The Mac Studio: A Confused Computer with Limited Value

The Mac Studio takes on the form of a much taller Mac Mini, and its design is both nice and dated at the same time. In an ironic twist, Apple now has the hardware efficiency to create radical designs like this one, but instead, they opted for a computer that was always meant to be cheap. The Mac Studio doesn't even have a website, which might raise some eyebrows.

However, things are about to change. Linus Media Group is going to make their website using Squarespace, and we'll get to see what this all-in-one platform has to offer. They have tons of mobile-supporting templates for everything we need, as well as third-party extensions that can help expand our site with other platforms in the future. And if you head to squarespace.com and use the code "MACADDRESS" at checkout, you'll receive 10% off your first purchase.

The Mac Studio was launched by Apple with a framing device that compared it to a fully specced iMac in a mid-range Mac Pro. The comparison revealed some interesting facts about the pricing of these computers. When you price out an M1 Max Apple Studio with a display, keyboard, and mouse, it comes out to be exactly the same as a fully equipped 2020 iMac at $3,900. On the other hand, the M1 Ultra model comes out to $6,000, which is less like a Mac Pro and more like a successor to the long-discontinued iMac Pro.

The lack of a mid-range desktop option is another point that might have been a better idea for Apple to explore. You can get an M1 in a Mac Mini or iMac, but if you need more CPU power, you're forced to jump up to the M1 Max, which might provide more GPU power than you need. The M1 Pro is a good balance between the two, but it's not available for those who require more processing power.

My Response to the Mac Studio

In all honesty, I was really looking forward to the Mac Studio, but after seeing it in action, I couldn't help but feel that it's a decent but confused computer. It offers limited value for a select group of professionals who might still be waiting for the apps they rely on to better support Apple's new architecture.

I also can't help but think about how Apple wanted to create a 27-inch iMac but ended up settling for this compromise instead. The cynicism is real, and it's hard not to feel that way when we see what could have been done differently.

But despite my disappointment with the Mac Studio, I do want to acknowledge some of the great things Apple has done recently. For instance, the iPhone 13 Mini exists, and no one else makes a phone this capable and this small. The iMac is still personal and colorful, making it a statement piece for the home. The MacBook Air's silent performance is also something I love, as well as its trackpad and overall build quality.

Furthermore, Apple does listen to its customers and takes their feedback into consideration. We've seen this with the return of IO ports in some Macs, as well as the company's efforts to make repairs easier at home. However, there are still growing pains when it comes to transitioning from PowerPC to Intel processors, and these transitions can be hard and annoying.

In conclusion, criticism of Apple's products can sometimes sound cynical, but it's also necessary to acknowledge what's going right. The company has made some great strides in recent years, and with patience and time, I have hope that the tech industry will flourish as a result. And who knows? Maybe one day we'll see a mid-range desktop option that truly addresses the needs of professionals like those who rely on Apple's hardware.

Final Thoughts

But despite my enthusiasm for what's to come, there are still some issues that need to be addressed. The Mac Studio is not going to change my tune about Facebook or Uber anytime soon. Those companies have done some terrible things, and until they shape up, I won't be singing their praises.

However, when it comes to Apple, I want to remain balanced and enthused for what's in store. If you like the Mac Studio, please give this video a like, and if you're excited about what's coming next, then you must subscribe.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enare my expectations too high has my view of apple and their products shifted because everyone's noticing something poor jonathan horst i feel like he's gotten so much more cynical about apples since he started working i really think so what have i changed or has apple look at the settings page like it's just insane how small the buttons are people who sit near me at the office note that i moan a lot sometimes about things that are trivial and sometimes about things that are not in my recent videos i spent a lot of time complaining about the input cable placement on two otherwise beautifully designed displays i've complained about the iphone se's aged form factor and increased price and i've questioned why the latest ipads need an m1 though that's been answered in its own annoying way oh and then there are all the policy choices the scrappy underdog days of apple are long over and what we're left with is such a big and powerful company decisions they make impact billions of people and so with power that immense they basically become a political institution that means people are rightly frustrated about things like developer relations repair restrictions heck even updates i don't view having a little bit of skepticism as a bad thing in tech journalism one has to be a curmudgeon whizbang marketers are very good at conjuring up excitement for their latest products and it's very easy to be swept up in it all i know this and i try very hard not to be but i don't know sometimes i worry that my healthy skepticism might transform into malignant cynicism and who wants to watch that guy wouldn't you rather watch someone who's ecstatic about what they're covering and yet here i am with a brand new kitted out mac studio yet i have more criticism than i was expecting which is why i haven't done a video on it yet we ordered a fully rammed up m1 ultra model alongside a base m1 max model for anthony to compare both sides of the performance spectrum which you can check out over at ltt that m1 ultra model however because it was custom took months to arrive so when i sat behind this m1 max model and did some of my own testing i realized that it performs just as well as an equivalent macbook pro the m1 max is amazing in a laptop but on a desktop the expectations are a little different you're plugged into a wall and the enclosure is bigger so you can cool more efficiency isn't as beneficial i mean i should concede that this hardware efficiency is actually really beneficial out here in the beach i mean we're running this off battery so i couldn't really wax poetic about the performance so what else is there to talk about the mac studio takes on the form of a much taller mac mini it's a nice if not dated design and in a funny irony apple now has the hardware efficiency to do the radical designs they did in the past and yet this is what we got something based on a computer that was always meant to be cheap which this is not you know mac address doesn't have a website wait eddie how did linus media group make their website squarespace really wait are they sponsoring this video yep oh well then i should probably get started which will be easy with squarespace's all-in-one platform they have tons of mobile supporting templates for everything we need now and third-party extensions that can help expand our site with other platforms we might need in the future and andy just told me that if you head to squarespace.com mac address you can get 10 off your first purchase i should do that and then there's the framing that apple launched the mac studio with on the website and in the presentation they compared the mac studio to a fully specced imac in a mid-range mac pro and yes when you price out an m1 max apple studio with a display keyboard and mouse it comes out to the exact same price as a fully equipped 2020 imac at 3 900 the m1 ultra model on the other hand looks less like a mac pro and more like a successor to the long discontinued imac pro because look both come out to six thousand dollars so where's the mid-range desktop you can get an m1 in a mac mini or imac or you can get an m1 max or ultra for that matter in this the m1 pro which is a good balance isn't available if you need more cpu power you have to jump up to the m1 max then and that might have more gpu power than you otherwise need to say nothing of the jump to the m1 ultra so my response to the mac studio is that it's a decent but confused computer offering only a smattering of value for a select group of professionals who are probably still better off waiting for the apps they rely on to better support apple's new architecture if you buy a fully spec 2020 imac you don't have to feel bad see i really had high expectations for the mac studio and while others were really enthusiastic about it i for some reason was unimpressed i think they wanted to make a 27-inch imac but for some reason they couldn't so we were left with these in their compromises there's that cynicism again i think i need to take some time to appreciate some of the great things apple has done much of which during the pandemic i love that the iphone 13 mini exists no one else makes a phone this capable and this small i still love how personal and colorful the imac is making it a statement piece for the home i love the silent performance of the macbook air i love their track pads i love their overall build quality and reliability i love seeing the return and inclusion of important io and i do like that apple listens albeit very stubbornly i mean we did get the mac pro in 2019 we avoided a bad user interface design in safari last year and we could now repair our devices at home i'm not gonna list the caveats i'm not gonna list the caveats across the caveats we are going to begin the transition from the power pc to intel processors architecture transitions are hard and really annoying apples going through their third there's bound to be growing pains in more powerful and demanding applications like the ones the mac studio is designed for they are amplified and harder to fix so criticism can sound and feel cynical but i still have hope as the hardware engineers slip into their iterative update cadence the hard work they put into chip efficiency will be taken advantage by developers and the designers will be able to express themselves better they've already done it with the imac and the macbook pro we just need a little bit of patience i also have hope that as real political institutions recognize the power apple has they'll create finding policies that'll help the tech industry flourish with innovation like it did in the more competitive days criticism and cynicism aren't the same thing but too much criticism can be a bad thing because you can forget to recognize really great accomplishments i at the very least want to remain balanced enthused and excited for what's to come now on the other hand i won't be changing my tune about facebook or uber don't even get me started on those thanks for listening to this therapy i mean mac address now if you like the mac studio give this video a like and if you're excited about what's to come then you must subscribe now i'm curious in the comments where the weirdest place you've set up a desktop computer is because this is greatare my expectations too high has my view of apple and their products shifted because everyone's noticing something poor jonathan horst i feel like he's gotten so much more cynical about apples since he started working i really think so what have i changed or has apple look at the settings page like it's just insane how small the buttons are people who sit near me at the office note that i moan a lot sometimes about things that are trivial and sometimes about things that are not in my recent videos i spent a lot of time complaining about the input cable placement on two otherwise beautifully designed displays i've complained about the iphone se's aged form factor and increased price and i've questioned why the latest ipads need an m1 though that's been answered in its own annoying way oh and then there are all the policy choices the scrappy underdog days of apple are long over and what we're left with is such a big and powerful company decisions they make impact billions of people and so with power that immense they basically become a political institution that means people are rightly frustrated about things like developer relations repair restrictions heck even updates i don't view having a little bit of skepticism as a bad thing in tech journalism one has to be a curmudgeon whizbang marketers are very good at conjuring up excitement for their latest products and it's very easy to be swept up in it all i know this and i try very hard not to be but i don't know sometimes i worry that my healthy skepticism might transform into malignant cynicism and who wants to watch that guy wouldn't you rather watch someone who's ecstatic about what they're covering and yet here i am with a brand new kitted out mac studio yet i have more criticism than i was expecting which is why i haven't done a video on it yet we ordered a fully rammed up m1 ultra model alongside a base m1 max model for anthony to compare both sides of the performance spectrum which you can check out over at ltt that m1 ultra model however because it was custom took months to arrive so when i sat behind this m1 max model and did some of my own testing i realized that it performs just as well as an equivalent macbook pro the m1 max is amazing in a laptop but on a desktop the expectations are a little different you're plugged into a wall and the enclosure is bigger so you can cool more efficiency isn't as beneficial i mean i should concede that this hardware efficiency is actually really beneficial out here in the beach i mean we're running this off battery so i couldn't really wax poetic about the performance so what else is there to talk about the mac studio takes on the form of a much taller mac mini it's a nice if not dated design and in a funny irony apple now has the hardware efficiency to do the radical designs they did in the past and yet this is what we got something based on a computer that was always meant to be cheap which this is not you know mac address doesn't have a website wait eddie how did linus media group make their website squarespace really wait are they sponsoring this video yep oh well then i should probably get started which will be easy with squarespace's all-in-one platform they have tons of mobile supporting templates for everything we need now and third-party extensions that can help expand our site with other platforms we might need in the future and andy just told me that if you head to squarespace.com mac address you can get 10 off your first purchase i should do that and then there's the framing that apple launched the mac studio with on the website and in the presentation they compared the mac studio to a fully specced imac in a mid-range mac pro and yes when you price out an m1 max apple studio with a display keyboard and mouse it comes out to the exact same price as a fully equipped 2020 imac at 3 900 the m1 ultra model on the other hand looks less like a mac pro and more like a successor to the long discontinued imac pro because look both come out to six thousand dollars so where's the mid-range desktop you can get an m1 in a mac mini or imac or you can get an m1 max or ultra for that matter in this the m1 pro which is a good balance isn't available if you need more cpu power you have to jump up to the m1 max then and that might have more gpu power than you otherwise need to say nothing of the jump to the m1 ultra so my response to the mac studio is that it's a decent but confused computer offering only a smattering of value for a select group of professionals who are probably still better off waiting for the apps they rely on to better support apple's new architecture if you buy a fully spec 2020 imac you don't have to feel bad see i really had high expectations for the mac studio and while others were really enthusiastic about it i for some reason was unimpressed i think they wanted to make a 27-inch imac but for some reason they couldn't so we were left with these in their compromises there's that cynicism again i think i need to take some time to appreciate some of the great things apple has done much of which during the pandemic i love that the iphone 13 mini exists no one else makes a phone this capable and this small i still love how personal and colorful the imac is making it a statement piece for the home i love the silent performance of the macbook air i love their track pads i love their overall build quality and reliability i love seeing the return and inclusion of important io and i do like that apple listens albeit very stubbornly i mean we did get the mac pro in 2019 we avoided a bad user interface design in safari last year and we could now repair our devices at home i'm not gonna list the caveats i'm not gonna list the caveats across the caveats we are going to begin the transition from the power pc to intel processors architecture transitions are hard and really annoying apples going through their third there's bound to be growing pains in more powerful and demanding applications like the ones the mac studio is designed for they are amplified and harder to fix so criticism can sound and feel cynical but i still have hope as the hardware engineers slip into their iterative update cadence the hard work they put into chip efficiency will be taken advantage by developers and the designers will be able to express themselves better they've already done it with the imac and the macbook pro we just need a little bit of patience i also have hope that as real political institutions recognize the power apple has they'll create finding policies that'll help the tech industry flourish with innovation like it did in the more competitive days criticism and cynicism aren't the same thing but too much criticism can be a bad thing because you can forget to recognize really great accomplishments i at the very least want to remain balanced enthused and excited for what's to come now on the other hand i won't be changing my tune about facebook or uber don't even get me started on those thanks for listening to this therapy i mean mac address now if you like the mac studio give this video a like and if you're excited about what's to come then you must subscribe now i'm curious in the comments where the weirdest place you've set up a desktop computer is because this is great\n"