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What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

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Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#21

Post by methyl »

eastbound wrote: post #16
dwaite wrote: post #10

IMHO Mac mini isn't going to die any time soon; it is there in the lineup to be hostable/rackable operations glue for running old software and (old operating systems) headless. I doubt they will release a M2 Pro Mini. They will instead update the Mac Studio. Conversely, if they make a M2 Pro in the current Mini form factor, they'll likely use that as an excuse to redesign the regular M2 Mini to be smaller (Mac Micro)…

I buy Mac Mini because OSHA once demanded (and I find it’s not a bad idea) that I use screens instead of laptops to avoid employees spending 7hrs bending to neck. So they have 2 displays at work and 2 displays at home, and a Mac Mini, total 2300€, better than a 2800€ Macbook Pro + screens. What is the state of the art, do all of you simply buy a top-notch Macbook Pro and work on it all day?

I have a Macbook Pro but keep it plugged in for longer stretches of work. I couldn’t give up the convenience of being able to just unplug and sit on a couch from time to time. Not mentioning working from places outside of office and home.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#22

Post by pjmlp »

ksec wrote: post #13

It seems strange to include the Mini. As it is more of an Intel Mac for those who somehow still need Intel macOS for whatever reason. The memory capacity is limited in ARM Mac. So if you want high capacity memory you go to Mac Studio. And with Mac Studio, which brings us the next question. What are the Market Mac Studio couldn't compete with Mac Pro. If it is not powerful enough now, will possibly another doubling of…

The market of VFX, which without an Mac Pro, might end up going back to Windows or custom built Linux desktops, like many Hollywood studios did when migrating away from SGI, and Pro wasn't still an option.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#23

Post by Joyfully8173 »

jamujamu wrote: post #4

Hopefully what’s also left is a 27-inch iMac with M2 or M2 Pro chip inside. The current 24-inch iMac just doesn’t cut it, and the Mac Studio + Apple Display combo is way to expensive compared to the price point of Intel iMacs.

Yeah, I was going to mention 27 inch iMac as well. I used to work for a design agency and we used to buy 27 inch iMacs with upgraded CPUs and 16GB of RAM, and then we would install another 32GB of RAM ourselves. The quality of the 5K screen was good enough, savings on the RAM upgrade were significant, they were quite good computers for the price. We used them for all designers that didn't need to attend too many meetings. More senior people got laptops. During COVID we moved everyone to laptops, but I was still curious what Apple will do with the powerful iMac. Let's not forget they also offered iMac Pro, with a Xeon CPU and 128GB of RAM.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#24

Post by eyelidlessness »

BooneJS wrote: post #8

Xeons have many, many PCIe lanes. Apple Silicon only needs enough HSIO for SSD and Thunderbolt ports, and they’ve released all of the non-internally-expandable machines already. They needed a chip that added 48+ PCIe lanes to the package so they could satisfy the relatively few Mac Pro customers. And without external DRAM, they’ll never be able to provide as much memory as a low-end Intel chip in the Mac mini at the…

There’s some very interesting speculation on the ArsTechnica forums about how expandable RAM on a Mac Pro might look. It’s not my speculation but it’s definitely not all said and done from what I’ve read.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#25

Post by sneak »

eptcyka wrote: post #14
bpye wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How will Apple recoup the cost of designing a powerful chip for a product like the Mac Pro, which is presumably their lowest-selling product? In their own datacentres?

I am under the impression they do not run macOS in their own datacenters. And, unlike mortals, if they need to run macOS in datacenters, they're not bound by their own license to never virtualize macOS on non-macOS hosts, they can do as they please.

macOS or Linux, it doesn't matter - all hyperscale datacenter operators are going to move as much as possible to the highest perf/watt platform (ie ARM). Apple is a hyperscale datacenter owner and operator, if only for iCloud.

AWS is already doing so with Graviton.

It has nothing to do with macOS.

Graviton CPUs are not for sale. If Apple wants a million ARM cores to run iCloud, they are going to have to get TSMC to fab them.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#26

Post by chongli »

ksec wrote: post #15
akamaka wrote: post #5

How will Apple recoup the cost of designing a powerful chip for a product like the Mac Pro, which is presumably their lowest-selling product? Most of the M-series chips are shared across multiple products, but the Mac Pro seems to be a clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip makes more business sense right now. I don’t see Apple doing it simply as a vanity project, so there will have to be some inn…

>How will Apple recoup the cost of designing a powerful chip for a product like the Mac Pro, which is presumably their lowest-selling product? Which is the question I have been asking since 2015 . From a cost prospective it never made any sense. Presumably they will wait until Mac Studio becoming powerful enough to fill the gap. >but the Mac Pro seems to be a clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip…

Which is the question I have been asking since 2015. From a cost prospective it never made any sense. Presumably they will wait until Mac Studio becoming powerful enough to fill the gap.

To me the only reason they still make products like the Mac Pro is for brand reputation and face-saving. It’s like when a big auto maker sponsors a formula 1 racing team. There’s no profit in formula 1 (for the auto makers). It’s just a giant money pit!

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#27

Post by akamaka »

teruakohatu wrote: post #7
akamaka wrote: post #5

How will Apple recoup the cost of designing a powerful chip for a product like the Mac Pro, which is presumably their lowest-selling product? Most of the M-series chips are shared across multiple products, but the Mac Pro seems to be a clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip makes more business sense right now. I don’t see Apple doing it simply as a vanity project, so there will have to be some inn…

> clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip makes more business sense right now. It will simplify MacOS when they end Intel support.

That’s aside from the point. They could accomplish that by simply killing off the Mac Pro line.

The question is how they will pay for a high-end chip when they no longer can rely on Intel to spread out the development cost among many customers.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#28

Post by thewebcount »

ksec wrote: post #15
akamaka wrote: post #5

How will Apple recoup the cost of designing a powerful chip for a product like the Mac Pro, which is presumably their lowest-selling product? Most of the M-series chips are shared across multiple products, but the Mac Pro seems to be a clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip makes more business sense right now. I don’t see Apple doing it simply as a vanity project, so there will have to be some inn…

>How will Apple recoup the cost of designing a powerful chip for a product like the Mac Pro, which is presumably their lowest-selling product? Which is the question I have been asking since 2015 . From a cost prospective it never made any sense. Presumably they will wait until Mac Studio becoming powerful enough to fill the gap. >but the Mac Pro seems to be a clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip…

What do you mean without Metal support? All Intel Macs shipped for the last 5 years at least have supported Metal.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#29

Post by spookie »

pjmlp wrote: post #22
ksec wrote: post #13

It seems strange to include the Mini. As it is more of an Intel Mac for those who somehow still need Intel macOS for whatever reason. The memory capacity is limited in ARM Mac. So if you want high capacity memory you go to Mac Studio. And with Mac Studio, which brings us the next question. What are the Market Mac Studio couldn't compete with Mac Pro. If it is not powerful enough now, will possibly another doubling of…

The market of VFX, which without an Mac Pro, might end up going back to Windows or custom built Linux desktops, like many Hollywood studios did when migrating away from SGI, and Pro wasn't still an option.

I assume the tile based rendering architecture is the biggest footgun in the new Apple SoC's. It just doesn't scale with a lot of polygons.

I don't see how they can solve this either.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#30

Post by dagmx »

pjmlp wrote: post #22
ksec wrote: post #13

It seems strange to include the Mini. As it is more of an Intel Mac for those who somehow still need Intel macOS for whatever reason. The memory capacity is limited in ARM Mac. So if you want high capacity memory you go to Mac Studio. And with Mac Studio, which brings us the next question. What are the Market Mac Studio couldn't compete with Mac Pro. If it is not powerful enough now, will possibly another doubling of…

The market of VFX, which without an Mac Pro, might end up going back to Windows or custom built Linux desktops, like many Hollywood studios did when migrating away from SGI, and Pro wasn't still an option.

VFX has largely been on Linux workstations since the demise of SGI. There’s never really been a Mac presence at the workstation level at those studios.

Windows is already in many studios due to VR or Virtual Production work, since Unreal Engine kind of sucks on anything that isn’t Windows, and the same goes for VR.

However there are a few areas that Macs are used heavily and where I don’t think Apple need to be worried:

- artists that need to use Adobe products or anything non Linux. Macs offer better Linux like workflows for pipelines since it’s Unix like, so is favoured for pipeline integration and macOS has much better colour handling than windows. So you’ll see in house concept artists, matte painters and the like on macs. VFX editors tend to be on macs for the same reason. Those are the folks that a Mac Pro would be handy for.

- dailies review boxes. Macs again are better for playback and the arm macs are so quiet they’re perfect for a review room. More RAM is always welcome here.

- coordinators and producers are almost always on Mac laptops. They’re unparalleled for battery life in a compact body. Plus since macs need to be supported for the above two use cases, it makes sense to use them as well.

- conform machines to handle media conversions often are macs. Though this depends greatly on what formats are being used

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