Apple Mac Studio: Reviews Reviewed
by Jean-Louis Gassée
Apple’s Intel-based 2019 Mac Pro left a hole in the Mac line. The just-announced and felicitously-named Mac Studio restores order. Reviewers wholly agree.
When the Mac Studio was announced on March 8, I was curious: How would the kommentariat react to it? How would benchmarks rank it, and for what tasks? And how would it fit in Apple’s Mac line?
Because I find the product particularly interesting (I’ll explain the particularly towards the end), I decided to read all the reviews I could find, and see if I could build a zeroth-hand impression. This proved an interesting experience, one that I decided to share in this Monday Note, starting with a list presented below for your dining and browsing pleasure [as always, edits and emphasis mine]:
NYTimes Wirecutter: The Apple Mac Studio Looks Like a Mini, Performs Like a Pro.
Wall Street Journal: Apple Studio Display Review — At $1,599, You Won’t Get What You Pay For.
CNET: A Desktop Combo for Creators Looking to Step Up.
Wired: A Magnificent Duo — Apple Mac Studio and Studio Display.
CNBC: Apple Mac Studio and Studio Display — Great if you have $3,600, but most people should get a Mac Mini.
PCMag: Apple Mac Studio narrows its potential audience to those dead-set on a desktop plus a big monitor.
TechRadar: The Mac Studio is a fantastic addition to the Mac family. Its laser-like focus on creative professionals means it won’t be for everyone, but if you’re after a powerful and compact creative workstation, you’ll love this.
Endgadget: If you think you need the sheer power of the Mac Studio, then you probably need the Mac Studio.
The Verge: Finally™. This computer is a historic achievement. The Mac Studio is the computer everyone wanted the Mac Pro to be.
Digital Photography Review: The Apple desktop we’ve been waiting for.
Tom’s Guide: This is fast. Apple’s Mac Studio can deliver more power than almost any other computer on the market.
Pocket-lint: Unleash your superpowers. It’s the most powerful Mac we’ve ever tested.
Mac Rumors: Faster Than a $13,000 Mac Pro.
Macworld: Apple flexes its might (and muscles). Power gap in the Mac lineup fills in with a buffed-up media master.
TechCrunch: Emerging from the Mac’s midlife crisis.
Six Colors: The most beautiful thing about the Mac Studio is it fills a very specific ecological niche to perfection.
9to5Mac: Impressive power and efficiency, but overkill for many users.
Are Technica: The Mac Studio shows us exactly why Apple left Intel behind.
A few thoughts emerged after compiling that list.
First, general audience media such as the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal didn’t give top billing to the Mac Studio. This might reflect their knowledge of their audience, or advertising revenue considerations. Probably both.
That being said, placing the Mac Studio in the best-of-breed, product-oriented NYT’s Wirecutter segment isn’t banishment, especially with the “Performs Like a Pro” tag line.
The same can’t be said of the WSJ’s review, or lack thereof. Actually, the Journal only reviewed the Studio monitor and found it lacking. In particular, the camera failed to provide the superior picture promised by the March 8 Apple presentation. This was confirmed by other reviewers such as Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, adding the problem was acknowledged by Apple, and (hopefully) corrected by an upcoming update to the Studio Display’s software. I feel bad for the person or team in charge of preparing systems for reviewers, they probably knew about the bug and yet had to ship knowing what would happen…
Second, PC-oriented sites provided generally fair reviews. They pointed to the Mac Studio strengths in media-intensive developments and to its weaknesses when it came to game-oriented uses. At least one review mentioned the Studio’s relatively weaker performance against a high-end NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090. That GPU card sells for more than $2K and consumes close to 300W of power just by itself, to be compared to the whole Mac Studio rated at 370W maximum.
Third, more broadly oriented tech sites such as Ars Technica or The Verge didn’t fail to see the Mac Studio’s impact. The Verge called it a historic achievement and the aptly-named Ars Technica put its finger on the raison d’être of Apple Silicon: more computing power for less watts, and tighter hardware/software integration. Those claims have been made from day one, from the June 2020 Apple Developers’ Conference. Now, the Mac Studio adds resonance while broadly beating the much more expensive Intel-based Mac Pro from December 2019.
Fourth: Benchmarks. The reviews above provide plenty of those and I’m happy to provide another dose through the Puget Systems’ largish list of benchmarks that covers Intel and Apple devices and a wide range of applications, including Photoshop and other Adobe software tools. The Verge, in its review, makes the following point:
But the [M1]Ultra also enabled Alex to use features of Photoshop that he’s never been able to use before. The process that blew all of our professionals’ minds was the brushes. Alex was able to paint a white layer with a media brush, and it was instant — it really looked like he was painting with a physical brush. That tool requires so much computing power that many current machines can’t handle it. It was a breeze for the Studio.
I’ve reviewed a whole bunch of computers in my career that are aimed at this exact market. I’ve never reviewed one that seemed like it could change the sorts of things creators can make.
Fifth: negatives or, at least, mixed praise. The most common is “great but you don’t need it”, referring to one obvious fact: if you’re not dealing with complicated software development of multi-layered media creation, this machine isn’t for you. More pointed: a desktop machine, the Mac Studio isn’t upgradable — just like an iMac, or a MacBook. Also a nit: the Mac Studio doesn’t come with a keyboard or trackpad, or mouse. The latter still needs to be recharged belly-up, rendering it useless during the operation. Perplexing, to say it politely.
Sixth: the dual-processor question, my particular interest. Specifically, would the two M1 Max chips “fused” as one to make an M1 Ultra function as one. Or would the Ultra suffer a performance penalty? In broader terms, benchmarks in the reviews above seem to reveal the UltraFusion connects the two M1 Max halves without inflicting a sizable penalty. Connecting two processors (CPU or GPU) has been tried, with AMD’s Radeon and Nvidia’s SLI as examples, but never with such efficiency and software transparency.
While we are on the subject of efficiency, benchmarks above show how close a MacBook Pro (14”or 16”) powered by an M1 Max comes to a Mac Studio powered by the same M1 Max CPU — a rare lack of sacrifice. Only M1 Ultra-based Studios run really much faster — and are more expensive.
After the advent of the Mac Studio, many questions remain regarding the future of the Mac line. These range from an Apple Silicon-based Mac Pro, to the future of the M line of processors, newer iMacs and MacBook Airs and more. Topics for future Monday Notes.
[I’ll be on the road in France for the next three weeks, resulting in fewer or no Monday Notes. Or more politically oriented ones as our Paris place sits close to a long-standing Ukrainian rendezvous location, the Square Taras Chevtchenko on Boulevard Saint-Germain.]
— JLG@mondaynote.com
