For many, the Mac Studio is the dream Mac desktop system. It’s powerful, has good connectivity, and, for a professional-grade workstation, it's incredibly compact. The last update came in 2022, so Apple decided to give it a spec update earlier this year. It’s physically identical to the model it replaces, but it has improved internals and upgraded connectivity. Let’s jump into what’s new and see if it's worth getting one.

The big update is obviously the chips that power the Mac Studio. The last-generation Mac Studio came with the M2 Max and M2 Ultra. For this generation, the Mac Studio now comes with the M4 Max and M3 Ultra.

The M4 Max is not new. The M4 made its debut in the iPad Pro in May last year, and the M4 Max in last year’s MacBook Pro. It’s essentially an M4 chip on steroids.  The M4 Max is built on a second-generation 3nm process and comes in two variants. In its most powerful form, it has 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores. It can be equipped with up to 128GB of memory.