I’ve been a Mac user for a long time. I purchased my first Mac in the fall of 1984, an original 128k machine. Hence, the name of my blog, “Original Mac Guy.” The ease of use and artistic form of the Mac resulted in love at first sight.
I’ve enjoyed my new Mac Studio more than any other Mac I’ve had. Through the years I’ve owned an assortment of Macs including a Mac LC, Mac Performa, MacBook, MacBook Air, and several 27” iMacs.
1. My Mac Studio is a Joy to Use
I ordered my Mac Studio with 64 GB of memory, an Apple M1 Max with 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU, and a 2TB SSD. It’s not the base machine, but it’s not the top of the line either.
It’s a joy to use because:
- It’s blazing fast with everything I do in my workflow. There are no more bouncing app icons in the dock to wait for. Occasionally I get half a bounce, but that’s about it. It exports heavily edited photos and videos much faster than any other Mac I’ve had. And it renders edited screencasts in almost no time.
- It’s quiet. So far, I haven’t heard it make a single sound. I can tell the cooling fan runs because the air is flowing out the back, but it’s been absolutely silent.
- It’s cool. My intel iMac would help heat the room in the winter. There was always heat coming out the top vents. My studio Mac has never felt warm. Even the airflow coming out the back of the computer feels cool.
- The two front USB-C ports are super convenient. I love not having to contort myself over and behind my iMac to attach a cable to recharge my trackpad or attach a peripheral. It’s so convenient to plug into a front port for a sync of a device.
2. My Mac Studio Has a Great Form Factor
One of the reasons that I’ve always been attracted to Apple products is because, unlike many companies run by computer geeks, they actually care about how their products look. They want them to be beautiful as well as functional. I like beautiful!
- I like the simplicity and beauty of the Mac Studio. When I first saw the Mac Studio during the Apple Event when it was introduced, I wasn’t that impressed. It’s not that I thought that it was ugly, I just thought it looked like an oversize Mac Mini. The design has grown on me since then. I now see it as a beautiful design, sleek, rounded, and modern, the very image of “modular.” It fits perfectly with the design of my Studio Display, and together they look great on my desk.
- The Mac Studio is small and compact. Compared to my 27” iMacs, this computer and the Studio Display look small. They have a small footprint on my desk and leave plenty of room for other tasks.
3. My Mac Studio is Much More Powerful Than I “Need”
In the past, when I’d get a new Mac, it would be faster, but often not that faster. I’d notice a quicker startup time or launch time for apps, but even so, it would still take a while to do anything. It was a difference in apps taking 6 bounces to launch versus 8 bounces.
Moving from a very high-end Intel iMac to the Apple Silicon Mac Studio has been like night and day. It was a quantum leap in performance, not the incremental improvements of the past.
I’m thinking that this machine has a lot of future-proofing built into it, in the sense that it’s so fast it will take a long time for it to feel slow due to more complicated software, etc. It should be a great computer for years.
I also like the fact that it’s modular. If I decide to move to an upgraded computer at some time, I don’t have to also buy a new monitor.
In Mac Heaven Now
At one time, I was afraid the Mac was dying and Apple was going out of business. That’s when I should have bought Apple stock, right?
After Steve Jobs returned to the company, Apple didn’t die and due to products like the iMac, iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. Apple has become one of the richest companies in the world.
Yet, even so, it seemed to many of us that the company had forgotten about the Mac and was focusing on the iPad and iPhone excluding the Mac. And then Silicon Macs were announced and produced, and we learned that Apple had not abandoned the Mac, but rather gave it an unprecedented boost.
As a longtime Mac user, I’m grateful to be alive to see the resurgence of the Mac and enjoy the wonderful new Silicon Macs!