i always thought that i could get more
done
if only the computer was faster
hey i'm jerry and the new mac studio is
really the new flagship desktop from
apple and i've been using it for two
weeks now it's a whole new device from
apple not an upgrade or a rebrand but a
brand new form factor with a new naming
scheme and a brand new chip option
that's not available on any other
products yet so let me give you a few of
my thoughts after using the brand new
mac studio to start us off let's cover
the specs and price really quick so that
you can understand what i'm working with
this is the first pro or at least
prosumer mac desktop with apple's own
silicon inside and you can get this
machine with two main chip options
including the m1 max the m1 max starts
with the 10 core processor 24 core gpu
32 gigabytes of memory and a 512 gig ssd
for 2 000
this is the same m1 max you can find in
apple's macbook pro 14 and 16 inch you
can bump up the processor to a 32 core
gpu and 64 gigabytes of memory or you
can go all the way up to the m1 ultra
version starting with a 20 core cpu 48
core gpu 64 gigabytes memory and a one
terabyte ssd at four thousand dollars
and that's the model that i have right
here
along with some heartburn and spoiler i
hate
hate hate to say this
i'm going to return it but first this
really looks like a mac mini just all
growed up but obviously from the same
design language so if you thought a new
design for the mac mini was coming that
idea is probably out the window the top
is smooth and flat with an apple logo on
the top the sides are round and smooth
and on the bottom we have a big air
intake on the back side of course is
where all of the magic happens with a
giant exhaust vent and all those ports
and it's been really nice over the last
couple years coming out of this port
drought that we've had in apple land
apple is finally choosing to level out
the scales of form and function to give
pros and prosumers more flexibility and
options for their devices you get a
relatively generous two usb a ports four
thunderbolt 4 ports 10 gigabit ethernet
a headphone jack and an hdmi port but
even though there are more ports on this
device than any other recent mac you can
still fill them up relatively quickly
after you start connecting displays ssds
speakers and other accessories which you
can see in my mac studio accessories
video on the front there are two
thunderbolt 4 ports and an sd card
reader and over the last two weeks i've
used the crap out of both of these who
would have thought that front ports on a
desktop computer could be useful like i
said there are two thunderbolt ports on
the front when you have the m1 ultra
version of the mac studio otherwise they
are just 10 gigabit per second usbc if
you order with the m1 max in my testing
over the last couple weeks these ports
are just as fast as previous m1
implementations of thunderbolt which
means they're not always as fast as
intel max but they are fast enough for
pretty much any workflow and that's nice
if you want to expand the storage
without paying apple prices for internal
storage which
to be fair is really good flash storage
and really fast i also tested the st
card slot on the front because you know
cameras and found it to be slower than
sd card readers on docs i have not by a
lot but something to be aware of also
like the new macbooks it's a little
unsatisfying to insert sd cards into
this slot it doesn't feel smooth i would
much prefer a spring spring-loaded slot
but either way at least it's a built-in
front-facing port and for that i'm happy
the new mac studio with m1 ultra is a
solid brick of a computer and i mean
that almost literally like i'm tired of
holding this thing up already this
version has a two pound heavier heat
sink than the m1 max version and because
of this i actually named it cinder block
now despite the heft of this beast and
this rubbery ring on the bottom you can
see right here this thing does still
slide around the desk pretty easily like
you can easily move it around so if
you're connecting cables to the back of
this thing you're probably going to have
to use two hands because
it will just
push
the computer around and you know how
much i hate using two hands
one other physical thing to point out on
the mac studio is the light on the front
and it's kind of annoying it feels
brighter than it needs to be bigger than
it needs to be and it's always on even
in sleep this feels like the least good
light on a mac that i can remember
other than that on the outside this mac
studio looks sleek and elegant if not a
little plain but that's totally okay
with me
actually using this m1 ultra inside
machine has been absolutely great
once i got past some ethernet issues i
thought was coming from the mac studio
but was actually coming from a 10
gigabit adapter on my switch this thing
is stupid fast if you're coming from any
previous intel mac or even the first
generation of m1 chips there's just no
stutter in regular use of apps or web
browsing or
managing files creating documents
watching videos remotely accessing
servers creating apple scripts checking
email shopping managing calendar
calendars
playing casual games or any other
regular computer use i know shocking
right when you fire up some benchmarks
you can see that there's a clear
performance increase over the previous
m1 chips in multi-core tests you can get
about double the performance compared to
the m1 pro and max in geekbench
multi-core and about three times
compared to the regular m1 with the 48
core gpu i can get about 30 percent
faster performance compared to the 32
core gpu in the m1 max and about 450
faster than the m1 with eight gpu cores
you could search youtube and find a
whole lot of benchmarking tests that
confirm that the m1 ultra is roughly
twice as fast over the m1 max and even
in some real world scenarios like actual
blender rendering not just benchmarking
and just fyi the fans never not even
once spun up past regular idol speed in
any test i performed the fan is at a
constant 1300 ish rpm speed which is not
silent but is very low volume and
quieter than the fans i have in my
studio lights now the most pressure that
i personally put on a computer is video
editing and for me the m1 ultra saved me
a whopping one second in my final cut
pro export compared to the m1 max wait
one second yeah one second on a video
i've been testing against multiple
computers for about two years this is
multiple streams of h.264 video with
transitions audio and color adjustments
being exported in h.264
when i take a more recent video shot in
h.265
again with multiple streams transitions
music and adjustments i actually get a
slightly better result with the m1 ultra
compared to the max saving about 13
seconds and you would think that
for 2 000 more dollars that there would
be a bigger difference in this workflow
and it's really disappointing
but it starts to make sense that there
isn't when you look at the chips all the
m series chips use the same cores built
in
both for cpu and graphics so in single
core tests they all get roughly the same
score within a margin of error they all
do hardware media encoding but the pro
has a dedicated media encoder decoder
the max has two of them and the ultra
has four and that's where all of the
encoding and reading of those video
files is being done when i export a
video so
now i'm a bit sad and kind of broken
that it seems i've finally hit the limit
of what i can do
on this computer see
ever since i owned max
i always thought that i could get more
done
if only the computer was faster if it
was just 10 or 50 faster i could get so
much more done
not just with video editing but
everything i do on a computer
that thought process continued all the
way through the m1 max and now that
there is a faster chip that doesn't
actually make me faster
now what this is a super strange feeling
for me to know that i've hit the limit
of what i can do with the m1 max and the
m1 max isn't even the top of the line
chip but the m1 ultra in reality gives
me almost zero benefit for anything i
can throw at it i love that the m1 ultra
mac studio has those front thunderbolt
ports and if there was a max version
with front thunderbolt ports i would
probably pay more just for that
and that's
really the only difference between the
max and ultra versions for me and my
workloads
and not even i can justify two thousand
dollars for that so who should buy the
m1 ultra version of this computer well
if you made it this far into the video
it's probably not you
if you think that this computer is going
to be really good for gaming whether
that's through virtualization or
crossover or something else
you're wrong you should spend your money
on something else the m1 ultra has
headroom for certain workloads and if
you run those workloads you probably
know if this will work for you but for
me
sadly and just about everyone else the
m1 max processor is the limit right now
of what we need to do just about
everything more cores from the m1 ultra
is not going to change anything for us
the only way for me and my workload to
get any faster will be the next
generation of chips with newer faster
cores not necessarily more cores so for
the first time
probably ever for me
i'm going to downgrade and get the m1
max version of the new mac studio but
overall the mac studio is a fantastic
desktop computer that solves a lot of
issues that people wanted from a pro mac
mini including performance and ports if
you don't like laptops or you just
prefer desktop computers
then there's no better mac desktop than
you can buy right now even with the m1
max chip but what do you guys think do
you have workloads that can actually
take advantage of the m1 ultra let me
know below because i'm curious what
those are if you're looking for the best
accessories to get the most out of your
new mac studio check out this video
right over here
hit the thumbs up button if you liked it
hit subscribe if you want and i'll see
you next time