MAC STUDIO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[James Steele]

Apple can and probably will claim the T2's security feature is the reason. Gives them a better position than if it was just "because we want more $$$$."

The multiple TB ports make the issue essentially a non-issue in my eyes.

True enough. Just be nice if it were possible to pop a second SSD in the other slot somewhere down the line without breaking the bank!

[mikehalloran]

This proprietary price-gouging tendency of Apple really tests my loyalty to the platform sometimes. Someone commented beneath the story about the SSD drives you linked to that this is what class action lawsuits are for. I don’t know, but the Right to Repair movement can hopefully address these scenarios. It really seems that Apple does this primarily to gouge their customers.

So, Apple charges $2,200 or $2,400 to upgrade the Studio to 8TB while OWC charges $1,999 to add 8TB that's only 40% the speed.
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3TBV4T08/

As for Right to Repair, the parts have to exist on the aftermarket. Otherwise, that trash talk about lawsuits is meaningless. Still waiting to see those 3rd party blades for all of the T2 Macs.

[James Steele]

The interesting thing is you can’t even move a drive from one Mac Studio to another. They seem quite intent on locking out third parties. Reminds me of the inkjet printer companies that put chips on the cartridges to prevent using third party or refilled cartridges.

[HCMarkus]

The interesting thing is you can’t even move a drive from one Mac Studio to another. They seem quite intent on locking out third parties. Reminds me of the inkjet printer companies that put chips on the cartridges to prevent using third party or refilled cartridges.

But no ink cartridge with which I am familiar has ever been able to store every detail of your life and finances!

[James Steele]

The interesting thing is you can’t even move a drive from one Mac Studio to another. They seem quite intent on locking out third parties. Reminds me of the inkjet printer companies that put chips on the cartridges to prevent using third party or refilled cartridges.

But no ink cartridge with which I am familiar has ever been able to store every detail of your life and finances!

Haha. No. I’m just talking about these methods companies use to guarantee you’ll by a commodity from them at significant markup.

[HCMarkus]

Yeah, I get it James. The ultimate "Subscription"... incompatibility with any aftermarket parts.

I'll put this link here, for folks who might be looking into a new UPS...

https://www.costco.com/cyberpower-1500v ... 27623.html

I also posted in the Plug Ins thread. Seemed on-point somehow.

[James Steele]

Yeah. Looks like a good deal. I bought 3 of those 8TB Seagate externals from Costco thanks to you. I probably need a UPS. I have everything plugged into a TrippLite voltage regulator that can do makeup voltage if there’s a voltage sag.

[HCMarkus]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03 ... p-them-out

explaining-the-mac-studios-removable-ssds-and-why-you-cant-just-swap-them-out

[cuttime]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03 ... p-them-out

explaining-the-mac-studios-removable-ssds-and-why-you-cant-just-swap-them-out

ArsT is always the source for reason. My Big Dum Question is...what happens if the drive fails? Can it be repaired? Is there a way to recover your data from a backup?

EDIT: I guess it can be done:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210626

[mikehalloran]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03 ... p-them-out

explaining-the-mac-studios-removable-ssds-and-why-you-cant-just-swap-them-out

Yep.

Apple released an update of Configurator today. I'll take a wild guess and speculate that the DFU Restore that didn't work in the article probably works now.

I went through that exact process on my iMP followed by a 40 hour TM restore. I ran Configurator on my 2012 MBP and connected it through a USB-A to a USB-C cable to my iMP.

[BobK]

This proprietary price-gouging tendency of Apple really tests my loyalty to the platform sometimes.

Ditto.

the Right to Repair movement can hopefully address these scenarios.

I hope so. A bipartisan (!) right to repair bill has just been introduced to the U.S. Senate. I’ll be reaching out to our CA senators asking them to support it, but I’m not holding my breath. They’ll probably be bribed to kill it.

https://www.ifixit.com/News/57741/a-bip ... -us-senate

Of course Apple charges extortionate prices to gouge customers! They need to raise billions to spend on content for their TV channel. Absurd.

[James Steele]

Very helpful video by David Das:

[mikehalloran]

I saw that when it came out. Although I disagree on a couple of points, it's very good.

It reminds me that a couple things have been overlooked in the discussion of the Studio.

The first is that empty SSD slot on the 512GB version. I hope that we all know by now that the controller is in the M1 chip (like the T2 before it) so that's not an issue. However, with a pair of SSDs in there, they run at RAID 0 (ish). Apple says it's not quite RAID 0, whatever that means, but it's close. This nearly doubles the RW speed of having a single blade. Whoever wrote the Cult of Mac initial teardown and some of the ones on YouTube clearly didn't understand any of this — weird since the first T2 MBP was 2016.

The other thing that no one has mentioned is the change to Applecare. You now have a choice: the traditional 3 years for a set price ($169) or a renewable annual fee ($59.99) "good until cancelled" —what?!?! Interestingly, you are given that choice only after selecting the unit and adding it to the bag—if you choose AppleCare on the checkout page, 3 yrs is your only choice. Am I the only one who thinks this is huge? If my guess is correct, annual renewal will no longer be available when Apple puts a product on the obsolete list. I don't care for the fact that the Studio Display is no longer included and has its own AopleCare pricing ($149.00 or $49.99/yr.). Oh well, I'll live. OTOH, accidental damage (with a co-pay) is now included, also new.

BTW, this goes directly to David Das's concern about large internal storage — drives eventually go bad. Ok… I do not share his concern: If AppleCare is renewable beyond 3 years and you have Time Machine backups, that issue goes away. The Configurator update from two days ago tells me that Apple knows how to replace drives in the Studio and the initialize/verification procedure is identical to replacing them in a T2 Mac—even if the form factor is different. The Ars Technica reviewer was trying to initialize with an older version.

The other point on which Mr. Das and I disagree? My Magic Trackpad 2 will have to be surgically removed before I will give it up. It's my favorite input device of all time.

[Anders Peev]

My wait has been long. I am taking a grand leap from a Mac Pro tower from 2007 with Snow Leopard, DP7, 16GB RAM and 2,25 TB HDD— to a Mac Studio Ultra with 64 RAM and 4TB SSD. (Well, not all true, I have been doing occational work with a MacBook Air and DP10 and recently MBP M1Pro 14'). But the tower has and will be my main workstation until april 7, when the Mac Studio arrives. The tower did it's last payed job for a short film just 3 weeks ago.

• Clean slate and just transfering files? No "turn yourself into my old Mac"-thing?
• No raid or partition needed for the SSD, right? My Mac Pro towers 2x1TB disks were given a partion of 6 virtual drives in order not to crash with DP5, if I remember it correctly (someone wonderful person here told and taught me how to fix this, back in the Unicornation-days).
• I should upgrade to from DP10 to Dp11?
• Will Rosetta 2 stop triggering itself when I no longer use intel plugins in the distant future? I don't believe I understand how Rosetta 2 works.

It's crazy to imagine that my mac is 15 years old. It can't surf the internet but it can run DP and works well with my old RME FF400, which will become a full time pensioner in order to make room for my MOTU 828es (Thanks Mike Halloran, for encouraging me to keep it! I love it!) .

"It's the deep breath before the plunge" - Gandalf

[mikehalloran]

My wait has been long. I am leaping from a Mac Pro tower from 2007 with Snow Leopard, DP7, 16GB RAM and 2,25 TB HDD— to a Mac Studio Ultra with 64 RAM and 4TB SSD. (Well, not all true, I have been doing occational work with a MacBook Air and DP10 and recently MBP M1Pro 14'). But the tower has and will be my main workstation until april 7, when the Mac Studio arrives. The tower did it's last payed job for a short film just 3 weeks ago.

• Clean slate and just transfering files? No "turn yourself into my old Mac"-thing?
• No raid or partition needed for the SSD, right? My Mac Pro towers 2x1TB disks were given a partion of 6 virtual drives in order not to crash with DP5, if I remember it correctly (someone wonderful person here told and taught me how to fix this, back in the Unicornation-days).
• I should upgrade to from DP10 to Dp11?
• Will Rosetta 2 stop triggering itself when I no longer use intel plugins in the distant future? I don't believe I understand how Rosetta 2 works.

It's crazy to imagine that my mac is 15 years old. It can't surf the internet but it can run DP and works well with my old RME FF400, which will become a full time pensioner in order to make room for my MOTU 828es (Thanks Mike Halloran, for encouraging me to keep it! I love it!) .

"It's the deep breath before the plunge" - Gandalf

In no particular order:

Do not partition an SSD on a Mac. Not only is there no need but you are making drive space unavailable. With APFS, you can create additional Volumes but I do not see the need unless you want to boot from a different OS — as some of us have for one reason or the other.

RAID is not an issue on the internal SSDs in a Studio. The larger ones have a pair configured RAID 0 (sort of, per Apple) while the smaller ones have only one SSD. We know the 8TB uses a pair while the 512GB and 1TB have a single. I've not seen a teardown of the 2TB & 4TB Studios so I have no idea. There's a ton of misinformation out there by people who haven't a clue. The rated speed of the internal storage in a 2-blade Studio is 7,600 Gb/s (up from 7,000 in my iMac Pro or a MacPro 7.1) while the single blade rating is close to 4,000.

As for external storage, the fastest is 2,800 Gb/s using a single NVMe 3 x4 blade. A pair doubles the storage over RAID 0 but is a little slower, and increasing the number of SSDs or HDDs gives you more storage but slows it down even more. There's a 4 lane pipe with storage over TB3. TB4 is no faster but allows multiple TB3 devices to be connected to a single port.

Do not ever run disk optimizing apps or write to zeros on any SSD — ever. The good apps will not run on an SSD but the crapware might. You'll cripple the performance in the short run and shorten the life of the drive over time. SSDs do not function at all like HDDs. Cells, when erased, must be prepared before they can accept new data. APFS adds other differences, some are way cool.
viewtopic.php?t=64689

Not everything that requires Rosetta 2 triggers it. You can determine which apps run over R2 and which run Native. If there are plugs or libraries not yet Native, the app may not function correctly. Example: Finale just released 27.2 which can run Native but many use it with NotePerformer, myself included—if I don't have 27.2 running in R2 (Get Info, check a box) then it cannot see or use NP.

DP 11.04 runs Native but not all my plugs and VIs do (yet?). DP 10 cannot run Native but it might run over R2 — not installing it on my M1 to find out.

A Clean Install or not? You have an old system with a lot of apps and drivers that will be incompatible with the Studio. None of your 32 bit apps and plugs will run, for example. Although the MacOS is very good at filtering out the old crap, it is not perfect. Old code can absolutely screw you up and I've been through some major Apple hell due to old apps and code as recently as last month. Apple was ready to replace my Logic board and SSDs a few weeks ago before I found an Autotune license run time from 2019 that was causing all the problems. I've had old versions of Soundflower, HP print drivers, Finale 2009, NI Guitar Rig II, Bresink, Corel and others cause major grief — Migration Assistant will bring them all over.

You can use Migration Assistant to copy over your Network Settings and work files (Music, Documents, Movies, VIs in the Shared folder etc.) I do not recommend bringing over your apps and supporting libraries—that's where the old crap is. You want to reinstall them all, one by one. If they won't, you'll need to update or discard. I expect this to take a week when my Studio arrives, a week I won't have till July.

As for your work files, if you do not use Migration Assistant as recommended, DO NOT COPY THEM STRAIGHT OVER (especially Office and DP). Instead, zip (compress or archive) them first and unzip onto your new Studio. Zipping and Unzipping grants you the required ownership and permissions on the new Mac. Again, Migration Assistant does this automatically.