AI and ml<\/p>\n
The cost of memory makes this an expensive ML meal<\/p>\n
Apple on Tuesday heralded the imminent refresh of its headless Mac kit with new versions of the Mac Studio and the Mac mini that you can pre-order now for shipping on September 22, 2026. The diminutive desktops promise a high level of local AI performance with memory prices to match.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“[T]he new Mac Studio is our most powerful Mac ever,” said Johny Srouji, Apple\u2019s chief hardware officer, in a statement<\/a>, citing the integration of Apple’s Neural Accelerators into processor GPUs and the utility of high-bandwidth unified memory to justify the assessment.<\/p>\n The Mac Studio became Apple’s high-performance standard bearer following the retirement of the Mac Pro<\/a> in March.<\/p>\n With the “most powerful” slot taken, the Mac mini has been dubbed “our most versatile Mac,” as Srouji put it, highlighting the machine’s recently discovered role as “an always-on agentic device.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Earlier this year, the excitement around OpenClaw and open weight AI models led to a run on Mac mini hardware as AI aficionados found Apple’s compact desktop made a comfortable home for AI agents and local inference.<\/p>\n The Mac mini<\/a> has unified memory \u2013 the CPU and GPU share the same RAM \u2013 making a Mac with ample unified memory (eg, 64 GB) well suited to GPU inference compared to a PC with 64 GB system RAM but only 16 GB GPU VRAM.<\/p>\n What’s more, Apple silicon hardware supports the company’s MLX machine learning framework, which provides respectable private inference performance<\/a> on hardware that draws far less power than a desktop GPU workstation.<\/p>\n You have less power, but more money for memory. As outgoing CEO Tim Cook admitted<\/a> in June, memory prices have been rising due to AI demand, and those costs are being passed on to customers.<\/p>\n The Mac Studio comes with two flavors of chip, M5 Max ($2,499) and M5 Ultra ($5,499).<\/p>\n