AnandTech on the recently announced Apple Silicon M2 Chip

Ryan Smith has a must read article on the recently announced Apple M2 Apple Silicon chip that is in the new Air and low end MacBook Pro.

Basically while it can be more energy efficient, it can also run more power and be more powerful. And it is larger than the previous generation, and it also includes ProRes acceleration instead of just H264 acceleration in the chip. Also it has more memory capacity, 24 vs 16 and at 100GB/sec vs 68GB/sec in the previous M1,

And the larger chip will have Max and Ultra versions and I am betting the quad version that will be in the next Mac Pro, which makes me happy that they didn’t yet release the MacPro as if it is based on this it will beat out the current Mac Studio, though will certainly be quite expensive.

9To5 Mac reports no M1 mac supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 at 10 GB speed

Ben Lovejoy has the slightly confusing report.

It seems M1 macs don’t support 10gb USB 3.1 Gen 2 and only 10gb for USB 3.2 which should reach 20gb, so don’t officially support usb 4 which would have to include both of those.

So it basically supports the 5gb of Usb 3.1 Gen 1, and 3.2 is dual, so 2 5gb, but full thunderbolt 4 40gb.

Intel macs supported USB 3.1 Gen 2 at 10GB, but also only supported USB 3.2 at 10gb.

I don’t know if this is licensing, saving money or just bad implementation on their own chip design. This is a huge mistake and one I wish Apple would deal with in the future (i bet it is hardware and not software).

PVC on Maxon Updating Red Giant Universe with M1 Support

PVC on the Maxon formerly Red Giant Universe Plug-ins having been updated to 5.1 with M1 Support and having replaced JavaScript with C++ for a more powerful and better Code Base.

I have used Red Giant Universe for years and think their whole suite is a must have. I use them literally on every project. I still wish Maxon still allowed you to have an installation on Laptop and Desktop, and even worse the Application Manager now signs out at least once a week, leaving renders with X’s in Premiere all the time. Honestly it was better when owned by Red Giant alone, but I still use the plug-ins all the time.

Rumors were true Apple has announced the Mac Studio with M1 Ultra and a new display the Studio Display

Mac Studio Front

I would also bet that the rumors are true that the iMac Pro and Mac Pro are delayed, and likely will be M2 versions of M1 Pro, Max and Ultra, as they have released this new machine. It is a Mac Mini sized7.7″ inches square and 3.7 inches tall so twice as tall. 4 thunderbolt ports, 2 usb c in front as well as a sdxc card slot, and 2 usb 3.1 in back a 10gb ethernet a headphone jack as well as an hdmi port.

It can run 4 displays and a TV. Damn!

I so want one and 2 studio displays, though I would rather have the Mac Pro, which will likely have 4 M1 Max’s with 256 GB of RAM (and now we know there is no new iMac Pro).

The studio display doesn’t do height unless you buy an expensive stand like the previous display and is 27″ 5K, anti-reflective, and you can get the nano texture as well and the same camera as iPad and mics and 6 speakers. (Wish I could get it without), but is $1599 to start. It is $300 to add Nano Texture Glass. The tilt stand comes wit6h it and the Vesa Mount costs the same (but then you need a VESA mount) and the Tilt and Height Adjustable Stand is $400 more, which is better than the $1000 for the one for the 32 inch display.

The M1 Max studio starts at $1999 and the Ultra version starts at $3999.

Oh yes I want one!

And this makes me think I couldn’t afford a Mac Pro anyway.

The $3999 Model is 20-Core CPU, 48 Core GPU and 32-core Nueral Engine. It is then a $1000 upgrade to move the the 20-core CU, 64 Core GPU and 32 Core Nueral Engine, another $800 for 128 GB of Unified Memory, and $400 to move from 1 TB to 2 TB SSD (and would be $1000 to move to 4TB, which is just too much. So that brings this sucker to $6199.00 USD. Wow, and I would need at least 1 studio display for $1500. Youch!

ooooh Apple just announced the M1 Ultra above the M1 Pro and M1 Max in Apple Silicon

So Apple just announced an M1 Ultra so rumors of a new mac today seem to be true! It is literally 2 M1 Max’s stuck together with Ultra Fusion technology with 2.5 TB/s of bandwidth. 4 times faster than other multichip setups! And it acts like 1 processor, and that means it is also expanding memory with 800 GB/s memory bandwidth with 128 GB of Unified memory!

20 Core CPU with 16 High performance and 4 slow, and a 64 core gpu. 8 Times faster than standard M1! With 4 ProRes Encode Decode engines! Damn!

And much less power than any PC CPU or GPU!

Damn this is going to be rocking, and makes the Mac Pro with 4 even more amazing!

Macworld on Apple Silicon Mac Pro

Jason Snell at Macworld has an article, Forget Everything you know about the Mac Pro which is speculation on Apple Silicon.

Of course we know some, like a bigger version of the M1 Max with more cores and more graphics cores and more memory.

And of course that means a smaller box than the current Intel Mac Pro.

And of course less expansion, because it is unlikely to have PCI slots especially since it doesn’t need an afterburner since it is built into the processor now, and only thunderbolt for expansion.

So really we are not saying anything new here. And sure it is all speculation.

I personally hope for more storage options. It would be great to have at least 2 banks of raided SSD’s, as I am sure there won’t be any room for spinning hard disks (though I would love a bank of 4, but am sure that will need external needs).

Honestly the New MacPro will likely be pretty damn small, but with some fans to cool the processors down for better performance.