Mac Studio

[Uncle E]

It's a natural upgrade for me, as I usually upgrade my machines every 5,6 years or so.

Yes, I’m in a similar situation. I need a new computer and this just happened to come out at the right time. If they had announced a new MacBook Air, I’d probably be buying that instead.

[Bombadil]

My BTO M1 mini cost €1,400. The lowest tier for this is €2000.
The M1 does great with native plugins. The thing that is lacking in my setup is lack of native support for a few of my go-to plugins. The M1 is fine. These machines are overkill for the majority of music makers. I'll revisit my choice in a few years.

[PAK]

shameless copy & paste quote from a thread over at our friends on GS:

According to Toms Hardware, an engineering sample of the AMD Threadripper Pro 5975WX scored 1686 and 27,603 on Geekbench 5 in single-core and multi-core respectively.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ryzen ... erformance

Did the poster even bother to read what they were posting?! Not only were the numbers taken from a pre-release engineering sample, but the link went on to mention how the methodology "wasn't fair", and that they only used it because it was "all that was available" for the moment, before suggesting that the 5975WX "may have been bugged" in terms of its multi-core performance run. It's in the two paragraphs below the quoted figure.

It's one thing to be excited about something. It's another to post numbers comparing two things when the numbers are taken from an article which specifically mentions problems, and has posted them in a "this is what you might expect" type context, where they're not meant as a definitive statement on the performance of the final product.

[dayjob]

i'm really happy with my macbook pro M1 Max. it's better than the 2018 macbook pro i9 6 core i had. doesn't burn lap, runs quiet, has ports and more ram etc. things that are native apple silicon run amazingly well on it and rosetta isn't bad on the other things.

sold the 2018 model for $1650 locally. i had bought it used from a reseller for about $2k so didn't lose much and used it for a few years.

prior to that was using a 12 core 2010 cheesegrater that i also bought used for cheap. sold it on ebay for decent price as well as my perfectly working G5 2.5 quad and an older G4 quicksilver mac pro. some guy bought them for his video rig at his company.. to churn away on some project. they all worked perfectly.

still have an athlon winXP laptop that works ok. but i haven't turned it on in years. if i start to miss audiomulch and get nostalgic i may dive into it for a track.

regardless... the new mac mini studio looks like a beast. were in need of a new computer it's what i'd get. plug and play. no configuration needed.

i dock my laptop w/a speedy little thunderbolt dock that is connected to all my peripherals and interface. one connection. easy peasy. no complaints. overall these M1 computers are well made and really good for mac users.

if i wasn't a logic/five12 numerology user i might've bailed on apple years ago.. but i also use an ipod for music so i'm kinda in the ecosystem and i'm fine w/that. i only upgrade when something is at end of life or i stumble into some cash or whatever.. even then.. i try to get as much as possible out of every machine and that's sort of how i treat everything in life. if it ain't broke.. currently driving a 2004 VW i bought new.

[jamcat]

Apple refuse to join the right to repair movement

“Right to repair movement.”
Is there a special Facebook avatar for that?
Or do repair rights activists just screech about it on forums?

[Synth Master Jedi]

Apple refuse to join the right to repair movement

“Right to repair movement.”
Is there a special Facebook avatar for that?
Or do repair rights activists just screech about it on forums?

When I think of right to repair, I think of all of the small, shady looking repair shops that I see where I live.

I would never walk into one of those shops with any of the Apple devices that I own. Who knows what kinds of parts those places use. There are a lot of scams around and fake/used/stolen parts being used.

If I have an issue with one of my Apple devices, I'll take it into an Apple store and walk out with a replacement, if it's under warranty.

[jamcat]

Or trade it in for an upgrade long before it becomes a problem.

[Hink]

Well, you need to convince yourself its worth the money. Not sure what your basing that fantasy on but its not anything concrete. Mac owners just ignore the problems such as recent memory leaks, M series battery life being 5 hours rather than 20. SSDs waering out sooner than they should. Yea light years ahead lol.

FWIW, my Macs are all old (2011, 2012, and 2013) and were even second hand. I’ve owned close to 20 PC’s and none ever lasted that long.

I work in IT. Youre talking BS or at least youre incompetent. Sorry but the 2 Billion Windows PCs in use today in Business speak for themselves. Interestingly, the Macs youre talking about were Intel. Lets see how the reliability of the M1 stacks up over time, bearing in mind, they arnt serviceable.

Will you please stop turning another thread into useless Mac vs PC bs.

You dont have to reply. Will you please stop spouting anecdotal rubbish.

well I will reply..want it to go poof...keep making it mac vs pc

[dellboy]

The US price for the base model is $1999.00 which in UK money converts to £1,518.34 at today's rates. I am in the UK and have just received a marketing email from Apple and I clicked on it and same the base model in the UK is £1999.99 which is almost £500 more, (or $650). Why is Apple stuff always so much more in the UK? I clicked right through the US site and it did not add VAT. Is this added on at a later date?

[Bombadil]

VAT probably has something to do with it. Shipping, import duties, but mostly VAT.

[Synth Master Jedi]

I clicked right through the US site and it did not add VAT. Is this added on at a later date?

Yes, US prices shown does not include tax. Prices for many other places in the world does include VAT.

Tax is different from state to state. Where I am it's about 9%.

[Bombadil]

In Germany, a basic Studio costs €2300. There's the VAT.

[PAK]

The US price for the base model is $1999.00 which in UK money converts to £1,518.34 at today's rates. I am in the UK and have just received a marketing email from Apple and I clicked on it and same the base model in the UK is £1999.99 which is almost £500 more, (or $650). Why is Apple stuff always so much more in the UK? I clicked right through the US site and it did not add VAT. Is this added on at a later date?

Yes. The rate varies and is based on the state where they deliver to. It's usually in the 5-10% area.

But, even if you take the 20% UK sales tax off, Apple frequently charge the UK 10-15% more than the USA. This only became the case when the pound dropped due to "Brexit uncertainties". Apple then adjusted their prices so the dollar and pound prices had parity.

When things recovered, amazingly Apple forgot to readjust the prices back. How knew?! If you don't like the prices don't buy. Then they might find time to remember to make pricing readjustments.

[ghettosynth]

Apple refuse to join the right to repair movement

“Right to repair movement.”
Is there a special Facebook avatar for that?
Or do repair rights activists just screech about it on forums?

Started by an American electronics repair engineer called Louis Rossman. He does live board repairs on Macs. You can make fun of it but hes changed the world. I doubt youll amount to anything as productive.

I follow this, Louis Rossman is an advocate, but he did not "start" the right to repair movement. The movement extends far beyond the right to repair your PC. The earliest legislation in the U.S. that I'm aware of is about the right to repair your own car. Farmers are key players in this movement as they have a long history of repairing their own equipment and new digitally controlled farm equipment impacts their ability to earn a living.

Wikipedia: "With the beginning of the 2000s the automotive industry came under scrutiny again: the first proposal of a right to repair bill for the automotive sector[30] was introduced by Joe Barton and Edolphus Towns to end the "unfair monopoly" of car manufacturers maintaining control over repair information that could result in independent shops turning away car owners due to lack of information."

The long roots of this idea, however, go back to the earliest part of the 20th century and consumer frustration with the idea of planned obsolescence.

This is a bit off topic for this thread, however, "right to repair" is not about being able to add ram or storage to your machine. That might be somewhat related, but right to repair addresses specific consumer unfriendly practices related to being able to repair your devices, either yourself, or through some other repair shop. That said, Apple has demonstrated pretty egregious practices in this, and for those of you who think that Apple Care is all that you need, you might want to read up on some of the cases that Louis Rossman has reported.

So as much as I'd like to be able to put standard storage drives in a Mac, it's not quite the same thing as not being able to do your own minor repairs on your Mac.

[PAK]

Some details, of these Apple processors, were known for a while. The M1 Ultra was the Jade 2C.

The interesting bit is there was supposed to be a Jade 4C, with double M1 Ultra performance. It seems they'd rather make the Mac Pro wait on the M2 for higher clock speeds along with extra cores. But, when you step back from Apple's marketing spin, it also tells you they didn't consider a double performance M1 Ultra as a worthy enough replacement for the 28 core Xeon.

The Studio config, of the M1 Ultra, also weighs 2lbs heavier. Most of that is probably heatsink. More efficient than Intel? Yep. But they're still eating a chunk of electricity and, based on their comparisons with the Intel 12900K, the M1 Ultra processor alone might eat upwards of 140W under load. The M1 Ultra being "up to 90% faster than a 16 core PC desktop" was also based on the "8 performance core" 12900k, rather than something like a 5950X (16 full performance cores)

I think, when people see the hugely better stats, few look at what Apple are actually comparing, and how much of it applies to very specific stuff like video exporting and running x streams of 8k video. Which is cool if you use it for that. But, for audio use, maybe not so important. Their SSD pricing may also be expected by now. But it's still shockingly bad.. Not to mention recent revelations about Mac OS SSD handling and desktop data integrity.

Sticking so much on one chip also makes me worry. Overall it's probably more reliable than having separate components. But it also means a single point of failure - whether graphics, memory, or CPU, which makes for cost prohibitive "repair" when out of warranty. Right to repair also also doesn't make much of a difference if nearly everything is contained on a single chip - then there's not a whole lot to repair!