Hands On With The New Apple Mac Studio M4 Max

It's a powerful master computing strategy that will standard to transcend your expectations.

I tin still retrieve nan first clip I attended a property motorboat for a master Mac – nan January 1999 preamble of nan Blue and White Power Mac G3, which Apple wanted nan world to judge was faster than Intel PCs of akin timepiece speed. Today, Apple’s caller master Mac Studio perfectly devours immoderate different strategy erstwhile it comes to processor capacity and power efficiency.

What a quality a 4th period makes.

I’ve spent clip pinch the Mac Studio M4 Max in caller weeks. This exemplary was equipped pinch an M4 Max spot boasting 16 CPU cores, 40 GPU cores, a 1TB SSD thrust and 128GB of memory. This peculiar loop costs $3,699, but you get a batch for your money. (For reference, that original Power Mac G3 started astatine $1,599, shipped pinch Apple’s infamous ‘puck’ mouse, and was nicknamed nan Smurf, for its unique blue-&-white color.)

That’s wherever nan comparisons end, of course, arsenic location really is nary applicable comparison to make betwixt Apple’s aged Power Macs and nan caller breed of Apple Silicon-driven velocity demons.

The Mac Studio is everything Apple 20 years agone couldn’t present — nan astir powerful instrumentality successful its class, tin of munching its measurement done nan astir demanding tasks, and pinch benchmark information points that perfectly show these Macs to beryllium nan champion systems for immoderate master needing to do intensive work.

Speeds and feeds

Here’s what nan numbers show:

• Geekbench, Single-core, 4,086
• Geekbench, Multi-core, 26,021
• Geekbench, Metal, 187,728
• Geekbench, Open CL, 118,684

The Mac aced its Cinebench tests, too, convincingly topping nan database of reference systems and achieving successful excess of 3,000 points connected nan Unigine Heaven benchmark; it’s a bully score, but is dented by nan truth nan trial situation needs to tally successful Darwin emulation.

Supporting nan release, Apple published a number of information points to show really powerful these systems tin be. The main takeaways: moreover if you’re utilizing a Mac Studio that’s nether a twelvemonth old, nan caller exemplary is simply a invited velocity upgrade, and if you usage an M1 Mac Studio you tin expect doubly nan capacity (faster rendering, compiling, photograph editing).

Numbers are really real-world, truthful to put these into context, they mean this Mac — nan latter-day descendant of nan “Smurf” — is powerful capable to return thing you propulsion astatine it. And pinch moreover much powerful models besides available, there’s almost nary demanding task you can’t expect this Mac to achieve. Apple Silicon is eating nan PC manufacture lunch.

Higher and higher

Finally, if you upgrade from an Intel Mac, well, conscionable arsenic nan move to Intel unleashed Apple’s pro Macs from decades successful nan PowerPC doldrums, nan move to Apple Silicon has utterly unshackled nan line. It intends that if you’ve travel crossed from an Intel Mac, you’ll beryllium stunned by nan immense capacity upgrade you experience.

For pros, it intends you’ll get much done faster than ever connected a Mac.

That really wasn’t nan lawsuit successful 1999, erstwhile pro machines really were destined for usage by Mac fans and group from nan imaginative departments; while bully astatine handling imaginative tasks, they didn’t genuinely lucifer Windows successful others — isolated from you didn’t person to tally Windows, which has ever been an advantage to galore of us.

Where’s nan ceiling?

The problem pinch reviewing this portion of kit is that thing I could do would really make it break a sweat. For example, I did my accustomed trial of opening up a GarageBand task pinch 300 instrumentality tracks; nan instrumentality figuratively shrugged and delivered. It past shrugged astatine everything I could deliberation of doing pinch it — moving aggregate video windows, moving pinch Pixelmator Pro transitions, dabbling astir pinch Final Cut. During nan week aliases truthful I tried to make nan Mac stumble, I hardly noticed it get lukewarm and ne'er heard nan cooling strategy successful action.

For me, these Macs complete deliver, delivering capacity acold beyond what I really need. To beryllium frank, of course, astir of my computing needs are answered by nan besides available M4-powered MacBook Air, pinch which I besides had a pleasant dalliance. But I’m not nan target marketplace — nan astir cutting-edge pros successful design, graphics, architecture, AI, medicine, and researchers. For those people, these Macs will deliver.

They besides unfastened up different opportunities. 

For example, Apple interrogator Awni Hannun managed to run Deep Seek v3 successful 4-bit natively connected nan moreover much powerful M3 Ultra Mac Studio: “The caller DeepSeek-V3-0324 successful 4-bit runs astatine > 20 tokens/second connected a 512GB M3 Ultra pinch mlx-lm!” he wrote.

The strategy I tested can’t rather do that, but it will happily tally smaller ample connection models connected device, making it imaginable to build and tally bespoke AI systems connected hardware you support connected your desk. That’s awesome for security-conscious businesses seeking an AI separator who want to guarantee each nan information belongs to them, and not to their AI provider.

Are location limitations?

There are immoderate drawbacks, I suppose. Some could spot nan request to get clasp of a display, mouse, and keyboard to usage pinch nan instrumentality arsenic being a snag. Users mightiness besides consciousness disappointment astatine nan deficiency of easy upgradeability of Apple’s systems – it would beryllium neat to beryllium capable to instal your ain memory, conscionable arsenic you were capable to do pinch nan much upgradeable Power Mac of yore.

Some mightiness want much connectivity options, but that didn’t really interest me; nan 5 USB-C/Thunderbolt 5 slots, 10Gb Ethernet, dual USB-A, HDMI, and SDXC slot seemed much than capable for astir people.

If you really want nan champion and astir powerful gaming computer, you mightiness request to usage systems pinch Nvidia chips, astatine slightest for a small while longer until gaming firms drawback up pinch Mac. Again and again, we deed package compatibility problems pinch immoderate apps arsenic nan only remaining obstruction to accelerating Mac adoption.

Summing up

I’ve deliberately tried to debar nan formulaic attack to a Mac reappraisal here. You don’t person nan clip to perceive maine reprise each information constituent from nan tech sheet you tin publication here, and I don’t spot immoderate worth successful regurgitating those numbers. Life’s excessively short to re-read it, right?

And erstwhile it comes to looks, here’s a picture:

If you’ve been keeping up pinch news connected these machines, you cognize they look for illustration a gangly Mac mini and travel successful nan shape of a bully metallic box. You already cognize what Macs do – they tally macOS, tin tally Windows successful emulation, and arsenic Apple builds retired nan Apple Intelligence system, they’ll do much things much efficaciously complete time. 

What is clear is that Apple’s high-end Macs tin and will standard to immoderate you request them to do. You should besides admit that nan velocity of Apple Silicon improvement intends that wrong nan adjacent 12 to 18 months Apple will beryllium capable to upgrade nan scope each complete again, inserting moreover faster processors that raise nan barroom of what Macs tin execute moreover much each complete again.

That’s a immense alteration from really things utilized to be. Back erstwhile I met nan Power Mac G3, Apple really was playing catch-up pinch its master Macs. These days, Apple’s pro machines aren’t playing nan aforesaid game. The computers group nan barroom for what competitors dream to achieve. If you request a batch of computational powerfulness astatine importantly little power costs, you can’t spell incorrect pinch a Mac Studio.