After following the build-up and subsequent collective release of anticipation from this year’s Apple WWDC, we—and the internet in general—have some questions. Most notably, who the hell is this AR/VR headset for, and why does it look so weird?
While we might not have immediate answers to that query. We might have some solutions for those out there wondering which new Apple desktop might be the best investment for their video production and editing needs.
Let’s take a look at the new Mac Studio and explore how it might actually be a cheaper (and perhaps ultimately better) investment than Apple’s M2 Ultra Mac Pro.
A Look at the New Mac Studio
So, looking at the new Mac Studio first as compared to the new Mac Pro, these are both two of the most powerful Macs ever made. The Mac Studio features M2 Max and the new M2 Ultra and promises to deliver a huge boost in performance and enhanced connectivity with its tight and compact design. The Mac Studio is also boasted to be up to six times faster than the most powerful Intel-based 27-inch iMac, and up to three times faster than the previous-generation Mac Studio with the M1 Ultra.
Needless to say, it’s an upgrade and people are excited about it.
“The new Mac Studio and Mac Pro with Apple silicon are the two most powerful Macs we’ve ever made," John Ternus, Apple's Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, said. "Mac Studio has been a breakthrough for pros everywhere, and it’s at the heart of hundreds of thousands of home and pro studios across the world. Today, it gets even better with M2 Max and the new M2 Ultra, featuring even more performance and enhanced connectivity."
With the M2 Max and M2 Ultra in particular, this new Mac Studio should really lap previous generations in all manners of CPU and GPU with its 12-core CPU and up to 38-core GPU, plus 96GB of unified memory with 400GB/s of memory bandwidth to boot.
Comparing the Mac Studio to the M2 Ultra Mac Pro
But the big question here is specifically how the Mac Studio compares to the new M2 Ultra Mac Pro. And, as many commenters and YouTubers have pointed out, like in the video above by Luke Miani, the Mac Studio with the M2 Ultra at its heart is going to be pretty much the exact same in specs, speeds, and processing as the M2 Ultra Mac Pro—but, most notably, at nearly half the price.
Of course, while the chips are the same and many of the features, there’s either a lot or a little to be said about the housing and what each desktop could eventually become now or in the future with add-ons. But if you’re looking for more bang for your buck today, it makes total sense for many creators to opt for the Mac Studio over the Pro at this point.
They should be just about exactly equal for any sort of video rendering or compositing work. If you actually prefer a compact size, it might be easier to store and travel with a Mac Studio over the larger Mac Pro frame. However, if you do anticipate that an M2 Ultra chip-powered Mac Studio might need a boost in the future a year or more down the line, then maybe the Pro would be a better option for those modifications later.
A look at the new Mac Studio and its specs and features.Credit: Apple
Mac Studio Pricing and Availability
With a wide array of connectivity within each reach for all types of video and creative professionals, this new Mac Studio is going to provide quality 8K resolution and 240Hz frame rates for high-end video work. By offering support for up to six Pro Display XDRs, you should have plenty of screen real estate for any advanced multi-screen workflows.
Here are some of the featured specs as well as a look at the pricing and availability:
Apple M2 Max chip or Apple M2 Ultra chip
Up to 24-core CPU
Up to 76-core GPU
Up to 192GB of unified memory
Up to 8TB of storage
Price: $1,999
The Mac Studio is available starting on June 13th, 2023.
How do you feel about this new Mac Studio and how it compares to other Mac desktops? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
I read somewhere that there are only two best-case scenarios for a great screenplay—either it meets the expectations of the audience or it doesn’t. Either they sigh in relief or gasp out loud in shock.
Giving your audience what they want shouldn’t be difficult for a practiced writer. A character has a desire, and they achieve it at the end of the story. Boom! Expectations met!
But there’s something oddly satisfying about not meeting those expectations in a screenplay, leaving the audience shaken in disbelief.
Many compelling screenplays use something called misdirection—it's sneaky, it's intelligent, and it takes viewers somewhere unexpected. It's all about planting subtle clues that seem insignificant until a revelation forces us to reconsider everything.
Let’s examine how this narrative tool, when used thoughtfully, can transform straightforward storytelling into something more complex and satisfying.
What is Misdirection?
Misdirection is distracting the audience to mislead them, preventing them from getting on to your scheme of actions, until you finally reveal the truth. In essence, it is a style of storytelling, where the “audience proposes, filmmaker disposes.”
In misdirection, a filmmaker manipulates information, character(s), and their timing in the narrative while building the conflict, until everything falls into place to reveal an unexpected resolution that does not match the audience’s expectations.
Many times, the audience is also purposefully misdirected by exploiting their biases, prejudices, and gullibility.
Why Would Any Filmmaker Misdirect Their Audience?
A story is as interesting as its narration. Be it a bedtime story or Nolan’s Inception, if the narrative is linear and flat, it may be less engaging to your audience.
Misdirection is one of the finest tools that acts like a hook to your story. Misdirecting elements are thought-provoking, working with the audience’s psychology to throw them off guard.
Fiction gives you the freedom to alter realities, but even while misdirecting, it is important that the dots connect effectively by the end of the story. Information shouldn’t be irrelevant and without context.
How Do You Misdirect Your Audience?
You can use any story element to misdirect the audience, but the most commonly used are characters, sound, props, plot points, strategic information reveal, and the time of the incident of any event.
Examples of Misdirection in Great Films
Gone Girl by David Fincher
Misdirection by unreliable narrator
This is one of those stories that is completely narrated in misdirection.
The film opens through husband Nick’s (Ben Affleck) perspective, who becomes the prime suspect in the disappearance of his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), on their fifth marriage anniversary. As the investigation and media frenzy take over, we are let into the lives of our two main characters and led to believe that Amy might actually be dead.
We learn about their failing marriage and Nick’s extramarital affair. Thus, when Nick lies through his teeth about his loving relationship with Amy to the police, he instantly becomes an unreliable narrator in the story.
Thus, even though his alibis are believable, you cannot trust him and can’t take his word. Rather, you, with the police, start suspecting him.
This automatically shifts all your trust to Amy instead, even though you know even less about her than Nick. Wonderfully, you have begun rooting for her now.
What you might not realize is that you have been misdirected to dislike Nick as a character, so that you automatically take Amy’s side right from the beginning, until it is revealed that Amy is alive and purposefully in hiding.
This is one of the many misdirections in the film.
By regulating how the audience judges the characters, their morality, and their intentions, a filmmaker often shatters the expectations of the audience with misdirection to give them a more surprising resolution than expected.
The Sixth Sense by M. Night Shyamalan
Misdirection by character
Just by establishing a character in a certain way and revealing information about them strategically, a filmmaker can determine the character’s impression on the audience.
This is what M. Night Shyamalan does in The Sixth Sense. The magician of misdirection keeps both the characters and the audience engaged, looking for the ghost, all the while narrating the events through the ghost’s perspective!
The beauty of a nuanced misdirection lies in the clues left throughout a film’s events, leaving you both frustrated and delighted at the same time that you didn’t pick up on them!
Money Heist by Álex Pina
Misdirection by sound
In the Spanish drama series, Money Heist, the makers use a powerful misdirection but with a genius twist. This misdirection is not only for the audience per se, but for the main character—the Professor (Álvaro Morte), too.
In the Season 2 finale of the drama series, the Professor and Raquel (Itziar Ituño), the love of his life and newly minted partner-in-crime known as “Lisbon,” are sprinting through a dense, shadowy forest. The air crackles with urgency as police hounds close in, their shouts breaking the eerie silence of the forest.
Eventually, they are forced to separate, with a radio as their only mode of communication. Raquel ends up taking refuge in a barn, but not for too long. The police arrive, and she is completely surrounded. A gun to her head, she is ordered to compromise the Professor, but she’s steel-willed and denies the police any information.
All the while, the Professor is on the radio with her, frightened and worried, begging her to tell them everything in exchange for her life. The Professor frantically runs through the forest to reach Raquel, when… bang! A gunshot rips through the radio.
The Professor stops dead, the forest swallowing his anguished cry. But as the episode races to its close, the fog clears. The shot? A cruel ruse. She’s alive and in police custody. The Professor’s despair was their bait, and he bit—hard.
What I love about this particular sequence is that the filmmakers don’t use misdirection as a generalized cliff-hanger of “what happens next.”
Instead of revealing that Raquel is alive in an upcoming episode of the next season, they make a choice to reveal it at the tail end of the same episode.
Raquel is a crucial character in the series at this point, so to lose her in the narrative would have been a huge plot twist. At times, thrillers do go for the cheap surprise, whether it makes sense or not. But in Money Heist, the reveal elevates the value of the misdirection because now the audience knows things are going to change forever—for better or worse.
Final Destination 5 by Steven Quale
Misdirection by props
The sequence leading up to Candice’s fall in Final Destination 5 is a series of brilliantly crafted misdirections that keep us on the edge of our seats until the mishap finally happens.
The misdirections also seem to be symbolic, as the death of poor Candice (Ellen Wroe) is a sharp irony. Throughout the scene, we keep worrying about the loose screw in her gymnastic apparatus but how she is killed by it in the end is absolutely unexpected—just how a nuanced misdirection should be.
Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock
Misdirection by casting
Killing the heroine halfway through the film was a risky but brilliantly used misdirection by Alfred Hitchcock in Psycho, especially considering the film dates back to the ‘60s.
An actor’s face value is as important as their acting skills. Big actors usually have strong plot armor and are expected to survive the story.
In Psycho, when a star like Janet Leigh is killed off midway through the movie, the audience is thrown off guard and does not know what to assume, whose story to follow, or what to expect next. This amplifies the shock factor of the plot twist.
Misdirection can turn your story into a fun experience with plenty of unexpected twists and turns. When done well, a reveal should prompt viewers to think, "Of course! How did I miss that?" rather than, "That came out of nowhere!"
The audience hates being deceived. So, not meeting audience expectations doesn’t mean you lie and fill the screenplay with deceiving information, revealed in an untimely way, aiming for a plot twist in the climax that feels isolated and seemingly unmotivated.
Also, be careful not to clutter your narrative with forced misdirections.
For a better understanding, check out the examples in the article—how each misdirection is a strategic literary device, not just a stylized form of storytelling.
A look at the new Mac Studio and its specs and features.Credit: Apple
