Whether you’re serious or joking, your point is valid. People don’t need to chase processor updates if their current machine is working for them. If Apple Intelligence isn’t a requirement and they’re not professionals writing code or working with complex media, an Intel Mac mini could still be a reliable and suitable workhorse for their personal needs.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Macs With M5 Chips Expected to Launch in This Order
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Whether you’re serious or joking, your point is valid. People don’t need to chase processor updates if their current machine is working for them. If Apple Intelligence isn’t a requirement and they’re not professionals writing code or working with complex media, an Intel Mac mini could still be a reliable and suitable workhorse for their personal needs.
Good points. Speed throttling makes a big difference for me. I work with compute-bound tasks which trigger thermal management on the M3-Max laptop. So, it hasn't replaced my Studio as I was hoping it might.
Im agree, but 8 months to release the mac studio max from the mbp max is just marketing.
Apple’s desktop pro users are just a niche, and Apple historically has mistreated us in every possible way, since the super outdated dual 1,42ghz G4
The intel mac pro was extremmly expensive and the best iMac 27 always lacked a decent GPU
Apple focused on the more profitable products for regular users since the miracle iMac bondi ( the iPod, the iPhone, the macbook air etc) with some good points as the first G5, first Mac Pro xeon (I dont know what to say about the iMac Pro…) even the best M1 option, the Ultra M1, came with just one internal drive as another expansion limitations…
Apple’s desktop pro users are just a niche, and Apple historically has mistreated us in every possible way, since the super outdated dual 1,42ghz G4
The intel mac pro was extremmly expensive and the best iMac 27 always lacked a decent GPU
Apple focused on the more profitable products for regular users since the miracle iMac bondi ( the iPod, the iPhone, the macbook air etc) with some good points as the first G5, first Mac Pro xeon (I dont know what to say about the iMac Pro…) even the best M1 option, the Ultra M1, came with just one internal drive as another expansion limitations…
…..
Name doesn’t matter. I’m a pro user that needs a pro desktop. I’m still on M2 meanwhile M5 is getting close on BASE UNITS. How much more performance do grandmas need? Apple’s continual treatment of the pro market is baffling.
Unfortunately this is capitalism. Apple is a publicly traded company. They are going to do it in whichever order maximizes profits as is their legal fiduciary duty to shareholders. Base chips have fewer yield issues and can be churned out at higher volumes and with higher margins.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
And presumably Mac Studio & Mac Pro has the higher profit dollars-per-unit-sold of ANY Mac.
Those wised up- as I have been- won't make the same mistake again. So those fatter profit dollars won't flow from people like me who now believe it would be better to ignore the Mac Studio or Mac Pro Ultra and wait the few months from the much cheaper MBpro MAX with M-next chip... even to use it as a desktop.
Capitalism is about both costs and profits. As is, the order risks maximizing profit-per-Mac-sold. And this order flip wouldn't impact the mainstream releases of MBpro, etc in the Fall... so the "bread & butter" volume sales would be as is... except for perhaps a few people "pulled up" to ULTRAs because they want "most powerful" enough to pay the extra thousands for it.
Those wised up- as I have been- won't make the same mistake again. So those fatter profit dollars won't flow from people like me who now believe it would be better to ignore the Mac Studio or Mac Pro Ultra and wait the few months from the much cheaper MBpro MAX with M-next chip... even to use it as a desktop.
Capitalism is about both costs and profits. As is, the order risks maximizing profit-per-Mac-sold. And this order flip wouldn't impact the mainstream releases of MBpro, etc in the Fall... so the "bread & butter" volume sales would be as is... except for perhaps a few people "pulled up" to ULTRAs because they want "most powerful" enough to pay the extra thousands for it.
Yes, you’re “still” on a computer that’s 18 months old. Practically Stone Age. Hard to cope!
It is less baffling when you consider that the desktop and laptop markets are mature, stable, and saturated. The Mac Studio and Mac Pro will only account for $4.3 billion in revenue, a hair over 1% of Apple's total revenue this year. All desktops together are only about 3%, the same percentage as the Apple Watch. All Macs, desktop and laptop combined, comprise only 9%.
Pro and Studio desktops account for 1% of Apple's revenue. Even if they made twice the profits of other Macs it would barely move the needle on revenue or profit. It is a fact of business that the profit from a project that would guarantee the success of a normal company is a rounding error for a giant like Apple.
The Pro and Studio models are for a niche within the professional segment. Most people who consider themselves "power" or "pro" users will do just fine with a Max processor. Studios and Pros are for people who process large data sets or media and saturate computation for extended periods of time. They are for workloads that saturate memory bandwidth and/or trigger thermal throttling on a Max. If one doesn't need that level of performance, the Max chips are fine workhorses for a professional.
If you have wised up and found the Max to be a better and most cost effective alternative, realize, the initial mistake was your own. You wanted the Studio out of FOMO, not need.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
That 1% so popularly slung around here comes from a chart that only implies it might represent revenue. It could also be units. There is another slice of that pie that doesn't make logical sense... unless it IS about UNITS. If it IS about units, would Apple rather sell units that cost multiples of base and pro/max prices to those willing to buy ONE Mac in some year and desires to buy "most powerful?" Of course they would. There's more profit if buyers buy a Studio or Pro Ultra instead of only a MB MAX. Apple likes maximum cash. 💰💰💰
There's no real loss in a schedule flip for Apple. In fact, they may get a few more coughing up the extra money for Ultras if the people want most powerful... because the Ultra would then be king of the power hill for upwards of a year or more instead of only a few months. As is, if the compulsion to own "most powerful/greatest" (Mac) can be managed for only a couple of months, they can scratch that same itch and spend as little as about HALF the cost.
And the flip wouldn't change the unit volume of the "cash cow" Fall releases. This idea is NOT about altering how Apple makes the bulk of the money (mostly on laptop sales). They still launch at the same time in this idea. Upwards of all of the vast revenue (per that chart) or units remains the same from the great wave that favors laptops over desktops.
Yes, couldn't have known it at the time as the implication was 2 MAXes are better than 1 MAX, which turned out to not be true in a full 2X way. But lesson learned now and I just won't do it again unless ULTRA is really "most powerful" for longer than only 3-5 months or so. I'd rather save the money for Next-gen MAX... which means Apple gets less profit from the unit sold to me. If there are others like me, that's even more most profitable units NOT being purchased in favor of waiting only a few months to get the new most powerful for towards about half the price (and less profit for Apple).
Last edited:
You are correct that the 1% is only an estimate. But it is based on information on sales from Apple's quarterly reports, research firms, analyst reports, other market data. We can reliably know the total Mac percentage because Apple does report that.
I trust Apple executives, who know all the real numbers, are making decisions that they believe maximize the profitability of Apple. I don't discount that interdepartmental politics plays some role in the allocation of R&D dollars, but it all has to be justified on rational projections of the numbers, otherwise Tim Cook must return his MBA.
My M2-Ultra outperforms any M4-Max chip in a non-studio form factor for my tasks. I’m content waiting for an M4-Ultra or M5-Ultra to justify an upgrade. If it doesn’t, an M5-Max might, but TSMC’s N2 process improvement may only be 10% to 15%, memory bandwidth might not reach 800Mb/sec, and speed throttling in non-Studio form factors conflicts with my use. However, if the rumored GPU separation from the M-series SOC onto a separate chip is true, it introduces a different architecture and all bets would be off.
Last edited:
This implies desktops are about a third of Macs.
We know that in 2017, 80% of Macs sold were laptops. By now, surely that number has increased. Now, units aren’t revenues, but for your figure to work, a ton of laptops would have to be low-revenue, and a lot of desktops high-revenue. I don’t think that checks out, because the MBP is quite a big seller and serves most high-end needs.
This mistaken but quite common thinking is as old as the first CPU.
“This 16k ROM has enough room to load 2 DOS, who needs more?”
The sad true is the tools you are allowed to use in your comouter are conditioned by the power your computer has. This means, you cant render 4K h265 movies in real time just because no computer can.
And you never would render videos in real time with the latest and greatest codec because there is a relationship between available power and tools.
Could you imagine 30 years ago people guessing what kind of tools are we using today?
Available power allows new tools, not the oposite.
AI wasnt restricted by lack of human kowledge or creativity, but for lack of computing power.
Give AI developers a 100.000x computer power today, and they would develop new tools that common people would use in common day to day usage that would make your actual computer from the cave era.
Who is going to take advantage of more power?
The short question is: everyone (one or another way)
The AI example is a good one as Apple Intelligence just forced Apple to jump ahead in time with the M4, and is not possible with old chips and low RAM
Or maybe not so surely. According to the estimates I'm seeing, laptop sales increased from about 14.2 million to 15.8 million from 2017 to 2024. Desktop units went from 4.6 to 5.9 in the same period.
That's about 75.5% laptops in 2017 to 72.8% laptops (est) in 2024 by unit sales. It isn't surprising. Desktop sales were up and down through the 2010 (and almost at their lowest in 2017). They only went higher than their previous high in 2014 when the modular Mac Pro was introduced in 2019. They then got a larger boost when the M-processor chips arrived.
There’s some truth to that.
Apple Intelligence runs all the way back on M1.
Yes it is, because especially in the age of COVID, laptop sales got another huge boost.
So did desktops. Mac desktop unit sales jumped from 5 million to 5.5 million from 2019 to 2020. Laptop sales jumped from 14.5 million to 15 million over the same two years. In other words, though they both increased by the same number of units, desktop sales increased 10% while laptop sales increase 3.4%.
Comparing 2019 to 2024 estimates, laptops will have gone from 14.5 million to 15.8 million, an 8.9% increase, whereas desktops will have gone from 5 million to 5.9 million, an 18% increase.
I love all the Apple apologists around here saying well since it’s only 1% of sales it’s okay for Apple to half-ass their pro line. I’m as big of an Apple fan as anyone. I have 4 Mac Studios nearly maxed out for goodness sakes. But holy cow. You know what would improve that 1%? Actually showing pro users you give a damn. I went back to Windows after the awful trash can Mac Pro.
Almost came back in 2019 but knew Apple Silicon was on the way and didn’t want to get that Mac Pro. Mac Studio M1 and M2 were great. But their attitudes to the pro market are starting to be like the trash can again.
If Apple wants their pro market to matter they need to give it more attention. Otherwise I’m looking at windows AGAIN in a couple years. If that long. Will see how new AMD and NVIDIA 50 series compares with my workload.
All this constant talk about how desktops have matured isn’t stopping AMD, Intel or NVIDIA from keeping up in the pro market. There is still NO ANSWER from Apple for a majority of workflows to a 13900k and even an RTX 4070. There you go. Mac Studio and Mac Pro has SIGNIFICANTLY more room to grow.
And other than running better on battery and, again just SOME WORKFLOWS, Mac Laptops still have a lot of room to grow too.
Almost came back in 2019 but knew Apple Silicon was on the way and didn’t want to get that Mac Pro. Mac Studio M1 and M2 were great. But their attitudes to the pro market are starting to be like the trash can again.
If Apple wants their pro market to matter they need to give it more attention. Otherwise I’m looking at windows AGAIN in a couple years. If that long. Will see how new AMD and NVIDIA 50 series compares with my workload.
All this constant talk about how desktops have matured isn’t stopping AMD, Intel or NVIDIA from keeping up in the pro market. There is still NO ANSWER from Apple for a majority of workflows to a 13900k and even an RTX 4070. There you go. Mac Studio and Mac Pro has SIGNIFICANTLY more room to grow.
And other than running better on battery and, again just SOME WORKFLOWS, Mac Laptops still have a lot of room to grow too.
Last edited:
I think this is because the more advanced chips take more time to bring to production, and they ship in far lower volume. An M5 MacBook Pro will greatly outsell an M5 Max Mac Studio, probably by more than 10x.
Nobody said that it’s ok to deprioritize their Pro line, but there are business reasons why they do what they do.
Perhaps if Apple’s CPU’s become dramatically faster than Intel/AMD, then it will make more sense for Apple to pour greater resources into timely launches of professional machines. Personally, I think Apple’s refusal to make internal storage and memory upgradeable will stop them from dominating the professional market, no matter how fast their chips are.