 You might not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like. And it is CHONKY. Yeah, kind of reminds me of a stubby G4 Cube. The Mac Studio and matching Studio Display are the two latest announcements out of Apple, and of everything they announced today, they're easily the most exciting. Both powered by Apple Silicon, they're set to usher in a new era of performance for Apple enthusiasts. But the way Apple's gone about this makes things so much more complicated. Unlike our sponsor, Ridge Wallet, thanks to Ridge Wallet for sponsoring today's video. Ridge Wallet holds up to 12 cards, comes with a cash strap or money clip, and is available in tons of different colors. Celebrate Ridge's 9th anniversary and use offer code LINUS for 15% off site-wide until March 18th at the link below. The new Mac Studio is, in every way, what we all feared the Mac Pro would become when Apple started the transition to Apple Silicon. An entirely unexpandable design with fully soldered components and a Mac Mini enclosure they decided to make a little taller than usual. Cooled by two beefy fans that pull air up through the bottom of the chassis and out to the rear grill, something Apple says is nearly silent, there's actually a lot going for this design. For starters, you get 10 gigabit ethernet as standard. Thank you, Apple. Now, the rest of the rear I.O. is rearranged, but looks basically the same as the Intel Mac Mini with a high impedance Pro audio output that I suspect is the same as on the new MacBook Pros. Turn it around, however, and you'll see that Apple has finally acquiesced and added front-facing connectors, two USB Type-C 10 gigabit ports, and an SDX-C reader. While support for the brand new SDXpress format would have been nice to see as a future-proofing measure, what we're getting tracks with the larger MacBook Pros. If you pick up an M1 Ultra equipped Mac Studio, those Type-C ports up front turn into Thunderbolt ports. Wait, M1 Ultra? Yeah, turns out Apple's been holding out on us, and their M1 Max chips had an unused interconnect called Ultra Fusion that allows for a chiplet-style connection between two M1 Maxes to make up an M1 Ultra. The effective result is a single SoC as far as software is concerned, and gives a metric bug load of CPU and GPU cores, double the already very impressive media engine on the M1 Max, and twice the maximum memory capacity. At 800 gigabytes per second, that is faster memory than the GDDR6X that is used on Nvidia's RTX 3080 and 3090. That is pretty amazing, and even more amazing is the memory itself isn't even clocked faster. There's just that many more channels to work with. If you believe what Apple has to say, the M1 Ultra is up to 60% faster than the Mac Pro equipped with 28 Xeon W cores, and 80% faster than that machine's fastest GPU, the Radeon W6900X. They still sell those, by the way. Something about those claims, though? It doesn't really pass the sniff test. Part of that claim is that it's also 90% faster than a 16-core desktop CPU while drawing 100 watts less power. You might think that's referring to the only current 16-core desktop CPU, the Ryzen 9 5950X, but in fact, they're talking about the Core i9-12900K, which is an 8 plus 8-core CPU with performance and efficiency cores much like Apple Silicon. What's more, max turbo power on the 12900K is 241 watts, so we can surmise based on Apple's own data that the M1 Ultra draws around 140 watts, which is still a lot of watts. The 12900K's TDP at base clock is 125 watts, and I can guarantee you M1 Ultra doesn't draw just 25 watts. But that's the CPU. 128 gigs of unified memory offers an unprecedented amount of potential VRAM to the GPU. Apple's right in that the biggest workstation card on the market right now, the RTX A6000, caps out at a meager 48 gigs. Sure, you can connect multiple A6000s together via NVLink, but having that much memory in a single package is a significant feather in Apple's cap. They're also making some interesting claims about beating the highest-end discrete GPU while also using 200 watts less power, though. The footnote says they're talking about the RTX 3090 using select industry-standard benchmarks. So take from that what you will. I expect performance will be decent either way, but it's very possible this specific claim leans on the media engine as Apple has done in the past, and they're not talking about raw compute performance. I'd like to be wrong, though. Speaking of, the doubled-up media engine is now capable of running 18 simultaneous 8K ProRes 422 streams, so it really does sound like an ideal workstation for most professionals, especially as software support comes online like with Glender 3.1. You'll be able to make use of it, too. Up to four Pro Display XDRs and a 4K HDMI device simultaneously. That is more battle stations, certainly more pixels, than Apple has ever officially supported. Internal storage doesn't look expandable, however, so you'll need to add over $2,000. $2,000 for 8 terabytes if you don't want external storage, a fact made worse by recent revelations that Apple's SSD performance isn't as good as they claim it is. They're cheating and in the process putting data at risk if an unexpected shutdown occurs. The onboard battery in a MacBook makes this a non-issue, but on a stationary machine plugged into wall power? Well, make sure you combine the Mac Studio with a battery backup. That'll add to the already high price tag for the M1 Ultra variant, but if you take Apple at their word, it's the most powerful machine you can buy for the money. Get subscribed because we are definitely putting that claim to the test. You might also want to combine the Mac Studio with the new Studio Display. Apple certainly wants you to. The panel itself seems suspiciously similar to the existing LG UltraFine 5K, with a slight bump in peak brightness and 10GB Type-C ports instead of 5GB. It even has similar power delivery capabilities to the recent models, so it seems like a bit of a cop-out. Until you get under the hood. Yeee, from LTDStore.com! Hey, got it in there. What makes the Studio Display special, aside from the aluminum and glass construction, is the A13 Bionic chip powering a plethora of onboard goodies. It's got a very similar speaker array on paper to the 24-inch M1 iMac, complete with spatial audio, a 3-mic array presumably with noise suppression, and an integrated 12-megapixel FaceTime camera capable of center stage, which means you can finally use center stage on a Mac! Like, the one place it makes a lot of sense. Not to mention, the A13 provides the image signal processing we've come to expect from Apple Silicon. That means that the Mac itself doesn't need to do any of the work, freeing up the neural engine for other tasks. It even makes these AI features usable on Intel Macs as old as 2016. Now, the Studio Display XDR comes with three mounting options. A 30-degree tilt adjustable stand, a Pro Display XDR-like stand, except without rotation support, and an ugly VESA mount. Although, it looks like you need to choose what you want out of the factory, because unlike the Pro Display XDR, there isn't a user accessible mounting mechanism on the display itself. Thankfully, the VESA mount and tilt adjustable stand are options that don't add to the already lofty $1599 price tag, but the tilt and height adjustable stand costs an extra $400. I guess rotation is a $600 value now. It's worth mentioning that the UltraFine 5K is $300 cheaper, and it's already priced $300 higher than the old Thunderbolt displays were. I can't win them all, I guess, but hey, you've got the option of buying color-matched silver and black peripherals. So, it's not all bad? Whatever. The rest of the event was pretty unimpressive. We've got a spec bump for the iPad Air, now powered by the M1 SoC with 8 gigs of RAM and rocking a 12 megapixel front camera with center stage. It's got 5G support now, and it comes in new colors. I don't really know what else to say here. They're comparing it to a similarly priced laptop, and while I don't disagree that for a layperson it's probably a better experience, it's really not the same thing unless and until they bring Mac OS to the iPad, which they stubbornly refuse to do. The other specs, as much as they talked about them, are the same, with the exception of the Type-C port, which is now 10 gigabits per second rather than 5. It's a little less disappointing than the iPhone SE, and I know that's going to be a hot take, but hear me out. The price is going up, and all we're getting is the A15 Bionic SoC, a few hours better battery life, ceramic shield, and 5G. The rest is exactly the same, right down to the iPhone 8 and styled chassis. Now, to be clear, I wasn't expecting Apple to reinvent the wheel here. I understand that things are getting more expensive, and I'm glad this form factor is still available, but it would have been nice to see MagSafe come to the SE. By Apple's own admission, this is going to be many people's first foray into iPhone, and MagSafe is becoming a big part of the ecosystem. I might be giving Apple a harder time over this than I should be, but I feel it's a missed opportunity, particularly given how long SE models have traditionally stayed in market. And that is basically all they talked about outside of baseball and Apple TV Plus and a new green color option for the iPhone 13 and 13 Pro. There are a few things we did pick up on, though. First, they came out and said that the Mac Studio is not the Apple Silicon refresh to the Mac Pro, so that's still on the horizon. Second, they said that the Mac Pro was the final Mac to make the transition, and the 27-inch iMac, like the iMac Pro, is now missing from Apple's product pages. In fact, if you type 27 into the URL bar to try and force it, you're redirected to the 24-inch page instead. My guess is the M1 Mac's equipped Mac Studio is taking the place of the 27-inch, which makes sense looking at the performance comparisons again. It just feels strange for Apple to discontinue a long-standing skew like that with no fanfare, you know? Speaking of bailing with no fanfare, we'll have all this stuff linked below, and we're going to be clicking on those links ourselves, because we've got a lot of Apple hardware to purchase, so I'd better get cracking on this segue to our sponsor, Ting Mobile. Thanks to Ting Mobile for sponsoring today's video. Do you like saving money? 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