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eaj101

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It's been a long time since I've been impressed enough with new tech to really geek out about it, but the new Mac Studio hits that bar. It's not just the power (60% faster than the top of the line Intel box) but that they've managed to do that at an entry price of $2,000 and only $8,000 fully loaded. I think this may be the best photo box around, by a big margin.

www.engadget.com

Apple's Mac Studio is a tiny pro-level desktop powered by M1 Ultra

Apple has unveiled the Mac Studio, its first computer with the M1 Ultra chip.
www.engadget.com www.engadget.com
 
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eaj101 said:
It's been a long time since I've been impressed enough with new tech to really geek out about it, but the new Mac Studio hits that bar. It's not just the power (60% faster than the top of the line Intel box) but that they've managed to do that at an entry price of $2,000 and only $8,000 fully loaded. I think this may be the best photo box around, by a big margin.

www.engadget.com

Apple's Mac Studio is a tiny pro-level desktop powered by M1 Ultra

Apple has unveiled the Mac Studio, its first computer with the M1 Ultra chip.
www.engadget.com www.engadget.com
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I agree. I was thinking of a new iMac when they come out, but I may go with tis instead - looks like it'll do everything I need and (way) more.
 
Will Lightroom and Photoshop have greater capabilities compared to a high end Windows machine with a pro monitor?
 
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Steve said:
I agree. I was thinking of a new iMac when they come out, but I may go with tis instead - looks like it'll do everything I need and (way) more.
Click to expand...

From what I’ve read this is the replacement for the 5k iMac. I’ve been waiting to replace my 5k but doesn’t seem like will happen so I’ll probably order this (with the max chip, not ultra).
 
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Palmor said:
From what I’ve read this is the replacement for the 5k iMac. I’ve been waiting to replace my 5k but doesn’t seem like will happen so I’ll probably order this (with the max chip, not ultra).
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Interesting. I can certainly see that. I think for what I do, it's likely a solution that's viable for years to come :)
 
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NA4M said:
Entry level $2K? Tricked out "only" $8K??? :oops:

I'll stick with my sub-$2K W10 PC that works fine even for editing and rendering 4K video clips.
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Well, a tricked out Power Mac was north of $50K, so that's progress :)

I don't do video, but my entry-level M1 Mac Mini is so much faster doing complex noise reduction, image merges, fills, sharpening and the like that it's made a difference in my workflow. I try processes that I might have dismissed in the past because they took too long. Things that took 5 minutes or more on my 64Gb 8-core i7 take less than a minute on the 8Gb M1 mini. That's a big enough performance difference that it changes the way I do things.
 
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I decided to order one. Delivery will not be until May so I will have time to decide if I want to cancel or change my configuration. Undoubtedly this will be a major improvement over my 2013 Mac Pro. And the smaller size will be a real plus
 
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eaj101 said:
Well, a tricked out Power Mac was north of $50K, so that's progress :)

I don't do video, but my entry-level M1 Mac Mini is so much faster doing complex noise reduction, image merges, fills, sharpening and the like that it's made a difference in my workflow. I try processes that I might have dismissed in the past because they took too long. Things that took 5 minutes or more on my 64Gb 8-core i7 take less than a minute on the 8Gb M1 mini. That's a big enough performance difference that it changes the way I do things.
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Ditto - my M1 Mac Mini is much faster on image processing than my 32GB 8-core i9 and I shifted my workflow to the mini for that reason. The thing that’s been killing me on the mini is the 16GB RAM which was the highest they had. So I’ve been waiting for the “next gen” mini and this is that on steroids. Once it becomes available as a friends&family purchase (I have friends at apple) I’ll definitely be getting one. I’m also stoked they finally have a good followup to the Thunderbolt Display. I wasn’t quite willing to drop the $$ on the XDR but wanted a new monitor. The Studio Display hits right at the spot where I want.
 
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The base model is a pretty sweet deal.
Not sure anyone doing photography (maybe high end video) needs the Ultra chip.
I have the M1Max 24GPU 32GB RAM in my new 16" MBP and it screams through DeNoise and DXO PR.

Right now I'm pretty satisfied using my MBP as dual duty laptop and main editing hooked up to my external display. But if I decide I want a dedicated desktop then I'll be looking at this Studio for sure.

I guess maybe the only thing the Ultra might improve for photographers is having double the CPU cores. The current M1Max 24GPU is already performing as well or even outperforming the 32GPU (but this may be due to thermals in the laptops and be better in the cooled Studio). I do think the one issue with the M1Pro/Max is they are all maxed at 10 CPU cores. Having 20 may help LR or some other programs not using the GPU as much.
 
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Palmor said:
From what I’ve read this is the replacement for the 5k iMac. I’ve been waiting to replace my 5k but doesn’t seem like will happen so I’ll probably order this (with the max chip, not ultra).
Click to expand...

Yeah that seems to still be up in the air if they will still be updating the 27" iMac or even doing a new iMac Pro.

But if you get the Studio and the new Studio display then at least you don't end up with more useless iMac 5K monitors sitting around doing nothing when you eventually want to upgrade the computer in the future. I've owned two iMacs and I'm done with that. I would think differently if I could use my 2015 5K via TargetDisplay and keep using it...but I can't. LumaDisplay doesn't support 5K so that is a waste. I am still using my 2009 27" as my 2nd display so at least that is still getting used.

From now on it is either MacMini, Studio or just MBP hooked up to monitors for me.
 
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arbitrage said:
I guess maybe the only thing the Ultra might improve for photographers is having double the CPU cores.
Click to expand...

My Apple friend pointed out two other differences - the Ultra has 6 Thunderbolt ports whereas the Max only has 4. I have multiple RAIDs and SSDs I have plugged into my mini and currently am leveraging a dock as well as a thunderbolt hub to get everything plugged in. The extra 2 TB ports might be nice. He also pointed out you can get more RAM on the Ultra, and my philosophy for decades has been that RAM tends to have more of an impact than CPU, though whether my workflow would actually leverage 128GB RAM (??!!??) is hard to say, so I’m still on the fence. I’ll probably go with that because I also run multiple virtual machines and dedicating more RAM to them helps.
 
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arbitrage said:
Yeah that seems to still be up in the air if they will still be updating the 27" iMac or even doing a new iMac Pro.

But if you get the Studio and the new Studio display then at least you don't end up with more useless iMac 5K monitors sitting around doing nothing when you eventually want to upgrade the computer in the future. I've owned two iMacs and I'm done with that. I would think differently if I could use my 2015 5K via TargetDisplay and keep using it...but I can't. LumaDisplay doesn't support 5K so that is a waste. I am still using my 2009 27" as my 2nd display so at least that is still getting used.

From now on it is either MacMini, Studio or just MBP hooked up to monitors for me.
Click to expand...

I agree. The reason I got the 5k 27" iMac was because of the screen. At the time you really weren't going to find a 5k screen even close to that cost anywhere else. It was one of the few times were Apple actually made sense from a $$ perspective :).

All that said, I did just pre-order. Decided to get the M1Max 10 Core CPU/32 Core GPU and 64GB Ram. The Ultra would be overkill for what I do and I know in 3-4 years I'll probably upgrade to whatever the latest and greatest is anyway. Not sure the Ultra would extend that timeframe since I'm sure other things beside the CPU will be better that I'll want.... although the extra ports would be nice but not worth an extra $1k.
 
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nautiboy said:
He also pointed out you can get more RAM on the Ultra, and my philosophy for decades has been that RAM tends to have more of an impact than CPU, though whether my workflow would actually leverage 128GB RAM (??!!??) is hard to say, so I’m still on the fence.
Click to expand...

the answer is *probably* "no". while i agree with you that having enough physical ram to cover everything you might be running concurrently, it seems unlikely it's going to be much more than 32GB with _image_ processing. i've done a quick peek periodically and with LR + PS + Topaz open with a 50MP image, plus a random set of stuff like web browsers, email and the like, i'm only at 32-33GB. i did get 64GB for my system to make sure i'm always on the happy side of that, but 128 is probably going to mostly sit unused unless your workflow pulls in a lot of more memory hungry things, and i can't imagine what those would be.
 
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John Navitsky said:
the answer is *probably* "no". while i agree with you that having enough physical ram to cover everything you might be running concurrently, it seems unlikely it's going to be much more than 32GB with _image_ processing. i've done a quick peek periodically and with LR + PS + Topaz open with a 50MP image, plus a random set of stuff like web browsers, email and the like, i'm only at 32-33GB. i did get 64GB for my system to make sure i'm always on the happy side of that, but 128 is probably going to mostly sit unused unless your workflow pulls in a lot of more memory hungry things, and i can't imagine what those would be.
Click to expand...
Yeah, if it was just image processing and sometimes video, 64 would probably be my happy place. I also do development in Xcode as well as within Linux virtual machines, and I typically dedicate a minimum of 16GB to the VM, and preferably more. Now I'm often not doing all of that at once, in part due to the memory pressure. But with sufficient RAM I could conceivably be working on photos while I'm waiting for a compile to complete or something similar. Dunno, it seems like overkill, but every time I've said that in the past I've always either been happy I went the overkill route or bummed I didn't. Ah, the old days, when 128KB was "more than you could ever possibly need" ..... :) And now we're talking about 128GB instead of 128KB. Oy!
 
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nautiboy said:
Yeah, if it was just image processing and sometimes video, 64 would probably be my happy place. I also do development in Xcode as well as within Linux virtual machines, and I typically dedicate a minimum of 16GB to the VM, and preferably more. Now I'm often not doing all of that at once, in part due to the memory pressure. But with sufficient RAM I could conceivably be working on photos while I'm waiting for a compile to complete or something similar. Dunno, it seems like overkill, but every time I've said that in the past I've always either been happy I went the overkill route or bummed I didn't. Ah, the old days, when 128KB was "more than you could ever possibly need" ..... :) And now we're talking about 128GB instead of 128KB. Oy!
Click to expand...
I owned an IBM PC with 128kB of RAM when I was in college and upgraded by adding an additional 64kB for a total of 192 kB which gave me the "hottest" machine among students in my major. I was ridiculed for having that much RAM, with a frequent comment being "Who would ever need that much RAM?" It's similar to when the first PC hard drives came out the choices were either a 5 MB or 10MB drive, and the sales person told they'd sell me either one, but that I'd never really need 10MB.

How times change. And they'll continue to do so!
 
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NA4M said:
Showing my age - but recall my 1st IBM PC. Green screen CRT with 16kb RAM and dual 8" floppy disk drives! The monster 10mb HDD added later,
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I started to graduate school on a PDP 11/40 with 32 K words of RAM memory. The top 4 K were address registers but could be addressed in your machine code. We had 2 disk platters, around across and 2-3 inches high, each holding 2.4 MB of data. THe department had an 11/45 with an 80 MB disk - we thought that was huge.

Yes times have changed :) I will be getting 128 GB RAM on my new Mac Studio. I have a friend who thinks anything over 32GB is a waste. But he only adjusts images in LR using a few sliders, never PS, no pans, no HDRS, no focus stacking, ....
 
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John Navitsky said:
the answer is *probably* "no". while i agree with you that having enough physical ram to cover everything you might be running concurrently, it seems unlikely it's going to be much more than 32GB with _image_ processing. i've done a quick peek periodically and with LR + PS + Topaz open with a 50MP image, plus a random set of stuff like web browsers, email and the like, i'm only at 32-33GB. i did get 64GB for my system to make sure i'm always on the happy side of that, but 128 is probably going to mostly sit unused unless your workflow pulls in a lot of more memory hungry things, and i can't imagine what those would be.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately I bet that somewhere down the road there'll be something that needs that much memory. Iron law of software is that work expands to take all the RAM and CPU cycles available :(
 
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