As much of an Apple fanboy as I am, I have to completely agree with you. $4000 IMHO should be the price of a really well equipped Mac Pro with lots of memory and drive space, and not a glorified Mac Mini.
Even if Apple managed to double the render speed matching it closer to a PC with a dedicated GPU, the $4000 price point still seems excessive.
I have no idea how Apple managed to convince all of us that this is ok.
Thought someone might know in this thread. What a way to do 4k animations at up to 60 fps, but with alpha channel? With 1080p, I can just do QuickTime ā import image sequence, choose HEVC, and then it works. With 4k though, I get an error.
Main goal is to display an animation with alpha in safari. In chrome, I use a different set straight from Blender. Itās a bit annoying to not have an animation supported with alpha by both safari/chrome, but I donāt know of one (which isnāt to say that it doesnāt existā¦maybe it does?)
reading all this makes me really not want to have a mac studio max
good question, actually had one on order and changed my mind, will wait till after WWDC at least.
As for price.
I do not believe that will make a Mac Pro that is cheaper / same price but who knows.
So I better wait 
Also if Apple said the truth the Mac Pro if they show it will not be an M1 something.
I am a bit pissed at Apple for making it that ādifficult, it is easier and safer to take out the fan of a PS5 and clean and even that one is āupgradableā.
They could have at least done a cleanable dust filter on the bottom.
Any way will wait and see what is next.
Fingers crossed for an M2 with RT cores.
Still feel like the M1 GPU is lacking and I am not confident that we will se big optimizations like 2x speed.
Also if I had to guess M2 will beat M1 Pro or get very close (especially if it gets the rumored 12 core gpu).
I just saw this and was like yeah right Appleā¦
In their keynote they were Ultra needs no further App optimization and then you see things like this.
Would be great to see an equivalent PC build, but a truly equivalent one:
As for the overpriced M1 Max vs M1 Ultra, yeah, maybeā¦ at least on Blender current state of affairs and even FCP/Motion/etc which hasnāt been updated to take advantage of all the double graphics accelerators, media engines, neural engines that it has.
What I mean to say is that I donāt think itās that black or white, but Iām heavily Apple biased (kinda obvious) and have been pampered by the ecosystem beyond recoveryā¦ I got used to just plug a thing (display, headphone, trackpad, devices), see it turn on, use it, walk after work to the TV, two taps to connect the headphones to the Apple TV (no syncing, pairing, etc)ā¦ my brother comes in, connects with his the same way. Watch a movie sound broadcasted wirelessly to both of us. Go back check something on the computer, resume, etc, etc.
Would you have a scene that you would be allowed to share to try on? I could heading into the weekend give it a try on an 14" M1 Pro, and capture some of that to see how it goes. (Also if you give me instructions of what to do and hit what/where)
I think that is pretty much impossible in the PC world at the moment.
The smallest with a decent GPU I have seen is this https://nzxt.com/collection/h1-mini-pc
The 2.2k version is not bad could use a bit more RAM.
Those arenāt that bad of a start! itās a couple CPU generations behind and the RAM bandwidth and all that wonāt be anywhere near close to the latest M1s but I do like where this can go, the connectivity options are also lacking. But I can totally see having this as a side Gaming PC.
The one I see the most advanced is $1699 though (not a $2.2K one, just making sure, Canada here, and those look USD prices).
Thanks for the share.
Hehe sorry was on their European site.
Yes I meant the 1,7k config.
I think it is decent and looks nice too.
Building a computer around a Lian Li Dan A4 case would probably be the closest you could get from an equivalently powerful PC. You could fit it in a backpack, provided youāve got a backpack big enough.
More Mac Studio optimization.
Iāve been checking out little reviews here and there for the Studio since itās announcement.
ā¦so itās a little weird that I only just now discovered it sports a small pair of speakers onboard. Did you all know this? If so, why was I not informed?
yes seen it somewhere but they did not seem very useful, canāt remember in what video however.
Apple are completely correct that you donāt need to make any changes for the M1 Ultra because the APIs se it as a single unit, just with more cores. That is fact.
But like everything in software engineering, the architecture means that you can make optimizations for performance. When the M1 Pro and Max laptops were released, Apple put out a video on how to optimize your Metal code to use things like universal memory optimally and other best practices.
Thereās definitely something for sure, just saw this today with all the FCP/Motion/etc news about them receiving updates:
So, at least those Neural Network engines can give 70% more for double the quantity of them.
(From the Mac AppStore āmoreā when the app is asking to update)
We are talking about different things here. The design of the M1 Ultra treats it like one multicore CPU and one multicore GPU in software.
The other way they could have gone is have to M1 Maxes on the logic board, but in that case it would have to be treated as two multicore CPUs and two multicore GPUs. This would change the APIs and mean that you would have to manage these different devices in your code, a big headache.
However, when you bring out a brand new architecture, there are opportunities to optimize your code to perform better with the larger number of cores etc. This is what is happening and it also happened when the M1 Pro and Max came out.
Might be Windows Defenderās āreal-time threat protectionāā¦ protecting something, somewhere. Horrible thing, made my new PC feel like something from 10 years ago. It even turns itself on again and again even if you tell it to stay off.
Needless to say, there are ways to get a zippy feeling PC back, but your IT dept might not want to go there.
Your IT department forced that piece of crap called Windows Defender on the Macs even, well luckily they recently changed their mind and removed it again.
