Peek Performance

Anyone see anything to drool over?

The only thing of direct interest to me is that it seems they've discontinued the 27" iMacs (link)... if I want to move up from this Intel machine to Apple silicon it'll have to be a Studio setup, starting at around $3,600

Link

Not sure I want it that much!

Well the top-end Mac Mini would be nice. But I don't think I can justify 4 grand just at the moment. I might just get the base model one of these days to play with the new processor.

I'm good thanks

What do we think of the ‘stretched’ (or is that heightened 😃) mini firm factor?

I don’t think power will be an issue - 114 billion transistors in all those execution units, in the “welded” M1 Ultra architecture - didn’t see that one coming - wonder how many other hidden features they’ve built into the architecture?

Anyway the pattern or should that be the die is set for the next generation M2 range now. Will be interesting to see when and how they move the Mac Pro from a Xeon behemoth to an Apple Silicon behemoth

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

What do we think of the ‘stretched’ (or is that heightened 😃) mini firm factor?

TBH I've never seen the point of seeing how small you can make something just because you can...

Granted I don't want a full PC tower on the desk, but in the specific case of the mini box I'd rather have a bit more room for my fingers when I'm trying to plug something in. Or trying to get it out again!!

The taller case doesn't seem any better in that regard, the connectors are all "within" the old form factor as far as I can tell.

(eta- although I'll concede that having a few connections on the front is something of an improvement.)

So I'm neutral, with a slight feeling of an ease-of-access opportunity lost.

Re the M1 Ultra... the eyebrows went up a bit when I saw the pictures, that's a serious piece of silicon

Edited by billford (Wed 09-Mar-22 13:16:06)

I find it easier to plug externals into my Mini than my tower PC. I can just upend it so that all the connectors are at the top, plug stuff in, then put it back in position.

One USB-A on the front would have been sensible alongside the SD slot, but otherwise its decent connectivity with 6 lots of Thunderbolt ports and 10GbE. They won't be shared channel either.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Will be interesting to see when and how they move the Mac Pro from a Xeon behemoth to an Apple Silicon behemoth

This Studio is the new Mac Pro. It's reportedly up to 80% faster than the Pro.

True, it's not expanable in the way the Pto is, but no new silicon Mac is going to be expandable. I can't see why Apple would need to produce a replacement for the Pro, or what extra it could offer - at least not for a few years.

They’re still rolling out a replacement for the Pro. Jump to around 55:30 in their Peek Performance presentation. They basically say exactly that.

https://www.apple.com/apple-events/march-2022/

This Studio is the new Mac Pro.

It was explicitly stared at the end that the Mac Pro is the last part of the story, but for another day.

To be fair TM may not have seen the presentation. But 60% performance over the incumbent generation these days wouldn’t be enough to unseat the highest performance unit, especially given that all the other M1 iterations have been around 2 to 3 times faster than the equivalent incumbent model.

The Mac Studio is a Mac Mini on some very serious steroids but it’s not a long term replacement for a 28-core Xeon W based behemoth.

So whatever Apple come up with for the Mac Pro would be expected to pack a similar boost - at least twice as fast as the top Intel based Mac Pro, if not more. It also needs the full complement of internal drive expansion and system expansion.

It’s hard to guess how they’ll bridge that - “weld” 4 lots of M1 Max’s together, move to the M2 cores and scale that out something like an M2 Max..,

No new Mac mini then? That is a shame, I was waiting to see if they would update the Mac mini.
going to wait for a few more months before I decide to update this machine or go for a Mac mini.

Mac Mini upgrade: called the Mac Studio / it’s grown an extra two inches in height and starts at two grand.

A few titbits here about that extra altitude.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Mac Mini upgrade: called the Mac Studio / it’s grown an extra two inches in height and starts at two grand.

That is a shame, I really thought they would have put a m2 or something in a new Mac mini, I certainly am not paying 2 grand. With the way the cost of living is going up, I need to budget more and I am not paying 2 grand for any computer.
Maybe I should think about staying with Windows, which is a shame.

That is a shame, I really thought they would have put a m2 or something in a new Mac mini,

| would expect this to be either WWDC (so July-ish, to prep the devs) or September. Or phased over that period as was M1.

Yeah looks like it will be some more waiting for an M2 machine to appear. Possibly coinciding with the next A16 mobile processor / next generation iPhone. Usually around September. But you never know with Apple, they might throw a curve ball.

In reply to a post by billford:

A few titbits here about that extra altitude.

I guess that makes sense when you think that an M1 Ultra is basically two M1 Max’s glued together on the die. So the potential power dissipation is double in the same area/volume.

It’s extremely hard to get the fans running on an M1 Max in any event. It’s been shown that M1 Mini brethren can happily run at full throttle without a fan present. So they are being very conservative in their approach, which is a good thing. There will no doubt be some customers that push these things to the limit for very big, constant workflows perhaps in quite high ambient temps.

Apple don’t want to be seen skimping for the sake of too little heatsink and getting a reputation for lots of very expensive paperweights.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Yeah looks like it will be some more waiting for an M2 machine to appear. Possibly coinciding with the next A16 mobile processor / next generation iPhone. Usually around September. But you never know with Apple, they might throw a curve ball.

I will wait, give more time to put money into the update account, as I said before I am in no rush, got to keep finances in check to see what the hell I am left with when everything goes up in price. Got a pay rise starting this week, so that should help, hopefully.

iJustine does her usual calm and sedate look (you can skip though thre unboxing bit).

7 million subscribers! She's...energetic

Hard to keep a straight face when she said was using a "spec out Mac Pro" with 1.5 terabytes of RAM "that is so unnecessary for what I'm doing on a day to day basis"...OK then so why do you have this...hang on 7M subscribers. Oh yeah

A brief, less-than-rave review of the Apple Studio Display.

I'm finding a lot of these reviews a bit bizarre and the standfirst saying "It’s the best Apple monitor for consumers, unfortunately." telegraphs this big time.

No part of the Studio concept is targeted at consumers. Its market is SME AV houses that work to very tight deadlines or fast schedules where every moment of render time and every pixel of colour accuracy is money in the bank - and it is way cheaper than a Mac Pro with an XDR. Bang for a buck as they used to say.

And then there's the ad agencies and marketing forms that will just love having these things on display, all charged to clients one way or another.

One detail - Gruber has found out that the web cam issues are a software thing that was introduced late on and will be fixed. They only partially acknowledge that. Things that creep in late are exactly the things that might not get picked up in QA.

They really, really take exception to the power cord…amongst other aspects in this review.

The video that (for me) followed that one (link) is none too enthusiastic either.

Think I'll be sticking with this iMac for a while yet.

Mac Studio models on the other hand seem too be getting on the whole very positive reviews (other than the price and predictable premium cost of RAM and SSD uplifts...)

Personally I don't really need a "desktop" per se. Very happy with my M1 Max MBP running in desktop replacement mode via OWC Thunderbolt 3 Pro dock and Dell U4021QW display.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Personally I don't really need a "desktop" per se.

Nor do I really... but I don't need portability and I do like lots of screen real estate. I suppose that when I finally got fed up with Windows the iMac was a nice package and I've stayed with it largely from inertia .

Maybe a rethink needed if I decide to upgrade... not that I really need to, practically any computer on the market these days is faster than I am

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

They really, really take exception to the power cord…amongst other aspects in this review.

Yeah, equally in the bizarro camp but also very typical of reviewers getting in a snit about things that actual users could not give a stuff about.

See also The Chin and The Notch.

Post deleted by ian_c

Edited by ian_c (Thu 24-Mar-22 22:49:51)