These are a few more meditations on the Mac Studio, and also on the challenges Apple faces with the entire range of products in the M1 era.

How M1 Changed the Game

M1 is both the solution and the problem. Under Intel, the Mac had grown dreadfully stagnant. It was a replay of the bad old days of RISC. Apple was completely at the mercy of a chip maker who had no real interest in advancing the platform. Apple had to get out of that very dysfunctional relationship. They did so by producing their own silicon. That is how the M1 was born

After the introduction of the M1 MacBook Air, an Apple exec admitted in an interview that the extreme power they put into their entry level laptop was not really their intention. In his words, they overshot. By the time they realized they had a monster on their hands, the dye was cast. The least expensive laptop Apple made could almost shame their $5,000 Pro machine equipped with the fastest processors produced by Intel.

You could begin to see the shape of the problem when Apple demonstrated the power of the M1 Air by giving it tasks that were normally reserved for the pro machines. They were suddenly talking about how many 4K streams a sub-$1,000 computer could manage. That was strange to watch. People didn’t believe Apple could deliver on their promise. As it happened, they underpromised.

This left many of us wondering where Apple would go next. If that was the bottom, what would the top look like? How could they market a mid and high range computer if the low range was doing the job of the pros? The answer to that question still isn’t very clear.

We watched the introduction of the M1 Pro and M1 Max. They were talking about tasks reserved for a well speced Mac Pro. No normal human needed that kind of power. Yet if you wanted something more than the i/o, RAM, and external monitor limitations of the M1, that is where the intermediate consumer had to go. Furthermore, they had to climb the price ladder to get there.

While more power was unlocked, fewer people could see themselves using what was once a relatively accessible MacBook Pro. It was more power than they needed and more money than they were comfortable spending. That said, those laptops were and are excellent! There are none better on the market in my opinion. But the challenges were just beginning.

Another Solution and Another Problem

In the mean time, the desktops were in serious need of attention. Apple gave us the M1 Mac mini and the M1 iMac. That wasn’t enough. Those were the equivalents of the low-end laptops. Desktop users were waiting on the bigger iMac with more power and options. They were hoping for an option with the M1 Pro. They didn’t get it.

Instead, we go the Mac Studio. It was so much better than anyone expected. Forget a desktop with the Pro. Studio started with the Max and went up from there. We got the M1 Ultra at the very top of M1 mountain. This time, Apple was not just implying. They were openly embarrassing their $50,000 machines. Some of us picked up and M1 Pro MBP because we didn’t need the Max. In fact, we were a little timid about getting something so beastly as the M1 Pro laptop. Now, we were being pushed into the Max chip anyway. It was that, or continue living with the limitations of M1 on the desktop. But what were we supposed to do with all that power?

I have the $2,000 Studio and I can tell you that I still don’t know. I’m grad to reclaim my laptop for use as a laptop. But my desk is now over-provisioned. I couldn’t personally relate to anything Apple was showing off in the keynote. Apple’s idea of creative pro seems to be limited to Pixar-level video production.

Apple seems to have forgotten about the 20% of their users who just want something powerful enough and maybe a little more than we need. We want to graduate from the low-end but not leave the stratosphere entirely. Instead, Apple skipped over us and went straight to the 1% of the 1%. There is nothing in the middle. The Studio is not even close to the middle.

The New Middle

Except, it kind of is. Welcome to the new middle. Today’s Apple entry point is yesterday’s MacBook Pro. Today’s MBP is yesterday’s Mac Pro. Today’s mid-range desktop beats everything from Yesterday. And tomorrow’s pro desktop is simply unthinkable. The new middle is really high. These are the ripple effects of Apple overshooting with the M1.

In this brave new world, we mid-rangers are the new pros whether we like it or not. The chip department did their job a little too well. Now, it is up to marketing to make sense of Apple’s messaging mess. They have an incredible computer that almost no one should buy. And it is the only option for people who never wanted this much power. That is not what we were asking for. That said, we’re here now. Let’s see what happens from here.

David Johnson