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      M2 Ultra Mac Studio review: Who needs a Mac Pro, anyway?

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 12 June, 2023 - 17:00 · 1 minute

    Apple's M2 Ultra Mac Studio.

    Enlarge / Apple's M2 Ultra Mac Studio. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    The original Mac Studio , despite the absence of "Pro" in the name, was Apple's most compelling professional desktop release in years. Though it was more like a supercharged Mac mini than a downsized Mac Pro, its M1 Max and M1 Ultra processors were fantastic performers, and they were much more energy-efficient than the one in the most recent Intel Mac Pro, too.

    Apple is releasing the M2 version of the Mac Studio this week , and even though it's being launched alongside a brand-new Mac Pro , it still might be Apple's most compelling professional desktop. That's partly because the new Studio is even faster than the old one—Apple sent us a fully enabled M2 Ultra model with 128GB of RAM—and partly because Apple Silicon Macs are designed in ways that make Mac Pro-style expandability and modularity impossible.

    There is probably still a tiny audience for the redesigned Mac Pro, people who still use macOS and still use internal PCI Express expansion cards that aren't GPUs; it should also be relatively easy to add gobs of cheap, fast internal storage, a kind of upgrade the Mac Studio is still frustratingly incapable of . There's also a bit of awkward pricing overlap with the high-end M2 Pro Mac mini that didn't exist last year.

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      As rumored, the Mac Studio gets an M2 refresh, including fused-together M2 Ultra

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 5 June, 2023 - 17:21

    M2 Studio shot with monitor overhead

    Enlarge / Apple's new Mac Studio offers the M2 Ultra chip, which, like its M1 counterpart, provides vastly greater computing power. (credit: Apple)

    CUPERTINO, Calif.—The Mac Studio will be refreshed this summer with chips based on the M2, including the M2 Max and new M2 Ultra, the "most powerful chip" ever released "for a personal computer."

    The M2 Pro and M2 Max have previously been seen in MacBook Pro models released late last year , but the M2 Ultra will be a first. In the M1 line, the Ultra was the top-of-the-line chip with substantially better performance than the Pro or Max—particularly in graphically intensive tasks. M2 Ultra will support 192 GB of unified memory, 800 GB/s memory bandwith, and a 24-core CPU and up to 76 cores of GPU. Apple claims the M2 Ultra will work 30% faster than the M1 Ultra, and that a single system with the Ultra can work machine learning datasets that would choke systems with discrete GPUs.

    The M2 Max is "up to 50 percent faster" than the prior Max-based Studio, according to Apple, and features a 12-core CPU, 38-core GPU, and up to 96 GB unified memory, with 400 GB/s memory bandwidth.

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      Apple reportedly prepping a pair of high-end Mac desktops ahead of WWDC

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 1 June, 2023 - 15:51 · 1 minute

    Apple's Mac Studio desktop.

    Enlarge / Apple's Mac Studio desktop. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    As Apple rumors go, the long-rumored 15-inch MacBook Air sounds almost certain to be announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference next week. But as Apple’s plans take shape, it also seems possible that we’ll see new Mac desktops featuring high-end M2 Max and M2 Ultra chips.

    Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman believes that these new chips are most likely to power an updated range of Mac Studio desktops, a little over a year after the first Studios were initially introduced . As recently as a few months ago, Gurman speculated that the M2 generation would skip over the Mac Studio entirely and that Apple would instead opt to use the newer chips as a selling point for a new Apple Silicon Mac Pro.

    But that version of reality may not come to pass. Gurman says these new Mac models have Mac14,3 and Mac14,4 model identifiers, while the Mac Pro that Apple is testing internally is identified as Mac14,8. (We initially thought these no-adjective model identifiers were a throwback to the PowerPC days , but the reality is more boring; Apple just isn’t using unique Mac names in model identifiers anymore, possibly to combat leaks and the speculation that arises when new IDs break cover.)

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      Report: 15-inch MacBook Air coming at WWDC, new Mac Studios will arrive eventually

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 17 April, 2023 - 16:48 · 1 minute

    Apple's Mac Studio desktop.

    Enlarge / Apple's Mac Studio desktop. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    We're generally fans of Apple's now-year-old Mac Studio desktop—and skeptical about its now-year-late Apple Silicon Mac Pro refresh. The Studio addresses many of the needs of the Mac Pro's intended audience in a smaller device that costs less money, while the Apple Silicon Mac Pro seems likely to dispense with at least some of the upgradeability and versatility of past generations.

    Reports have suggested that Apple could skip an M2-powered Mac Studio refresh to make that planned Mac Pro more appealing to potential buyers when it arrives. But that doesn't mean the Mac Studio is going away; Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says that a pair of Mac Studio updates are being "planned," though he doesn't know when they'll be out. (We would assume that the difference between the two models comes down to which processor they use; the M1 Mac and M1 Ultra versions of the Studio have several differences aside from raw CPU and GPU speed.)

    That nugget is one of several in a summary of Apple's plans for its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Gurman adds small details to several stories he has reported in the recent past; the most interesting for Mac users is the 15-inch MacBook Air, which he said late last week would likely include an M2 processor and the same 3024×1964 screen resolution as the 14-inch MacBook Pro. Gurman now says Apple plans to announce the new Air at WWDC.

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      Apple could skip an M2 Mac Studio update to boost Apple Silicon Mac Pro

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 6 February, 2023 - 20:42

    Apple's Mac Studio desktop.

    Enlarge / Apple's Mac Studio desktop. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    If rumors are to be believed, Apple has had to scale back its ambitions for the Apple Silicon Mac Pro. A planned performance-boosting "M2 Extreme" chip has allegedly been canceled, and some of the perks people normally associate with the Mac Pro—upgradeable RAM and graphics—likely won't be supported because of the way Apple Silicon chips are designed.

    Which leaves us with, if the most recent rumors are accurate, a high-end Mac Studio with user-accessible storage slots stuffed into the current neo-cheese-grater Mac Pro tower design .

    That doesn't leave a whole lot of space between the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro—little enough that the Mac Pro could have trouble justifying its continued existence and price premium. One possible solution, as reported by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman: Apple could simply skip an M2-generation refresh for the Mac Studio entirely, leaving more of a performance gap between the still-M1-based Studio models and an M2-based Mac Pro.

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      Apple’s self-service repairs expand to desktops like iMac, Mac Studio

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 20 December, 2022 - 20:56

    Apple's Mac Studio desktop.

    Enlarge / Apple's Mac Studio desktop. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    Apple's Self Service Repair program continues to roll out in new regions and to new products. Earlier this month, the program expanded from the United States to eight European countries . Now, US customers are gaining access to manuals and parts for new devices: Mac desktops.

    As reported first by Six Colors , the program has now been extended to cover the Mac Studio, M1 Mac mini, M1 iMac, and the Studio Display.

    Up until now, it only covered the M1 MacBook Air, M1 MacBook Pro, the iPhone SE, and iPhone 12 and 13 models. This expansion only applies in the US, though; the previously mentioned European countries will have to wait to gain coverage of these additional devices, it seems.

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      Report: M2 Pro and M2 Max Macs coming in 2023, not 2022

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 31 October, 2022 - 21:35

    The 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro from 2021.

    Enlarge / The 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro from 2021. (credit: Samuel Axon)

    For months, there have been rumors that Apple would launch new, M2-based Macs—specifically MacBook Pro and Mac mini models with new M2 Pro or M2 Max chips—sometime before the end of this year. But now two usually reliable insiders and Apple CEO Tim Cook are signaling that those new computers will arrive sometime in early March instead.

    During a recent call with investors last week, Cook began a sentence with "as we approach the holiday season, with our product lineup set," suggesting that there will be no new hardware announcements from Apple in 2022.

    Further, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo tweeted several weeks back that he expects the new MacBook Pro models in early 2023.

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