series of compact workstation computers from Apple

There was a time in the PowerPC era roughly 20 or so odd years before the Mac Studio’s release, in which Apple sold a rough equivalent to the Studio itself. Perhaps it’s a stretch saying such a thing – however, the Power Mac G4 Cube did offer the same G4 Processor and most of the same GPU options as the tower form factor Power Mac G4. While the Mac mini is considered to be the successor of the Power Mac G4 Cube, no model released would resemble the same hardware or performance as the pro-end desktop counterparts until the transition to Apple Silicon.

The Mac Studio, and Studio Display were announced on March 8th 2022, available for purchase on the 18th. Due to the supply chain issues created by the pandemic, it created a chip shortage which contributed to delayed orders for customers in the initial months of release. Some didn’t receive their Macs for months, and reports of shipping delays as late as May or even June.

While the Apple Silicon Mac Pro and Mac Studio share mostly the same guts, the Studio starts off at ($1999) with an M1 Max Chip. The AS Mac Pro base configuration starts at ($6999) with an M2 Ultra chip. The studio is widely seen as the better and more economical choice over the Mac Pro, as the Mac Pro has not shown much performance benefit over the studio. For $1999, you got 10 CPU cores, (8 performance, 4 efficiency), a 14-core GPU, 16-core neural engine, 400 GB/s of memory bandwidth, a 512GB PCIe-based SSD, 32 GB unified memory, and a Power Cord. Just like the Mac mini, the display, Keyboard, Mouse, and other accessories are sold separately.

Specs (via Low End Mac)

• Model Identifier: Mac13,1 (M1 Max), Mac13,2 (M1 Ultra)
• Model: A2615 (EMC 3988)
• Drive Bus: PCIe 4.0, up to 7.4 GB/s, offered standard with 512 GB of storage.
• M1 Max Configurable To: 1 TB (+$200) , 2 TB (+$600) , 4 TB (+$1200) , and 8 TB (+$2400)
• M1 Ultra Configurable To: 2 TB (+$400) , 4 TB (+$1000) , and 8 TB (+$2200)
• Weight M1 Max: 5.9 Lb (2.7 Kg)
• Weight M1 Ultra: 7.9 Lb (3.6 Kg)
• M1 Max (Base, $1999): 10-cores, 8x 3.23 Ghz “Firestorm” High Performance Cores: 8x 192 KB (1.5MB) L1i, 8x 128 KB (1MB) L1d cache, 24MB L2, 48 MB System Cache
• M1 Ultra ($3999): 20-cores, 16x 3.23 Ghz “Firestorm” High Performance Cores: 16x 192 KB (3MB) L1i, 16x 128 KB (2MB) L1d cache, 48MB L2, 96 MB System Cache
• (+$200): , 2 TB
• (+$600): , 4 TB
• (+$1200): , and 8 TB
• (+$400): , 4 TB
• (+$1000): , and 8 TB