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Apple Mac Studio

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481–490 of 734 posts

Re: Apple Mac Studio

#481
I see that the official Apple specs mention "support for 5 displays" and the tech specs state:

"Support for up to four Pro Display XDRs (6K resolution at 60Hz and over a billion colors) over USB-C and one 4K display (4K resolution at 60Hz and over a billion colors) over HDMI"

... so I am very pleasantly surprised there ... >4k resolution on the four Thunderbolt ports and then a bonus 4k port via HDMI.

The same question arises as with the mac mini: Why can't the additional (leftover) ports be used for even more displays ? In this case, there are two more ports on the front (either USB-C or TB4) that can handle a display - why is that not possible ?

Re: Apple Mac Studio

#482
post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about game developers, but gamers are a low-margin, high-touch, low-satisfaction-score, garish-aesthetic, speeds-and-feeds market. Pretty much antithetical to Apple's core focus and I think they rightly avoid them. Despite personally wanting more games on Mac :)

What does high-touch market mean?

Want to be hands on and make customized modifications

Re: Apple Mac Studio

#483

Could/would this machine makes sense as a development machine? I use a Macbook Pro (M1) and it's always docked...I basically don't need it to be transportable. I could also use more power (I'm regularly running a bunch of docker containers + PyCharm + DataGrip + Android Studio).

I don't think any M1 chip makes sense at all if you need to work with a lot of docker containers. Orders of magnitude faster to do that on a Linux machine.

Re: Apple Mac Studio

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet none on the front. So your shoebox full of thumb drives are useless and you have to plug them in from behind. Just to be clear yes I know USB-C thumb drives exist but they are next to useless because their whole purpose is to shuttle files between devices. Devices that likely don't have USB-C yet.

just connect that USB-A hub you know you already have and plug in all the USB-A thumb drives you can fit.

Apple is one of the world's biggest proliferators of e-waste through indirect means. No charger with the new phone huh? Well it's USB-C cable won't fit your old charger or computer either.

USB-A is the de-facto standard for thumb drives. Are we all just supposed to throw them away overnight because Apple blessed us with computers without USB-A ports? Or, they'll sell you a dongle for $19 which can be had on Aliexpress for $0.75. Would it have killed them to throw an extra USB-A 3.x port on the nearly empty front panel? It carries nearly the same signals as USB-C minus power delivery. No, this was a purely aesthetic decision. Apple could design a brick PC with no ports besides power and people would still pleasure themselves into a coma at the thought of spending $2k on such a grotesque monstrosity.

Re: Apple Mac Studio

#485
post #349

The amount of compute paired with the shared memory and fast bandwidth would make this an awesome fit for machine learning. But for PyTorch, the framework everybody is using now at least in computer vision, there seems to be no support at all for the GPU or the neural cores (which the presentation went on and on about). I guess I’d better not hold my breath about support there, given Apples historical stance on suppo…

Whether PyTorch supports it... I'm not sure, but Tensorflow is still an immensely popular framework, and it is supported:

https://blog.tensorflow.org/2020/11/accelerating-tensorflow-...

https://developer.apple.com/metal/tensorflow-plugin/

Re: Apple Mac Studio

#486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did better with the limited space they have — they included a bunch of multi-functional USB-C ports that can be used with dongles for additional HDMI ports!

"With the limited space they have"? They chose how much space they had to work with...

This is Google with their new battery-powered Nest Doorbell explaining that it can't record 24/7 video _even when it's plugged in_ because "it's too thin and the thermals presented problems."

MAKE IT THICKER. IT'S A GODDAMN DOORBELL. YOU CONTROL THE THICKNESS! THERE IS LITERALLY NO REQUIREMENT IT BE THAT THIN!

Re: Apple Mac Studio

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You definitely shouldn't buy a $4000 computer if your only workload is web browsing.

If people listened to that advice Apple's stock price would be cut in half. 99% of Mac users can get along fine with the base m1 models.

I'v seen (more than once) Apple Store employees push people away from higher-end devices, or from buying devices altogether (happened with me) when they didn't think the bigger sticker price would serve the customer well, so at least apple is happy to give that same advice to their own customers.

Re: Apple Mac Studio

#489
post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USB-C (or Thunderbolt) can also carry a DisplayPort link natively, and you don't even need a dongle for that. Workstations don't really care about HDMI, that's for TVs. Not only that but with the Ultra variant, all of the USB-C ports are thunderbolt 4 ports at 80gb/s, that's a massive amount of IO. (note that despite the number of ports - only 4 of them can be running displays, plus the HDMI port gets its own channel…

> Workstations don't really care about HDMI, that's for TVs. And people who only have HDMI cables! I was using display port on my old MacBook, but I'm using HDMI on the new one as I already had an HDMI cable, but not a USB-C to DisplayPort one.

USB-C to DisplayPort cables are like $14 on Amazon. I'm responding to you using one. I have a MacBook Air in clamshell mode with 1 USB-C going to the display and a $10 hub that does Power Delivery and 3 USB-A ports for speakers, Yubikey, and external SSD for backup.

I had a M1 Mac Mini but I do occasionally want to take a Mac with me so I replaced it with the Air. I only slightly miss the extra ports on the Mini.

Re: Apple Mac Studio

#490
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$8k for 128GB RAM, 8 TB solid state storage and 22 trillion ops/sec isn't exactly a bargain. I do however image that the performance per watt will be really good.

> $8k for 128GB RAM, 8 TB solid state storage Maybe not, but 32GB RAM + 512GB SSD for $2k is a pretty competitive price point.

Not at all. You could buy 32GB of RAM and a 512GB NVMe drive for a couple hundred dollars.
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