Pro Moviemaker May 2022 - Web

ACADEMY MAC STUDIOHARDWARE

Great Scott! Follow our filmmakers’ guide to the brand-new Studio computer

WORDS ADAM DUCKWORTH

I f you could travel back in time, you’d find the majority of creative image makers were huge fans of the Apple Mac computer, as it was easy to use and worked well with Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, InDesign and After Effects. Not only that, but it looked cooler than PCs in their boring plastic cases. In recent years, PCs have improved dramatically, and Apple has been accused of abandoning its creative heartland with a string of odd decisions. The unpopular ‘dustbin’ Mac Pro was replaced by the massively expensive Mac Pro – coupled with the 1600-nit, anti- glare, 32in Pro Display XDR that costs a staggering £6448/$6998 if you want it with a stand. If you couldn’t afford over 50 grand for a fully loaded Mac Pro and screen, you could at least get a MacBook Pro. But for desktop use, it wasn’t perfect, as there was no Apple monitor available to plug it in. Apple had canned its stand-alone monitors, which forced many small

“You don’t have to go down the Apple route and order theMac Studio display, as there are other options”

screens, like many filmmakers do for editing. If you want the newMac Studio, you’re not alone. Pre-orders were staggering – largely fuelled by lots of YouTube influencers raving about it, and even doing back-to-back tests where it outperforms high- spec Mac Pro towers. Apple says it is up to 7.5x faster than the 27in iMac, and up to 3.7x faster than 16-core Mac Pro when transcoding video. That’s why it’s so popular. However, you don’t have to go down the Apple route and order the Mac Studio display, as there are other options that can be cheaper or offer more. Many people like to avoid the ‘Apple tax’, where the peripherals are often very expensive. So, let’s take a look at some products versus Apple’s own.

production studios to go the iMac, then iMac Pro route. These have also been dropped. So, the options were a £50,000+ loaded Mac Pro – which doesn’t have the fastest M1 chips in it – or a Mac Mini or MacBook Pro, plugged into a third-party monitor like the LG 5K. But not two monitors for the popular dual-screen set-up, as these small Macs didn’t have the power to run dual external screens. This is hardly the well-thought-out Mac of old. Yet now, filmmakers have been celebrating Apple’s launch of the Mac Studio. It costs around £4000 for the fastest Ultra model, and has two M1 chips that outperform the £50,000 Mac Pro. There’s also a newMac Studio 27in 5K screen that plugs right into the Thunderbolt 4 ports. Plus, you can use multiple

GOOD TO BE MAC The latest Apple kit is a sleek solution for creatives who yearn for a return to Mac greatness. And yes, the Studio does have Time Machine software

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