Apple has announced the Mac Studio, a desktop Mac that looks like the Mac Mini on the outside but packs a lot more power on the inside. The Mac Studio incorporates both Apple’s M1 Max chip as well as a new, even more powerful processor, the M1 Ultra. Apple says the new device will be faster than its top-end Mac Pro.
As expected, Apple announced its new machine named Apple Mac Studio. The latter is of course delivered with the brand new Apple M1 Ultra, but you will also have the opportunity to order it with an M1 Max chip so as not to completely empty your bank account.
Exterior appearance and connectors
This machine looks like an obese Mac mini. It is almost 10 centimeters high, 19 centimeters wide and deep. This height allows Apple to integrate two large fans to evacuate the heat behind and under the Mac Studio.
As you can see, there are 4 Thunderbolt 4 ports on the back, a 10Gb/s Ethernet port, internal power supply, headphone/microphone port, HDMI and 2 USB-A. Apple also specifies that there is Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.
In front, there is also an SDXC card slot, as well as two more USB-Cs. This Apple Studio can be plugged into four large 5K monitors and a 4K TV simultaneously.
Mac Studio Performance
As explained above, this Mac Studio will be sold with two different SoCs: an Apple M1 Max or an Apple M1 Ultra. With the Ultra, this Mac Studio will therefore be able to manage 18 8K ProRes 422 video streams, which is clearly impressive on paper. You can configure up to 8 TB of SSD in internal storage (at 7400 Mb / s), in addition to Thunderbolt 4 for external storage.
As usual with other M1 chips, it’s still unified RAM (therefore not expandable) up to 128 GB with speeds up to 800 Gb/s. Apple talks about its efficiency: according to them, the Mac Studio will use 1000 kWh less energy in one year compared to a competing workstation.
Apple claims the Mac Studio with M1 Max will be 50% faster than a Mac Pro with a 16-core Xeon and 2.5 times faster than a 27-inch iMac with a 10-core Core i9. The M1 Ultra configuration is claimed to be 3.8 times faster than this 27-inch iMac and up to 60% faster than the Mac Pro. Like the other comparisons, Apple did not specify the tests or conditions that led to these results.
Price and availability
Regarding the prices, they are up to the performance of the machine. Count 1999 dollars for the version with the Apple M1 Max and 3999 dollars with the Apple M1 Ultra chip. These are the base prices, then you can add unified memory, storage and so on.
In France, it will cost 2299 euros (Apple M1 Max, 32 GB, 512 GB) and 4599 euros (Apple M1 Ultra, 64 GB and 1 TB). Several variants of the M1 Ultra exist, with 48 or 64 graphics cores, so we can go up to 9,199 euros with 128 GB of unified memory and 8 TB of SSD.
The conference gave pride of place to many new products other than the Apple Mac Studio: let’s mention the new iPhone SE 5G, the iPad Air (2022), the previously mentioned M1 Ultra chip, the impressive 5K screen named Studio Display and a fir green color for the iPhone 13. A complete summary can be found here.
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