iCaveDave
Apple has today announced and released updates for Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Compressor and Motion and the mobile version of iMovie bringing new features. However all eyes will now be on how the Mac Studio with M1 Ultra inside fares now the software is optimised. And perhaps that’s exactly what Apple wanted.
When Mac Studio was announced with almost no leaks ahead of time, at least until the week of the event, it surprised a lot of people. The performance, once it got into people’s hands though didn’t quite stack up.
The performance of the M1 Ultra was good, but it wasn’t the mind blowing experience people were expecting right off the bat. And even more confusingly, Apple’s own Final Cut Pro wasn’t flying. But then reviewers noticed, Apple mentioned they were using an unreleased version of Final Cut Pro. But where was that version? Why wasn’t it released with the Mac Studio and the Studio Display?
There are a couple of options, either Apple found a bug that took a couple of weeks to resolve with that update, or, they intentionally held it back, just a little. I think the latter.
It was a calculated risk if that’s the case, but combined with the short supply of hardware, I doubt many would have cancelled a pre-order based on some less positive reviews. But dropping the updates to Final Cut now, arguably the biggest real world benchmark for the Mac should massively boost attention on the device just as it would have started to wain.
Now, here we are, all talking about it again. So how much extra performance can you expect from your Mac Studio with M1 Ultra post update? Well Apple Insider is reporting that even on the M1 Max which was already pretty well optimised, their 9 minute 4k project in H.264 dropped from 3:30 to export to 3:10, as well as being smoother and with fewer graphical inconsistencies when editing.
On the M1 Ultra though, there’s still very little in the way of testing that I can find, and I certainly don’t have the budget for one here!
I can’t wait to see what results come out from this over the coming days, and I’ll be sure to keep you updated.
Speaking of updates, the Apple Studio Display got an update this week and weirdly also leaked an upcoming Mac mini. Of course this means if it comes true, the Apple Studio display will become a 100% accurate leaker and top the board over at Apple Track.
But more importantly, that Mac mini – it’s referenced as Mac mini 10,1 which follow’s Apple’s normal naming convention and as it’s already appearing in the Studio Display’s code, it’s almost certainly planned for release before the display’s next planned update. The display runs iOS 15.4, and we already have iOS 15.5 betas in the public realm, so I’d almost say it could be this side of WWDC, which means probably in May.
But we’re not expecting any events in May… the plot thickens! Now we’ve heard about redeisgns for Mac mini, and there are thoughts of the M2 being in the next Mac mini, but honestly I think neither might be the answer. I think especially if we’re to see this as a possible press release and website update Mac mini, I think we may get a space grey Mac mini Pro with M1 Pro inside, filling that gap between the existing Mac mini M1 and the M1 Max equipped Mac Studio. Old design, already released chip, so nothing mind-blowing that Apple would need a full on event to explain, but also a way to replace that outlier on Apple.com, the Intel “High End” Mac mini.
It just feels like the easy answer here. We know Apple has had some massive issues with production recently, though these seem driven by MiniLED shortages and yield issues, but that’s probably kept Apple’s engineers pretty busy. So go with the tried and tested design, a bigger fan inside and we know that the Mac mini M1 has plenty of room inside too, along with a very overkill power supply for anything up to and including an M1 Pro.
Apple can still make a nice release video for us all to get excited about, just like with the AirPods Max back in 2019. We’d all get excited and we’d be even closer to completing that transition, with just the Mac Pro (which if you remember I was the only one saying from day one would NOT get an update with new Xeon chips) left to make the switch.
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