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Apple Announces Macbook Pro with M2 Max and 96gb RAM.

I'm on a 2012 cheese grater (5,1) modified in 2017..limping along. I'm ready to upgrade to some serious Ram (96 should do it)...orchestral work... plus surround.heavy use etc. I was waiting for a Mac Studio 2 (and still may) or to see what they do with the New Mac Pro (whenever that's going to appear) but in the meantime the top of the range MacBook Pro feels like a real contender. Expensive, but then, it's my job.
 
Minsky said:
I'm on a 2012 cheese grater (5,1) modified in 2017..limping along. I'm ready to upgrade to some serious Ram (96 should do it)...orchestral work... plus surround.heavy use etc. I was waiting for a Mac Studio 2 (and still may) or to see what they do with the New Mac Pro (whenever that's going to appear) but in the meantime the top of the range MacBook Pro feels like a real contender. Expensive, but then, it's my job.
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Me and you buddy... and tons of other folks. That mac pro being delay sucks and now seeing how good the m2 are its hard to spend the $3k on the studio now when itll soon have a refresh (i hope)
 
Justin L. Franks said:
Oh man, just checked the pricing on the M2 Pro Mini.

Non-binned 12-core CPU + 32 GB RAM with 512 GB SSD = $2K, same price as the Mac Studio with the M1 Max and same RAM and SSD.
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yep, the apple ladder. now you will looking at that studio and maybe wonder if 64gb would be worth it for a little more... and a little more... $$$
 
Hansu Heya said:
The funny thing is, as good as these new Apple offerings since M1 may be: the pricing of the internal SSD and (to a lesser degree) of the ram still makes me tend towards using PC-Slave for hardcore orchestral template. The reason is clearly, for most of my day to day applications the m2 Mac mini does the job and is a pretty decently priced machine. However, when you are aiming for 128gb of ram (or even more on the Mac Pro), that will also mean considerable cost for external SSDs to run all those samples on. Maybe even going for a 8tb internal SSD!

However, at this price point, you get a lower specked m2 Mac mini and could buy a pc monster on top - you will probably even have some money left. And if you use VEpro anyway, it will not even impede your workflow at all.

I just wonder, why Apple has to be THAT absurd with memory pricing?! If they wouldn’t be, I think more people would consider their top-shelf workstations …
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From the looks of it apple seems to be trying to do a "ladder" pricing sort of thing where increasing ram and hdd will get you to another mac thats more expensive and adding ram/hdd on that will make it more expensive. The mac mini could easily handle more ram but left more ram for the studio. Money of course is a good reason but makes sense for many consumers looking for a lower prices mac thats no frills and its good and not overlap with other macs too much that could confuse people.

I think before it was a lot more obvous as it was appple to apples with intel based pcs. Now since we just dont know about ram in silicon chips appel can charge whatever. The hard drive is another story as its the same ssd we can buy at around $1=1gb.
 
gsilbers said:
From the looks of it apple seems to be trying to do a "ladder" pricing sort of thing where increasing ram and hdd will get you to another mac thats more expensive and adding ram/hdd on that will make it more expensive. The mac mini could easily handle more ram but left more ram for the studio. Money of course is a good reason but makes sense for many consumers looking for a lower prices mac thats no frills and its good and not overlap with other macs too much that could confuse people.

I think before it was a lot more obvous as it was appple to apples with intel based pcs. Now since we just dont know about ram in silicon chips appel can charge whatever. The hard drive is another story as its the same ssd we can buy at around $1=1gb.
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It is of course not new that Apple is charging to much for memory. It is just new (since m1) that even for desktop computers you have to equip ram AND internal SSD with the initial purchase with no hope of ever bing able to upgrade it later. This creates a certain fear with the customer to have skimped on it too much. Also, most Macs can get way more expensive due to memory than ever before!

I just wonder: how many people will really get a Mac that expensive? I rather think most people will go for the less expensive machines and either live with it or get a PC to do the heavy lifting.
 
davidson said:
The single core is higher than my M1 max, but the multi score is lower, which surprising. How many performance cores does the M2 pro have?
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M2 Pro has either 6 or 8 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores. The full 12-core version should definitely outpace the M1 Max in multicore results, even with the slower memory bandwidth (M1 Max is 400 GB/s, M2 Pro is 200 GB/s). But the binned 10-core version will be a bit below the M1 Max.
 
Just checked the recent Geekbench results for the M2 Pro Mac Mini:

10-core M2 Pro is getting around 12,000 multicore
12-core M2 Pro is getting around 15,000 multicore
 
The only thing stopping me from considering this new MBP is the heat generated from a full-metal body running a scoring template using 80GB+ RAM. It would be interesting to see how hot this machine runs at normal (and intensive) capacities.
 
scoringdreams said:
The only thing stopping me from considering this new MBP is the heat generated from a full-metal body running a scoring template using 80GB+ RAM. It would be interesting to see how hot this machine runs at normal (and intensive) capacities.
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All reports to date are the Apple Silicon machines run extremely cool.

I have an M1 Studio Ultra. Never even breaks a sweat, but it has superior cooling, no doubt.
 
scoringdreams said:
The only thing stopping me from considering this new MBP is the heat generated from a full-metal body running a scoring template using 80GB+ RAM. It would be interesting to see how hot this machine runs at normal (and intensive) capacities.
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The only times I've had my MBP run warm enough to spin up the fans to an audible level is if I'm doing something that taxes the CPU and GPU simultaneously, such as gaming or doing a Blender 3D render.
 
Justin L. Franks said:
M2 Pro has either 6 or 8 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores. The full 12-core version should definitely outpace the M1 Max in multicore results, even with the slower memory bandwidth (M1 Max is 400 GB/s, M2 Pro is 200 GB/s). But the binned 10-core version will be a bit below the M1 Max.
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Ahh yeah, of course :emoji_thumbsup:
 
Nick Batzdorf said:
What intrigues me is the 16-core neural engine. Who is working on what to take advantage of those chips?
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Some companies were quick to adopt the neural engine. But unfortunately not in music.

"Apple Neural Engine support for DaVinci Neural Engine on M1 and M1 Pro."

" DaVinci Neural Engine performance is up to 4 times faster, for real time facial recognition, object detection and smart reframing"
 
Tronam said:
The only times I've had my MBP run warm enough to spin up the fans to an audible level is if I'm doing something that taxes the CPU and GPU simultaneously, such as gaming or doing a Blender 3D render.
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From your experience, was the MBP still physically holdable when running at 80% (or near max-RAM) capacity?

If it remains cool, I am very seriously considering it - it's hard to find a portable machine that has the capability to run and yet retain thermal stability.

HCMarkus said:
All reports to date are the Apple Silicon machines run extremely cool.

I have an M1 Studio Ultra. Never even breaks a sweat, but it has superior cooling, no doubt.
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Superior cooling with 96GB of RAM, on top of a portable form factor, does make it really appealing now.

I wonder if the cooling you experience on the Studio carries forward to a similar experience with the laptop format MBP.
 
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Justin L. Franks said:
Just checked the recent Geekbench results for the M2 Pro Mac Mini:

10-core M2 Pro is getting around 12,000 multicore
12-core M2 Pro is getting around 15,000 multicore
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interesting. the m1 max studio 10-core is 12336

m2 max single core 1900
m1 max single core 1756

the iphone 14 single core 1874
the iphone 13 single core 1710
the iphone 12 single core 1577
the iphone 11 single core 1312

the iphone 14 pro max multi core 5383
the iphone 13 pro max multi core 4684
the iphone 12 pro max multi core 3992
the iphone 11 pro max multi core 3289


If iphones history is any guide, we might be able to tell how much better each new m series chip performance will be for macs. Incrementally at least.
ITs something i wanted to know before getting an expensive mac studio and seeing how much would it lasts with m series cpu lifecycle.
I recently got the iphone 14 and onlye because i could pay in installments and didnt see much of a difference between iphone 13. So i could of gone with the 13 and be perfectly fine.

I still imma gonna wait until the new mac studio to see if maybe the iron out some kinks or if apple decides to add 128gb of ram option to the studio max in the store page. Several youtube videos convinced me that the studio max is more than great for large music projects but 128gb of ram is something id like to run all instruments loaded in one session w/o issues.
 
One of the interesting things is on the lower models you pay more for memory.

On the new Mac Mini M2 you pay $200 for 8gb or $400 for 16gb where as on the Macbook Pro M2 Pro you pay $400 for 32gb. Given the cost of the memory to Apple is the same, this does feel very wrong to me.
 
Im most interested in reports of fan noise, especially in the 14” MBP (wife is considering one). The M2 chips are known to run hotter and are more likely to be thermally throttled, losing some of that performance that’s paid for.
 
vitocorleone123 said:
Im most interested in reports of fan noise, especially in the 14” MBP (wife is considering one). The M2 chips are known to run hotter and are more likely to be thermally throttled, losing some of that performance that’s paid for.
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The only MacBook that thermal throttles is the fanless MacBook Air, for obvious reasons. The 14/16” MBPs maintain their peak CPU performance indefinitely.
 
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