I Was Right About the Mac Studio!

It IS in trouble…

A couple of weeks ago, I speculated about the possibility of the forthcoming Apple silicon-based Mac Pro replacing the Mac Studio.

The problem with the Mac Studio, I said, is that it is “too powerful”. Where’s the headroom for a Mac Pro? How do you distinguish between the two? At which point do you draw the line between stupidly powerful and even more stupidly powerful?

More importantly, how do you avoid confusing top-end buyers and those who want to buy the most powerful Mac at the most cost-effective price?

If the latest rumours from Mark Gurman are anything to go by, it seems as though Apple is struggling with this concept, too.

I don’t want to be one of those annoying people who say, “well, I told you so”, but I did tell you so.

No update to the Mac Studio this year?

If the M2 Mac mini update wasn’t quite enough for you and you’re subsequently holding out for an update to the Mac Studio, you might be in for a very long wait.

An indefinite wait, possibly.

According to Apple rumour mill veteran Mark Gurman, Apple may not launch an updated Mac Studio with an ‘M2 Ultra’ chip in 2023. The reason? Apple is concerned about the computer’s similarity with the upcoming Mac Pro.

See? I told you so.

Gurman goes on to say that the proximity of the Mac Pro’s capabilities to those of the Mac Studio could force Apple to wait until the M3 or even the M4 generation before updating the latter.

This neatly ties in with recent suggestions (once again, from Camp Gurman) that Apple has scaled back its plans for the new Mac Pro. Rather than being made available with a super-powered ‘M2 Extreme’ chip, the new top-end Mac will apparently stop at the M2 Ultra.

That literally leaves no room for the Mac Studio at all. And it raises many questions.

How can the Studio and Pro coexist?

‘Pro’ and ‘Studio’ are marketing names — nothing more. They have absolutely no bearing, meaning, or consequence for the Macs to which they’re attached. Indeed, the new-found ubiquity of the ‘Pro’ moniker across Apple’s lineup has further diluted its original high-end connotations.

The more I think about it, the more I can’t imagine a world in which the Mac Studio and Mac Pro co-exist, particularly with the M2 Pro-powered Mac mini nibbling at the former’s heels.

In a theoretical world where both did exist, who’s a Pro user? Someone who demands modularity and the ability to pop in a different graphics card when the project requires it? How big is that market for Apple, really? How much are those people willing to spend on that ability?

An M2 Ultra-powered Mac Pro would be an updated Mac Studio, albeit in a completely different form factor and with a different name for the marketing team to use. Launching both that and an M2 Ultra Mac Studio would make zero sense and cause a monumental headache for Apple’s pricing strategy.

Your brain hurts when you consider the connotations, doesn’t it?

Removing the middle man

Apple silicon is its own worst enemy. It has completely revolutionised the Mac lineup and democratised super-powered computers for macOS users.

We no longer have to worry about spending a fortune on as much memory as possible. There are more CPU and GPU cores available than most users will ever need — even in the base models. Like the iPad, a Mac you buy today will last many years and feel fresh for far longer than any of us have been used to.

However, I get the distinct impression that this has presented Apple with a huge challenge when it comes to their high-end Macs.

The Mac Studio is a wonderful computer, but it almost feels as though it was a rush job; the Mac Pro, for whatever reason, wasn’t ready, so why not just quickly smash out a fat Mac mini with oodles of power and utility?

The apparent need for Apple to scale back its Mac Pro plans are testament to this. Producing an ‘M2 Extreme’ Mac at scale would be far too expensive for such a small subsection of Apple’s user base and would steal vital production resources from more popular products.

They’ve painted themselves into a corner again, haven’t they? The only way out is to drop the Mac Studio entirely and focus on the Mac Pro, as these new rumours suggest is indeed Apple’s strategy. That will piss off current Mac Studio owners and those holding out for a new one, but with my Tim Cook hat on, it’s the only route forward.

Final thought

I’m not daft enough (stop laughing at the back) to think that Apple doesn’t plan its product launches many years in advance, but I think we’re witnessing something rather different taking place with the high-end Mac strategy.

It feels like a mess. The delayed appearance of the new Mac Pro seems entirely unaccounted for and indicative of smartly controlled, silenced chaos behind the scenes.

Apple will absolutely have mapped out the transition to its own chips across the Mac lineup. It’ll take two years, they told us over two years ago. Back then, I’m sure the Mac Studio was firmly in its plans, as was the updated Mac Pro. But something went wrong.

Supply chain issues, COVID, changes in personnel — it could be related to anything, and we’ll never know the truth. One thing is for sure, though — there’s going to be a lot of disappointed power users out there if the Mac Studio really does go the way of the original HomePod.

Oh. Hang on.

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Originally published at https://markellisreviews.com on February 6, 2023.