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Apple's Mac Studio, available with M5 Max or the fused-together M5 Ultra chip, offers up to 80 GPU cores, 512GB of RAM and a 16TB SSD, along with more ports than the Mac mini, including four Thunderbolt 5 connections. The Mac mini starts at $899 and covers most everyday needs, while the Mac Studio starts at $2,499 and targets professionals with intensive workloads.
Apple kept the M5 Max Mac Studio's starting price at $2,499, but choosing the 40-core GPU option—listed as a $300 upgrade—automatically bumps memory from 32GB to 48GB, adding another $300. That makes the real cost of the GPU upgrade $600, not the $300 shown next to it. John Gruber flagged the discrepancy while tallying configuration prices for the new lineup.
The August 25, 2026 episode of 9to5Mac Daily podcast summarized the day's top Apple news, including the unveiling of a refreshed Mac mini and Mac Studio lineup. The episode is distributed through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, and an RSS feed for players like Overcast.
Apple published a support document listing the devices that fully support Wi-Fi 7, following today's update to the Mac mini and Mac Studio, which now include the technology for the first time. The list differs from Apple's broader compatibility list, since Wi-Fi 7 networks remain backward-compatible with older Wi-Fi 6E devices that can still connect but lack full feature support.
Following Apple's announcement of new Mac Studio and Mac mini models with M6 and M5 Pro/Ultra chips, Amazon has begun accepting pre-orders for the 2026 Mac mini lineup starting at $899. Apple also refreshed its Magic Keyboard, which is now listed on Amazon in configurations ranging from $99 to $199.
Apple has released the M5 Ultra chip for the new Mac Studio, built by fusing two dual-die M5 Max chips into a quad-die design, a first for the company's silicon lineup. The chip offers up to 36 CPU cores, a jump in inter-die connection speed to 4.4TB/s, and unified memory bandwidth of 1.2TB/s, both notable increases over the M3 Ultra.
Apple has introduced a new Mac Mini and Mac Studio lineup featuring the M6, M5 Max, and M5 Ultra chips, with the M5 Ultra standing as the company's most powerful processor to date. The chip offers an 80-core GPU, up to a 36-core CPU, up to 512GB of unified memory, and quadruple the LLM prompt performance of the previous M3 Ultra, built using a quad-die design that fuses two M5 Max chips. Prices have risen across the board, with the Mac Mini M6 now starting at $899 and the top Mac Studio configuration with M5 Ultra starting at $5,499.
Apple released updated Magic Keyboard accessories alongside its new Mac mini and Mac Studio launch, replacing text labels on keys like tab, caps lock, return, shift, and delete with icon-only glyphs. The change mirrors a similar redesign Apple made earlier this year on MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Neo keyboards, and also affects Home, Page Up, and Page Down keys on extended keyboards with numeric keypads. Aside from the visual update, the keyboards retain USB-C support and the same layout and functionality as prior models.
Apple quietly refreshed its Polishing Cloth alongside the new Mac mini and Mac Studio launches, now selling it for $9 instead of the original $19. The product description remains unchanged, and Apple hasn't specified what, if anything, is different about the new version.
Apple unveiled two new processors, the M5 Ultra and M6, to power refreshed Mac Studio and Mac Mini lines. The M5 Ultra fuses two M5 Max dies into Apple's first quad-die chip with up to 36 CPU cores, 80 GPU cores, and 1.2 TB/s memory bandwidth, while the 2nm M6 targets everyday users with a 12-core CPU and nearly 30% more peak GPU compute for AI tasks than the M5.
Apple introduced a refreshed Mac Mini powered by its new M6 chip, priced from $899 for 256GB storage and 16GB RAM, with pre-orders open now and shipping starting September 22. A higher-end M5 Pro variant starts at $1,699 with 512GB storage and 24GB RAM. Apple also launched new Mac Studio desktops built on M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips, priced from $2,499 and $5,499 respectively.
Apple unveiled a refreshed Mac Studio built around its M5 Max and new M5 Ultra silicon, promising up to 4.3x faster on-device AI performance, 1.8x faster graphics, and support for up to 512GB of unified memory. The desktop also gains Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thunderbolt 5, with the latter allowing multiple units to be clustered for tripled AI inference speeds. Pre-orders opened today, positioning the machine as Apple's flagship workstation for AI researchers and creative professionals.