Apple has updated the Mac mini and Mac Studio with faster chips, offering buyers a choice between a compact, comparatively affordable desktop and a far more powerful workstation. The article argues that the Mac mini should suit most users, including many professionals, while the Mac Studio is aimed at demanding work such as AI model training, engineering, scientific workloads and high-end production.

The Mac mini starts at $899 and has an M6 chip, 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage in its base configuration; an M5 Pro version can be configured with up to 64GB of memory and an 8TB SSD. The larger Mac Studio starts at $2,499, with M5 Max and M5 Ultra options reaching up to 36 CPU cores, 80 GPU cores, 512GB of memory and 16TB of storage, as well as more ports including four Thunderbolt 5 connections.