The new Apple Mac Studio computer and Studio Display are displayed shortly after going on sale at the Apple Store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, in New York City, New York, March 18, 2022.
Mike Segar | Reuters
With more consumers turning to Apple’s computers for creating and running AI agents, the company is rolling out new Mac Mini and Mac Studio models with updated chips and other upgrades for artificial intelligence applications.
The announcement, a few weeks before Apple is expected to release new iPhone models, shows how desktop computers have become strategically important for Apple as a foothold in the AI development world, and as a showcase for the capabilities of its processors.
Developers using software like OpenClaw to create their own agents often prefer to run them on a dedicated Mac Mini computer instead of in the cloud. And Apple’s Mac Studio is a popular choice for AI researchers who are experimenting with training and deploying local models.
Apple highlighted in Tuesday’s announcement that it builds its iPhone and Mac chips with special parts called neural engines dedicated to running models, and that it uses a RAM architecture that eliminates some memory bottlenecks.
“With these frameworks and new chips, developers can run and fine-tune large AI models locally on their Mac,” Apple said in the press release.
The Mac Mini can now be configured with two new chips, the M6 and M5 Pro. It’s the first Apple computer with an M6-generation chip, which is manufactured on a 2-nanometer process from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
The prior version was available with M4, M4 Pro and M4 Max chips. Apple said the computer configured with the M5 Pro can process large language model prompts 8.5 times faster than older Pro versions of the Mac Mini.
Prices are also going up. The computer now starts at $899, up $100 from the prior model. That followed an increase over the summer from $599, which Apple blamed on memory costs.
The Mac Studio is Apple’s most powerful computer that doesn’t have a built-in screen (Apple’s Mac Pro was discontinued earlier this year). Some models will come with the M5 Max chip, which Apple says will allow LLMs to run nearly four times faster than its predecessor.
Some can be configured with Apple’s M5 Ultra chip, the most powerful chip Apple currently offers. And Apple says multiple Mac Studios with the Ultra chip can be linked together to work as one machine, pool memory together and run trillion-parameter frontier AI models.
Mac Studio computers with an M5 Max chip start at $2,499 — the same as before — and a Mac Studio with the M5 Ultra starts at $5,499. Apple previously charged at least $5,299 for a Mac Studio with an Ultra chip, and the past model was equipped with an M3 Ultra chip, a generation behind.
The new computers go on presale on Tuesday and will ship on Sept. 22.
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