Apple has been busy, unveiling not just one, but two exciting updates to its Mac lineup. The new MacBook Air featuring the M4 chip is here, and surprisingly, it's coming with a lower price tag. Meanwhile, for power users, Apple has introduced an upgraded Mac Studio desktop PC boasting the long-awaited M3 Ultra chip. Let's dive into what these announcements mean for consumers.
MacBook Air Gets the M4 Treatment
Apple's best-selling laptop, the MacBook Air, just got a whole lot better. The new M4 chip promises an "ultra-snappy" experience, building upon last year's upgrade to 16GB of RAM across all Macs. This makes the MacBook Air an even more compelling option for everyday users. The M4 chip improves upon the M3 by adding two more cores to both the CPU.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is the price. The new MacBook Air with the M4 chip is actually $50 cheaper than last year's model, making it an even more attractive option for students and professionals alike.
Mac Studio: Powerhouse for Content Creators
For those who need serious processing power, Apple has unveiled the latest Mac Studio desktop PC. This machine promises improved performance over the previous model thanks to the long-awaited M3 Ultra, the company's highest performing processor to date. The new Mac Studio is primarily aimed at content creators, offering faster chips, the latest high-speed SSD storage, Thunderbolt 5 technology, and an updated Neural Engine.
It's been nearly two years since the last Mac Studio was released at WWDC 2023. Think of it as a "Mac mini Pro," a bigger and significantly more powerful version of Apple’s budget desktop, the Mac mini. Like the last two models, it comes in two configurations: one with the M3 Ultra chip and the other with the M4 Max chip. The physical design remains the same as the previous M2 model.
The M4 Max version is geared towards "video editors, colorists, developers, engineers, photographers, and creative pros," according to Apple. It boasts up to a 16-core CPU and 40-core GPU, from 36GB to 128GB of RAM, four Thunderbolt 5 ports with 15 GB/s throughput (triple the previous model's speed), and over 500 GB/s of unified memory bandwidth. It also includes two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, 10Gb ethernet, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
All that power makes it up to 3.5 times faster than the original Mac Studio M1 Max. With the M4 Max chip, the latest Mac Studio is the first with Apple's advanced graphics architecture that allows features like hardware-accelerated mesh rendering and a second-generation ray-tracing engine to boost content creation and gaming. For AI processing, it offers triple the speed of the M1 Max version.
M3 Ultra: The Ultimate Performance
The M3 Ultra model takes things to another level with a 32-core CPU featuring 24 performance cores, "50 percent more than any previous Ultra chip and the most CPU cores ever in a Mac," Apple said. The GPU packs up to 80 cores, another record for Apple silicon, along with a 32-core Neural Engine for on-device AI and machine learning. It also supports from 96GB to a record 512GB of unified memory, plus up to 16TB of SSD storage.
You might be wondering why Apple is just now releasing the M3 Ultra chip when other Macs have M4 processors. The answer is that designing and building the Ultra processors is complex, as they're essentially two chips connected using Apple's "Ultrafusion" bridge technology. Despite not having "M4" in the name, the M3 Ultra is still approximately twice as fast as the best M4 Max processor under taxing workloads and 2.5 times quicker than the Mac Ultra M1.
The Mac Studio with an M4 Max chip starts at $1,999 with 32GB of memory and 512GB of storage. The Mac Studio with M3 Ultra starts at $3,999 with 96GB of unified memory (up from 64GB) and 1TB of storage. Orders are now open, with shipping starting on March 12th.
"The new Mac Studio and MacBook Air represent a significant leap forward in performance and value for Apple's customers." - Apple Spokesperson
These new releases solidify Apple's commitment to providing powerful and accessible technology for both everyday users and demanding creative professionals.