Apple‘s WWDC events don’t usually go too hard on hardware but the newly announced M2 Ultra chipset is the best thing to happen to personal computing, ever. That’s not us making the claim, obviously. The fruit company blitzed through the announcement but made it very clear that the M2 Ultra is the latest, greatest invention in the history of processors.
Which is why Apple has placed it inside both the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro lineup. You remember the cheese grater, don’t you? But these units are typically designed for use in industrial contexts — high-end video editing and animation — so don’t expect to pick one of these on a whim unless your family has oil money handy. Still, Apple’s making its new chipset sound super attractive.
The CIA did M2 Ultra
Provided, that is, you’re a fan of cores. A 24-core processor, up to 76 cores for GPU, 32 neural cores, and support for up to 192GB of RAM means that you’ll be able to edit multiple 8K video streams at once. Not four or five, either. Apple reckons users on the Mac Pro will handle up to 22 simultaneous streams of 8K ProRes. We don’t need that sort of power. Nor do you. But someone does, and that person is able to afford R15,000 a month to purchase the hardware needed for this.
Besides the new prices and the new processor capabilities, there don’t seem to be any other new features for the Mac Studio and Mac Pro. All of the upgrades are facilitated by the M2 Ultra chipset. If you’ve ever wanted more power from your Apple hardware, this is as powerful as it gets. Until this time next year and the launch of the M3 Ultra, obviously.
Whether South Africa is getting an M2 Ultra Mac Studio and the corresponding Mac Pro model is highly doubtful. It’s possible to purchase the M1 Ultra Mac Studio models here at home but pricing starts at R90,100 and the local iStore will only bring them in to order. It’s probable that pricing will be higher for these new models and they’ll be just as scarce at retail. Still, if you absolutely have to have all the bragging rights…
