Mac Studio is Apple’s most powerful desktop yet

Following much speculation, Apple finally revealed the Mac Studio during its “Peek Performance” event. Many expected the desktop product to be a hybrid between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro, and as far as looks are concerned, it pretty much is. But the incredible specs for the Mac Studio have put it firmly at the front of the pack.

Apple said the Mac Studio was designed for musicians, 3D animators, software developers, and photographers. At least in terms of size, the Mac Studio will be the middle child between Apple’s Mac Mini and its Mac Pro desktop options. Like the Mac Mini, the Mac Studio will be 7.7 inches wide and long, but more than double the height, at 3.7 inches.

Small form, super specs — But when you look at the specs of the Mac Studio, it blows both of its desktop siblings out of the water. The Mac Studio with the just-announced M1 Ultra chip will be 90 percent faster than Apple’s fastest Mac Pro for CPU performance and will be 80 percent faster when looking at GPU performance. Even the specs of the Mac Studio with the existing M1 Max will be faster than any of Apple’s current desktop products.

Apple is also cramming in 128GB of unified memory and an SSD with a speed of up to 7.4GB/s and 8TB capacity into its Mac Studio with M1 Ultra. The M1 Max variant will instead go up to 64GB of unified memory.

“In the same way that MacBook Pro shattered the limits of graphics memory in a laptop, Mac Studio will do the same for the desktop,” Colleen Novielli, produce line manager for Mac, said during the Apple event.

The Mac Studio is packed with ports, including four Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 10GB Ethernet port, two USB-A ports, an HDMI port and a pro audio jack in the back. The Mac Studio also includes two additional ports in the front — USB-C for M1 Max and Thunderbolt 4 for M1 Ultra — alongside a very welcome addition of an SD card slot. With all these ports, the Mac Studio can support up to four displays — like Apple’s newly-released Studio Display — so you can have plenty of screen space for your studio.

Pre-order now — The Mac Studio is already available for pre-order on Apple’s website and will start shipping on March 18. The Mac Studio built with the M1 Max starts at $1,999, but the M1 Ultra version is nearly double the price, at $3,999. That’s some serious sticker shock, but it makes sense since the new M1 Ultra is essentially two M1 Max chips stitched together. And if the M1 Ultra costs that much, I can’t wait to see the price tag of the next Mac Pro.