I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited about an Apple announcement as I was this week after Apple’s March 2022 event. And all that excitement comes form just one part of the presentation: the announcement of the Mac Studio. For me, the Mac Studio is the ultimate Mac for what I do, and it is something I think many creators like myself have wanted for a long time. To explain why I’m so excited, let me rewind a little…

Ever since I got my M1 MacBook Pro last year, I have been waiting to see if Apple would release a higher end Mac mini. While I have switched from an older Mac Pro to using my MacBook pro as my main Mac for all of my work and day to day computing needs, this was only ever a stop gap solution until a replacement desktop was released that was powerful enough to suit my needs. While this setup is working well for me, there are disadvantages to using a laptop as a desktop replacement long term, especially when you want to still use it as a laptop. I didn’t want to go all out on a new Mac Pro until after the Apple Silicon transition, and even then, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go down the route of a large tower again. I had assumed that Apple would release a higher end Mac mini like their previous intel versions, which would have sufficed. However, a few days before the Apple event rumours started to arrive about a new Mac, called the Mac Studio.

At first I thought these rumours were too good to be true, especially as some of them seemed to be coming from a source without a previous track record. However, as the event approached, the momentum on this suggested it would be a real thing.

We weren’t disappointed.

Not only did Apple announce an entirely new Mac line, but they also announced a new chip, which by itself would have been an incredible announcement.

Coupled with the new Studio Display, the Mac studio seemingly takes the place of the older and now discontinued 27” iMac in the lineup. While this has upset some people, there are big advantages to having the display and the computer separate. The last time I owned an iMac the display died on me, but the computer part was still fine, but there was effectively no way to use it. Thats always been one of the disadvantages of the iMac. If you have a problem with your display, you have to send your whole computer in for repair. At least with the Mac studio and Studio Display, you can always swap out the display if you need to and keep working.

Apple Mac Studio and Apple Studio Display

The new Mac is also something people have wanted for a very long time. For as far back as I can remember, people have fantasised about the mythical mid-range Mac and now it actually exists.

(The cube is dead, long live the “not quite a cube”)

More powerful than a Mac mini, but without the options and expandability of a big tower, the Mac Studio fits this description perfectly…well, except for one thing: It’s actually more powerful than the most expensive Mac Pro, for a fraction of the cost.

Which brings us to the M1 Ultra, Apple’s newly announced über-chip. Essentially two M1 Mac chips fused together so it acts like a single processor, this new chip is pretty incredible. The benchmarks Apple posted indicate that this has enough CPU power to beat the 28 core Xeon (seemingly confirmed by leaked geek bench results), currently found in the highest end Mac Pro, as well as enough GPU clout to beat a Nvidia Geforce 3090 (not confirmed yet). Configuring a Mac Pro with equivalent options will cost you over €20,000 but a similarly specced Mac Studio with the full spec M1 Ultra will be around €5000. Even the Graphics Card Apple references, an Nvida Geforce Ti 3090 is over €2000 alone. While there’s already people complaining about the price, in terms of performance for a Mac, it’s pretty great value for money. It really makes you wonder, if this is the power Apple is putting in its mid range Mac Studio, what kind of monster processor is going to be in the Mac Pro?

Apple also released a lower-end Mac Studio with an M1 Max Chip in it. I think for many users this will be sufficient. For photographers especially, an M1 Max version will be more than enough to meet your needs. For me, using my M1 MacBook Pro, the most limiting factor has been the 16gb ram ceiling, so even getting this up to 32gb will be a big boost, and more than sufficient for anyone working on still images, or non-motion design. For Video, or Motion Graphics users, the entry level M1 Ultra version is probably sufficient for the most part, with 3d users and high end video editors, effects artists, or colourists using DaVinci or other GPU heavy application, the ones most likely to take advantage of the full GPU cores with the top end M1 Ultra chip.

But one of the biggest advantages of these new Macs, which I haven’t seen a lot of people talking about, is the energy efficiency. People tend to dismiss energy efficiency in a desktop computer, but with energy costs rising significantly around the world, the energy savings of the M1 chipset shouldn’t be discounted. With Apple stating that the savings are 100watts on peak performance vs an intel chip, and with high end discrete GPUs also using significant power, over the course of a year, this could add up. It mightn’t make a huge difference for an individual artist, but with a small to mid-sized studios that have a lot of Macs, this could end up saving a lot over the course of a year, and at the moment, every little bit helps.

I haven’t even talked about the Studio Display. I’m also really happy about this. While it is expensive, there aren’t really that many alternatives to this. There Arte lots of 4k displays, but there is only really one other 5k display out there: The LG 5K display, but these are next to impossible to get any more, especially here in Europe. They also don’t have the speaker and microphone setup, nor the same level of webcam. Either way, it’s a good option for those who want a fist-party display. There are lots of 4k or ultra wide options for those for whom this is too expensive. A higher refresh rate or proper HDR options would be nice but not really necessary for the majority of users. Even so, there are already rumours of a pro version of the studio display with those options coming in the future.

Overall, it’s nice, if a little weird to see Apple actually giving users what they’ve asked for. It’s kind of unnerving! Given that this is Apple we’re talking about, there will be lots of people for whom these new Macs are somehow an abomination, the worst thing ever and beckon the imminent end of Apple. As a long term designer, motion graphics artist and photographer, this is the perfect Mac for me, and I’m thrilled that it exists. I think the Mac Studio is one of the best Macs Apple has ever created.

Now to just find a way to pay for one!

Some additional notes

If you’re considering one of these, and speccing one out, here are some recommendations:

Get the most ram you can afford. You can’t upgrade it later, so consider future proofing now. Even so 32gb will be fine, but if you can afford 64gb, consider it.
Get at least 1tb of an internal drive. While you may be tempted to save here, and keep everything on an external drive, you will be suprised how much various applications and their support files eat up internal drive space. It’s also wise to keep your Lightroom Library, or Capture One catalogue on the system drive for optimum performance. In my experience, 512gb won’t be enough, especially if you use a lot of applications.
The entry level one is surprisingly powerful on its own, so if you are a photographer, or aren’t doing a lot of video, this will be more than enough. However, if you are on a budget, and you are doing video, even this will be a powerful machine. I’m currently working off an M1 Mac, and its capable for video work. An M1 Max would be equivalent to a high end i9 in intel and still a great option, even at the price. Just up the storage, and consider getting extra Ram. This will probably serve you better than upping the processor. Of course, if you can afford to go the whole hog, then have at it!

All Images courtesy of Apple