The Mac Studio satisfies a market segment hungry for an advance, given that the iMac Pro was discontinued and the Mac Pro hasn’t seen a meaningful update in almost three years. Although this desktop — which looks like a pair of Mac minis stacked on top of each other — doesn’t get the “Pro” designation Apple reserves for its top-of-the-line hardware, it’s very much aimed at creatives and others whose thirst for computational muscle is unquenchable.
Sure, mere mortals could buy one for mundane uses such as working on the web, e-mail, productivity, photo management, social media, communication, music and even gaming. But, with prices starting at $1,999 — and that doesn’t include a display, keyboard or mouse/trackpad — it’d be akin killing a mosquito with a bazooka: Impressive, but an outsized waste of resources.
I finally got my hands last month on a Mac Studio and the 27-inch Studio Display that Apple launched at the same time. I’ve been using it as my everyday computer, temporarily bumping a 2020, 27-inch iMac off my desk. My everyday needs fall into the aforementioned mundane category, so I pushed the machine in different ways. It did not disappoint.
The specs
Even if Apple hasn’t slapped a “Pro” moniker on the Mac Studio, the specs even at the lowest end tell you what’s going on here. My review unit was the base model, a $1,999 offering. The minimum amount of memory is 32 gigabytes, and the least amount of storage you can get is 512 GB. That latter is surprising, as I’d consider 1 terabyte to be the cost of admission for a machine on this tier, but that adds $200 to the cost.
This unit has the M1 Max processor, the next step up from the M1 Pro chips found in the company’s 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro laptops. The Mac Studio is also available with an even beefier chip, the M1 Ultra, which is essentially two Max processors bolted together. However, that will cost you at least $3,999; it comes with 64 GB of RAM and the 1-TB drive.
The CPU on my system has 10 cores – two efficiency cores, which are used for most day-to-day tasks – and eight performance cores, for when you need to put the pedal to the metal. The graphics processor has 24 cores. There’s also a neural engine for your AI needs with 16 cores. These components – the CPU, the graphics, the neural engine and memory – are all part of the system-on-a-chip design, making the transfer of data between them more efficient and thus faster.
The downside to this setup, however, is that you cannot upgrade a Mac Studio after the fact, unlike the Mac Pro. Spend those big bucks wisely, because what you get is what you have for the life of the machine. Want to max out your Mac Studio? That will cost you $8,000, and that’s before adding any peripherals or a display.
Fortunately, the Mac Studio has a slew of ports and connections that make it possible to add external expansion. On the back of the device are four Thunderbolt 4/USB-C ports, which also work as DisplayPort connections for up to four monitors; a 10-Gigabit Ethernet port; HDMI; two USB-A ports; and a headphone jack. On the front are two USB-C ports and a memory card slot; on the M1 Ultra version the two ports are Thunderbolt 4.
Performance
When Apple launched its M1 chips in late 2020 inside new MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs, reviewers (and competitors) were impressed with its power, particularly as it relates to the chip’s energy efficiency. The M1s are built on the same foundation as Apple’s A-series processors for iPhones and iPads.
The Max and Ultra processors step up that game. I use iStat Menus, an app that runs in the background to monitor various aspects of my Macs’ performance, and I was surprised to see that most of my activities barely ever kicked off the performance cores in the CPU, relying 95 percent of the time on the efficiency cores.
Video rendering nudged the faster cores into action, as did some 3D gaming (EVE Online), and it took running the Cinebench benchmark test to pin all 10 cores. But even then, the Mac Studio’s fan never kicked in. In fact, I never heard the fans, even though some early owners of the desktop said fan noise was a persistent problem. That was likely fixed with new firmware in a subsequent update.
And speaking of gaming: I think the Mac has a real opportunity with its new processor and system design to erase its reputation as a weak game platform. It’s certainly up to developers to take advantage of the graphics and computation capabilities, but the foundation is certainly there.
Studio Display
The Studio Display looks great, with a bright, crisp screen in a stylish aluminum design. It’s specifically engineered to be friendliest to set up and use with Apple’s newest Macs, though it will work with older Macs and PCs. However, the specs and the overall look and feel are familiar.
That’s because it’s essentially the same screen found on Apple’s now-discontinued 27-inch iMac. It’s a little brighter, but the 5K resolution and the 60-Hz refresh date back to 2014. Side by side with my 2020 iMac, I can’t tell a difference. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because both displays are a pleasure to use. But display technology has come a long way in the past eight years, and it’s a shame Apple didn’t use some of it, particularly considering that the price starts at $1,599, and can go as high as $2,299.
The Studio Display has one Thunderbolt 3 port, to which you can connect the video source, and three USB-C ports. There are six speakers, with woofers, that support Dolby Atmos/Spatial Audio. And there’s a built-in webcam that is a modest improvement over Apple’s notoriously bad webcams of the past. The company released a firmware update that improved it, but it still needs work.
But the most interesting thing about the Studio Display is hardware that seems underutilized. Inside its case is an A13 processor – the same chip that powers the iPhone 11 – and 64 GB of internal memory. The camera’s capabilities and audio processing uses the chip, but that’s a lot of underutilized power. In theory, the Studio Display could run iOS, the iPhone operating system.
Buy one and stay tuned, maybe?
