The Mac Studio and Studio Display made a major splash at the Apple March event, and it left at least one opinionated tech journalist soaked in the process.
Surprise, the Apple Mac Studio and Studio Display made their debut at the Apple March event this week, a showpiece for the new M1 Ultra processor and a major new workstation for creative professionals of all stripes. This all came as a surprise to many who were eagerly anticipating the announcement of an Apple M2 processor along with a bunch of new consumer-focused Mac products like a redesigned MacBook Air, a Mac Mini, and maybe even a new 27-inch iMac. None of these were on offer this time around, and though we’re still likely to see some of them later this year (though not a 27-inch iMac, I’m afraid), the Mac Studio and Studio Display absolutely stole the show – something that one tech journalist *cough cough* confidently predicted just yesterday was not just out of the question, but a downright terrible idea. Wrong on both counts. Anyone who has tried to predict the release of a particular product has experienced the disappointment of seeing a release window come and go without an announcement. This is good experience for life, and especially good experience that tech journalists like myself ignore at their peril. On Monday, Mac analyst Luke Miani published renders of the new Mac Studio and Studio Display based on leaked details from anonymous sources a full day ahead of the Apple event. While it was making the rounds on many of the Mac news sites, I dismissed the idea pretty definitively. Ultimately, my logic for believing that there was no way Mac Studio and Studio Display were appearing at the Apple March event seemed sound. Apple rarely mixes up its Professional and Consumer product announcements, and all the rumors up until that point were pointing to one or more MacBook announcements (or so it would seem, more on that in a bit). If we were getting MacBooks and an Apple M2 processor, then why would Apple announce a pair of major professional devices at their event where it would just get buried under the other major news? That’s all very reasonable, but the problem was that I ultimately made the assumption that this was a consumer-focused event, which it absolutely was not. The iPhone SE 2022 and iPad Air 5, Major League Baseball coming to Apple TV, these were just appetizers for the main course, which turned out to be a major new product that we are all still talking about today.
