I set the Mac Studio in between my two-monitor setup, which allowed me to easily turn it on (the power button is located on the back left of the machine when looking at it from the front) and gave me immediate access to the two Thunderbolt 4 ports and SD card reader on the front of the computer (on M1 Max Mac Studio models, they are only 10Gb/s USB-C ports). Since the power button is not on the front of the Mac Studio, though, I do think more people will keep it close to their working area than those who hide it away, simply because there it will be more convenient to turn it on. However, for those who plan to hide the Mac Studio under a desk or away from the display, the included cable isn’t likely to be long enough. It doesn’t bother me because I have the Mac Studio and the Studio Display positioned right next to each other and I, therefore, have enough room to route the cable through a monitor arm and into the back of the display with cable length to spare. There has been some pushback over the length of the Thunderbolt 4 cable that comes with the Studio Display, and I can understand that. I like Apple’s implementation of the fabric-wrapped cords and they do feel very premium.
The cables that are included with the Mac Pro and Studio Display feel really nice. The Mac Studio ships with three fabric-wrapped cables: a power cable, lightning to USB-C cable, and a Thunderbolt 4 cable. I do, however, agree that the placement of the charging port, which is still at the bottom of the mouse and therefore means you cannot charge it and use it at the same time, is bad.
I have small hands, so I don’t have any issue using it for hours at a time and I really like the omnidirectional touch scrolling it provides. Some people, like myself, enjoy the Magic Mouse. The Magic Mouse feels and works identically to the Magic Mice of previous generations.
They type with about the same pressure but feel slightly more raised above the aluminum base than the iMac Pro keyboard does and perhaps provide a bit more pressure back after each keypress. I was able to get used to the slightly different feeling of the keys rather quickly. The keyboard feels different from the previous iMac Pro keyboard, but not hugely so. PeripheralsĪlong with the new Mac Pro, Apple has refreshed the Touch ID keyboard and Magic Mouse and continued using a fabric-wrapped set of cables, this time in black. Of note, it does top the M1 Mac Mini’s average of 3,100 MB/s write and 2,880 MB/s read speeds. That’s not quite as fast as what we saw out of the MacBook Pro and I can’t explain why that might be, but these data speeds are well more than any photographer (and a majority of videographers) is going to need. I saw some peaks as high as 6,060 MB/s and some dips into the 4,000 MB/s area. As mentioned, our review unit features a 2TB SSD, which provided blistering data transfer speeds: 5,910.3 MB/s write and 5,276.7 MB/s read speeds.