It’s been a busy week for Apple. The Fruit Company’s recently updated Mac Studio follows updates to the iPad Air and MacBook Air. Except here, raw performance is the main focus. This time, that performance comes in two possible flavours – M4 Max and M3 Ultra.

As is customary, Apple says that the M3 Ultra is the “highest-performing chip it has ever created.” Until the next one comes along, anyway.

Size continues not to matter

The exterior of the ‘new’ Mac Studio has no discernable changes. There’s no new Sky Blue colourway, and the I/O options and layout are visually the same as the first version that launched in 2022. It’s the same almost-square silver box with two USB-C ports and an SD card reader on the front and a plethora of other options around the back.

It might look identical but pretty much everything is faster. The company says the M4 Max model is “up to 3.5x faster” than the original M1 Max model. It features the option of a 14- or 16-core CPU with 32 or 40 GPU cores respectively. Its memory config starts at 32GB and can go up to 128GB – if you need more, you’ll have to spring for the M3 Ultra model.

That one comes with the choice of a 28- or 32-core CPU, a GPU with either 40 or 60 cores, and up to 512GB of RAM, or ‘unified memory’ as Apple likes to call it. The M4 Max variant maxes out (sorry) at 8TB of SSD storage but you can double that in the M3 Ultra model.

Mac Studio pricing

Be prepared to pay through the nose for that. While the base M4 Max Mac Studio model starts at an almost reasonable $2,000 (~R36,180), cranking up its specs will also crank up the price, topping off at $5,900 (~R106,733).

That’s a downright steal compared to the fully kitted M3 Ultra version which costs a whopping $14,100 (~R255,072). Those figures are directly converted so they’ll probably cost even more when they launch in SA.