Apple today introduced Mac Studio, an entirely new Mac desktop that’s a breakthrough in personal computing, powered by M1 Max and the new M1 Ultra, the world’s most powerful chip for a personal computer.
It is the first computer to deliver an unprecedented level of performance, an extensive array of connectivity, and completely new capabilities in an unbelievably compact design that sits within arm’s reach on the desk. With Mac Studio, users can do things that are not possible on any other desktop, such as rendering massive 3D environments and playing back 18 streams of ProRes video.
Mac Studio joins Apple’s strongest, most powerful Mac lineup ever, and is available to order today, arriving to customers beginning Friday, March 18th.
Mac Studio delivers even more capability to users who are looking to push the limits of their creativity — with breakthrough performance, a wide range of connectivity for peripherals, and a modular system to create the perfect setup.
Revolutionary Desktop Design Enabled by Apple Silicon
With the power and efficiency of Apple silicon, Mac Studio completely reimagines what a high-performance desktop looks like. Every element inside Mac Studio was designed to optimize the performance of M1 Max and M1 Ultra, producing an unprecedented amount of power and capability in a form factor that can live right on a desk.
Built from a single aluminum extrusion with a square footprint of just 7.7 inches and a height of only 3.7 inches, Mac Studio takes up very little space and fits perfectly under most displays. Mac Studio also features an innovative thermal design that enables an extraordinary amount of performance. The unique system of double-sided blowers, precisely placed airflow channels, and over 4,000 perforations on the back and bottom of the enclosure guide air through the internal components and help cool the high-performance chips. And because of the efficiency of Apple silicon, Mac Studio remains incredibly quiet, even under the heaviest workloads.
Game-Changing Performance with M1 Max and M1 Ultra
Powered by either M1 Max or M1 Ultra, Mac Studio delivers extraordinary CPU and GPU performance, more unified memory than any other Mac, and new capabilities that no other desktop can achieve. With M1 Max, users can take their creative workflows to new levels, and for those requiring even more computing power, M1 Ultra is the next giant leap for Apple silicon, delivering breathtaking performance to Mac Studio. M1 Ultra builds on M1 Max and features the all-new UltraFusion architecture that interconnects the die of two M1 Max chips, creating a system on a chip (SoC) with unprecedented levels of performance and capabilities, and consisting of 114 billion transistors, the most ever in a personal computer chip.
Mac Studio Powered by M1 Max Enables:
• Up to 2.5x faster CPU performance than the fastest 27-inch iMac with 10-core processor.
• Up to 50 percent faster CPU performance than Mac Pro with a 16-core Xeon processor.
• Up to 3.4x faster graphics performance than the 27-inch iMac, and over 3x faster than Mac Pro with its most popular graphics card.
• Up to 7.5x faster than the 27-inch iMac, and up to 3.7x faster than 16-core Mac Pro when transcoding video.
Mac Studio Powered by M1 Ultra Enables:
• Up to 3.8x faster CPU performance than the fastest 27-inch iMac with 10-core processor.
• Up to 90 percent faster CPU performance than Mac Pro with 16-core Xeon processor.
• Up to 60 percent faster CPU performance than 28-core Mac Pro.
• Up to 4.5x faster graphics performance than the 27-inch iMac, and up to 80 percent faster than the fastest Mac graphics card available today.
• Up to 12x faster than the 27-inch iMac, and up to 5.6x faster than 28-core Mac Pro when transcoding video.
With its ultra-powerful media engine, Mac Studio with M1 Ultra can play back 18 streams of 8K ProRes 422 video, which no other computer in the world can do. Mac Studio also shatters the limits of graphics memory on a desktop, featuring up to 64GB of unified memory on systems with M1 Max and up to 128GB of unified memory on systems with M1 Ultra. Since the most powerful workstation graphics card available today only offers 48GB of video memory, having this massive amount of memory is game changing for pro workloads. And the SSD in Mac Studio delivers up to 7.4GB/s of performance and a capacity of up to 8TB, allowing users to work on massive projects with incredible speed and performance.
Connectivity within Easy Reach
The compact design of Mac Studio puts an extensive array of essential connectivity within easy reach. On the back, Mac Studio includes four Thunderbolt 4 ports to connect displays and high-performance devices, a 10Gb Ethernet port, two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, and a pro audio jack for high-impedance headphones or external amplified speakers. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 are built in as well.
And because users frequently connect and disconnect devices, like portable storage, Mac Studio includes ports on the front for more convenient access. There are two USB-C ports, which on M1 Max supports 10Gb/s USB 3, and on M1 Ultra supports 40Gb/s Thunderbolt 4. There is also an SD card slot on the front to easily import photos and video. And Mac Studio provides extensive display support — up to four Pro Display XDRs, plus a 4K TV — driving nearly 90 million pixels.
macOS Monterey
Mac Studio is powered by macOS Monterey, the latest version of the world’s most advanced desktop operating system. The combination of macOS Monterey with M1 Max or the powerful new M1 Ultra delivers breakthrough performance, security, and productivity for users. FaceTime includes audio and video features that make calls feel more natural and lifelike, and SharePlay enables Mac users to have shared experiences through FaceTime. Live Text and Visual Lookup are intelligence features that surface useful information, Safari includes powerful tab organization with Tab Groups, and Shortcuts bring the ease of automation to the Mac. Continuity tools like AirPlay to Mac enable Apple devices to work even better together, and with next week’s release of macOS Monterey 12.3 and iPadOS 15.4, Universal Control will make it easy for users to work effortlessly across Mac and iPad for unparalleled productivity.
Mac Studio, Studio Display, and the Environment
Mac Studio and Studio Display were designed to minimize their environmental impact. Mac Studio uses far less energy than competitors to deliver its extraordinary performance. For example, over the course of a year, Mac Studio will use up to 1,000 kilowatt-hours less energy than a high-end PC desktop.6 Both Mac Studio and Studio Display use 100 percent recycled rare earth elements in all magnets and recycled tin in the solder of the main logic board — as well as recycled aluminum and plastic in various components. Both products also meet Apple’s high standards for energy efficiency, are free of numerous harmful substances, and use wood fiber in the packaging that comes from recycled sources or responsibly managed forests.
Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations, and by 2030, plans to have net-zero climate impact across the entire business, which includes manufacturing supply chains and all product life cycles. This means that every Apple device sold, from component manufacturing, assembly, transport, customer use, charging, all the way through recycling and material recovery, will be 100 percent carbon neutral.
Pricing and Availability
• The new Mac Studio ais available to order today on apple.com/store and in the Apple Store app. It will begin arriving to customers, and will be in select Apple Store locations and Apple Authorized Resellers, beginning Friday, March 18th.
• Mac Studio starts at $1,999 (US), and $1,799 (US) for education. Additional configure-to-order options are available at apple.com/store.
• Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad ($199 US), Magic Trackpad ($149 US), and Magic Mouse ($99 US) in the new silver-and-black color option are available at apple.com/store.
• With Apple Trade In, customers can trade in their current computer and get credit toward a new Mac Studio. Customers can visit apple.com/shop/trade-in to see what their device is worth.
MacDailyNews Take: The new Mac Studio is an amazing value!
We priced out a top of the line Mac Studio (Apple M1 Ultra with 20-core CPU, 64-core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine, 128GB unified memory, 8TB SSD storage) for $7,999. Drop down to 2TB internal storage (as most pros already have external drives) and the price is just $6,199.
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Return of the Cube?
no, this one is custom machined from a solid piece of alyooominyum
So, uh, asking for a friend… any idea how well this might play games? I’ve, er THEY’VE, got a cheesegrater Mac Pro with an NVidia 1080 GPU but want to upgrade after 13 years.
Give it a few years for Mac silicon to get native games. For any decent gameplay, you’ll want an older Intel Mac with Bootcamp to run Windoze games.
Apple made the iPad for games if you can stand the tiny screen.
FYI, World of Warcraft has had a native version, with Metal support, pretty much from the start of the M1 release. Public Service Announcment. 🙂
I guess it depends on what games and type of gaming you would like to play, but generally, Mac OS X isn’t known for being a gamers platform. iOS has more native games by far. Windows is the unfortunate choice for desktop gaming. NVIDiA RTX platform seems to lead in photo realistic real-time ray tracing and VR.
For the record, it’s mostly Blizz games like WoW plus some older Intel-native stuff. Basically, is the M1 GPU reasonable for games, or only for video processing? How does it compare to the older Pascal-based NVidia GPUs? I know we could take these Mac Pros and convert them easily to Wintel boxes, but the PCIe bus is too old to perform well with an RTX board even IF you could get one reasonably-priced.
Can’t wait for 3rd party benchmarks to land
“Just?” I just want an upgraded large iMac, thanks.
Why? What makes you think an iMac with Max or Ultra chip would be cheaper or better in any way than the MUCH more versatile Studio? Apple made the right call to go modular again.
Somehow it STILL isn’t HDMI 2.1?
don’t steal max headroom name
But but but PERSONAL FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Apple Silicon makes PCs with separate components for CPU, GPU, and memory seem primitive and quaint. Look at the size of Mac Studio compared to Apple’s own Intel-based Mac Pro. And the video presentation shows that the upper half of Mac Studio is mostly its cooling system. The computing parts could probably fit into current Mac mini casing.
I just bought one (Max version bumped up in specs)… and the new display, keyboard, and AppleCare… spent approximately $5,000 (roughly $1,000 more than I anticipated) but I’m still psyched. It’s due to arrive in about 3-4 weeks. Wooooo!
We bought two! To refresh our radio production studio. Also psyched!
As blazing fast at the Mac Studio M1 Ultra seems to be (much faster than existing 2019 Mac Pros) and you might think they don’t need to update the Mac Pro to Apple Silicon because of the Mac Studio they alluded a new Mac Pro is in fact coming only at “another time.” 2023? One can only imagine how fast that sucker will have to be to be better than the Mac Studio.
Solid gear. Can’t bear to sit through the presentation anymore, too much ‘everything’.
Nice Mickey Mojses silhouette in the power connector. Reminds us that Windows is Mickey Mouse while Apple is the real deal.
But what happens when the SSD’s or RAM take a crap….do you just toss out the whole MAC Studio?
Serious question?
You would do same thing you do with every Apple product they make now, except the Mac Pro. Take it to a professional and find out what they can do to your sealed box.
You should buy the Apple Care 3 year extended warranty and at year 2.5 sale you used Mac for a new machine. The best kept secret in used apple computers sales is with computers with time left on their warranty; it gives peace of mind to the buyer and thus brings more money. So yes Macs are upgradable; just sale the old one and upgrade to a new one
Really? I still have a 2012 MAC Mini, that I have upgraded myself to max RAM and 2 1.0TB SSD’s that I use for Streaming Music only. I will really miss DIY stuff with that box when it finally dies. That being said I do own an M1 iPadPro and a M1 MAC Mini…but it seems with all the RAM and Storage Memory built in to the Main Chip, I doubt they will be repairable! So again….just toss it in the trash?
I have to eat crow. This is a great Mac, and I actually really like the modern OSes. Big Sur is great, and Monterey is even better. The new chips and architecture are nothing short of mind blowing. I ordered one of these yesterday, and i can’t wait to take it through its paces. it’s actually starting to feel like the RISC days, which always dusted Intel through integration, on steroids. A sheepish well done, Apple. This is just awesome, and future developments have us salivating. Fight back for the Mac, again, it finally deserves it.