I've been seriously wondering whether or not to even comment on this, but.....I kinda have to.
This might have been the most disappointing piece of Apple news I've heard since...well...ever.
The Studio Ultra is a strange configuration. $4000 base price for a cpu with the same single core performance as a $700 M1 MacMini.
On the other hand, the Studio Max hits a sweet spot, especially for music production. All Apple needed to do with the M1 MacMini to make it more attractive for media production was a different balance between the performance and efficiency cores and more memory, and they've done exactly that with the Mac Studio.
The conventional wisdom that there is an "Apple Tax" where you pay a premium for Apple is no longer true. Or at least it's a lot more difficult to make the case for it. You might be able to configure a 5900X PC with similar specs to a $2000 Studio Max for less money, but not much less. More importantly, it would mean giving up some features, like faster memory access or cooler/quieter operation. Things have changed.
Imagine how awesome they would be if they dropped the price by not including overkill video stuff...assuming, of course, that you don't want or use it.
That old saw has been around for ages, but it’s not based on the total cost of ownership (TCO).
Among other things, for about 7 years, I used to manage desktops for a major semiconductor company in their flagship wafer fab, where we had over 1,000 Macs and PCs on Windows as our responsibility, with the majority of machines being Mac because the user was given their choice of what to use, with all the systems locked so they couldn’t install or configure anything, with a crew of about 10 techs managing installation, repairs, replacements and backups. The techs were assigned jobs each morning based on what needed to be done and their interest, Windows or Mac OS.
We had fewer Mac techs and they had fewer jobs though there was a greater population of Macs, and the majority of the times the problems were a simple adjustment or upgrade, so they’d get done by lunch and could work on special projects. The PC techs were all CNEs and were hired because they were experienced, but the PCs generally had to be hauled back to our lab for hardware failures or total OS reinstalls, it took all day to go through their lists.
The PC techs would come in very convinced that the PC was a better choice and very much a better deal and were quite snooty about it, but after a few months would want to switch to the Macs because they saw their counterparts able to do other things besides the grunt work and would eventually switch over as openings occurred. Our PCs were high-end HP systems and were not cheap, very close in price to the Macs, because we tried to keep the performance the same, but the reliability and lower support costs made the Macs a much better choice because of the support side of things, and we had the numbers to show it.
It made me laugh at the time, and still does, because TCO is the true measure but too many managers and owners only looked at the initial purchase, not the after-sales support.
ps - Probably the reason the majority of us bought Fractal products is because of the sound, but later realized they are built like tanks. Cliff deliberately over-engineers the design so that they should be operating long after the competition breaks. That is why a Fractal costs a little more, and they make it up to us with stellar support, repeatedly upgrading the firmware and inventing better ways to improve the sound using fewer clock cycles so they can cram in even more stuff. That makes Fractal products be a much better deal. My second Helix floor spent over twelve months waiting for replacement parts so I bought an FM3 and ditched Line 6.
You've got the numbers, and I don't dispute that. But my personal experience is the exact opposite, as apples-to-apples (no pun intended) as I can get.
I wish I could believe what you were saying, but...
2011 PC laptop still working. Not every day, but when I need it. 2011 MBP was recycled several years go, which was after more than 1 logic board replacement and a full computer replacement under warranty. I don't actually remember what year the final computer was. I've bought my wife 3 MBPs since 2015 because of hardware failures they couldn't fix. Though, whenever she needs yet another one, an Air will do what she needs. So, at least the next hardware failure will be cheaper.
2 old desktops (3rd and 4th gen i-series) are still working. One is a work desktop running FreeBSD. The other is running ESXi. Both were originally built as hackintoshes, and both are mostly on their original hardware. One was delided to have the thermal compound replaced when it started overheating. RAM was upgraded in one of them (not due to a failure). Drives have been upgraded. Extra NICs have been added. Both are on 24/7 and used daily and had zero problems. The 3rd gen one was when I stopped buying Apples because the hackintosh was a better OS X experience than any of the Apple computers I owned.
I honestly just don't trust Apple hardware anymore. I got to know exec customer service too well. And, again, the hackintoshes performed better...I only built the second one because I needed another one, not because the first one had a problem. It literally never did.
You very well may be right about TCO, but that also depends on the use case. Any mac I would buy today would need about $1500 worth of additional hardware to do what my PC does. Or, I'd have to flip stuff I like. Mostly so I can over-pay for GPU and AI cores that I will never use and be forced to boot off storage technology that I flat-out don't trust. FWIW, I don't really trust Windows storage all that much either (compared to FreeBSD). But, at least I know it's actually flushing to disk instead of only guaranteeing cache writes. And at least in terms of quantity of RAM, it's M1 Pro machines or do the same thing I've been doing with laptops since like 2007 IIRC. Maybe it's fine...the way I've always approached it was 16GB as a bare minimum with discrete graphics (or only text terminals) or 32GB minimum if it's shared with CPU and GPU.
I was honestly excited for this announcement...I really don't want to give MS any more money. But, all it's done is solidify that I'm on PC for the foreseeable future.
If I cared about video....sure. They're awesome. But, I think Apple is finally forcing me to accept that I'm just a PC guy.
. But it was definitely a needed space. I had a 2008 Mac Pro for about 10 years. After that went to the Mini (prior to the M1) and it mostly suits all my needs but am definitely in need of some additional horsepower for video editing. The Studio Max should give it in spades.
