the M1 Pro and Max when the MacBook Pro was released ended up being very misleading. How exactly does the M1 Ultra stack up to a RTX 3090 when ray tracing in Blender? Who knows? Guess we have to wait for a real review to find out. We do know that that the M1 Max hash rate is around 10.7 MH/s while a 3090 gets 121 MH/s so even if the M1 Ultra is twice as fast, it is still 1/6th the speed of the 3090.

Exactly, instead of an all-in-one package with a 27" iMac, they release this overpriced monitor and a cpu with no upgradeability in a box. Cool. Cool. 

You and that other guy haven’t been paying attention for the last two years have you. Get a clue.

More like the last 6+ years.