Apple's new Mac Studio starts shipping today, and the top configuration costs $12,299.
The refreshed Mac Studio runs on Apple's M5 Ultra chip, with review units packing a 36-core CPU, 80-core GPU, 256GB of RAM, and 4TB of storage. The design hasn't changed since 2022, so this year's upgrade is entirely under the hood. Standard benchmark suites reportedly can't keep pace with the review unit, a sign of how far this machine sits from typical consumer hardware. Apple pitches it for AI developers and demanding 3D visual effects studios, not everyday content creators.
This is Apple pushing the Mac Studio into a different buying category altogether. At this price, and with benchmarks this far off the consumer curve, the machine is competing with the GPU rigs and Linux workstations that AI teams and visual effects studios already cobble together, not with iMacs or MacBook Pros. Keeping the same enclosure since 2022 signals Apple thinks it already nailed the form factor for professional buyers, and that the real upgrade now is the chip inside it.
A $12,299 desktop that needs its own benchmark category is less a consumer upgrade than a statement about where Apple thinks its money is now.