burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Apple just finished announcing its first products of 2022. You can watch the video (an hour) at Apple dot com.

The highlight of this for me is the new Mac Studio. It is an all new computer they have never offered before. It has the M1 Max SOC in it, but you can also order it with their latest Apple Silicon, the M1 ULTRA. The ultra contains an integrated fusion of TWO M1 Max chips.

Suffice it to say, this new machine is many times faster than the fastest iMac Pro in their previous line-up. It is faster than most of the lower end Mac Pro configurations.

A new 27" 5K display with all sorts of audio and video features, ports, and its own processor is also offered for use with the Mac Studio and all their other computers.

If you have been waiting for Apple's " new 27" iMac," this is probably the replacement for the old Intel model. They said at the end of the presentation that they have "just one more replacement to go — the Mac Pro."

Shipping March 18, the M1 Max Mac Studio starts at about $2000. The M1 ULTRA Mac Studio starts at about $4000. The 27" Studio Display is $1600. Of course, everything has options...

The reviewers on YouTube and at the old fashioned review sites are going to have plenty to say about these soon. Comparisons with all sorts of Intel and AMD hardware will be interesting. Apple said some pretty boastful things in the presentation.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Having just received my MacBook Pro M1 for Christmas, I'll have to wait a couple more weeks before I think about the next step up. My wife needs a new computer but she's pretty much a minimalist and doesn't do image processing beyond her iPhone photos. By the time I need a new computer they'll probably come with FOUR M1 chips.

In the meantime I'll just limp along with what I have.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Yeah, I'm set for a few years with my lowly M1 MacBook Air. At some point one of my kids might get it when I upgrade. He's nursing a 2012 MacBook Pro, updated with 1TB SSD and 16GB RAM.

The new Ultra SOC is supposed to be a rocket.

happy sailor Loc: Ontario, Canada

Actually I am pretty disappointed with the announcement, while the new computer is a powerful beast I don't really see a replacement for the iMac with this offering.

I am more disappointed with the Studio Display, I think its price point is ridiculous to be honest. In Canada the display is $1999 with the regular anti glare glass (which is fine) and the standard stand. But put a stand that is adjustable on and the price jumps to $2499, really $500 for an adjustable stand.

I was waiting to see what they would announce for a display that I would use with my 14" MacBook Pro. After that announcement I will be going with the Benq SW321c (comes with an adjustable stand and a hood).

The new iPad with the M1 chip looks good for someone wanting that size iPad. My wife's iPad is getting long in the tooth so Apple might get me to part with some money for it but that's it.

Of course it is doubtful we can afford gas to drive the car to the Apple store these days, lol.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

We may yet see another iMac. Apple is full of surprises these days.

The Mac Studio is what a lot of professionals can use right now. It looks perfect for recording studios, small-to-mid-size video companies, ad agency designers, professional photo studios, software developers, and other creatives. It is less appropriate for home use. I wouldn't bother with the Studio Display, at those prices. It seems like a luxury add-on. But the base Mac Studio with a couple of third party displays would be great for a work-from-home office.

JamesCurran Loc: Trenton ,NJ

"many times faster"????? Really?

We've pretty much already hit the limit of silicon CPU designs. Physical restrictions (things like the speed of light) prevent any significant speed up there. Without a radical, revolutionary breakthrough (something that would lead the news when discovered), the best you could hope for is about a 10% speed increase.

And, even if we did have that breakthrough, we still have the bottlenecks of every other component (memory, video, internet, keyboard) slowing it down.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Measurably faster.

Yes, the speed of light is a limit. In this case it is overcome by placing the elements closer together.

neillaubenthal

From a limited number of videos I have been able to find…it’s not clear that the Max chip is any better for LR than the Pro so the Ultra seems likewise. The Pro and Max are significantly better than the M1 nothing but the video reported very limited improvement for either the Max or RAM more than 32…for still images. I think the studio is more aimed at video folk but might find a home at my house since it’s better than the M1 and waaaay better than my 201o Intel iMac.

I was hoping for a M1 Pro mini myself at something less than what the Studio costs…but that ain’t what we got. I think the larger iMac is dead and buried, the Studio and any 5K monitor re it’s replacement.

JamesCurran Loc: Trenton ,NJ

The silicon chips are already pretty crowded. The essence of microprocessors is millions of transistors, which in chips are three line traces next to each other. Power up the middle one, and current flows between the two outer ones. Cut the power to the center, and the current stops --- kind of like a light switch. Now, put another transistor too close, and the current jumps from one transistor to the next --- and suddenly nothing works.

Since there are far too many transistors in modern CPUs for a human to place them (The Intel Core i7 has 1.86 billion), for at least the last two decades, that work has been done by layout compiler software. And, while they have been tweaked over the years to optimize the layout more, it's not going to get a change of more than 5-10% in a generation.

The main change to newer chips these days is more and more level-1 and level-2 cache memory on the chip (about 99% of the transistors in modern chips are for the caches). This means making the wafer bigger & bigger, which means component become further apart.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

I quoted Apple. Let's wait for real-world tests with a broad array of typical applications (not benchmarks!). The usual review sites have all ordered samples, some of them multiple configurations. Their collective tests and comparisons will tell a pretty accurate story.

I doubt single core performance is improved significantly, but it was already pretty fast. This sort of computer is no better for web browsing, email, and office tasks than a low end M1 MacBook Air.

But for "extreme computing" (other than gaming, which no one in their right mind does on a Mac), it's likely a winner. Where the M1 Ultra is likely to shine is in VERY high end video production for top tier motion picture production, pro audio recording and mixing, software development, artificial intelligence applications, mathematical modeling, animation... Those are the things Apple showed people doing with it. They showed it rendering an impressive number of 8K video streams from the same timeline.

Once again, low power consumption, low fan noise, low profile, and low heat output are by-products of the SOC design. That has implications for server applications.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

The M1 Ultra has 114 billion transistors.
It performs up to 22 trillion operations per second
It supports up to 5 displays (four 6K displays and a 4K TV
It has *hardware* to encode and decode H.264, HEVC, and ProRes video formats.
It can contain up to an 8TB SSD with up to 7.4GB/s read speeds.
It has up to 128GB of unified memory (acting as both RAM and VRAM with no need to shuttle data back and forth).
It has an internal memory bus moving at 800 GBPS.
It has 20 CPU cores and up to 64 GPU cores, plus 32 Neural Engine cores.

Those are impressive specs, but what can it really do? That's what I want to see reviewers demonstrate.