Apple really has themselves to blame for this. Actually it’s not Apple’s fault as much as it is the global supply chain issues and silicon shortage that have created an interesting situation that we are all but unused to in the Amazon Prime, 2 day delivery, expedited world that we live in…
Time to think — objectively.
We’ve become so accustomed to going from “Buy Now” to having it in our hands in 3 seconds flat and what that does is it creates a reality where we go from want to have before we’ve really had a chance to consider our actual need.
I’m becoming convinced that the free expedited shipping, which is a relatively new phenomenon that was no doubt driven by Amazon Prime, is designed to take advantage of this process and hack the psychology of purchasing something.
In the typical buying process the buyer’s remorse doesn’t usually set in until after it’s too late. We get excited about the new and shiny thing. Then the anticipation carries us through the short wait time of actually getting it in our hands. Then it gets delivered and the dopamine hit of getting something new carries us through until we’ve settled into daily life with this new object and realize that it hasn’t changed our lives all that much, certainly not as much as we thought it would, but at this point the return period is over and it’s too late. The money is spent, no way out, and we’re left to try and rationalize our irrational purchases.
So what happened that made me cancel my M1 Ultra Mac Studio order?
Time happened.
I preordered the Mac Studio, in March, the day that it was released, and since then I’ve watched the delivery date go from May, to June, to July, back to June, and then finally to August where it had settled as of the last 10 days or so. Now, I’ve watched other people receive their mac studios in much quicker fashion, I don’t know if there was a hiccup with my particular order that caused a delay or what the deal was there, but that’s a different discussion altogether. The reality is, I ordered in March and still don’t have it in May and the most concrete prediction I have is that I won’t get it until August.
What that has done has given me a decent amount of time to ponder the quality of life difference that’s going to be brought to me by this new machine and that pondering has come in the form of objectively evaluating my quality of life with my current machine and if there’s any real hang ups that I find in my day to day use.
Just a little background, I’m a film maker. I spend A LOT of time at my computer and I’m definitely a pro user in terms of the performance that I demand from my machine. If you don’t care about the technicals you can skip the rest of this paragraph and probably the next. Like I said, I’m a film maker and I shoot all of my projects in a variety of 4K/5.5K/and 8K raw video formats, 12 bit color, the works. These files are big; we’re talking 1000mbps-2700mbps big. They are hard to process and require a decent amount of compute and graphics power. A single project may be several terabytes of footage alone that my machine has to dig through and process and I do this day in and day out and require that my machine can keep up.
My current machine is a maxed out 2021 Intel iMac. It has a 10 core, 3.6GHz Intel Core i9 CPU, an AMD 5700XT graphics card with 16GB of VRAM, 128GB of RAM, it’s the highest spec iMac that Apple has ever made (the iMac pro could be considered higher spec but it was older so the newer technology of my iMac still matches or outperforms the older iMac pro despite it having higher specs).
And so, with the delivery of my incoming Mac studio getting delayed several times, I’ve had an opportunity to truly examine what current frustrations are going to be resolved by going to the newer machine vs. my current one — and would you believe me that through that process, I’ve realized that I have very few complaints about the current performance of my machine and that the problems the new Mac studio would solve are fairly negligible?
I know, shocker — he says sarcastically.
Now there is a legitimate reason to upgrade at this point. If you’re a Mac user, you know that we’ve all been in this multi-year transition from Intel X86 to Appple silicon. And I am eager to make that jump, just purely from a practicality standpoint. I’m a Final Cut editor (Apple’s proprietary professional video editing software) and I do motion graphics in Apple Motion as well. And frankly I’ve been excited to make the transition to Apple silicon but there just hasn’t been any Apple silicon that has the raw graphics power that I need until the M1 Max/M1 Ultra which is why I haven’t made the switch yet. But the reality is that we’re a long ways away from Apple no longer supporting their Intel models. They’ve done a very good job at not kneecapping their Intel machines in the process of this transition and so I have a couple years left in this machine, easily.
So what was the real kicker for me and why I cancelled my Mac studio order?
The reality is that, as a small business, I just can’t afford to have $6000 of capital tied up in a machine that isn’t making me money right now. The annual revenue of my business in 2021 was about $120,000. I don’t do debt, financing the equipment that is quintessential to my business operating is not a risk I’m willing to take on. Especially when the equipment I use is relatively cheap and can be bought and paid for out of pocket, easily. I’m able to keep my overhead insanely low by owning my equipment and the studio space I work out of outright so that when a global pandemic comes along and grinds business to a halt, I’m not stuck stressing about how I’m going to pay for my computer that month… or year, when I should’ve just bought it outright because I had the cash (This is a rabbit hole I could write a dissertation on) . Because that’s how I operate, debt free, the fact that I preordered this machine in March means that I’ve had $6000 set aside since March to cover it’s cost. $6000 is 5% of what my revenue was in 2021 and if this machine doesn’t show up until August that’s 5% of my total revenue not providing any return on investment whatsoever for 5 whole months and in the past 2.5 months since placing the order I’ve watched opportunity after opportunity to put that money back into my business, effectively, start making a return right now pass by me.
There’s the cost of the machine, which is fairly affordable at $6000 (‘affordable’ is definitely a relative term in this business where a single memory card costs $700 or a battery to run my camera for 90 minutes is $350); and I don’t mind ahving $6000 burning a hole in my pocket for a few months. But the opportunity cost of that six grand not being invested elsewhere in my business and bringing growth, all of a sudden makes purchasing this machine a losing proposition.
Now, I know this is getting pretty granular but when you’re a small business, 5% of your entire cash flow for the year not doing anything for 5 whole months is a big deal.
The argument that video editors always make in upgrading computers is that, if time is money even if the machine only saves a couple minutes every day by being more powerful; over the course of a year it’ll end up paying for itself in time saved. And that’s a valid argument, but it goes the other way too. And in this case, the savings in time, (and therefore money) has been waaaaay more than chewed up by having to have $6000 tied up and producing no return for 5 months when it could have been going towards more marketing and getting myself out there or at the very least upgrading a piece of gear that I can get in my hands now and put to work immediately and start making money from it.
And again, this would probably be a different discussion if I didn’t already have a largely adequate machine. The Mac Studio with M1 Ultra is, no doubt, a more capable machine than my 2020 iMac but I don’t find myself slowed down in the day to day of my current workflow in a way that is unbearable to the point of not being able to do my work. I’ve had machines that literally can’t handle the workload I would throw at them and would grind to an absolute halt and just refuse to do it, I know what that looks like and that is not my reality with this machine that I’m writing this on right now.
So the fact that my current setup is adequate definitely plays a roll in this decision, but on the heels of that comes this realization that I got caught up in the shock and awe of the new and shiny. But at the end of the day, the goal of a business is to make money and when a business spends money, that money spent should be providing a return; and so the math of upgrading to the Mac Studio for me, at this time, just doesn’t provide a positive return (mathematically it actually provides a loss given the wait time), and that’s not a good strategy for running a business.
So, that’s my story of why I’ve cancelled my Mac Studio order. Will I probably turn around and order one the minute they become more readily available in the configuration that I need? Probably. Assuming I don’t just decided to hold out for the next best thing. But in the meantime, I just freed up 5% of my working capital that will go towards something that will start providing a return right now. This experience has gotten me to re-evaluate how I spend my money and I hope it might you too.
