Apple just posted new Mac Mini with M2 Pro and new Macbook Pros with M2 Pro and Max!

Front page at https://www.apple.com

So how long will M1Pro models (particularly 1tb ram models) be out there to buy? And when do we expect to see prices on them fall in response to the release of the M2Pros? I’m upgrading from an ancient 2012 15” Retina and would like to get the best deal I can on an M1Pro 16” 1tb.

I think the new M2 Mini with the 4 Thunderbolt ports is the project studio Mac of choice, at this point. I'm in.

Yes, but only the M2 Pro mini will come with four TB4 ports. The regular M2 mini can't do 4 ports and comes with the standard 2 ports as seen in the "old" M1 models.

I went back and forth between the mini M2 Pro and the Macbook Pro Max, but ultimately just placed an order for the Macbook Pro M2 Max 64 gb ram. I was torn because 99% of the time I use my mac sitting at my desk in my studio room, so a desktop would be fine, but I really wanted 64gb ram. About 8 months ago I had bought a Mac Studio which I thought would be perfect, but it was too noisy so I sent it back. Oh well, this thing should be a beast.

I absolutely think there will be a LOT of people who bought Studios who wish they had not, tbh, now that these models have been released

No further comment on all that, except to say: I am glad I didn't buy a Studio.

I agree ! The mac mini pro with 32GB and 2TB will be the perfect computer for me to replace my old mini 2018 intel. ;-)

The Pro Mini with maxed out RAM is $300 cheaper than the stock base model Studio.. You lose 8 GPU cores, and switch 2 of the performance cores to efficiency cores, and also lose one external display but eh.. I'd like to see what the next iteration of the Studio looks like before I buy (still got the '2020' i7 Mini with no need to upgrade yet). If it's going to be at the same price it has been, might be good to wait depending on what they put in it to make it the new 'Studio' model over the regular one.

My main concern about the Studio is that notorious whine that many users were getting. I can't afford to play that lottery.

And I am not maxing out RAM on anything, I think.

I've got 16GB in my Intel i7 model and I'm fine for the most part. Then again I don't do projects anywhere near as big as a lot of folks around here do. Im still like 24-32 audio tracks with maybe a couple of synth plugins here and there so it's fine for me. With the new architecture, I'd bet the 16GB base is pretty killer as it is, but devs are going to start taking advantage of that as usual so I'm not quite sure whether to upgrade or just go stock again. Never dealt with a desktop machine that couldn't be upgraded so this should be interesting. At least with my Intel Mini I can still get in there and do it myself if I need to.

I'll get one with 32GB and 1 TB to replace my two current desktop Macs: a 2013 Mac pro and a 2014 Mac Mini, both of which are still going strong and don't really need to be replaced but this new Mini will smoke both of them for everything I need to do (music, photo editing, and video).

This is my sweet spot, too.

My music projects are similar to yours and my MacBookPro M1 with 16GB RAM dies of boredom.
Just make sure your effect and instrument plugins are Apple Silicon native and you choose a decent sized SSD.

MacBook Pro M2Max ?
The very definition of a stop gap machine compared to its predecessor. And an expensive one at that, almost 10% more outside of the US.

If you do the 12 core mini pro you don't lose any performance cores. It is 8 performance and 4 efficiency cores. On the studio max you have 10 cores - 8 performance and 2 efficiency. So you get the same number of performance cores either way, but 2 more efficiency cores on the mini pro.

I think it might be true that at this point in the game even using a number of plugins that are not Apple Silicon native might not be a chore for the new machines, right?

Preferable to have everything native, of course, but I am almost convinced that running (half?) my considerable plugin collection in (native) Pro Tools via Rosetta on an M2 mini would perform significantly better than my current 2019 Intel MBP, though I might be wrong...

I’m sure there’s an hour long YouTube video from an Apple hype channel about all these questions and more.

I’m keeping my M1 Max for as long as possible.

After a long wait, Mac Mini M2 Pro has landed. Fully configured it's a bit less expensive than Mac Studio, with some interesting tradeoffs.

With the Mini I'll get by with 32GB RAM, versus 64GB I have been planning for the Studio pending this release.

I'll lose a couple high-speed ports but have planned one small expansion chassis for Studio to hold a pair of NVMe drives, so the same chassis with the Mini will be fine.

Mini gets Wifi 6e and Bluetooth 5.3 which are nice improvements over Studio.

Benchmarks should reveal improved single-core performance which is nice for our audio applications.

Mini likely will not whine. It might run warm and possibly throttle in heavy sessions due to the M2 Pro being 5nm and probably faster clock. Early reviews will quickly show if this is an issue or not.

I hope Apple engineers have improved Bluetooth antenna performance if this is indeed still an issue.

I may not go with the internal 4TB SSD in the Mini to reduce cost a bit. This may become a second computer for business apps and household file sharing, so buying just enough SSD for OS and music apps makes sense.

That's my first take. I'm pretty excited to read some early reviews and jump in. There's enough new tech in the old chassis design (which I like) for this to work nicely.

Now I just need to figure out my next audio interface to pair with the computer. As mainly a Pro Tools user, Carbon is looking more appealing as prices and availability have changed for my favored alternatives.

Sky

Seeing a lot of people saying they're waiting for M3, which will presumably be 3nm. What's the benefit of that to the end user - anything I'd really be missing out on by upgrading now? This has to this point been the laptop I've been waiting for - second generation of a new revision has always been the Apple sweet spot in my mind.

M3 MBPs should, in theory, offer a tonne more single core speed whilst simultaneously being a lot more efficient / running cooler.

Now, that’s not to say that the M1 Max machines aren’t already outstanding in that regard, but the M3s are likely to be a significant jump again.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and insights. I currently have an Other World Computing (OWC) "ThunderBay 2" Thunderbolt 2 drive enclosure. This holds my three 1TB 2.5" Samsung SATA drives and my one 6TB 3.5" 7200 RPM backup drive.

This setup was fine 7 years ago when I bought it and slowly added more 1TB 2.5" SATA drives. But now, managing all those drives is a real pain. And the 2.5" SATA drives are really slow compared to modern NVMe drives.

I would encourage you to buy as much storage as you can afford for your M2 Pro Mac Mini. The internal drive in the Mini will almost certainly be much faster than any external drive / enclosure you buy.

For instance, I have to wait several seconds when loading some of the larger Omnisphere patches from one of my 2.5" SATA drives. However, if I load the same patches from my internal 2TB OWC NVMe drive, the Omnisphere patches load almost instantaneously. The same thing happens with my UVI Falcon "Vintage Vault" sampled instruments. The load time is almost unbearable when loading instruments from one of my 1TB 2.5" SATA drives.

So I would make sure to check the throughput of your Thunderbolt enclosure so it doesn't become the performance bottleneck in your system.

I hope this helps.

i waited for the m1 pro/max, then decided the m2 pro/max, and it's true that i would prefer the m3, but i decided instead to get the m2 pro with the bare minimum of features i think i need, with the possibility to get a fully spec'd computer when the m3 comes out.

for the curious, my config will be

16"
m2 pro w/ 19 gpu cores
32gb ram
4tb ssd

the reason i am going with the 16" over 14" is because it is more thermal efficient, and i don't want any fan noise. being that the chassis is unchanged from the earlier releases, it's possible that the m2 pro in the 14" will have more fan noise than the m1 pro, but it's also possible that the upgraded thermal efficiency mitigates this.

You probably know this, but for the benefit of anyone who doesn't: that OWC expander dock is great for what it is, but it's a major bottleneck for throughput. Expanding a Thunderbolt port is automatically going to subdivide throughput on that channel.

If you were to plug your sample drive(s) directly into their own Thunderbolt port on the actual computer the data would move MUCH faster. For any drive that plays a crucial role in production, you must connect it directly to a port used only for that drive. That's why I was discussing (above ^) the need for one of these new Minis with the 4 Thunderbolt ports.

If you know this already, ignore me.

Thank you for pointing out the speed hit I will suffer by 1) using 2.5" SATA SSD drives instead of NVMe drives and 2) using a low bandwidth drive enclosure that is better suited for backup purposes.

However, I'm wondering if even a single external Thunderbolt 4 NVMe drive enclosure will provide the same performance you will get from the internal 4TB or 8TB drives inside the new 14" and 16" MacBook Pros and the new M2 Pro Mac Mini.

For instance, you can buy an 8TB Sabrent NVMe drive with read and write speeds of 7,100 MB/S and 6,600 MB/S. I don't think there is a Thunderbolt 4 drive enclosure that can support those speeds.

https://www.amazon.com/SABRENT-Inter...1-1e5b3de13370

Following this thread. I’m interested to know how quiet the M2 mini pro will be? Also intrigued by the M3 mini when it’s released? Essentially I’m after the smallest most powerful and quietest computer for my studio.

My M1 mini is silent running Pro Tools.

The M2 Pro mini will also be silent running Pro Tools making it the smallest most powerful and quietest computer for your studio imo.

The M1 Max Studio was whiny as **** so it’s nice to have this alternative at last.

I hope I'm not the bearer of bad news. But right now, the smallest and most powerful PC or Mac desktop is the Apple Mac Studio M1 Ultra. I don't currently own one so I can't speak to its noise floor.

I have no proof for this, but my suspicion is that there aren't "defective" Mac Studios with a high pitched whine. I think all the Mac Studios are the same but different people have different tolerances for computer fan noise. If the whine bothers you to the point of distraction, then place the Mac Studio under your music desk or (more drastically) in an "isolation chamber" outside your studio.

My two cents.

If history is any guide, it will most likely be several years before we see an M3 Mac Mini. For whatever reason, Apple treats the Mac Mini like a red headed stepchild. It gets no love despite the fact that it's the perfect size for a slim and light desktop audio PC.

I have proof they whine, I had 3 of them. They whine - it is not the expected fan noise. The expected fan noise is quiet, constant and fine.

A whining thing in the studio is never going to work.

I think that there have been some significant challenges with production these past few years that have affected releases I hope that Apple intends to make things more organized in the future