A new Apple Mac Studio computer and Studio Display are on display shortly after launch at the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on March 18, 2022 in New York City, New York.
Mike Seeger | Reuters
As more and more consumers pay attention to apple’s To develop computers for creating and running AI agents, the company is rolling out new Mac Mini and Mac Studio models equipped with the latest chips and other upgrades for artificial intelligence applications.
The announcement, which comes weeks before Apple is expected to launch a new iPhone model, shows how strategically important desktop computers have become to Apple, both as a stepping stone into the world of AI development and as a showcase for the capabilities of the company’s processors.
Developers who write their own agents using software like OpenClaw often prefer to run them on dedicated Mac Mini computers rather than in the cloud. Apple’s Mac Studio is also a popular choice for AI researchers experimenting with training and deploying local models.
In Tuesday’s announcement, Apple emphasized that its iPhone and Mac chips are built with special parts called neural engines that are dedicated to running models, as well as a RAM architecture that eliminates some of the memory bottlenecks.
“These frameworks and new chips enable developers to run and fine-tune large-scale AI models locally on the Mac,” Apple said in a press release.
Mac Mini can now be configured with two new chips: M6 and M5 Pro. This is the first Apple computer to be powered by the M6 generation chip, which is manufactured on a 2-nanometer process. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd..
Previous versions were available for the M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chips. Apple says computers with the M5 Pro can handle large language model prompts 8.5 times faster than the older Pro version of the Mac Mini.
Prices are also rising. Prices for this computer start at $899, an increase of $100 over the previous model. This comes after Apple raised the price from $599 over the summer, blaming it on memory costs.
Mac Studio is Apple’s most powerful computer without a built-in screen (Apple’s Mac Pro was discontinued earlier this year). Some models will be equipped with the M5 Max chip, which Apple says will allow LLM to run nearly four times faster than the previous generation.
Some products can be configured with Apple’s M5 Ultra chip, the most powerful chip Apple currently offers. Apple also says that multiple Mac Studios with Ultra chips can be linked together to operate as one machine, pooling memory together to run frontier AI models with trillion parameters.
Mac Studio computers with the M5 Max chip continue to start at $2,499, and 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 past models had the M3 Ultra chip, which was one generation later.
The new computers go on pre-order on Tuesday and are scheduled to ship on September 22nd.
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