Apple rolls out the power to Mac Studio, upgrading it to M4 Max and M3 Ultra Apple Silicon

Apple has followed their iPad announcements yesterday with two announcements today, an upgrade to the MacBook Air and the Mac Studio taking performance, speed and professional workflows to a new level for desktop computing.

The new Mac Studio will now come in two variants, M4 Max and M3 Ultra. This is the third version of Mac Studio after the 2022 launch featuring M1, 2023 follow up featuring M2 processor.

Leaping from M2 Max to M4 Max shows the timeframe of change, but acknowledging that their “Ultra” range of chips have the longest development cycle the highest end Mac Studio will feature a previous generation Silicon – however that M3 Ultra offers 2x the performance of the M4 Max in high CPU and GPU workflows.

This extended development time and today’s launch has allowed Apple to ensure the systems are ready for Thunderbolt 5 connectivity and Apple also concedes that we wont necessarily see an Ultra chip in every generation.

Thunderbolt 5 offers 120GB/s transfer speeds, with four ports on the rear and for the M3 Ultra version another two on the front.

You can spec your Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) with up to a staggering 16TB of storage space, and a whopping 512GB of Unified memory. The M3 Ultra version starts with 96GB of Memory.

On the M4 Max Mac Pro you get a 16 Core CPU and 40 Core GPU (up from 12 and 30 on the previous), while on the Ultra you get 32 Core CPU and an 80 Core GPU (up from 24/60)

This is all staggering specs and outstanding performance – the ultimate Pro level desktop (as Apple calls it) – yet in a relatively small package.

Pre-orders for Mac Studio start today, with orders fulfilled on March 12.

Mac Studio starts at $3,499 – a $200 bump on the current price, but let’s be honest – you’re spending this, you’re not checking that detail.