Why YOU Should Buy the "Cheapest" Mac Studio! 

@chipotleman I got about 70% of what I paid for it about a year and half ago on sale. I figured It cost less than $10 a month to use the mini so it really softened the $$ of the Studio Max and I used my Apple Card and got $$ back and now I pay about $125 a month for a year so it became very cost effective and it is all a business deduction and decision.

Nice! Hope you are enjoying the studio!

@@TheEverydayDad how can I not enjoy what this Mac brings. I was hoping for just a Mini Pro and they unleashed this 👍💪😀

Nice! I hope you enjoy it, and that's awesome on the pricing!

There’s also U.S. Military/veteran discounts available for those eligible.

@@havok3344 That is what I used for 10% off on my Studio. Great deal.

I did the same. As a current student I got that discount, and I'm trading in my late 2019 iMac as well. Got the base model (updated only storage) - for $1200. An absolute steal.

Sure we might have to do that!

You have a point. I went with the Mac studio as I rarely do work on the go. But with that you need a mouse and keyboard, display and everything.

How'd it go? I recently picked up the macbook pro 16" base for much the same reasons only to realize that mobility isn't as important as I had thought. I May return for the studio base model.

@@leagueofotters2774 To be honest for the work that I do, which is editing sound effects in Pro Tools, it's not much different than the Mac mini M1 I had before. I made a few video edits, preforms very well but not 3x better than the Mini as the price would suggest. Also, it's not completely silent as the mini was, doesn't really bother me, but in a dead quiet recording studio it's a downgrade. Looking back, the only reason I didn't get a macbook pro is there's more stuff that may break on it. Otherwise they're the same machine.

Cool story bro

I want fiber sooooo bad. We had it in a previous house and it was amazing but now we have the slowest upload speeds.

512 has been fine for me but if you are going to spend money anywhere absolutely getting a bigger hard drive is a good idea.

@@TheEverydayDad Very interesting -- thanks Gary, you may save me some money!

actualy if you don't need the optimisations for video editing, the Mini is a better machine (smaller, more silent, less power consuption)

I wonder how many docks you could chain off of a single port and then quadruple that out across the studio.

I’ve also seen complaints but wonder if those people every had a gaming PC and dealt with GPU coil whine. As long as it’s a low purr, I’ll gladly retire by 2009 cheese grater.

@@havok3344 PCs are shit!

I thought the ultra was 2 max’s linked together so if you get the max that basically is the other half of the ultra. I could be wrong

Welcome to the early team!

@@TheEverydayDad Thank you 😊

I almost always get the base model products.

An big heart of the problem, is that a lot of newer jobs like 3d animation work, or heavy video editing, are starting to chew up more and more ram. So the power you'll see in the Mac studio is starting be a necessity rather than a nicety. And sure, you can hope that you'll land a job at a company that will cover the cost of your editing or animation rig. But more and more of those jobs are moving towards offering contract work instead of real employment. Which has the same hardware requirements as the work you used to be hired on for. But now your (temporary) employer isn't covering the cost of your work rig any more. And 2000 might not sound like much. But saving up that much can be its own burden when all the other prices keep jumping up too. It's harder to save when gas is 6 dollars a gallon. When rent jumps up another 100 dollars, because landlords are trying to get back the money they lost during the Covid rent pause. And then you have student debt unfreezing in a few months. Complaints about the 2000 dollar price mark are a microcosm of a bigger problem. That the hard ware demands for creative professionals are going up. While the spending power of middle class Americans is going down. While businesses rely more and more on contractors to fill in the gaps caused by the great Resignation.

I'm sorry. I'm not Gary. But I will still reply. I have the base with a 2 TB ssd. It was just about $2600 with tax from the academic store (no apple care, just tax). You save about a few hundred. Normally $2600 is your subtotal going from the regular store $2599 * (1 + .1025) = $ 2,865.40. Using the academic store, you save $265 since the 2 tb is about $60 cheaper on the academic store? Not a student? Take p.e. But then you'd end up spending that $300 you saved on the Mac Studio on a 2 credit PE test. I heard 64 gigs is the sweet spot. But if you just have 1 app open, you're fine with the 32. 128 gigs of ram is just nit needed at all.. Since macs are expensive, maybe upping your GPU cores may be your first good move. I wish I did that. Iys only $200 on regular. About $180 on academic. And if you're going academic, you just moved up to the regular price but with 32 core gpu. And then to move up to 1 TB that's $200 regular $180 academic. Hence, subtotal ~$2200 academic ~$2399 regular, total regular $2645 regular total ~$2425 academic. Now if you want all of this plus 64 gigs ram, you're looking at a $3100 computer. It's kind of a souped up base but may be not as fast as the Ultra. Nut if you have $3100, you're sweet spot may consists of: 64 gigs ram 10 core cpu 32 core gpu 1 TB However of you want 2 TB, you're souped up base will starting reaching the Ultra price range but not act Ultra at $3529 roughly with tax. And of you're going to spend $3500 on a base, it's better to spend $600 more to get Ultra since you're so darn close But if you're willing to settle at $3100 and a 1 tb 64 gigs ram 10 core cpu 32 core GPU, then your base will still be souped up but Stay closer to you budget and performance. And if you're willing to stay at 32 gigs ram you can stay in thr $2,000-$2500 range.

@@DerekMckean thanks for the reply. Im in Denmark where the base model studio Costs $2400 with 10 core cpu & 32core GPU it costs $2640 then an upgrade to 2TB brings the price up to $3360. Then if i decide to upgrade to 64GB ram that will be a final Price of $4100. The price of the base Ultra is $4820. We pay 25% tax on everything in Denmark.

@@normanrobson9957 25%? Yikes. And I thought 10.25% was high. So you have to pay 2.5 times our state tax. New York state has the highest state tax at 12.7%. So your country has double the state tax of New York.

I still want a Mac mini body with the m1 max inside of it.

Far more likely to get an m1/m2 pro mac mini if you ask me. That seems to be the sweet spot for a Mac mini up to 16 cores gpu (maybe 20 cores on an m2) and up to 32 gigs of ram. That would be a real mini power house.

No

His top comment is "The next part in the series "I spent $5000 on Mac Studio Accessories!"". It sounds like a joke but also sounds like the average Apple fan. We will never know.

I disagree, you can get a very good monitor for less than the $1200 difference between the Mac studio and the cheapest m1 max MacBook.

@@TheEverydayDad That's true, but "very good" isn't the same as "equivalent to". The monitors on the MBP's are almost unbeatable. Then when we start talking "burn in", led degradation, and overall reliability.... Apple has something special in their monitors. I edit photos ALL DAY LONG, and have pretty bad eyes, so I have to use a bigger screen. After editing 4 thousand images wrong on a nearly $1700 hi-res gaming monitor, I went back to an 24 inch iMac. One central point most people forget, is the medium that content is most regularly consumed on. If people look at smart phones all day, they will notice the drop in quality when they use a monitor that isn't a top notch 4.5k display.

I have a Studio Max (with 1TB upgrade only) on order from B&H as well. Ordered it on March 16 and was estimated mid April delivery. Realistically, who knows? B&H has no idea so it’s useless to bother them about it. Had to think hard if maybe 512gb might be ok but my current onboard storage is more than 512gb but not over 1TB so having the bump will future-proof me. For archive storage I have plenty of external drives. Good luck!

@@2Chickaboom2 Yeah. This I'll be a waiting game for sure.

It's not cheap, the bottom of the range is the mid range on the laptop version.