Apple Did It Again! The Meh, The Outrageous And The Exciting

A developer’s perspective on Apple’s newest products

You know that feeling of being torn between buying the Porsche of your dreams and a house? I’m somewhere there. Apple’s latest product announced on the 8th of March are in some ways just as “meh” I predicted they would be. In other ways, though, left me pondering and oscillating between feelings of outrage, boredom and sheer excitement. I suppose, we can all agree so, it was a textbook Apple event!

The meh…

Trying not to dwell too much on Apple Tim’s wonky collar, and the new Apple TV+ shows advertised, which while indeed, exciting and generally inspiring are still more of an afterthought for most Apple users, and adding Friday Night Baseball exclusives won’t change that. Forgive my ignorance, but does any other country care about baseball than the land of Uncle Sam? So, I guess, thank you, Apple, for a completely non-inclusive and culture ignorant feature. A completely subjective thumbs down on this one.

And since we’re talking about uninteresting updates, we now have iPhones 13s in green. The excitement… Can’t describe it. The update sounded as if Apple invented a new green. It’s just a green phone. No need to get yer knickers in a bunch about it. Most people use a case, which means, the colour will be known only by them, and the next person they’re going to hand it off to.

In a similar vein, we, of course, have a new iPhone SE3, just as I predicted, and pretty much as uninteresting I suspected it will be. While much faster and better at improving photography and video through software with the A15 Bionic chip, improved battery life, tougher glass and better environmental protection from the elements and drops and added 5G, I can’t say it was very exciting. One aspect is true, though. It is indeed the best iPhone SE there ever was, and if you’re looking to get an SE, this is the one to get. Hopefully, the advertised battery-life is not just marginally better. The 5G, as stated before, looks great on paper, but where will most folks use it, remains an unanswered question.

The outrageous…

I’m going to have to admit that the outrage here has more than one meaning. Apple released a new variant of the M1 — which now clearly shows they’re not iterating as quickly with the M architectures as many predicted — the M1 Ultra. Funnily enough, last year when the Pro and Max were launched, I did say to myself: all we need is “ultra” now, to make naming even more silly and confusing than ever before. I guess Siri now knows my thoughts goo and sent them up to daddy Tim because lo and behold, we have M1 Ultra.

My initial reaction was that the last thing anyone needed was this new SOC. While the technology itself is cool, I already felt the M1 Max was nothing but a muscle-flexing exercise and when you look at the global energy crisis, you put it into even more context with the ban on Russian oil, which could lead to an even more acute crisis across the world, the absolute last thing we ever needed was an SOC that sucked more power than the previous just so one could generate a video, or run some AI in half the time.

My immediate concern was the environmental impact such a chip would result in. Some of my concerns were alleviated by the new UltraFusion architecture which turns essentially turns two M1 Max SOCs into one, but I keep feeling that people were pretty darn happy with the M1 Pro and M1 Max as it is, and what nobody really asked for was the M1 Ultra. The engineer in me is impressed by its outrageous capabilities like the 20 core CPU, 64 Core GPU, the 800Gbps/s memory bandwidth, 128 GB unified memory and the 7.4 GB/s SSD, but equally outraged by where this all could lead to.

Apple calls it a “monster chip”, but traditionally, monsters are not something you’d want in your home…

But in true Apple fashion, there is one more thing. This chip had to go into something, and what Tim came up with was… the Mac Studio. I knew about the rumours, so I wasn’t overly surprised. What did surprise me, though, was the design of it, which is just as ugly as predicted by last-minute rumours.

It’s essentially a tall Mac mini. A bit like a club sandwich, where the top part is basically just for ventilation. I get it. The M1 Max and Ultra needs to dissipate heat somehow, but to date, it’s probably the laziest design I’ve seen from Apple. We’ll nickname it “Mac Chungus”, courtesy of my best buddy Andrew Gribben and Mac Chungus apparently consumes 1000 kWh less energy per year than a similar high-performance PC. Yeah, those numbers don’t sound bad, but I would have preferred percentages. I feel like what Apple is saying is “Look, it uses less power, OK?” while hinting we should just stop wondering how efficient really this new setup is.

What many might have missed, though, was a passing remark towards the end:

One more product to go — the Mac Pro

This makes the Mac Studio the replacement for the iMac Pro, which is perhaps not a bad thing after all, but also an entirely unnecessary machine for 99% of software engineers. But at least it has ports. Lots of them, both in the back and the front.

The exciting…

If I have to be honest, the excitement part is kind of slim and not at all in the form of OMG, OMG, I don’t know what to do with myself. Just a level or two above “meh”, but at least there’s something I truly look forward to. Well, more than one thing…

While on the surface, the iPad Air upgrade might not seem like anything to write home about, but adding the M1 chip to the iPad Air does present an interesting opportunity to some developers. This iPad together with the Magic Keyboard does effectively make it an 8-core MacBook Air in many ways. Even for developers, especially those building Apple apps. While perhaps not a 1-to-1 replacement for the MacBook Air, it is a worthy and more versatile alternative at a very similar price-point, and that’s nothing to sneeze at!

Add to that the fact that it comes in 6 colours, a better 12 megapixel camera with centre stage and 5G connectivity with the obvious benefits of a touch-screen and Apple Pencil capability, and you have yourself a very compelling machine. At this point, most people I would have recommended a MacBook Air to I would now tell to consider the iPad Air as well, before forking out their hard-earned cash.

What got me truly excited though is something I have been waiting for many years now. One of my favourite ever Apple products will forever be the Thunderbolt monitor. It was under $1000, and it was — and still is — a fecking gorgeous screen to stare at, and yes, that’s the correct choice of words there. I would sometimes just let the Apple TV screen-savers run and stare at them. It was a religiously relaxing experience, and Apple is bringing it back. Kind of…

Meet the Apple Studio Display. A slim 27”, 5K retina screen. It’s 30 degrees tiltable and if you fork out some extra cash it’s also height-adjustable for an extra 450 euro, and if you have a problem with light reflections you can get nano-texture glass too for an extra 250 bucks. It comes bundled with an A13 Bionic chip that controls a 12 megapixel camera, 3-mic array Apple claims to be studio-quality, but I for one highly doubt, and a 6 speaker sound system, which I presume will be a little better than what the new 16” M1 Pro offers, but not by a lot. Finally, port-wise, you get 3 USB-C ports and a Thunderbolt port that can charge with 96 Watts of power.

In Europe, to get all this, you’ll need to fork out 1799 euros. I suspected the next Thunderbolt monitor won’t be below 1000 bucks, and I was right. Calling it cheap, is something I will most definitely not do. I want to avoid getting lynched in the comments. Calling it affordable, however, I will cautiously do. This is a nice screen. It’s not only that, but it’s a 5K screen that fully integrates with the Apple ecosystem, and having had third-party screens in the past that I was never overly happy with — though 30% of the price — I can tell you, as a software engineer who stares at screens for a living, a good one will make a huge difference. If the old Thunderbolts are anything to go by, the Apple Studio monitors will easily last a decade, and still feel like great screens to look at.

The Apple Studio monitor is a good investment for most professional work-from-home software engineers.

I will most definitely get the new Apple Studio Display, and will of course write about it too, so stay tuned by subscribing. And if you’re into more pragmatic Apple-related thoughts, here’s a few more stories you can read.

Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, Lego fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer!