There is no need for suspense-building. I am going to buy a Mac Studio Max edition. I already have $2,000 worth of Apple gift cards set aside. My plan is to walk into an Apple Store on the 18th and walk out with my new desktop. I have been waiting for them to release a prosumer desktop. I was expecting a 27” iMac. I’m thrilled at what it turned out to be. I will most likely not be reviewing it because I am unqualified to do so in a way that would be meaningful to the people who can get the most use out of it. But I do have some thoughts on the product and would love to see if they are in line with yours. Lets get started:

A Better Name

Are you a Mac Professional? If not, then why would you ever consider buying a Mac Pro? It is a limiting naming scheme that borders on elitism. Do you need “professional grade” equipment? What does that even mean? It is pandering to the lesser angels that lurk within us all. I have always hated the Pro nomenclature. In most of Apple’s products, it is just a dog-whistle for expensive and premium. In the case of the Mac Pro, it means gaudily over-built to the point that no one should take it seriously. It, along with the Pro XDR Display is the gold Apple Watch of Macs.

Mac Studio, on the other hand, focuses on the gear without being pretentious. A creative studio might be your modest space where you dabble in colors. It might be a place where you make special effects for blockbuster movies. It could even be the rickety cart at the foot of your bed where you crank out a podcast with a $50 mic and a free DAW. Your studio is where you go to be your best self and make your mark on the world. A Mac Studio is the machine Apple thinks will inspire you to view yourself and your work that way. From a marketing standpoint, that is all upside.

The iMac Problem

Mac Studio begins its life by taking the life of another beloved product: the 27” iMac. Had the Studio been purely additive, few would have complained. But instead of focusing on the machine in its own rights, people are focusing on comparisons with a mythical, 27” iMac. A real product can never beat a mythical product in features, specs, performance, and price. The mythical iMac wins every time. It might not be fair. But it is how the world works. The thing people want will always be better than the thing they have.

It is a problem because people can easily imagine a machine that looks exactly like the 24” iMac, but 3” bigger. It could have the exact same internals and options and cost $300 - $500 more. That has got to be an easy product for Apple to produce. So why didn’t they? Apple wouldn’t even need to sell a lot of them to justify its existence. I personally believe the problem runs deep in Apple’s core.

The Prosumer Problem

Apple has never fully embraced the prosumer, and never will. These people consist of the xMac crowd, gamers, tinkerers, and enthusiasts. They want something more powerful than the consumer offerings without having to pay professional prices. They would also love robust upgrade options for internal components. Essentially, they want a Mac that is built like a decent PC. The word, “hacintosh" is tattooed somewhere on their body.

Their prime directive is to get as much power as possible while spending as little money as possible. They are the kind of people who hang out on Apple discussion boards and complain about gaps in the product line from the comfort of their cheap, cobbled together PC. Apple does not care about this market, and never has. You might point to the original Mac Pro or even the G4 Cube as counter examples. But you are forgetting to convert those prices to today’s dollars. They were extremely expensive for their time. The neck-beards living in their mother’s basement found reasons not to buy them.

The current iMac is not the product they are looking for. Neither is the Mac Studio. Like always, what they want is that mythical in-between product. For the record, the 27” iMac wasn’t that product for them either. They tend to despise all-in-ones. The 27” iMac was the closest Apple was willing to come to pretending that they cared about that market.

Apple wants to sell you something that is entry-level or professional grade with no confusing options between the two. If you want to save money, get the basic product and go home. If you want a lot of power, get the machine with a lot of power and stop complaining about price. If you want the tweener device that does not excel at anything in particular, get a PC. Apple products are the alternative to that PC lineup and not merely another option with a different OS.

Another Pro Machine

It would have been nice had the Studio offered a prosumer option with something like an M1 Pro chip instead of starting with the much more expensive M1 Max chip. This is not a consumer or prosumer machine. It is yet another pro machine for media professionals. The notebook line has the same issue. There is a gap between consumer and professional laptops running macOS. Apple fears the middle which would cannibalize other products they would rather be selling.

When I watched the product introduction, I couldn’t help but notice the lack of any consumer, or even prosumer scenarios. In some tasks, this machine is more powerful than a $50,000 Mac Pro. Comparisons to the 27” iMac were just a way for Apple to say that the two machines and workloads have no business being compared at all. They are different machines that targeted different audiences. Apple was also making the subtle hint that a machine like the 27” iMac has no place in their lineup or thought process. That era, such as it was, is over.

If you were trying to live the lifestyle of the Apple prosumer, it is time for you to decide. You are either a consumer or a professional. They are banking on more people moving up to the professional level than moving down to the consumer level. If my choices are any indication, they are probably right. That said, it still stinks that the most exciting thing Apple has released in a long time is just another pro machine that most people cannot exploit. Almost no one has the kind of software and workflow that would allow them to take advantage of the massive, theoretical performance increase offered by a pro machine.

Theoretical Improvements

When I talk about theoretical improvements, I am not suggesting that Apple’s performance claims are false. They are definitely true. You will get amazing performance. The M1 Pro is miles ahead of the M1. And the M1 Max is miles ahead of the M1 Pro. But you will only see those massive performance gains if you have the very specific workflows those chips were designed to accelerate.

A regular M1 chip is already blink fast on the interface. Upgrading it to a Pro doesn’t make the interface feel perceptively faster. It might be faster. But the difference is not detectible by humans. It is a little like making something with such a high resolution that humans literally cannot see the difference in the resolution increase. This is why I call the performance gains theoretical. If you are not doing the kinds of things that exploit the performance of the chips, you will never see the performance gains in real life.

If you are coming from something like an M1 machine, it is highly doubtful you will see the difference by moving up to an M1 Max. If you are using an M1 machine, you probably weren’t doing the kinds of tasks for which the Mac Studio is intended anyway. If you are coming from a consumer Intel machine, it is unlikely that the M1 Max will give you anything that you wouldn’t get from the M1.

Again, I need to be clear that there are definitely real differences between the chips. Do you do ProRes video editing? If not, there is a good chance this pro machine would give you the same improvement that you would get from a $50,000 Mac Pro – which is to say, none at all. Theoretically, you will have one of the fastest machines on the planet. Good luck finding practical applications for it.

Practical Improvements

One of the biggest practical improvements when picking up a Mac Studio is 32GB of unified memory. That is a big deal: the kind that can make a practical difference in day-to-day tasks. If you are using 8GB of memory on an M1, or 16GB on an Intel box, it is hard to believe that you won’t feel the difference. RAM is always one of the most impactful upgrades you can give to a computer. 32GB is a lot.

The machine will also be whisper quiet. I don’t think we need to wait for the reviews to call this one. I have a notebook with an M1 Pro chip in a 14” body. I have never heard the fans and I do a lot of audio production on this machine. The thermal system is going to be lightyears ahead of this laptop. If you are tired of the days of noisy machines that throttle when things are just starting to get good, the Studio will be the solution to your problem.

You will also not have to worry about whatever comes next in the lineup. The entry-level Studio is about as future proofed as it gets. It will be a long time before normal workflows catch up to what the Max can enable. And it will also be a long time before you hit the limits of 32GB of unified memory. If you are the kind of person who hangs onto a computer for many years, this one will serve your needs for a very long time.

While it might not feel like an advantage in the beginning, it is a big deal to be able to choose your own monitor. Apple now has a nice offering that will cost you a lot of money. But it is money that you will only have to spend once. It will likely survive the transition to several new computers. If you already have a monitor you are happy with, you don’t need to add the price of another one. And if you want to upgrade your monitor down the road, that will always be an option for you. Don’t wait for Apple to release an affordable 32” monitor. You can buy one right now for less than $300. No iMac can do that.

You might also be able to put away the unreliable hub you were using and enjoy the generous port selection right on the machine. There are 11 ports altogether on the Studio. Four of them are Thunderbolt 4 with two more USB-C ports on the front. The Ultra model makes all 6 of them Thunderbolt. 2 USB-A ports, an HDMI port, and a high-impedance headphone jack round out the offerings. Best of all, every one of those ports is going to work perfectly every time, unlike third-party hubs. The new Mac Studio has you covered no matter how you want to use it.

Price Vs. Value

Some might be tempted to say that the Mac Studio carries a bad price but a good value. The most basic Studio will run you $2,000. The most basic Ultra will run you $4,000. Neither price includes a monitor, keyboard, or mouse. In that way, it is just like buying a Mac mini. If you could have speced up a 27” iMac to Studio levels, it would have cost you a lot. But few people would have done that. The iMac Pro started at $5,000 and wouldn’t have been as good of a computer.

What I am saying is that while the Studio prices are high, they are also fair for the value you get. The problem is that few people were asking for that kind of performance. A high-performance race car might carry a fair price. But it would make no sense to spend that kind of money on a car that you just need for regular car things. It is a good price for what you get. But what you get is something only the rarest of professional media creators were asking for.

Should you get it? That depends on if your current M1 machine really can’t handle your current workload and if the price proposition works out for you. I do three podcasts a week and I write 3,000 words a day. I live in my computer from the time I get up in the morning to almost the time that I go to bed. I don’t need this machine because I can’t exploit its benefits. But I want it. And I had the money ready to go to whatever Apple introduced. This is what they introduced.

My desktop will be a beast and my laptop will be a laptop again. I’m happy enough. But part of me still wishes it was something more geared to prosumers. I can’t recommend this computer for any but rarified professionals. Perhaps that will change when I get mine on Friday. I’ll let you know how it goes.

David Johnson