Apple’s most powerful desktop Mac is brilliant for creative pros, but it won’t be for everyone

The Mac Studio is festooned with ports, including four Thunderbolt 4 ports on the rear as well as 10Gb Ethernet.

You also get two USB–A ports and an HDMI port, as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Ever since Apple introduced its first Apple silicon Mac in 2020, its direction of travel has been crystal clear. First to arrive were the M1–powered MacBook Air, Mac mini, and 13–inch MacBook Pro in 2020, followed by the gorgeous 24–inch iMac in April last year. Last October, Apple moved things on again with the new 14–inch and 16–inch MacBook Pro offering up new members of the M1 family, the M1 Pro and M1 Max. Now there’s this, the new Mac Studio — aMac mini on steroids, armed with a choice of either an M1 Max or the new M1 Ultra, making it the most powerful desktop Mac ever made — or at least until the new Apple silicon–sporting Mac Pro arrives sometime in the coming months.

Thanks to the power of Apple silicon, even an M1–powered Mac mini or MacBook Air is powerful enough for most people, so it should come as no surprise to find that the Mac Studio isn’t really aimed at us — instead Apple’s target market is the creative pros who edit 8K videos, render graphics–heavy scenes and produce multitrack audio streams all day long.

And the new Mac Studio is priced accordingly. $1,999 buys you a Mac Studio equipped with an M1 Max chip with a 10–core CPU, 24–core GPU and 16–core Neural Engine), 32GB of unified memory and 512GB of solid–state drive (SSD) storage. Spending $3,999 takes you into M1 Ultra territory, complete with a 20–core CPU, 48–core GPU and 32–core Neural Engine, 64GB of unified memory, and a 1TB SSD. The model on test here shows just how far Apple can push even that. Priced at $6,199 (via the Mac Studio’s Configure To Order options), it comes with a 20–core CPU, 64–core GPU, 32– core Neural Engine M1 Ultra, plus 128GB of unified memory and 2TB of SSD storage. Increasing the storage to 4TB will cost you another $600, while adding 8TB costs $1,800.