Apple Announces M1 Ultra CPU, Mac Studio and Studio Display

[tedyun]

I think this is a great value for reasons mentioned above. After my prolonged fight with latest Monterey install I am thinking that a base Studio could be a good video production machine (I already have M1, wife is using that for office work). I will wait for discounts by end of the year.

I'm holding out for the M5 Max Ultra Ultimate Pro, hexa CPU with 256 cores.

And it will be endothermic, and in the shape of a beer koozie, so you can fit your drink in it and keep it cool.

 

[c-o-pr]

M1 Max Mac Studio teardown with better info regarding the SSD...

Judging by the differences in the cooling system between M1 Max and M1 Ultra, I think the M1 Ultra runs A LOT hotter.

This presentation was worthwhile, because dog and pony shows are inherently interesting right now, but it's not insightful (I have a peeve about dialog editing that compresses the inter-sentence pauses to the same length as the inter-word pauses because it makes the presentation stilted. If you rush this much to say something, you admit what your're saying is disposable.)

My points:

• There's no meaning to the repairability / upgrade-ability of this device. I regard it as a brick that gets whatever config chosen at checkout. Everything else hangs off thunderbolt.
• USB-A ports belong on the front, but no big deal.
• Predict the storage upgrade roadblock will be overcome.
• Apple shows OCD levels of care for presentation of internals of something never meant to be opened, but maybe all that plastic coating helps with liquid trauma? Idk I don't think it's wrong, I just wonder how they talk about it inside the company.
• Apple has taken pains to ensure it's quiet, which is good
• The dust concern actually seems legit; this thing might be a trap for some environments. Time will tell. I have seen many gunky PCs.
• SpaceG is the proper color for this device, not silver.
• I find it not attractive, whereas I think the Mini is pretty cool. Odd subjective moment.
• If it just runs for 10 years with no fuss, then genius, but I have the feeling we're at another precipice of big change, and this is a stop-gap.
• The display is a total mystery to me

I very much appreciate the product, but do not covet it.

 

[c-o-pr]

I think this is a great value for reasons mentioned above. After my prolonged fight with latest Monterey install I am thinking that a base Studio could be a good video production machine (I already have M1, wife is using that for office work). I will wait for discounts by end of the year.

I follow your point re video: this machine is designed for the social media set.

Apple must be able to count on 3rd parties to tap into the power of the HW for it to be a great appliance. Too bad about FCPX back in the day, but they actually improved the SW based on market / user studies. It just so happened they also alienated Hollywood, where content production cycles and the nerds who support production resent having their schedules disrupted by industry churn. Presumably, apple saw the gains of making FCPX more approachable to youtubers well worth the alienation of Hollywood tech influencers... PC got huge traction in market for personal vid authoring with Sony Vegas back in the day, while Apple was winning over Hollywood.

I am pretending I understand the content industry, when in fact I don't.

My counterpoint to my own limited views is that Premier did to FCPX what FCP did to Avid et al, which naturally has much to do with inertia of Wintel PC industry. Apple couldn't make the crossing to its own silicon fast enough.

The question for the Mac Studio user is does Premier run well on it, or is it only a FCPX box?

Adobe looks like a huge mess to me in the vein of Microsoft: they charge rent, and people pay it because they're locked into collaborative dependencies over file formats and workflows.

It's the phone that is making this world of AppleSi possible, so while this new kit has every advantage, every advantage is needed to grow.

If the hackintosh community truly reprazents anything high-minded: it's the righteous feeling of discontentment and huddled masses yearning to be free from being slotted with borg-like conformity into the marketing programs of multinational corporations. Apple has handed this pretty well, whereas Microsoft is evil with Google ambling around in the background babbling (Google's the one to watch out for.)

The Mac Studio seems to show that ultimately Java was totally unnecessary, because code and what we do with it is so fungible and uncertain according to fashion trends that development can afford to port the whole stack as a compromise to write-once run anywhere. Java's downfall was its gross UI.

Note that Windows 11 is skin for Windows designed to look like Big Sur+, while Linuxes have, of late, made strong gains on Windows for user approachability on a wide range of configs.

Without Jobs, does Apple still have a long game? What was Jobs' long game, really?

It's a new world now, it just looks like the old world.

 

[tedyun]

I follow your point re video: this machine is designed for the social media set.

Apple must be able to count on 3rd parties to tap into the power of the HW for it to be a great appliance. Too bad about FCPX back in the day, but they actually improved the SW based on market / user studies. It just so happened they also alienated Hollywood, where content production cycles and the nerds who support production resent having their schedules disrupted by industry churn. Presumably, apple saw the gains of making FCPX more approachable to youtubers well worth the alienation of Hollywood tech influencers... PC got huge traction in market for personal vid authoring with Sony Vegas back in the day, while Apple was winning over Hollywood.

I am pretending I understand the content industry, when in fact I don't.

My counterpoint to my own limited views is that Premier did to FCPX what FCP did to Avid et al, which naturally has much to do with inertia of Wintel PC industry. Apple couldn't make the crossing to its own silicon fast enough.

The question for the Mac Studio user is does Premier run well on it, or is it only a FCPX box?

Adobe looks like a huge mess to me in the vein of Microsoft: they charge rent, and people pay it because they're locked into collaborative dependencies over file formats and workflows.

It's the phone that is making this world of AppleSi possible, so while this new kit has every advantage, every advantage is needed to grow.

If the hackintosh community truly reprazents anything high-minded: it's the righteous feeling of discontentment and huddled masses yearning to be free from being slotted with borg-like conformity into the marketing programs of multinational corporations. Apple has handed this pretty well, whereas Microsoft is evil with Google ambling around in the background babbling (Google's the one to watch out for.)

The Mac Studio seems to show that ultimately Java was totally unnecessary, because code and what we do with it is so fungible and uncertain according to fashion trends that development can afford to port the whole stack as a compromise to write-once run anywhere. Java's downfall was its gross UI.

Note that Windows 11 is skin for Windows designed to look like Big Sur+, while Linuxes have, of late, made strong gains on Windows for user approachability on a wide range of configs.

Without Jobs, does Apple still have a long game? What was Jobs' long game, really?

It's a new world now, it just looks like the old world.

I actually migrated over to the Adobe Suite. It's not that bad. I started with Audition to do some audio processing because I needed something cross platform and something that could take the VST plugins. Then I got into photography. So with Audition, Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom and Acrobat, I got the Creative Cloud. Since I was paying for that, I felt obligated to give Premiere a shot. It's pretty good. With After Effects, it makes a really complete package. Plus, it is cross platform, so I can work on the same projects using Windows or Mac, depending where I'm at.

This is my theory on Jobs' long term vision. I think he realized it when the iPhone exploded in popularity, and we are watching it play out over the long term. Tim Cook just has to keep the train on the rails.

Conceptually, I think the iPhone is what Jobs always wanted from his Macintosh interface. Clean, simple and elegant. A simple point and click of an icon, and the application is up and running.

As the iPhone gains in popularity, the iOS and macOS are starting to converge. The devices are all interdependent, and moving information from one to the other is fairly seamless with Airdrop, Handoff, SideCar, AirPlay and now Universal Control. I think the new generation of users love this. Plus, there is a status thing. "If you don't have an iPhone, you're not cool." If the kids have iPhones, then the parents usually get iPhones too because it's just easier to communicate with them. Then, the apps that you buy on the iPhone hook you in and they make switching from the iPhone a highly frictional experience.

Now, as the OS's converge, eventually it just makes more sense to buy an Apple laptop or desktop so that you can interchange information. A good example is my photos. When I take photos of my kids, I can process on either my Windows or on my Hack, and I always choose my Hack for the simple reason that, after I process 30 or so photos, I simply push them by Airdrop them to our phones. If I did Windows, I would have to either email batches of them or use our Google Drive (which is frictional, and one or all of them are too lazy to pull the photos).

So if you have an Apple phone, you will eventually want an Apple laptop. My daughter is off to college this fall, a for her graduation present, she wants a laptop -- specifically, an Apple laptop. She is tired of her Windows laptop. But really, for school, any laptop will do, because everything is all online. What she really wants is the Apple laptop because she can do FaceTime, iMessage, Airdrop, etc., all keeping within the Apple ecosystem. Everything within the ecosystem feels so essential and it works so simply, so seamlessly and frictionless.

I think that was Steve's long game.

 

[pastrychef]

I actually migrated over to the Adobe Suite. It's not that bad. I started with Audition to do some audio processing because I needed something cross platform and something that could take the VST plugins. Then I got into photography. So with Audition, Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom and Acrobat, I got the Creative Cloud. Since I was paying for that, I felt obligated to give Premiere a shot. It's pretty good. With After Effects, it makes a really complete package. Plus, it is cross platform, so I can work on the same projects using Windows or Mac, depending where I'm at.

This is my theory on Jobs' long term vision. I think he realized it when the iPhone exploded in popularity, and we are watching it play out over the long term. Tim Cook just has to keep the train on the rails.

Conceptually, I think the iPhone is what Jobs always wanted from his Macintosh interface. Clean, simple and elegant. A simple point and click of an icon, and the application is up and running.

As the iPhone gains in popularity, the iOS and macOS are starting to converge. The devices are all interdependent, and moving information from one to the other is fairly seamless with Airdrop, Handoff, SideCar, AirPlay and now Universal Control. I think the new generation of users love this. Plus, there is a status thing. "If you don't have an iPhone, you're not cool." If the kids have iPhones, then the parents usually get iPhones too because it's just easier to communicate with them. Then, the apps that you buy on the iPhone hook you in and they make switching from the iPhone a highly frictional experience.

Now, as the OS's converge, eventually it just makes more sense to buy an Apple laptop or desktop so that you can interchange information. A good example is my photos. When I take photos of my kids, I can process on either my Windows or on my Hack, and I always choose my Hack for the simple reason that, after I process 30 or so photos, I simply push them by Airdrop them to our phones. If I did Windows, I would have to either email batches of them or use our Google Drive (which is frictional, and one or all of them are too lazy to pull the photos).

So if you have an Apple phone, you will eventually want an Apple laptop. My daughter is off to college this fall, a for her graduation present, she wants a laptop -- specifically, an Apple laptop. She is tired of her Windows laptop. But really, for school, any laptop will do, because everything is all online. What she really wants is the Apple laptop because she can do FaceTime, iMessage, Airdrop, etc., all keeping within the Apple ecosystem. Everything within the ecosystem feels so essential and it works so simply, so seamlessly and frictionless.

I think that was Steve's long game.

I think I have three friends on Android phones. When I text them, sometimes, they get it days later. When I text them pictures or videos, they receive tiny, tiny little versions of what the actual photos or videos should be. Sometimes, I just don't text them because I know they are on Android.

Two days ago, I decided to boot in to Windows on my hack to update Windows because I hadn't done it in months. Of course, this turned in to an all day affair with the updates somehow messing up the Windows Boot Manager so that even BIOS didn't even see it as a boot option and that took several more hours to find the correct fix on the internet.

Then, I tried to run Newsbin Pro in Windows since I was already booted in to Windows and it was slow as heck because something Windows was doing was causing 100% disk usage and it brought the entire system to its knees. The system took minutes to respond to mouse clicks. I gave up and rebooted back in to macOS.

Say what you like, but I'll take simple and "it just works" over the above any day.

 

[tedyun]

I think I have three friends on Android phones. When I text them, sometimes, they get it days later. When I text them pictures or videos, they receive tiny, tiny little versions of what the actual photos or videos should be. Sometimes, I just don't text them because I know they are on Android.

Two days ago, I decided to boot in to Windows on my hack to update Windows because I hadn't done it in months. Of course, this turned in to an all day affair with the updates somehow messing up the Windows Boot Manager so that even BIOS didn't even see it as a boot option and that took several more hours to find the correct fix on the internet.

Then, I tried to run Newsbin Pro in Windows since I was already booted in to Windows and it was slow as heck because something Windows was doing was causing 100% disk usage and it brought the entire system to its knees. The system took minutes to respond to mouse clicks. I gave up and rebooted back in to macOS.

Say what you like, but I'll take simple and "it just works" over the above any day.

@pastrychef -- are you on Win10? I had that happen to me (update, then BIOS didn't see it) and I couldn't figure it out. I "fixed" it by upgrading to Win 11 and it's been pretty solid, I have to admit.

Can you let me know what the fix was? I spent a Saturday trying to work through it, meaning reformat, reinstall multiple times, using different NVMe's. Win10 just didn't take. It drove me crazy.

I hear you about the Android. My family is in Canada, and before we got international plans, our old plan wouldn't let us call to Canada or call from Canada without a hefty fee. With iPhones, it is pretty easy because we just go through iMessage or FaceTime. My brother insists on Android (and Linux for his computer). True, there are solutions on Android (we use Signal), but there is always that friction. Plus not everyone wants to use Signal, others want to use another program, ugh.

There was one time when we were dog sitting for our friends, who went to Costa Rica. My friend is an anti-Apple guy and insists on Android. They were gone for about 3 weeks, and apparently, he was trying to IM me via WeChat. I rarely use WeChat and I think it is buried in my apps, with notifications turned off. He was texting and texting, and getting frustrated that he couldn't reach me! Finally, his wife just simply sent me an iMessage from her iPhone. We had a laugh about it because apparently, he is the only hold out of his family (kids, grandkids) that is on Android and it happens all the time with him. He thinks his family is ignoring him when they actually probably never check those apps.

I think for the ROTW, most people are on Android though. I keep hearing that Android is big in China, and WeChat or something reigns supreme there....

 

[pastrychef]

@pastrychef -- are you on Win10? I had that happen to me (update, then BIOS didn't see it) and I couldn't figure it out. I "fixed" it by upgrading to Win 11 and it's been pretty solid, I have to admit.

Can you let me know what the fix was? I spent a Saturday trying to work through it, meaning reformat, reinstall multiple times, using different NVMe's. Win10 just didn't take. It drove me crazy.

I hear you about the Android. My family is in Canada, and before we got international plans, our old plan wouldn't let us call to Canada or call from Canada without a hefty fee. With iPhones, it is pretty easy because we just go through iMessage or FaceTime. My brother insists on Android (and Linux for his computer). True, there are solutions on Android (we use Signal), but there is always that friction. Plus not everyone wants to use Signal, others want to use another program, ugh.

There was one time when we were dog sitting for our friends, who went to Costa Rica. My friend is an anti-Apple guy and insists on Android. They were gone for about 3 weeks, and apparently, he was trying to IM me via WeChat. I rarely use WeChat and I think it is buried in my apps, with notifications turned off. He was texting and texting, and getting frustrated that he couldn't reach me! Finally, his wife just simply sent me an iMessage from her iPhone. We had a laugh about it because apparently, he is the only hold out of his family (kids, grandkids) that is on Android and it happens all the time with him. He thinks his family is ignoring him when they actually probably never check those apps.

I think for the ROTW, most people are on Android though. I keep hearing that Android is big in China, and WeChat or something reigns supreme there....

Finding the fix was a chore in itself!! All the fixes I found were for MBR while I'm on GUID. After A LOT of searching, I finally found:http://woshub.com/how-to-repair-uefi-bootloader-in-windows-8/

Btw, is Windows 11 a free upgrade?

Yeah... Android people have tried to get me to install obscure texting/messaging apps. I just tell them to forget it and just call me. I don't know why they choose to do that to themselves.

In China, iPhones are a status symbol and highly popular. However, WeChat is their "super app" probably due to Chinese regulations.

 

[tedyun]

Finding the fix was a chore in itself!! All the fixes I found were for MBR while I'm on GUID. After A LOT of searching, I finally found:http://woshub.com/how-to-repair-uefi-bootloader-in-windows-8/

Btw, is Windows 11 a free upgrade?

Yeah... Android people have tried to get me to install obscure texting/messaging apps. I just tell them to forget it and just call me. I don't know why they choose to do that to themselves.

In China, iPhones are a status symbol and highly popular. However, WeChat is their "super app" probably due to Chinese regulations.

Y - Win 11 is free. You just have to set your motherboard for the security chip. There are ways to bypass it though if you don't want to do that.

 

[c-o-pr]

Btw, is Windows 11 a free upgrade?

Yes it is.

It has a baseline req of Intel 8th gen era processors. It also requires a MSFT account to install.

As to any requirement for Trusted Platform Module (security chip) support, my direct experience is that after disabling all related BIOS config, Win10 installed without issue and upgraded to Win11 with no issues.

As to what Win11 is: Superficially 11 appears to be a continuation of the re-skinning of 10, with the weird situation that MSFT refuses to actually officially release it. As to how Windows features are evolving, the only things in the news are that the Start Menu has got yet another update. Poking around it looks like every other Wibdows with UI rearranged. If there are bold advances under the hood I would never guess.

At a higher level, PCs are still sold on overt premise of MSFT lock-in: Internet Explorer (which now is just a fork of Chrome) Office, and Games. Of all the incredible app richness which is the Windows world, there's not much MSFT itself can brag about. Same for Intel. It's in the entire web we know but the branding has no bragging rights. When was the last time anyone gushed about how Cisco or Juniper web plumbing makes all streaming service experiences incredible! Never.

Re Windows 11 experience: it receives a major update, requiring a 1/2 hour install and two reboots, every week or so but strangely nothing much seems to change nor does it ever get done.

I've personally lived corporate IT and I am not ignorant of the implications and mayhem behind the scenes of Windows evolution. But the user experience reminds me of nothing else so much as a clone of Mac.

So hacktintoshivists have been on the right track in that sense: just go to the source.

 

[pastrychef]

Yes it is.

It has a baseline req of Intel 8th gen era processors. It also requires a MSFT account to install.

As to any requirement for Trusted Platform Module (security chip) support, my direct experience is that after disabling all related BIOS config, Win10 installed without issue and upgraded to Win11 with no issues.

As to what Win11 is: Superficially 11 appears to be a continuation of the re-skinning of 10, with the weird situation that MSFT refuses to actually officially release it. As to how Windows features are evolving, the only things in the news are that the Start Menu has got yet another update. Poking around it looks like every other Wibdows with UI rearranged. If there are bold advances under the hood I would never guess.

At a higher level, PCs are still sold on overt premise of MSFT lock-in: Internet Explorer (which now is just a fork of Chrome) Office, and Games. Of all the incredible app richness which is the Windows world, there's not much MSFT itself can brag about. Same for Intel. It's in the entire web we know but the branding has no bragging rights. When was the last time anyone gushed about how Cisco or Juniper web plumbing makes all streaming service experiences incredible! Never.

Re Windows 11 experience: it receives a major update, requiring a 1/2 hour install and two reboots, every week or so but strangely nothing much seems to change nor does it ever get done.

I've personally lived corporate IT and I am not ignorant of the implications and mayhem behind the scenes of Windows evolution. But the user experience reminds me of nothing else so much as a clone of Mac.

So hacktintoshivists have been on the right track in that sense: just go to the source.

The UI keeps changing because every iteration sucks. If they got it right (like macOS), they wouldn't keep throwing darts and trying to find something that sticks. "File Edit View..." were in the upper left corner 30 years ago and it's still there today.

I couldn't believe how the 100% disk activity I experienced a few days ago brought the system to its knees. Just shows me how bad the multitasking is.

I rarely ever boot in to Windows for anything but games. It's unfortunate that most game producers still ignore the Mac market.