hey everyone welcome back to today in tech i'm julia beauchamp and i'm here with computer world
executive editor ken mangus as well as macworld executive editor michael simon we are live on
youtube as well as on computer world's linkedin page so if you have any questions comments while
we're talking you want to mention something ask a question do let us know either in the comments on
um linkedin or in the live chat on youtube and we'll do our best to get back to you so we've
got a few different things to talk about today so we want to run over the mac studio review mike i
know um there's a new you guys have a review out um new updates with ios 15.4 and we want to talk a
little bit about foxconn shutting down its factory um it's like partially reopened now but kind of
the significance of that so if you don't mind let's talk let's start foxconn so ken can you
talk a little bit about um what what the deal was there sure i mean stop me if you've heard
this before but there's a pandemic going on and in china right now it seems like the omicron variant
has finally arrived so foxconn shut down it was weird because they sort of quickly shut down
and then sort of quickly partially reopened earlier this week uh lucas marion had done a
story for us uh on computer world and it you know it just goes back to that to the same problem
we've seen about supply chains for the last two years of course it's impossible to sort of
get uh get into a rhythm because just about when things seem to be going back to normal
something else happens whether it's you know again another variant of of um covid
or you know the fighting in europe or you know gas supplies and things like that so you know it
doesn't seem like it's going to have any major problem may have give major problems to apple
at this point but we'll see you know we're i know we're going to talk about like the uh the studio
and some of the new hardware from apple and i was checking this morning and like you know of
course it's a new device but uh you know delivery times depending on which one you're getting are
like three to four weeks or six to eight weeks so i i think it's just another reminder that
apple can roll out new hardware companies can unveil new phones and whatever but we're all
captive to the supply chain and the problems that are you know plaguing it yeah i mean apple
these stories are fun to write and read but the bottom line is apple has many factories that
produce iphones we're in the middle of an iphone cycle so they're making less of them or fewer of
them at the moment so if it's gonna happen this was kind of a better case scenario than it was
last year when um you know they were having chip problems and you know it seems to be getting
better if you look at apple's delivery estimates which is really what we have to go and i'm not
i'm not a supply can supply chain analysis or analyst but looking at the across the board from
the ipad to the iphone and as you said in the mac studio you know maybe maybe a week or two
not too bad you can go to the store and basically pick up anything right now
um amazon hasn't been stocked so there are you know apple isn't gonna have the hit that it took
in that holiday quarter which was like i don't know eight billion or something crazy nine billion
yeah yeah exactly so like that's not what this is but it's it's a reality check that you know
a there is some turmoil in the world that part of the world if you will and we have a pandemic
and you know there's a labor shortage and there's delivery shortages and there's all sorts of
issues going on the fact that they're able to get anything anywhere is nothing short of miraculous
hey michael i'm curious you know in terms of talking about the mac studio you know i i've
wondered because obviously there's the the base model 1999 model then there's the one with the m1
ultra which is the more expensive one and that's the one that's that's you know six to eight weeks
do you think that's because apple made less of them or because they're popular and that's the
one everybody wants or is it anyway i don't think it's it's because they made fewer than even if you
look at the reviews like we got a we got a max bunch of our con contemporaries got them got
m1 max you know a couple of sites got the ultra not many of them and i think that's why because
it's a 4000 computer so apple's going to make fewer of them and you know that's just how that's
going to go i mean they might not even really stop they probably won't stock them at stores
so like you might just walk every now and then yeah yeah like the mac pro is not a it's not an
apple store device so the m1 ultra might be one of those devices that isn't a next day thing it's the
next weak thing yeah okay so yeah i mean that's definitely a high end i mean four grand is a lot
you know i was just going to make one quick point and that is when it comes to apple supply
chain and delivery times apple almost always under promises and over delivers so even those
you know those devices that may be three to four weeks out you get a you know you get to two and a
half weeks and suddenly it's shipped you know and let's not forget before all this started
you know when a new product came out you did not get it immediately ever you always had to
wait sometimes remember when the airpods max came out it was like four months look at the
apple polishing cloth i mean apple's apple stuff is in demand so yes great supply chain
you have to do my polishing cloth baby i've got one tucked away
so the supply chain and the situation in the world and all these little uh external factors certainly
play a role but in a perfect in a perfect uh society we probably wouldn't be able to buy an m1
ultra right now anyway because it's apple gotcha so i mean well i i guess my question is then
you know mike what was what's the deal with it what is how was how did the review go what
was the first look like what's the consensus that um you all reached um roman roman loyola
our our mac expert who's been with us for i don't know 15 years maybe something i'll link his longer
than me how about that he he took a look at it and apple gave us a nice you know it wasn't like
a two-day thing he's had he's had a better week to spend to spend some time with it and yeah his
consensus opinion is that it's awesome if you want if you need it right it's it it supplies power
that's equivalent to a really high-end mac pro or a really high-end windows desktop and it's
priced accordingly you don't get a keyboard you don't get a mouse you don't get a monitor
you just get the mac studio that's it it's like buying a mac mini but the mac mini is 700 bucks
you know you you have to need that power but if you do this is like it's like you know shangri-la
we've been asking for this forever right uh a mac that has high end performance and higher end
performance if you want to spend the money all the ports you can possibly need you know it's got it's
got thunderbolt it's got hdmi hdmi 2 that's a bit of a bummer 2.1 provided really that's a surprise
okay well yes and no because the macbook pro also has 2.0 so it's not a total surprise
it's a very apple thing to do um so in that's about the only thing that isn't future-proofed
otherwise you're getting a machine that has tons of ports tons of power
and uh i want to ask you ken what do you think of the design we were having a bit of a debate
about it i like it i personally like it i mean i also like the look of the mac mini you know and
it's and to me it's just like if you took two mac minis and stack them on top of each other chunky
you know i get that i get that you know the vibe but it's a bit chunky but it's something tells me
that if i were to get one and i'm not i know it that's hard to believe but i'm not getting one
um that if i was holding it in my hand i think i would think of it as as you know an upscale design
why you do you think no we have a picture um a couple of pictures but
next to a power mac g4 cube yeah i mean that's 22 years old but apple's designed back then you
can look at the imac g4 that era and people criticize them for it uh form over function
and some complaints they were right for sure some of the complaints were absolutely justified but
there was a sense that apple was you know steve jobs said it all the time we're at the corner of
technology and liberal arts or creative and they absolutely were like they were making
machines that people wanted to buy because they wanted to look at them i'm not saying
that's why you should buy a mac but the mac studio yes it's definitely a high-end
performance machine but in my mind it looks more like a i don't know like a sword rather than like
a lamborghini and there's nothing necessarily wrong with it like it's fine but there's nothing
nice like it doesn't jump out at you as something like oh wow let me look at that thing because that
thing's cool and again like that's not what we necessarily want in a in anything that we buy
unless it's a piece of art it doesn't need to do that way but apple seemed over the last two
decades maybe you can tie it to steve jobs dying but apple and johnny aren't everything's gone
maybe johnny i've two from form over function to function over form and there's there's two
classes of people some people want this they just want a box that does what it's supposed to do and
it absolutely does and it has the rounded corners and you know uh based on my i haven't touched it
but i'm sure it's nice and you know nice and polished and smooth and all that stuff but
i just can't help but look at it and say huh it's okay it's fine like it's not bad but it's not
like that it doesn't have that apple flare see i you know again i haven't touched it either i would
like to see one but i mean i'm thinking back to you know you're absolutely right about where apple
was 20 25 years ago the remember the imax the color of colorful images those were meant to be
put in the living room and looked at you know the imac g4 is still the greatest computer ever made
yeah bar none but but you know think about the most recent macbook pros that came out last fall
they're same thing you know they're a little and they're very utilitarian they the screen's amazing
they do their job yeah i mean when i i mean when i nicknamed my macbook pro tank because it feels
like a tank when you're using it and holding it you know and so i i mean i can find beauty even in
in in just function you know sure and and there's a case to be made for that and there's a whole
class of users that are probably thrilled that apple does seem to be prioritizing to function
in the sense that this mac studio the reason why it's so thick is because it had a big
giant cooling uh mechanism yeah well and that's for the but that's for the m1 ultra right
no they both have it the m1 ultra is made of copper okay and the m1 max's is made of aluminum
so it's a different it's a different um conductor but it's the same it's the same mechanism inside
it and the reason why they did it is so when it's running at sustained speeds even the max
that it can even when that fan goes on it it first of all it doesn't need to go on as often
and when it does it spins very slow so you don't hear it well that's what i was going to ask is in
roman's testing of this thing has he gotten much fan noise he heard it but he said he had to like
listen for it okay so it's he said it's very very quiet it doesn't go like we know with the m1 i
mean the mac mini i know it does the macbook air doesn't have a fan so it doesn't need one
for for active cooling um unless you're pushing it and that's what these machines are meant to do
you know two hour rendering project projects and things like that so in his testing and his
benchmarks and the things that that pushed the processor he did get the fan to go on but he
didn't really hear it and so i mean that's what it's made for like music studios like you can't
have a fan background you're recording something because it's going to mess everything up so apple
absolutely you know we know the thermals of the m1 chip of the apple silicon chips are just amazing
i mean the mac so your macbook pro my macbook pro i have well i don't have the max you do i believe
i do it's the same like so it used to be and when i say used to be i mean like three years ago you
had to make a choice do you want the power of a desktop or do you want the portability of a laptop
and that was it was a conscious decision you had to make because laptops had sacrifices
you got slower chips you got chips that didn't have sustained power you got lesser graphic
all that stuff that's not the case the m1 max max studio benchmarks nearly identical to the m1 max
power book uh powerpoint look at me macbook pro how about that i was just going to literally ask
you that so if you've got the macbook pro with an m1 max but you bring back the power button
what's that i i he wants the power button i tripped up and said power
but no i was just going to say so if you stack those up so that the performance numbers are
pretty much the same they're right they're nearly identical um roman was able to get
the mac studio a little bit higher in graphics um on on higher tests and it probably has to do with
the fans inside the macbook pro only reach a certain level and it kind of cuts off it
does it throttled it a little bit yeah we're talking high high-end stuff for the most part
nice they're identical which is you know it's not a surprise in the sense that we
know from the imac and the mac mini and the macbook air those three all m1 all the same
all different format form factors all different cooling all different setups all that stuff so
like intellectually i understood that but when you see it in action you see it on paper it's like man
like we've reached a point where the playing field is just completely level
you just choose what you want what form factor you want a desktop here you go you
want to you want a laptop get that one yeah you're not getting anything for portability
did roman also get a studio display he did i was just about to ask that yeah that's next i was
about to say i know that there's been a little bit less fanfare yeah he didn't have those issues with
the camera or maybe he wasn't looking for them but i from what i saw you know he had screenshots and
he he he didn't experience that you know we we have every now and again this happens with apple
reviews review products if you remember the apple watch series three um there was a cellular issue
with those early reviews and you know like the verge i think maybe the or maybe the wall street
journal somebody blasted it because it was the first model with cellular and like this doesn't
work it just straight up in the work and you know ours was fine in fact i reviewed that um and
it turned out where it was a bit of a issue and they either replaced them or fixed them
and that was that and i i suspect this will be the same thing it doesn't come out until friday
i wouldn't be surprised if there if there's a software update by then if not earlier next week
that fixes and they'll have a thing that say that'll say a small amount of studio displays
exhibit you know lesser quality pictures or whatever but it had to do with the camera
and you know we know that 12 megapixel ultra wide camera is really good because we see it in the i
should be supposed to be yeah absolutely so um roman did not he's used it on the imac oh no
the image doesn't have it he's used it on the ipad pro and knows like and he didn't notice
those issues so if it does if it did affect his machine it wasn't nearly at the level
of the virgin or wall street journal um if if it it it might not have at all though
he might have had a good one in the sense that it it doesn't affect all of the machines
and you know i have a question for you michael uh just in terms of that whole form function
thing what do you think of the design of the street it's okay yeah just a minute it's fine
okay right i mean the bezels are you know not as thin as i like them to be the design is not
as nice as i'd like it to be i'll say nice is the wrong word not as unique i mean it's it's an apple
thing it's a thick wide screen 27-inch monitor that looks kind of like an imac without the chip
there's nothing about it that stands out from any other you know yes it's aluminum versus plastic
that's nice quite frankly i wish they would have used plastic so it was not 15.99 you know yeah i'm
using a samsung monitor i'm looking at it right now it's plastic i paid i don't know 300 bucks
for it it's fine you know like apple is the studio display is not what i have let's get that straight
this doesn't have a camera this doesn't have a a 3 mic array it doesn't have a spatial audio
do you really need that stuff in your monitor i don't know i think you know roman gave it four
stars but throughout he did say hey if you can afford it and if you want it you're gonna love it
sure so gotcha that's that that's that's kind of the verdict there like like it's a good monitor it
doesn't have hdr it doesn't have pro motion high refresh okay you know you're missing some stuff
it's still a good 5k monitor a really good quality i mean apple's displays are great it's not mini
led so the the blacks you know really dark gray not like you get on the on the on the macbook pro
it's good it's really good where do you think it should be it's you i think it's probably worth
1600 bucks okay based on how apple built it based on what roman described it's a really nice monitor
okay um i would have been happier if apple made a 999 monitor and made some sacrifices sure sure