Produced by | Tiger sniff car group
Author | Zhang Bowen
Header image | IC Photo
Apple's spring conference in 2022 is particularly fast-paced.
A total of 6 new products were launched, Apple introduced the first 4 new products, along with apple TV+ homemade dramas won many awards, put a new film trailer, a total of 30 minutes.
With 30 minutes left, the muscles were shown, and everything was shown to illustrate one thing: the Flag that was set up two years ago was almost completed, and it was done quite well.
Time back to two years ago, in June 2020, at the WWDC Developer Conference, Apple announced that it would use 2 years to shift the chips used in its Mac product line from the X86 architecture chip provided by Intel to the self-developed ARM architecture chip.
At that time, everyone thought that this thing was too difficult, even if it was as strong as Apple, 2 years was too short.
But in the following year or so, Apple released the M1 chip, updated the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, desktop all-in-one iMac, lightweight desktop Mac mini these 4 entry-level product lines. Then he doubled the number of transistors, released the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, and released the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro.
3 chips called M1, using the same design ideas, the effect is similar, in the pocket of the Mac products, the new chip can provide stronger performance at the same time, the overall power consumption is lower, so that the device endurance is stronger. On desktop-level devices like the iMac, because of the use of the M1 chip, the iMac achieves a more sci-fi looking design under the same advantage.
At the same time, for Apple, such a design idea can share a lot of research and development costs, and it is also convenient to quickly launch stronger chips on the roadmap that has been set.
Last night's Apple conference confirmed this.
Apple released a new chip, M1 Ultra, at the press conference, Apple said that in fact, at the beginning of the design, it has been considered, M1 Ultra, essentially, is composed of two pieces of M1 Max "paste".
Powered by the M1 Ultra chip, a new model in Apple's Mac product line, the desktop Mac Studio.
Let's start with some routine updates
After all, for most ordinary consumers, the entry-level Mac products equipped with M1 chips can already meet most of the daily work needs, even full-time content creators such as the author of this article, in the daily work of high-quality video production needs, the 16-inch MacBook Pro equipped with M1 Max can also complete the task with considerable ease.
It's better to see what new products were released 30 minutes before discussing chips and devices like the M1 Ultra and Mac Studio that are more Pro than Pro.
The first is the green iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro series 4 models, according to Apple's official statement, the new color is called Cangling Green.
This is not the first time Apple has launched a green iPhone, before the iPhone 11 Pro series, Apple launched a dark green, has disappeared on Apple's official website iPhone 5c, also used a more verdant green. In the apple's official protective case with the current Cangling Green iPhone 13/13 Pro, there are three colors: eucalyptus leaf green/ alfalfa grass / fir green.
If you have a unique preference for green, it is recommended to go to the official website to check, or go offline to see what kind of green you really like.
In the past 2 years, Apple has generally released a new color scheme for the iPhone released in the fall of the previous year in the spring of the following year.
But this year's spring conference, in addition to the new color of the iPhone in the current season, the iPhone SE, which has not been updated for many years, has been updated.
The new iPhone SE, continuing the previous generation of iPhone SE [the second generation], that is, the shape of the iPhone 8, the weight has changed from 148 grams to 144 grams, the biggest change is the use of the iPhone 13 contemporary chip A15 launched last year.
Because of the A15 chip, the new iPhone SE supports 5G network, longer battery life, better computing and shooting capabilities, support for smart HDR4 photos and camera style customization changes. But it didn't get "advanced features" like iPhone 13 movie mode, Dolby Vision video, and sound zoom because of the A15 chip.
Priced at 3499, it is the cheapest of the iPhones sold on Apple's official website.
With the same update idea, there is also the fifth generation of the iPad Air.
Apple equipped the new iPad Air with the same M1 chip as the iPad Pro, but in the hardware configuration, Apple did not improve the screen of the iPad Air, but only increased the front camera from 7 million pixels to 12 million.
After this update, the iPad Air and the 11-inch iPad Pro have been aligned in chip performance, but there is still a big difference in the quality of the screen display, the maximum storage specifications, the number of speakers, or the USB-C interface rate.
But if you care more about performance with an iPad, the iPad Air starts at a lower price than before, with the 64G version starting at $4,399.
From my personal experience, the stronger the performance of the iPad product line, the more beneficial to consumers, although the ability of iPadOS is not enough to make the iPad using the M1 chip become a so-called daily productivity office tool, but the iPad is a product with a fairly low frequency of consumer replacement, the stronger the performance, means that you buy an iPad, whether it is the most beginner or even the home button entry iPad, or has entered the full-screen era of iPad mini/iPad Air/iPad Pro, can be used for as long as possible, is conducive to saving money.
Apple's dream-making tool
After a few routine updates from Apple, we can finally talk about the two most important products at this conference, Mac Studio and Studio Display.
And, the M1 Ultra chip on the Mac Studio.
According to Apple, M1 Ultra is a desktop performance processor, positioned higher than the M1 Max, through UltraFusion technology, the two M1 Max processors are connected to form a 20-core CPU (16 high-performance cores, 4 high-performance cores), 64-core GPU, and 32-core neural network engine.
This "splicing" chip has 800GB/s memory bandwidth, 128GB of unified memory, can reach 2.5TB/s low-latency processing bandwidth, with 114 billion transistors, which is 7 times more than M1.
Relatively more intuitive is Apple's official claim that M1 Ultra compared to the latest processor i9-12900K of the PC platform, the energy efficiency ratio is 90% higher, and only 1/3 of the energy consumption can achieve the same performance.
So to speak, Intel "got beaten again."
With the blessing of such a high-performance low-energy chip, Apple has created a Mac Studio, a desktop computer that is not much larger than the Mac mini, and the output performance can be directly compared with Apple's most expensive and most powerful professional-grade workstation Mac Pro.
Apple gave an official comparison:
Mac Studio with M1 Max:
Up to 2.5x faster CPU than the fastest 27-inch iMac with 10-core processors.
Compared to mac Pro with a 16-core Xeon processor, the CPU can be up to 50% faster.
Up to 3.4x faster graphics performance than the 27-inch iMac and up to 3x faster than Mac Pro with the best-selling graphics card.
Video transcoding speeds are up to 7.5x faster than the 27-inch iMac and up to 3.7x faster than the 16-core Mac Pro.
Mac Studio with M1 Ultra:
Up to 3.8 times faster CPU than the fastest 27-inch iMac with a 10-core processor.
Compared to mac Pro with a 16-core Xeon processor, the CPU can be up to 90% faster.
Compared to the 28-core Mac Pro, the CPU can be up to 60% faster.
Up to 4.5x faster graphics performance compared to the 27-inch iMac and up to 80% compared to the fastest graphics card on your Mac today.
Video transcoding speeds can be up to 12x faster than the 27-inch iMac and up to 5.6x faster than the Mac Pro with 28-core processors.
If you're a professional user in a Mac environment, or even have a Mac Pro console that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, you should already regret slapping your thigh when you see Mac Studio.
After all, even if the Mac Studio is selected to the top, the price is only 59999 yuan.
Why use this "only" word, Pro users who can make money with a Mac will especially understand.
Even for a high-quality video creator (already a less profitable business that uses Mac as a tool), the machine may only cost a commercial video to pay for itself.
There is also a very intuitive performance performance, on the Mac Studio, can play 18 8K ProRes 422 video streams at the same time, there is no doubt that for those who need image processing performance workers, Mac Studio is currently the best performing host.
Apple's definition of this product is "dream engine", which is indeed worthy of the name.
With the release of Mac Studio, there is also an official Apple display, Apple Studio Display.
Compared with the previous pro display XDR, which starts at up to 40,000 yuan, the Studio Display starts at 11,499 yuan. The parameters are also reduced to 27 inch, 5K resolution.
Before Apple released this display, some users, including myself, would buy the LG UltraFine 5K screen sold on Apple's official website in order to match their Macs, because it was almost the best third-party screen for Mac display quality.
But the interesting thing about Studio Display is that Apple has also crammed a piece of A13 chips into this screen, as well as 6 speakers, providing apple-exclusive features such as automatic centering of video conferencing and spatial audio.
Compared with the price of LG UltraFine 5K of about 10,000 yuan, consumers plus a thousand yuan, you can use the overall design of more "Apple", the function is more suitable for the Mac's display, plus the optional price of 3000 yuan, you can use the same effect as Apple's own price of 7999 yuan monitor stand.
Apple's product knife method is really accurate for consumers who are deeply bound to their own product ecology.
When mac studio is paired with Studio Display, it forms a set of products that replace Apple's previous iMac Pro positioning, the performance of the whole new device is several times stronger, and the top price is much cheaper than the iMac Pro of 105532 yuan at the top of the year.
The barrier to entry for creating more value with high-performance Mac products has become lower.
Apple is only one last step away from the success of the revolution
Throughout the spring conference, there are two very interesting points.
One is that when the M1 Ultra was released, Apple said that it would be the last M1 chip.
The other is that after showing the Mac Studio, which has a stronger performance than the Mac Pro, Apple's very few previewed the next new product at the conference, saying: The Mac series using Apple chips has made our transition plan almost successful, so now there is only the last product, that is, the Mac Pro, but let's talk about it another day.
A simple translation, there is a high probability that the Mac Pro using a new chip will be officially unveiled at WWDC in June. And June this year coincides with the two-year period of Apple's self-developed computer chip transition plan.
In a sense, Apple's self-developed chip transition has been successful.
Successfully got its own products out of intel's squeezed toothpaste rhythm. The advantages of high performance and low energy consumption of ARM architecture chips have been successfully demonstrated in their own products. Successfully built its own competitive barriers from mini desktops, to entry notebooks, to professional notebooks, and then to workstation desktops in certain work scenarios. Successfully broke through the performance ceiling of the previous product series.
The revolution of the Mac product line is only a step left for the Mac Pro, and the stronger performance is what everyone can expect, but what is not expected is what kind of innovative architecture Apple will use to make its own performance ceiling truly become an industry benchmark that competitors cannot catch up with.
Of course, that kind of top performance, the probability of ordinary users is not used.
But under Apple's strategic path, the next step apple to do, may be what I guessed two years ago, when the Mac uses arm architecture, all iOS apps began to support Mac, all the software on the Mac can theoretically seamlessly support iOS and iPadOS, Apple wants to make iPad the next generation of computers, it is only a layer of window paper.
From the iPhone, to the iPad, to the Mac, the ARM architecture that is also applicable to the three product lines will further attract developers and truly build barriers from hardware to software for Apple.
The performance characteristics of arm architecture chips with high performance and low energy consumption may also become an important foundation for Apple to lay out the next generation of computing platforms.
Maybe it's the smart glasses that have been "released immediately" in the exposure, or maybe it is a smart electric car that has new rumors every year, but every year seems to have variables.
Perhaps in the short term, as long as it is not in the relevant industrial chain, no one can guess accurately.
But this is also reasonable, after all, Apple, from its inception, has been using innovation to drive technological progress of the "dream machine".