Rambling about the Mac Studio
A few sporadic & unhelpful reflections on a year with the Mac Studio.
Apple announced the Mac Studio as the main entrée of their March 8th 'Peek Performance' event, which also saw the debut of the modestly updated 3rd generation iPhone SE and 5th generation iPad Air. The Studio was an entirely new category of Mac, featuring the new Studio suffix, M1 Ultra chip, and brand identity. Overnight calling your creative workspace an 'office' became gauche: the office was out, studio was in!
It was also the first desktop Mac to feature a chip more powerful than the existing M1 on the iMac & Mac mini. Featuring the M1 Max introduced with the MacBook Pro the previous fall & a new M1 Ultra; the Mac Studio quickly became one of the most powerful Macs ever created. Single-core scores were nearly double the 2019 Mac Pro (1377 v. 2378, according to Geekbench 6), and multi-core benchmarks showed a 59% higher benchmark than a 28-core Mac Pro. I'm too much of a pleb to appreciate all the nuance in the numbers, but when a $3999 Mac Studio could arguably go toe-to-toe with a $12,999 Mac Pro in many performance areas, it made heads turn.
New Name, Who Dis?
The Mac Studio arrived at my doorstep in early May, 2022.
The Mac Studio also introduced an exciting new tier of Mac Ownership. Many people don't need a Mac Pro but would benefit from a boost in performance over an iMac or mini. For them, the Mac Studio provided a high ceiling in performance and capability that will serve people well for many years. I consider myself in this camp in that while I didn't need Studio performance all the time, I would routinely find myself bumping up against the limits of M1. And while I envied the concept of a Mac Pro, I couldn't rationalize the price for my use case. The Mac Studio scratched that itch. Looking back, the M2 Pro Mac mini would have been better for me, but that wasn't available a year ago. I'm curious how many people are better served by what the Mac Studio does that would otherwise be moved into buying a Mac Pro.
Looks
Despite its homely appearance, the Mac Studio is an incredibly powerful lil’ unit in the tiny footprint it occupies.
Before getting the Mac Studio, I used a blue M1 iMac. That iMac looked spectacular. By contrast, the Mac Studio is homely. It's a very utilitarian design that essentially looks like someone vertically stretched the Mac mini to make room for a fan and then added a few thousand little holes in the back for ventilation. Add a few extra ports in the front, and voila: Mac Studio. The SD card slot and 2 USB-C/Thunderbolt ports on the front are the only things that separate the IO of the Mac mini with M2 Pro from the Mac Studio. Also wish the headphone jack was located at the front of the device rather than in the rear.
Performance
The Mac Studio is at the heart of my creative hub. Although it’s specs are overkill for me today, I expect it to slice through anything I throw at it for years & years to come.
I'll start by deferring to the myriad of videos and articles online precisely detailing the minutia of the Mac Studio's performance in all manner of real-world and contrived use cases (online videos have conditioned me into thinking that all Mac users batch export RAW photos while playing Tomb Raider). But it's exceptional. I can't max out this chip, and I can't make it stutter. The only glitches I hit are software-related when an app has difficulty handling the request (e.g., simultaneously adding a gradient to 1,000 layers). Even then, my GPU/CPU cores barely register any uncomfortable load. Performance is fantastic and will likely remain so for many years to come. That's another reason I got this computer; for higher-end professionals, it will be an excellent machine for 2-3 years, but for my use case, I could see this rig lasting a half decade and beyond without a concern.
BYODKM
Another peripheral reason (pun intended) I justified the Mac Studio was that it allowed me to update the computer independently of the display. If, let's imagine, Apple releases a 30-inch micro-LED display with ProMotion, and I just so happen to be in a downward spiral of retail therapy, I could purchase that monitor and keep the same computer. Or, in reverse, I could upgrade my Mac and keep my display or add a second display. I found that to be the situation I ran into with previous iMacs – the display would continue to look remarkable, but I would still recycle it because I wanted a more powerful Mac.
Whine
My Mac Studio in for repairs in the fall of 2022.
This is the one area I have the most to gripe about the Mac Studio. I've done enough scouring across the web to conclude that not all Studios appear affected by this, but since day one, my Mac Studio has been plagued with a high-pitched 2600Hz whine. Playing with fans and covering the 2000+ vents on the back helped me conclude that this is most likely an artifact resulting from the air flowing through these very tiny, precisely drilled holes. It wasn't whining; it was whistling. And it got to the point midway through last year that I even started taping small sections on the back of the Mac Studio to try to disrupt the airflow and abate the noise. That worked for a time, but it wasn't a preferred or total solution – the Studio would still intermittently whistle.
After months of diagnostics & Genius Bar appointments, the Mac Studio finally went to meet its maker.
But as time passed, I grew tired of a bunch of tape covering the back of my expensive computer and decided to see what the AppleCare team could do to resolve my issue. Meet me for a drink, and I'll tell you the tale, but after over a dozen trips to the Apple Store, multiple components replaced, and several dozen of support calls later, I got my Mac Studio replaced. And the whistle? Still there, but now only 10-15% of the time (vs. 100%), and a lot quieter than it used to be. And while not an acoustics engineer or industrial designer, I still firmly believe that these holes and tolerances are so precise that fractions of a fraction of a millimetre are enough to result in some Studio's whistling. The issue has never been addressed through a repair program, so I'll defer to Cupertino, who probably has all the stats about this issue's prevalence. Suffice it to say that this issue put a damper on my ability to enjoy the Studio in the first year of ownership.
Chonky Unupgradable Cube
Given that these are Pro machines, I'm disappointed that components like the memory or storage are not user or Apple Store upgradeable. The advice has always been to "buy the most RAM and storage that you can afford," but that would have meant adding $1000 at the time of purchase (50% of the price of a base model) and incurring months of additional wait times. That's good advice, but it's not always actionable advice. The ability to update storage or RAM as time and use changes could add years of use to the product's lifespan, and I wish it had been something Apple considers for machines of this calibre.
One Time Stopgap?
Some concerns popped up in early 2023 that perhaps the Mac Studio is a stopgap product while Apple works on finishing development the Mac Pro. Basically, an iMac Pro 2.0 situation. But recent rumours counter that notion and suggest we'll see the Mac Studio in a tick-tock upgrade cycle with the Mac Pro, which then raises questions about how the Mac Pro and Studio will meaningfully differentiate themselves. How Apple will create a coherent decision tree for pro users between the two devices is a quandary I'm eager to see resolved.
In Sum
I've had a mixed experience with the Mac Studio. The whistling (and the process of repairing it) has significantly hurt my initial impression of the computer. But the Mac Studio has hinted at a future that few could have dreamed about only a few years ago: A tiny, compact 6-pound homely roundrect rivalling the performance of Apple's 40-pound powerhouse Mac Pro from only a few years back. It's far and away the most powerful Mac I've ever used, and I expect this to handle anything I throw at it for at least the next half-decade. It's my first foray into modular computing, having previously stuck with MacBooks or iMacs, and I love the freedom of upgrading or adding parts to the setup over time. I just wish Apple had done more in designing this very pro-level computer to be more upgradeable.
Postscript: An absolute crime that Apple didn’t revive the breathing sleep light when the Mac Studio is in Standby.
