Episode 43 - Why Josh Ordered A Mac Studio
I bought a Mac Studio, and no, I definitely didn’t need one.
In Episode 43 of Tek With Josh, I break down why I decided to order Apple’s Mac Studio and why the decision had a lot less to do with simply wanting a faster computer than it might seem. My current MacBook Pro already handles most of what I throw at it, but the way I work has started changing. I’m using AI agents for editing, publishing, marketing, business ideas, research, tracking numbers, and other repetitive parts of my workflow, and that made me start looking differently at what I actually need from a computer.
A big part of the decision came down to cost. I’ve been experimenting with cloud-based agents, but once I started looking at how many credits some of my real workflows could consume, especially something as involved as editing an entire book, the numbers stopped making as much sense. Instead of continuing to pay increasingly expensive monthly fees for cloud computing, I started asking whether putting that money toward hardware I actually own could give me more flexibility over time.
That led me to the Mac Studio and eventually the Ultra configuration. I talk through why I chose it, the tradeoff between more unified memory and significantly more CPU, GPU, and memory bandwidth, and why I think those resources make more sense for what I want to build. The plan is to run local AI models and agents through Hermes, eventually giving those agents access to parts of my workflow like scheduling, analytics, content creation, book publishing, and potentially even creating specialized agents for individual jobs.
The Mac Studio will also become more than an AI machine. I’m planning to move some of the server duties currently handled by my Mac mini over to it, use it for video production, and experiment with bringing more regular content back to both Books By Josh and Tek With Josh on YouTube. I fully expect there to be a learning curve once it arrives, but that is also part of what I’m looking forward to.
Would I recommend everyone go buy a Mac Studio? Absolutely not. The question is what you would actually use it for. For me, this is less about buying an expensive desktop and more about seeing whether owning the computing power behind my growing AI workflow makes more sense than continuously renting it from the cloud.