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It is never a good sign when I start writing an article about a new product announcement and my greatest care is whether I can intact the article with my credit card intact.
My daily director is a well-equipped Mac studio, but it is now a few years old, and I have noticed that it no longer has steam for some of my complex 3D models and occasionally when video production.
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I chose not to buy the small but Mighty M4 Mac Mini, despite how cute it is, because it misses a front SD card slot that I constantly use. But from today, Apple is introducing a new Mac studio, and this thing has heavy in the right places.
So there is a real question about whether I can keep my credit card safe and healthy, give myself a few months for the news to sit in and save, or if there is again in the next hour or two in a little debts to Apple’s rulers.
What is a Mac Studio?
Simply put, the Mac Studio is the desktop Mac that professionals have always wanted. While many people connect their laptops with large monitors when they are moored, some people crave machines with Gobs of memory, an almost unlimited stack of gates and considerable power.
For years the choices were a bit challenging to navigate.
The iMac often had the right amount of power and gates, but you were dealing with the screen of Apple, which never seemed big enough. If you chose to add a second screen, you would still have seized that big beast.
For about a year I had my rather long-in-the-tooth maxed-out iMac sitting with his face down on a shelf next to my desk, so that I could use monitors that I prefer.
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The Mac Pro was just ridiculous. After about a decade of a practical tower design, Apple introduced a machine that looked like a garbage can. It did not tolerate much in the way of add-ons, and it was very expensive. Apple then introduced a redesigned Mac Pro based on Intel, and it was a research in wild expensive compromise.
In 2023, Apple used the same form factor, but introduced a barely expandable Mac Pro based on the M2. It was essentially a larger Mac studio.
The other desktop Mac option in the years before the Mac Studio was the Mac Mini (and still is). I bought at least ten of these machines because they have excellent price/performance, a good selection of gates, and you can use them in a wide range of applications without taking up too much space.
But then Apple introduced the Mac Studio in 2022. It was the same form as the pre-M4 Mac Minis, but had the opportunity to run the fastest processors, Mondo-Gobs from Ram and Lordy-Lordy, had the gates. It even had (it still makes me cry with happiness) an SD card slot at the front of the machine.
It was glorious.
So in 2022 I spent $ 3,799 and bought a Mac studio on M1 Max with 64 GB and 4 TB internal storage. Adding three years of AppleCare+ brought the final total to $ 3,968.
However, it has not been enough for the past six months. I waited. And now it’s here.
The new 2025 Mac Studio
At WWDC in 2023, Apple introduced a Mac studio based on M2, but there was no big leap in the power to justify the price. At that time I had not started hitting walls on my M1, and by the time I did, Apple M3 and M4 devices – but no Mac studio based on both chipset.
That brings us until today. Apple sends two variants of the new Mac Studio, a based on the M4 Max and one based on the new M3 Ultra. And yes, there is an M3 that is newer than the M4. Someone in Apple’s product marketing needs good swearing for this.
Beyond the processors there are other spec jumps in the new Mac Studio, but it looks and feels like the M1 and M2 generations. So let’s talk about those two processors.
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Here is the most important point: Apple’s Ultra Series -Chips are essentially two complete chips in one package. The M3 Ultra is fundamentally two M3 Max chips.
That means you have to think about processes and tasks to get your head what is for you.
Apple only offers benchmarks compared to the M1 Max that I have in my Mac Studio. According to them, the new is 3.5 times faster. But an important point is that, all other things, the M4 Max will be faster than the M3 Max.
That means that processes that work well on one chip will be faster in the M4 Max version of the Mac Studio. But grafting the two chips for older generations together means that the combined processor can tackle double ram, and for certain parallelilizable tasks (including AI), the double processor will accelerate the workloads en masse.
However, keep in mind that adding that chip only adds $ 2,000 to the price of the machine. It is a big leap for a fairly special configuration. I’ll come back to the price.
Let’s just end with another specification that makes this interesting: Thunderbolt 5.
The new Mac Studio has Thunderbolt 5. The 2022 and 2023 models had Thunderbolt 4. Assuming you have devices that can handle it, Thunderbolt 5 is about three times faster than Thunderbolt 4.
So you get four Thunderbolt 5 ports (which also support USB-C), two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, two front-facing USB-C ports and that front-facing SD card slot.
Oh, yes, and it supports Apple Intelligence. Yes?
Let’s talk about prices
The basic model M4 Max Mac Studio Starts at $ 1,999. That brings you a 14-core CPU, 32-core GPU and 16-core neural engine (AI processor). It also brings you 36 GB RAM, a meager 512 GB SSD storage and all those gates.
On the other hand, the machine starts based on the M3 Ultra at $ 3,999, but you get a 28-core CPU, 60-core GPU and 32-core neural engine (AI processor). It also brings you 96 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD storage and all those gates.
If you want to upgrade the M4 Mac Studio with more memory, you must first spend $ 300 to upgrade the M4 MAX chip to a 16-core CPU and 40-core GPU. Then you can buy expensive memory and storage.
To match the configuration that I bought in 2022, my price would now be $ 3,899. The extra hundred dollars over my expenses back in 2022 is because what is now a $ 300 jump in Chipp prize for a few cores was a $ 200 jump then.
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What is a bit discouraging for me is that the machine I would buy now would not have been specified with only 64 GB RAM. That is part of what I come across. If I wanted to move from 64 GB to 128 GB RAM (the Max that supports the M4 Max), my price would be $ 4,699.
You can see why I am going to try to hold out a little longer and save my money.
But then we come to the Ultra model. This bad boy increases the maximum for RAM and SSD. Instead of a maximum of 128 GB RAM, it can go all the way to 512 GB. And instead of maximizing a maximum of 8 GB SSD, it can go all the way up to 16 GB.
Do you sit down? Because if you want to fully maximize your ram, you first have to upgrade that M3 Ultra upgrading from 28 CPU nuclei to 32 CPU nuclei and from 60 GPU nuclei to 80 GPU nuclei. Those cores are not cheap. That is an upgrade of $ 1,200 on top of the $ 2,000 that the M3 Ultra costs on top of the Base Mac Studio.
In short, if you want the top-of-the-line Mac Studio with all Fixin’s, look at a $ 14,099 account. That is still much less than Mac Pro prices, and it will certainly give you a powerhouse. But it’s a way, far from my reach. Fortunately I don’t need that much power. If you do that, you know who you are.
My credit card is safe for now
Readers regularly tell me that they find it useful when I share my reasoning for buying or not buying something. It is clear that the needs of everyone are different, and I am a bit of a lead in my equipment. But the thinking process that I can use can be admitted by almost everyone.
So here is my thinking.
$ 5,000-like is a lot of money. I completed the project that encouraged my current Mac studio, and nothing that I am doing now makes it difficult. The conditions start today and shipments and the availability of the store start next week, on 12 March.
Usually when I ordered Macs from Apple, they arrive within a week or two. So I’m going to wait until I work (or to work on) another project that will burden my device. Knowing that a suitable machine is available, reduces part of the stress, and as soon as I know that I need more horsepower, I will pony pony.
Are you considering upgrading to the new Mac Studio, or does your current setup still meet your needs?
Are the M4 Max and M3 Ultra options logical for you, or is Apple’s Chip -Name Convention simply confusing? How important are functions such as Thunderbolt 5 and extensive RAM to your workflow?
And when it comes to prices, do you think Apple offers good value for the power, or does it push the boundaries of what professionals will pay? Let us know in the comments below.
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