Ahead of Apple’s March 8 event, there was a rumor claiming that Apple was working on a higher-end and more powerful version of its Mac mini called the Mac Studio. It looks like the rumors were right on the money and if you wanted a powerful Mac that was roughly around the size of a Mac mini, then the Mac Studio could be worth taking a look at.
According to Apple, the new Mac Studio has a square footprint of just 7.7-inches and has a height of 3.7-inches, making it slightly taller than the current Mac mini, but otherwise roughly taking up the same amount of desk space, but under the hood is where most of the changes have been made.
Powering the Mac Studio is also Apple’s brand new M1 Ultra chipset which basically interconnects two M1 Max chipsets together through what Apple is calling “UltraFusion”. According to Apple, the model using the M1 Ultra is 3.8x faster in terms of CPU performance compared to the company’s 27-inch iMac with an Intel 10-core processor, and up to 90% faster than the current Mac Pro powered by Intel’s 16-core Xeon processor.
The Ultra model even supports up to 128GB of unified memory, which is pretty crazy for the average user, but it’s an option for those who might require more RAM.
Similar to the Mac mini, there will be a host of connectivity options on the Mac Studio which includes 4x Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 10Gb Ethernet port, two USB-A ports, a HDMI port, and a pro audio jack that will support high-impedance headphones or external amplified speakers. There is also support for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0.
Apple has also built-in an SD card reader in the front so that users can easily connect memory cards from devices like cameras along with 2x USB-C ports, and to help with the thermals, the Mac Studio features double-sided blowers and over 4,000 perforations to help push hot air out of the computer, sucking cool air in from the bottom and pushing it out through the back.
If you’re keen on picking up the Mac Studio, the base M1 Max model is priced starting at $1,999 while the M1 Ultra model will be priced starting at $3,999.
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