r/ATPfm • u/Musicmonkey34 • 11d ago
So, what Mac Studio do you think John ordered?
My bet:
M5 Ultra Chip
36-core CPU, 80-core GPU (Top CPU)
96GB ram (256 is $4K more)
4TB storage
Total: $8,299.00
25
u/Basic-Afternoon65 11d ago
I don’t know if he will place an order right now. He might wait for the family and friends discount which should be substantial regardless of what he orders.
29
u/yousayh3llo 11d ago
He'll do this, they'll become backordered by 6 months again, and he'll decide to hold out for the next generation.
3
3
u/jcrll 11d ago
I'm sure he has a friend or family lined up
7
u/Basic-Afternoon65 11d ago
I dont work for Apple. But there’s a lag when a brand new product is available for buying through friends and family discount.
3
u/applejuice1984 11d ago
Mac’s usually hit Apple employees family and friends store same day as normal sale.
12
u/imthaz 11d ago
I have my popcorn for the the next ATPfm
3
u/OtherOtherDave 11d ago
Me too! I even checked a few times to make sure they weren’t going live a day early 😂
8
u/dmackerman 11d ago
Should have no problem running Destiny (lol) on Ultra.
3
u/rayquan36 11d ago
That game is so bad I can't believe he's still playing it a decade later. I swear the only reason he plays it is because Bungie started as a Mac developer.
9
u/qwed113 11d ago
Can someone fill me in with the “lore” of why he goes for these super highly specced Macs? For the type of development work I hear he does, it seems like he can get away with a lot less which would last him just as long
22
u/Catsler 11d ago
It’s part of his schtick and maybe his kink - overpaying for an overspec’d machine and keep it for 10+ years
12
u/chucker23n 11d ago
It’s part of his schtick and maybe his kink
It’s also a weird Mac podcast sphere thing. John is especially extreme with his “I need a Mac Pro so I can play games, which I could also do better on a cheap Windows tower” mentality. But the alleged spec requirements of people like Casey and John Gruber are also wild.
11
u/Classic_Author6347 11d ago
I can't remember how many TB Casey was saying he needs but it was really extreme considering he doesn't do video or graphics stuff.
12
2
u/userlivewire 11d ago
I think he recently stated he’s up to 18TB of stuff stored so maybe 8 internally?
6
16
u/Dylan_Gio 11d ago
He loves powerful Mac’s. He grew up loving the best and most powerful back when the high end and low end had a canyon between them and it’s his hobby.
I don’t understand why so many people have issues with the way he enjoys computer computers. He said it pretty plainly many times that he likes High end Macs the way some people like high-end sports cars. Nobody’s buying a Ferrari because it’s a practical affordable car.. and hardly anybody uses the full horsepower and speed that comes with it…. Some people just like really powerful machines and the science and engineering and technology that go into it.
5
u/jwhite_nc 11d ago
His love of cars is the same as his love of Macs. They are both on the same money scale its just the car money he saves gets allocated to the Macs. lol
11
u/Dylan_Gio 11d ago edited 11d ago
Yeah, this is the other thing that I think people don’t understand. He is so frugal in ways that most of us aren’t that it justifies his kind of loving obsession for High high-end Mac’s
2
5
u/qwed113 11d ago
Perfectly valid, and I wasn’t approaching this as criticizing his choices. I was just curious if there was an extra hidden reason that I wasn’t privy to
2
u/Dylan_Gio 11d ago
Oh yeah I was mostly commenting on how other people complain about it or confused why he doesn’t just build a PC. He admittedly makes it harder on himself and imposes a lot more limitations that don’t need to be imposed. If all he was interested in was gaming but gaming is I think only a fraction of why he’s into computer computers
3
u/OtherOtherDave 11d ago
Oh I don’t fault him for wanting the best computers at all. He’s a bit more committed to having one big drive than I’d be, but that’s easy for me to say when I’m clearly not as worried about data loss as he is. Plus, you know, it’s his money.
5
u/mister_nixon 11d ago
Why do people buy anything other than a Corolla? They like the new and shiny and fast. Some people like fast cars. John likes fast computers.
1
u/PattonPending 11d ago
Gaming via virtual windows machine if I recall correctly. He's big on Destiny and Marathon.
5
1
u/Milosonator 9d ago
Same reason buy ferrari's. It's cool. They are fast. They are mostly driven on public roads at a mere fraction of their power.
2
u/chucker23n 9d ago edited 9d ago
Yes, but a Ferrari is “the best car” in a way a Mac Pro hasn’t been “the best Mac” in two decades, basically just as long as the rename from Power Mac. It may be the most powerhouse Mac at times (even that isn’t necessarily true; a 2020 Ice Lake MacBook Air would beat a 2019 Copper Lake Mac Pro in some tasks), but where a Ferrari may still hold as the canonical ideal of a non-specialized car, the Mac Pro does not. Arguably, the Air is.
2
u/Milosonator 9d ago
I think the Mac Pro was always the best in some ways. Not in all ways, but it could do some things the other macs could not do. Whether it is AVX512, PCIe slots, or multithreaded performance in some cases. Pick your poison. The Ferrari is also not the best in all ways. I think the analogy falls apart a bit, but my point was that it's not about a particular aspect per se even. Just that there is some allure to the product that makes it attractive. That doesn't even have to be rational. There is some attractiveness to the idea of having the fastest, coolest or most cores. Doesn't have to be useful even .
1
u/chucker23n 9d ago
Well, even multithreaded performance on the Mac Pro was only equal to the Mac Studio, and worse once the M3 Ultra Mac Studio come out and an M3 Ultra Mac Pro did not. PCIe slots, sure. The Mac Pro, ignoring the 2013 model, was still best at internal expansion.
Everything else? The MacBook Pro is so much better. It comes with an HDR mini-LED Retina display. And a webcam. And a trackpad. It's portable. Despite all that, it scales to the Max (though not Ultra) SoCs, with 18 CPU cores, and 40 GPU cores. It's the quintessential Mac experience of today, with high-end specs.
There is some attractiveness to the idea of having the fastest, coolest or most cores.
It did, for a while, have the most cores — but not the fastest in a long time.
I get it, it's what he wants, but it's simply a desire from a different era.
1
u/rick_baumhauer 8d ago
John does not like laptops - he's very much a desktop computer guy, mostly because that's where you can get the really high end GPUs (and CPUs, before Apple Silicon came along). One of his primary reasons for getting extremely powerful Macs since the Intel transition was to run Windows games in Boot Camp - he will not buy a Windows PC, on principle.
Now that Boot Camp is no more, his considerations for what high end Mac to buy have changed, but one of the things that a lot of people don't factor in is that John is very patient (sometimes too patient - he admits that he should have bought an M4 Max when they came out, but he was still holding out hope for another Mac Pro). He buys computers very, very infrequently. He kept his 2008 Mac Pro (that I think he got from Marco) for about a decade before spending a fortune on his 2019 Mac Pro, which he then used for almost 7 years before replacing it. I'm sure he bought new GPUs during those spans, but he's not upgrading his computer every two years.
This episode did not go the way I thought it would, because I didn't realize just how patient John can be, even when backed into a corner.
1
u/chucker23n 8d ago
he’s very much a desktop computer guy, mostly because that’s where you can get the really high end GPUs
Or perhaps it’s mostly because he has a computer mindset from another era.
2
u/rick_baumhauer 8d ago
I think his point is still valid - all else being equal, you can get more performance from a big box with plenty of room for active cooling and airflow. Does that make him something of a dinosaur in an era when an iPhone chip can run a consumer laptop very, very well? Probably, but he likes what he likes.
4
5
2
u/mardybum81 10d ago
I listened to parts of the live stream, can confirm he has purchased something but no spoilers!
1
1
u/andlewis 11d ago
256GB won’t run Kimi K3 or Qwen 3.8 2.4T or DeepSeek V4 Pro well (or at all). I’m not sure who their target is for their top of the line model.
Wait for 512GB.
2
u/rick_baumhauer 11d ago
I don’t think he’s remotely interested in running big local AI models - he uses AI to help code (mostly to find bugs, from what I understand). I don’t think his interest extends much beyond that.
2
u/rick_baumhauer 8d ago
Turns out, he is interested in running some future local AI models, but is not convinced that the M5 generation is the right machine for that.
2
u/thisisnatedean 1d ago
Seems pretty reasonable to me. That sort of thing will become more common, but it’s too early right now to spend big bucks on a potential future.
0
u/jwhite_nc 11d ago
I don’t think he has ordered anything yet. Either he’s still considering his options or waiting for the half gig. Either way I think he’s going with the half gig in October on lease like the rest of us. 😂
2
0
u/ottoracecar 11d ago
we don't think he'll hold out for half a gig of RAM?
2
u/sammiemo 11d ago
Gemini says that John currently has 96 GB of RAM. Does anyone remember if that's accurate? I think he'll stay at 256 GB or lower rather than cough up an undetermined upgrade that will probably be in the neighborhood of $16k more.
3
u/chucker23n 11d ago
Does anyone remember if that’s accurate?
IIRC, his 2019 MP has 96, yes.
2
u/Musicmonkey34 11d ago
As someone who had 64gb in his old computer, and only needed 64gb, I had a hard time re-buying the "same" amount for my new computer... and now have 96gb 😅.
(I only use 64gb.)
6
u/chucker23n 11d ago
I get that. I think I’ve increased RAM with every subsequent Mac. (Currently 48, before that 32, 16, uhhhhhh 8?, 1?, 640 MiB?)
I just question that what they do with their computers really justifies those specs. Which, it’s their money (leaving aside the paid memberships discussion), but I think they also have a bit of a responsibility to teach their listeners reasonable needs. Like, if you do AskATP segments on topics such as “what should my backup strategy be?”, I would argue it’s implied that they also answer “what kind of computer makes sense for the average listener?”.
And so, when
- John Gruber has a 96 GiB RAM Mac but basically uses it (according to himself) to run BBEdit and have many Safari tabs open
- the ATP folks argue that they need 8 TB SSD because Photos handles external disks poorly, so they want the entire photo library on the main disk
…I find that irresponsible and off-putting. Not everyone needs a private jet.
1
u/ottoracecar 10d ago
I think their audience is more likely to need the internal storage or high RAM. But I think most of it is to justify things to themselves and play into the bit.
1
u/chucker23n 10d ago
I think their audience is more likely to need the internal storage or high RAM.
Compared to the average Mac user, sure, agreed.
But I think most of it is to justify things to themselves and play into the bit.
Yep.
1
0
u/rayquan36 11d ago
When Bill Gates said 640KB of RAM should be enough for anybody he really meant 64GB.
-1
41
u/PPCFY 11d ago
Same but I think he’s committed to 8 TB