Speaking during Apple’s second fiscal quarter 2026 earnings call, CEO Tim Cook warned that supplies of the company’s Mac mini and Mac Studio desktops could remain constrained for months. According to Cook, surging demand driven by artificial intelligence workloads outpaces Apple’s manufacturing capacity.

The surge comes amid growing interest in “local AI,” where models run directly on personal machines rather than on remote cloud servers. Privacy concerns, latency reductions, and rising cloud inference costs have pushed many developers and companies toward on-device AI processing.

Cook’s warning marks one of the clearest signs yet that the AI boom is beginning to reshape the personal computer market in ways that extend beyond traditional GPU manufacturers like Nvidia. The comments also officially confirm our report that some Mac models were facing significant shortages and shipping delays, primarily driven by an "ordering frenzy" for high-memory configurations, spurred by demand to run local AI agents, such as the "OpenClaw" mode.

Apple’s Mac mini and Mac Studio have become particularly attractive for AI development because of the company’s Apple Silicon architecture. Unlike conventional desktop systems that separate CPU and GPU memory, Apple’s unified memory architecture allows AI models to access large pools of shared high-bandwidth memory more efficiently. This makes the systems especially useful for running local large language models, AI agents, and inference workloads.

The higher-end Mac Studio configurations can also be equipped with massive amounts of unified memory, allowing developers to run increasingly large AI models directly on desktop hardware. Combined with relatively low power consumption, the systems have gained popularity among AI developers seeking alternatives to expensive server-grade hardware.

Industry observers have noted rising interest in Apple desktops from AI enthusiasts over the past year. Online developer communities have increasingly discussed using Mac Studio systems for running open-source AI models locally, particularly as demand for high-end AI GPUs continues to strain global supply chains.

Apple’s supply warning also arrives during broader pressure across the semiconductor industry. Advanced chip packaging technologies and high-bandwidth memory production have already been strained by soaring demand for AI infrastructure. Several semiconductor firms have warned of prolonged shortages tied to AI-related manufacturing bottlenecks.

The constraints may also reflect Apple’s growing ambitions in artificial intelligence. The company has been steadily expanding its AI strategy following the introduction of Apple Intelligence across its ecosystem. While Apple has historically emphasized on-device AI processing for privacy and efficiency reasons, the recent surge in demand for its desktop systems could further strengthen its position in the emerging local AI computing market.

The shortages could persist for “several months,” according to Cook, suggesting customers may face extended shipping delays for some Mac mini and Mac Studio configurations.

Apple has just reportedly signed drivers for Nvidia eGPUs, allowing them to finally work on Apple silicon devices. Tiny Corp said in its X post that the company has finally approved the software, letting users pair the GPUs with Macs for AI LLM processing. In fact, the company claims that installing the drivers is now so easy that “a Qwen could do it.” The company first tested an eGPU on Apple Silicon in May 2025, but now that it’s supported by Apple, it means that users no longer have to use workarounds for supported hardware, like disabling System Integrity Protection, to get the system working.

Tiny Corp is the company behind the tinybox, an AI accelerator built around four high-end GPUs. It was famously known for butting heads with AMD due to driver issues, with AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su stepping in just to get things right. At the moment, the company is selling the red v2, which is powered by four AMD 9070XTs and costs $12,000, and the green v2 Blackwell, which costs $65,000 and has four RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell GPUs. It’s also planning to launch the exabox in 2027, which will come with 720 RDNA5 AT0 XL GPUs to deliver around 1 exaflop of computing power for around $10 million.

High-end Apple computers recently became popular with the rise of AI agents like OpenClaw. In fact, this frenzy has driven a shortage of Macs that came with massive amounts of Unified Memory, with the delivery window pushed from six days to six weeks. It has even gotten to the point that Cupertino no longer offers the 512GB Unified Memory option for the Mac Studio, while the 256GB model received a $400 price bump.

This custom driver seemingly did not come from the GPU maker, though, with Tiny Corp seemingly working on it on its own. Subsequently, this means that the driver is designed for running AI LLMs and not for gaming, surely disappointing people who don’t want to own two different PCs for work and entertainment. Nevertheless, this is still a game-changer for people working with artificial intelligence, as they could now potentially do training or inference (with some limitations) without needing a dedicated AI supercomputer like Tiny Box.

This week, Apple’s Mac OS X hit a quarter-century milestone. It officially launched on March 24, 2001, though a public beta had been available for tinkerers for almost six months. Heralded by Steve Jobs as “the future of the Mac,” the fresh new operating system presented an ‘Aqua’ aesthetic dipped GUI over a Unix-based foundation. In 2026, even after three upheavals to the underlying Mac computer architecture, OS X is more popular than ever, and looks set to win flocks of new converts with the affordable MacBook Neo.

You can’t just launch an OS on an established platform without some mitigations and workarounds. I remember at the time of OS X’s introduction, we had a very polished ‘classic’ Mac OS version 9, though it may have been slightly fragile. As a transition user (I used Macs at work and home at the time), OS X felt rough, a big step backwards in usability, despite all the marketing bombast of Jobs and Co. For several years, Mac users had to juggle with ‘Carbon’ apps running natively and others causing the computer to start up the ‘Classic’ environment – an OS9 instance in a sandbox.

It wasn’t a very smooth experience mixing legacy and newer applications for several years. Nevertheless, in many ways, it was an achievement by Apple to transition its users from one OS to another while gaining popularity. This transition occurred when Macs were enjoying pretty good momentum from the colorful iMac G3 era.

Stepping back a little, it must be remembered that Apple’s development teams already had transitional success moving from the Motorola 680X0 architecture (from 1984 to around 1994-6) to PowerPC (1994 to 2006). They might have had an inkling at the time of OS X’s development and release that there would be another underlying hardware shakeup on the way.

Apple’s developers were very likely better prepared for the PowerPC to Intel architecture transition, not only thanks to prior experience, but also due to the UNIX underpinnings of OS X being built on components that already had portable multi-architecture support. While the 68K to PPC transition saw the necessity is the mother of invention, ‘fat binaries’ of mixed architecture code were introduced, OS X reused this concept with ‘Universal Binaries.’ Moreover, the Rosetta PPC-x86 (2006) translator was simpler than the 68K emulator that the first versions of Mac OS X had to incorporate.

OS X was introduced to modernize Apple’s desktop OS with features like protected memory, preemptive multitasking, a real kernel, and modern graphics stack. However, probably by accident rather than design, it ended up being much easier to transition to Intel.

The latest version of Mac OS X is currently macOS 26 (they changed the nomenclature about a decade ago), Tahoe. Apple’s grown-up OS hasn’t risen without a few of its own ‘Vista’ or ‘Windows 11’ moments over the years, though. For example, the newest release has been criticized for gatekeeper tightening behavior, making running unapproved or unsigned apps tricker than before. It also had a ‘Vista UAC’ type issue with users being annoyed by re-authorization prompts for app permissions.

The Computer History Museum is teasing the “Big Mac.” This is an almost comically large-scale rendition of the circa 1986 Macintosh Plus. However, in 2026 design terms, only the keyboard looks particularly oversized, as screens on all-in-ones nowadays totally dominate designs, with the ‘PC’ bits so small they don’t look much different to monitors.

Above you can see the “astonishingly large Macintosh Plus computer” recently acquired by the museum, based in Mountain View, California. The device was likely built for exhibition and demo purposes back in the day, when the Plus was a commercially available and desirable machine.

The Computer History Museum shies away from any kind of technical details regarding the Big Mac. For this tease,r it preferred to try and hook in the keyboard ASMR crowd, a surprisingly large niche of enthusiasts. A staffer from the museum, we presume, is videos click clacking on the scaled-up replica of the Apple Keyboard (M0110A). As you can see, this keyboard would be very compact, with just 58 keys, but at least it has arrow keys, which were absent from its predecessor, the M0110.

Apple’s Macintosh Plus launched with the same Motorola 68000 CPU as the original Mac, but buyers benefited from a default 1MB of RAM (expandable to 4MB with its 4x standard 30-pin SIMM slots), an 800KB 3.5-inch floppy drive, and a SCSI port for peripherals like HDDs and printers.

Though it appealed to graphic artists, largely due to the direction of its software library driven by the Mac’s pioneering GUI adoption, these machines (original and Plus) were built around a tiny 9-inch monochrome CRT with 512 x 342 pixels resolution. That’s why, even with the ‘Big Mac,’ the screen looks kinda small, while the keyboard is comically large in 2026.

The Macintosh Plus launched at $2,599 in 1986, for the configuration outlined above. That’s over $7,500 in 2026 money. Still, it was a workhorse fully supported by Apple System releases for a decade, with Mac OS 7.5.5 maintaining support for the little all-in-one when it was released in Sept 1996.

The Computer History Museum teases that more info on the Big Mac is coming next week. Its social media post tag suggests this computer will form part of its Apple at 50 celebrations, which kickoff in March.

Microsoft ended support for Windows 10 last October 14, ending its reign as one of the most popular operating systems for PCs after nearly a decade. This happened about a year and a half after the introduction of Copilot+ PCs, and while some Windows PC makers were able to increase their shipments in the third quarter of this year, Apple seems to be one of the biggest winners, marching towards the end of the Windows 10 era. According to Counterpoint Research, Lenovo is the biggest gainer, shipping 17.4% more units in 3Q25, but Apple’s Mac shipments also jumped by 14.9% YoY.

This creates a huge bump for the company, with brands like Asus (+14%) and HP (+10%) also selling more units. Perhaps surprisingly, Dell sold fewer units, with company shipments falling by 0.9%, while all the rest of other PC makers sold 3% fewer units on average. Despite that, the overall PC market grew by 8.1% YoY — largely driven by the need to upgrade hardware to make them compatible with Windows 11 and to store additional inventory as a hedge from President Donald Trump’s exceptionally high import tariffs.

Despite the uncertainty with tariffs and the trade war between the U.S. and China, Lenovo’s growth rate was very high, especially when compared to its competitors. However, Apple is the surprising runner-up on our list, with the company’s shipments increasing by a whopping 14.9% YoY.

This means that quite a number of users are purchasing Macs and MacBooks instead of picking another Windows laptop, especially as some devices that are seemingly good enough for Windows 11 cannot install it due to a lack of a TPM 2.0 chip. Tariffs are another driver behind this jump in shipments, with companies stocking up on computers and other components, allowing them to have ready availability.

This interesting tidbit is that despite all the marketing, the AI PC has yet to take off more than a year after its introduction from the blueprint to the drawing board. This was the situation over a year ago, when people didn’t choose an AI PC for its AI features, instead picking a model that has the proper components for their needs (like more RAM or larger storage capacity). In fact, Intel is increasing the prices of its Raptor Lake chips owing to the growing demand for this bird.

Still, Counterpoint believes that AI PC shipments will increase across the industry in 2025, especially with the pending arrival of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite and the development of Intel’s own Xe3 graphics architecture. “The PC market’s rebound in 2025 is not just about replacing outdated systems; it is about preparing for what is next,” said Counterpoint Associate David Naranjo. “Many enterprises are choosing AI-capable PCs to future-proof their fleets, even if they do not yet need those capabilities immediately. The next refresh cycle will be defined by intelligence at the edge, not just performance improvements.”

Yesterday, CD Projekt Red revealed that Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition is coming to Apple Silicon Macs on July 17. Now, the developer has posted the system requirements for the game and, as expected, they're quite demanding.

Cyberpunk is supported across all Macs with an M-series processor as long as you're running macOS Sequioa 15.5 and meet the RAM prerequisite. The minimum tier starts with a base M1 paired with 16GB of unified memory, which will get you 30 frames per second at roughly 900p resolution in the game, upscaled from a lower internal resolution using MetalFX dynamic resolution scaling — Apple's upscaling tech similar to AMD FSR. In fact, MetalFX upscaling will be enabled by default.

The recommended specs list an M3 Pro along with 18 GB of memory, enough to run the game at 1080p and 60 FPS. Then, there's the "High Fidelity" tier, which requires an M2 Ultra or M3 Max, outputting at 1440p. Finally, "Very High Fidelity" demands an M3 Ultra or M4 Max for the same 1440p resolution but with increased details. Both of these tiers require at least 36GB RAM and still aim for 60 FPS, so if you tried to save a few hundred bucks at checkout, you might be out of luck.

Interestingly, none of these specs include ray tracing. It will remain a separate toggle that strains your system quite a bit. CD Projekt lists the recommended specs for ray tracing on a separate page; to run the game at 1080p with ray tracing set to medium, you'll need an M3 Pro with 18 GB RAM, which will target 30 FPS. That memory requirement doubles to 36 GB if you want 60 FPS, along with an M3 Max. Older-gen M1 and M2-series chips don't support ray tracing.

There is a new "For this Mac" preset that will automatically assign the best settings according to your hardware, saving you the hassle of manually tweaking everything. Moreover, if you choose to download Cyberpunk 2077 from Steam, Epic Games Store, or GOG (CD Projekt Red's own DRM-free marketplace), you'll need at least 92 GB of free storage. The App Store version, which includes all voiceovers, will be just shy of 160 GB.

Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition will release for macOS with the latest 2.3 update that fans have been looking forward to. It will support Spatial Audio, native HDR, and take full advantage of Apple's Metal API.

This marks the first major game release in modern Mac history that launches on Mac exclusively and not on iPads or iPhones — like Death Stranding, Assassin's Creed Shadows, or Resident Evil 4. If you already own the game on any platform (except for the App Store), it's a free download. You can also choose to buy the Phantom Liberty DLC separately if you've only played the base game.

Ideas man David Delahunty is behind a new flash storage device which looks like a classic MacOS folder icon dragged into the real world. This USB-C attached 128GB capacity storage product is called the FolderDrive, and it will be available soon for about $40.

We don’t have a lot of technical details for the FolderDrive, something which may disappoint the most hard-nosed segment of the Tom’s Hardware readership. However, this product is admittedly one that is first and foremost “whimsical, minimal,” yet functional. So, if you are simply after the best performance and capacity, you better check our guide to the best flash drives.

Dalhunty’s “literal folder for your digital folders” comes in just a single 128GB capacity option, connects via USB-C, and measures 3.25 wide x 2.5 tall x 0.5-inches thick. That’s the full spec sheet, but it is vaguely promised to be fast, reliable and lightweight - without any stats to back up these assertions.

We might have also thought it came in one color – the old MacOS default kind of light blue. Except, Delahunty’s Twitter/X feed shares a glance at some FolderDrives in a few other MacOS appropriate shades.

Small-scale producer Super Fantastic is Delahunty’s partner for getting this FolderDrive into consumer hands (linked top). It indicates the product will be “3D printed with care." Such attention to detail is important, as this product leans heavy on its appearance for being a “great conversation starter for designers, developers, and tech lovers.”

In the Twitter/X thread, we note a little controversy over another designer who originated a folder-icon-like flash drive a few months earlier. But that is quite a different design, and not in production, as far as we are aware.

Reverse skeuomorphism

Apple might have been a pioneer in popularizing skeuomorphism for computer UIs, and I remember some very striking iOS features and apps using this design direction several years ago. Reversing this idea thus seems attractively retro-whimsical.

Similar products based on Floppy icons, CD icons, and other memorable icons would also be quite fun to bring into the real world. A quick search surfaced some floppy disk USB drives for sale, but not in a cutesy computer UI style design. Along similar lines, there is also the WinRAR bag, which we mentioned recently.

The activation method for a rather ancient Easter egg, hidden deep within the ROMs of beige Apple Power Mac G3 computers, has been uncovered. Self-confessed "combined Apple/Linux/Windows geek" Doug Brown published a blog on Tuesday, discussing how he rediscovered the 'hidden dev team' Easter egg on a lazy Sunday. There was no known documented way of displaying this Easter egg in the Finder (Apple desktop). However, thanks to deeper detective work, some programming knowledge, and the help of friends, Brown eventually found and shared the method of activating this significant Easter egg. It is pretty easy, when you know how.

The PowerMac G3 computers were the mainstay of Apple computer-reliant businesses in the late 90s – until everything went pastel translucent with the introduction of the iMac line. As a reprographics worker at the time, I owned a couple of beige G3 machines for home use, and remember them fondly, moving up from Mac OS 7.5.3 through to 9.x. I also remember lots of software having fun Easter eggs that could be activated. That was quite high-octane Mac computing fun at the time, and this would be at least five years ahead of YouTube being a thing, for example. The Easter eggs I remember most clearly were conjured up by holding various modifier keys while selecting various menu items.

Brown found that the existence of the image was already known and documented from previous ROM hacking adventures. However, no one knew how a casual Mac user might see the image pop up as a ‘surprise’ on their system.

Intrigued and warming to the potential challenge, Brown looked more closely at text strings in similar locations to the image (a JPG). Working using various tools, including Ghidra, a software reverse engineering (SRE) framework, he eventually narrowed down the RAM disk driver as the prime suspect.

After Ghidra decompiled the code, it was determined that a process associated with the RAM disk would check for a string that was equal to ‘secret ROM image’ before it would create and write a file named ‘The Team.’ This was enough information to start to try and hunt the Easter egg in the ‘real world’ of the classic Mac OS, or so Brown thought...

Help came from fellow InfoSec Exchange user Alex, who managed to trigger the Easter egg as follows: “with hints from (Downtown) Doug Brown, we just discovered the trigger for the beige PowerMac G3's secret ROM image: go to the Memory control panel, set up a RAM disk, reboot to mount it, go Special → Erase Disk and name the volume secret ROM image — you'll get a file The Team at its root, type JPEG, creator ttxt. enjoy!”

This file will open in the Mac’s basic built-in editor, SimpleText, which is just advanced enough to be able to render JPG images. Just double-click 'The Team' file, and you will see the 26-strong team in the photo, reproduced top.

Enjoy this Easter egg via the magic of emulation

Developer Nolen Royalty published source code for a game of Pong playable on an array of 240 Google Chrome browser tab favicons, alongside a lengthy development blog post. This incredibly unconventional port of Pong, dubbed faviconic, was inspired by a similarly unconventional port of Flappy Bird, though Flappyfavi was notoriously limited to a single favicon, making fine height control quite difficult. Faviconic Pong seems a lot more playable in comparison, though its Apple exclusivity due to its reliance on AppleScript will undoubtedly displease some Windows and Linux users who had hoped to try this with their own versions of Google Chrome.

This isn't necessarily the most obscure way to play Pong, surprisingly enough. In fact, it's downright conventional compared to the likes of the palm-sized Pong machine we covered in December or the hydrogel "brain" taught to play Pong that I discussed back in August 2024.

Unfortunately, AppleSript-based Faviconic Pong isn't all perfect. While the basic display function does work and is split with the lower half of the screen being in the main browser window and the upper half being in the tab-favicon array, the segment of the game actually being rendered in the tabs runs at a noticeably lower framerate.

In any case, Faviconic Pong is an impressively unconventional use of AppleScript and modern web browsing interfaces, specifically Chrome and its Chromium branch. This game's effective exclusivity to Mac OS is something of a shame but a necessary compromise based on how AppleScript was used for its development.

Seeing another port of Pong, in general, always strikes me as pretty cool, especially in these scenarios where the game is being communicated to the player in a highly unusual fashion. Of course, running Pong itself obviously isn't a huge technical toll on most systems and devices out there since its original release was in 1973, an era when video games were far, far simpler than they are now. Getting the game working through a large array of browser tab favicons is truly ingenious, though, and we recommend the extended development blog post for those who would like to learn more about how this was executed.

Earlier this week, a team of security researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Ruhr University Bochum presented a pair of papers on two side-channel speculative execution attacks targeted at Apple silicon, dubbed SLAP and FLOP [h/t Bleeping Computer]. A dedicated web page for the attacks, showing some examples, documentation, and links to the original two papers, is also available at the aptly-named URL Predictors.Fail.

So, what are these attacks? To understand either, you first need a working understanding of what speculative execution attacks are. In March of last year, I covered a speculative execution attack called GhostRace, and back in 2016, the one-two punch of the Meltdown and Spectre attacks helped introduce the concept into the wider public consciousness. "Speculative execution" isn't a bad thing in and of itself— you can think of it as a performance optimization that lets a CPU "speculate" what it needs to execute next— but unless it's tightly controlled, it is prone to security exploits that are near-impossible to fix without performance degradation.

So, SLAP and FLOP may be new speculative execution attacks, but the fundamentals of how they work are well known.

SLAP, or Data Speculation Attacks via Load Address Prediction, functions by exploiting Apple Silicon's Load Address Predictor, which guesses the next memory address the CPU will use. By exploiting this functionality and forcing it to guess wrong, information like emails and browsing history can effectively be stolen. This impacts Apple CPUs, starting with Apple M2 and A15.

Meanwhile, FLOP, or False Load Output Predictions, exploits Apple Silicon's Load Value Predictor, which guesses data values to be returned by the memory on the next CPU cycle. If this is exploited and forced to guess wrong, memory safety can be bypassed entirely to leak things like credit card information and location history.

In a statement made to Bleeping Computer, Apple said: "We want to thank the researchers for their collaboration as this proof of concept advances our understanding of these types of threats, (but) based on our analysis, we do not believe this issue poses an immediate risk to our users."

The researchers do note that attacks actually using these exploits have yet to be spotted in the wild after initially discovering and reporting them to Apple in March (SLAP) and September (FLOP) in 2024, but also that users hoping to avoid them entirely can still disable JavaScript in Safari (tested browser) on their Apple devices until further notice. Doing this will introduce lots of site compatibility issues, though, so hopefully Apple actually patches this sooner rather than later.

Earlier today, watchful eyes spotted some key updates to the SteamDB listing for CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 which corresponded to a MacOS executable and depots being added to the game. The update is roughly in line with the "early 2025" timeframe given by CDPR on the MacOS Cyberpunk 2077 release [h/t Notebookcheck.net]. At the time of writing, we have yet to see any footage of the MacOS port running, but it has been promised to also support ray tracing on Mac models that actually support the functionality, namely Apple Silicon M4 Mac Minis and M3, M3 Pro, or M3 Max-based Macs.

So, how well should we expect Cyberpunk 2077 to perform on Mac? With hacky workaround methods, modern Macs can already run the game at a consistent-ish 40+ FPS, but not with ray tracing enabled. With the native port, which is already stated to provide ray tracing support, 60 FPS performance should be totally possible... but with RT enabled? Well, things start getting a little dubious there.

As an example, another recent game with Ray Tracing support, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, also got a native MacOS port with ray tracing functionality intact in the past year. Benchmarking that game with ray tracing enabled does show that playable AAA experiences with ray tracing are indeed possible on the Mac platform, but Rift Apart also isn't going to push ray tracing hardware nearly as hard as Cyberpunk 2077 can in its "RT Overdrive Mode".

Based on existing performance information on recent Macs, it would seem likely that the Cyberpunk 2077 MacOS port will perform perfectly fine without ray tracing enabled, likely be capped to 30-40 FPS with some ray tracing enabled, and most likely be overtly unplayable with current-gen hardware when RT Overdrive is enabled. It will likely take at least a few generations for Apple's own native silicon to be able to provide RT hardware that can actually push Cyberpunk 2077 to its upper limits of fidelity (consider how expensive such a feat remains even on PC, with the Best Gaming GPUs available to you), but even having the game playable on the platform in the interim should serve as a great benchmark for Mac gaming for quite some time to come.

Apple has updated its smallest Mac in a big way today, by shrinking the desktop down to 5 x 5 inches while stepping up to its latest M4 and even M4 Pro silicon, which should make it quite the powerhouse for content creators with desk space constraints.

The company has also taken one step forward and one step back in usability over style, by adding ports to the front  (two USB-C and an audio jack) as well as the back of the device (three Thunderbolt 4, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet, and the power cable plug). The M4 Pro model steps up connectivity to Thunderbolt 5 – a first for Apple. But, in a move oddly reminiscent of the charging port placement of its Magic Mouse, Apple has moved the Mac Mini's power button to the bottom of the PC. Given how good sleep states are these days, it's unclear how much this will matter in terms of usability, but it's still an odd choice.

For those interested in AI, the new Mini of course includes the M4's Neural Engine and, on the M4 Pro, model up to 64GB of unified memory, with Apple claiming up to 273GB/s of memory bandwidth, which the company touts as "twice as much bandwidth as any AI PC chip" – an obvious jab at Microsoft's Copilot+ PC initiative.

Pricing starts reasonably enough, with the 10-core (and 10 GPU core) M4 Mac Mini starting at $599, with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. Like the iMac announced yesterday, the new Mac Mini has moved up from a base of 8GB of RAM. This is great for general use, but is also likely there to provide room for the new Apple Intelligence features that came as yesterday's macOS Sequoia 15.1 update. Going up in storage or memory will cost you the Apple-typical $200 per step. And you can go from Gigabit to 10-Gigabit Ethernet for an extra $100. $999 will get you 24GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

And the powerhouse M4 Pro model, with 12 CPU cores and 16 GPU cores, plus 24GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD starts at $1,399. From there, opting for the top-end 14-core M4 Pro costs an extra $200, and maxing out the storage (8TB at $2,400 extra) and RAM (64GB at $600 extra) takes you to an eye-watering $4,399 – or $4,499 if you also opt for 10GB Ethernet. That gets you firmly into Mac Studio territory, though that pro machine hasn't been updated since it was released with M2 Max and M2 Ultra.

Images of the cooling show that air comes in through the bottom, similar to the Mac Studio. There appear to be two boards for components, with some sort of connection. It's a tight fit that allows for the surprisingly small

Apple also says that it's the Carbon Neutral Mac, following the lead of the Apple Watch Series 9 and 10. Recycled components include the aluminum chassis, recycled gold plating in the motherboards, and rare elements in magnets. Unlike the iMac, the Mac Mini doesn't come with peripherals, so you'll have to bring your own keyboard and mouse.

The Mac Mini is available for pre-order now and will be generally available on November 8. 

Just a few years ago, the idea of gaming on a Mac was a joke among the enthusiast PC community. But I'll give Apple this — it's clearly putting in the work. And while it definitely can't compete with Windows PCs or consoles on its library just yet, Apple does have one trick up its sleeve that I think, in time, may be able to draw a certain type of person to gaming on its platforms: the ecosystem.

At a small showcase, Apple showed me what a few years ago would have been unthinkable: a series of Macs running recent releases and previews of upcoming games, natively on Apple Silicon. It's a huge step that games like Assassin's Creed: Shadows and Frostpunk 2 are set to come day and date with PC, Xbox, and PlayStation releases. (Frostpunk 2 was on display. Assassin's Creed: Shadows was not.) And that's not all — the iPad and iPhone were also playing intensive games, thanks to Apple's shared chip architectures.

The company is catching up on some recent releases, like Palworld, which is set to release later this year. But toss in new developer tools and the idea that your games could carry over to other Apple devices, and that's where things get interesting.

Game Porting Toolkit 2

Announced at WWDC, this year's update to the Game Porting Toolkit should further help to streamline Apple Silicon Mac development for games already designed for the PC, and also, crucially, bring Mac games to the iPhone and iPad. 

The new version of the Toolkit includes AVX2 support, ray tracing, and improved performance. There are also new human interface guidelines, and new debugging tools for shaders in Xcode to help convert them to Metal (and unified shaders that should work once across the Mac, iPhone and iPad).

Apple showed off Control: Ultimate Edition running through the Game Porting Toolkit. The game is coming natively to Mac later this year, five years after the game's initial launch. A bit late, but it's a great game! 

Using the Windows version of Steam and the DirectX 12 version of the game, a MacBook Pro with an M3 Max played the title at 46 - 50 frames per second on high-quality settings and high ray tracing with a resolution of 1728 x 1117. I picked up the DualSense controller Apple had in front of the Mac and took on some Hiss guards as Jesse Faden, and it felt largely ready to go. If this is what convinced Remedy to port the game over, I can kind of see why it happened. With the M3 series and M4 chips supporting ray tracing tech, the game looks great.

The Unified Gaming Platform

Where Apple may have an advantage is where it typically excels: in its ecosystem. If games are released for the Mac, but then you can play them on your iPad or iPhone, it could open up gaming to tons of people who wouldn't have done so previously — and make it easier for enthusiast Mac gamers to play anywhere.

Playing anywhere has been a bit of a white whale for gaming companies lately. Think of cloud services like Game Pass from Microsoft or GeForce Now from Nvidia. The idea was you'd stream games to play them anywhere.

Apple's vision strikes me as a slightly more traditional version of the idea. Never mind streaming, but how about running the game locally on each device? Apple showed Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, which launched on Apple's products in July, running across the latest iPhone 15 Pro, iPad Pro with M4, and Macs . This particular game supports Apple's Universal Purchase functionality, so if you buy once, you get it across your Apple ecosystem. And the game uses iCloud to sync save data, so you can pick up where you left off on other devices.

Assassin's Creed Mirage has similar tricks, but only across the iPhone and iPad (and it looks excellent on the M4 iPad Pro's tandem OLED display, by the way). Rather than using iCloud, it uses Ubisoft Connect for syncing.

Apple needs to beef up its gaming library

As much as I liked seeing more games run well, particularly on the Mac, it still needs a lot more games to make it the main place for anyone to play. Ubisoft and Capcom are great partners — big studios with games people want to play. But the gaming PC is popular because it supports just about every major game outside of some console exclusives, and has a backlog going back decades. 

Apple needs to start somewhere. In my view, that's primarily with future games. I don't know how many people didn't play Death Stranding or Control a few years ago that will only play them because they're on the Mac. I think recent games like Palworld and upcoming games like Frostpunk 2 are better bets — get people when the games are new.

That also means it will take a significant amount of time for Apple to get its gaming efforts anywhere near mainstream. I hope the company is ready to continue this investment in chips, developer relations, and technologies. To get gamers and studios entirely on board will take a lot work. It will take years to see if this can be a true success. (Apple also needs to ensure it doesn't alienate game developers and publishers, like Epic Games, which means one of the biggest games in the world doesn't run natively on its flagship platform).

But sitting in that room, playing some Resident Evil on a MacBook Pro, Assassin's Creed on an iPad, Palworld on a Mac, and Control through x86 emulation tech makes me believe Apple is taking gaming seriously this time. It may never release a gaming laptop — instead, the idea is any Mac (with Apple Silicon, of course) can be a gaming machine. So can any iPad, any iPhone. It's a bold claim that will take continued successes to convince the often-skeptical PC gaming community. 

Quality of life improvements, as long as you're in the ecosystem

Apple's other gaming-focused projects are less shiny. Game Mode, which launched on the Mac last year, is coming to the iPhone and iPad this year with iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, minimizing background activity and reducing latency for audio and controllers. MacOS Sequoia will have a new version that reduces background processes even further. 

The Mac App Store will  require far less storage space to begin an installation update when macOS Sequoia launches later this year. Future updates will also let Mac owners install games to separate disks from the Mac App Store, which is helpful given the ballooning size of games.

And spatial audio is making its way to games in the new Mac and mobile operating systems, reducing latency and ensuring better audio while you're in game chat. Of course, that requires the second-generation AirPods Pro.

Stereotypically, the PC gaming community doesn't like lock-in. But the Apple community is known for loving when things work in an integrated fashion. 

The work has started, and it's impressive. Apple still has a long way to go. But hopefully, one day, there's a future where PC gamers, Mac gamers, and console gamers are all cross-playing with each other. Wouldn't it be beautiful?

Starting February 15, 2024, Steam will no longer provide support for macOS versions 10.13 (High Sierra) and 10.14 (Mojave). The latter is the final version that supports 32-bit games, so such beloved titles as Civilization IV, Half-Life 2, and Metro 2033 will become unplayable on Macs with those versions of macOS.

The decision to discontinue support for these older macOS versions stems from several factors. First up, macOS Mojave is the final version that supports 32-bit games. Apple's move to stop supporting 32-bit applications in macOS 10.15 has rendered many older games incompatible with newer macOS versions. This change will also be reflected in the Steam store, which will no longer list games with only 32-bit macOS binaries as compatible with Mac at the end of 2023. 

Valve says that over 98% of Mac Steam users have migrated to newer macOS versions, so very few people will likely be impacted. Meanwhile, users of the older versions are urged to upgrade for continued access to Steam features and security updates. Furthermore, while Steam and its games may continue to function on these older versions for a time, their performance and compatibility cannot be guaranteed beyond the February 2024 deadline. 

For users still on macOS 10.13 or 10.14, upgrading to a more recent macOS version is essential to get the latest security fixes and new features, but there are Macs that do not support Mojave. If people running those versions update Steam (which is done automatically), they might lose access to 32-bit games. There are likely older Macs are kept specifically by their owners to run legacy applications, including older games. 

The technical aspects of Steam's operation are also a factor in this shift. The platform relies on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which does not work with macOS versions older than 10.15. (We saw this happen earlier this year for users of macOS 10.11 El Capitan and 10.12 Sierra.) Future versions of Steam will need macOS features and security updates only present in newer versions, further necessitating the move away from older platforms 

Finally, the security implications for users on outdated macOS versions are significant. Apple stopped providing security updates and technical support for macOS 10.13 in December 2020 and macOS 10.14 in October 2021.

When it comes to creative solutions, no one’s better up to the task than maker and developer Ivan Kuleshov. Whether he’s hacking a Mac Mini to use PoE or developing the new soon-to-be-released Compute Blade module, Kuleshov’s creative juice is in no short supply. Today we’re sharing another project of his shared to Twitter/X, this time a medley of both Raspberry Pi and Mac Minis. Kuleshov ran into an issue recently in which a rack of 16 Mac Minis needed to be manually powered on. His solution? Use a Pi to flip the physical switches, of course!

The Pi is connected to 8 individual servo motors that are responsible for activating the power switch on two Mac Minis a piece. The Raspberry Pi is fitted with a PiKVM HAT so it does more than just power on the Mac Minis. This also meant that developing a custom case was necessary to support the additional hardware.

This project is more than just a proof of concept. We spoke with Kuleshov who confirmed the setup has successfully been implemented in a professional setting. His team works in a data center that has three shelves of Mac Minis and this Raspberry Pi rig is able to power them on using the system of servos.

The Raspberry Pi has a couple of HATs and extra hardware that required Kuleshov’s cool case design. It fits the Raspberry Pi, a PiKVM HAT, a Servo HAT and an OLED screen. A heatsink and fan were included to cool the unit, as well. The outer housing is also fitted with LEGO-compatible studs so you can attach your favorite LEGO pieces—his team chose a Stormtrooper figure.

The software involves a custom UI that Kuleshov put together that makes it easier to operate the PiKVM features and servos. Python was used to program the servos while some bash scripts enable it to interact with a separate KVM switch.

To get a closer look at this Raspberry Pi project, check out the original post shared by Ivan Kuleshov. You can also follow him at Twitter/X or Instagram to keep an eye out for future creations as well as any updates on this one.

PDFs were never really meant for digital use. It’s a document standard that exists to make sure that What You See Is What You Getwhen you hit that print button.  But when you're asked to sign and return a PDF, it's a pain to print it out, sign it with a pen, and then scan it again.

If you’re a macOS user, however, you don’t need to print anything — nor do you need to download paid PDF reader software to add a signature. . With the built-in Preview app, you can just open your PDF and sign it. We’ll show you how to do it right away, but you may want to learn how to convert a Word Doc to a PDF so you can use this method with documents formatted for MS Word as well.

How to Create Your Signature

Before you can sign a PDF using macOS, you need to create a signature that you can easily reuse every time you need to sign. Here’s how:

1. Open a PDF in the Preview app. In this case, we’ve created a blank PDF for illustrative purposes. The PDF should open in the macOS Preview app.  If your PDF does not open in the Preview app, right-click on it in Finder and select Open With > Preview.

2. Open the Markup toolbar. If it's not open already, click on the pen in the top right corner of the app for more options.

3. Click on the Sign button. It looks like a little signature. From there, you’ll see three options to create a signature - trackpad, camera, or an iOS device such as an iPhone or iPad. If you’re using a Mac without a trackpad, you won’t see that option.

4. Choose a creation method. If you’re using a Mac with a trackpad, this is the fastest way to create your signature. If you choose camera, you can hold up a paper copy of your signature to your Mac’s webcam, or you can use your iPhone’s camera, if it’s signed into the same iCloud account as the Mac. If you have an iPad or iPhone nearby that’s signed in, you can also choose iPhone or iPad.

5. Create the signature. Whichever method you’ve chosen, follow the instructions to complete the process. In this case, we’ve chosen to create the signature on our iPhone. Select “Done” once you’re happy.

You can create multiple signatures or initials you’ll want to use over and over again in your PDF. You don't need to do this every time you sign something. Once you create the signature, Preview will store it.

Inserting Your Signatures

Now that you have one or more signatures saved in Preview, it’s time to insert them into your PDF:

1. Open your PDF in Preview.

2. Click on the Sign button.

3. Click on your signature. If you have more than one signature stored, make sure you choose the correct one.

4. Size and place the signature. You can grab the signature by clicking anywhere within its borders. You can also resize it by clicking and dragging one of its four corners.

5. Close the PDF. No need to save manually (though it never hurts!), your changes are locked into the PDF.

Now your PDF is signed and sealed, ready so share with your intended recipient, any need to print anything!

In a post shared today to Twitter/X, maker and developer Ivan Kuleshov shared a cool mod for his Mac Mini that we’re too stoked about not to share. With a little ingenuity, his latest mod has enabled him to successfully power a Mac Mini using PoE — yes, powered only by the ethernet cable — and the ethernet cable can also serve as a power backup for redundancy. If the name sounds familiar, Kuleshov’s the mastermind behind the Raspberry Pi Compute Blade we covered earlier this year.

Kuleshov delved into the creation process of this PoE Mac Mini mod which apparently involved a bit of reconstruction on the original Ethernet port. The native connector had to be completely unsoldered and modified to use the new PoE hardware. In this case, Kuleshove is using a MagJack connector.

According to Kuleshov, the best way to get the hardware he needed was to take apart an existing MagJack. If you aren’t familiar with this component, it’s a type of RJ45 Ethernet connector with the integrated magnets necessary to enable PoE functionality for the port.

Just like in the Compute Blade project, Kuleshov uses off-the-shelf modules for this mod. These components handle all of the signal interpretation with the PoE switch, which is how it’s able to convert and power the Mac Mini with 12V. He provided a close-up look at the mod in the original Twitter/X thread, which we definitely recommend checking out. You can expand the tweet below to see the video and thread.

There are plans in the works to share more details about the development in the near future, including both an in-depth article and a video. In the meantime, you can check out the demo in action over at Twitter/X. This is just one of many cool creations put together by Kuleshov. Be sure to follow him for more clever projects as well as any future updates on this one.

Shenzhen Wesion Technology, a maker of single-board computers and media players, has developed its Khadas Mind. This concept workstation can be expanded with proprietary docks featuring extra ports or a built-in graphics processor. There is a catch, though. Unlike traditional PCs, the Hadas Mind can only be upgraded with proprietary docks and cannot support standard Thunderbolt or USB4 devices.

Wesion's Khadas Mind is a tiny workstation that measures 146×105×20mm (5.75×4.13×0.79 inches) and packs Intel's 12-core Core i7-1360P processor with built-in Iris Xe graphics that is mated with 32GB of LPDDR5-5200 memory and can be equipped with two M.2-2230 SSDs, one with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and another with a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. 

The unit can drive up to three 4K displays out-of-box and has all the connectivity features that one comes to expect from a compact workstation, including a Wi-Fi 6E + Bluetooth 5.3 adapter, two USB Type-C connectors (supporting DP, PD, and USB 2.0 or USB 3.2 Gen2), a USB 3.2 Type-A, an HDMI output, and a Mind Link header to connect to docks.

Speaking of docks, the company plans to offer two Mind Link-compatible docks initially. One adding a 2.5 GbE port, three USB 3.2 (5 Gbps) Type-A connectors, two HDMI 2.0 outputs, an SD card reader, a USB Type-C power port, an audio jack, and a volume control knob. Another one packs Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060M mobile GPU and adds a USB-C port, a USB-A connector, an audio jack, and an SD card reader.

 There is a catch about these docks though: they cannot be used simultaneously, so one can either have all the ports, or a proper graphics processor. Wesion plans to offer more docking options eventually, and it remains to be seen whether they can work in concert, or only separately. 

One of the interesting peculiarities of the Khadas Mind is that it has a built-in 5.55Wh battery that provides some extra protection during power loss and allows one to carry the device around in sleep mode without having to shut it down. 

Tiny workstations with mighty capabilities are nothing new: Dell, HP, and Lenovo have offered them for years, and Apple recently debuted its Mac Mini with workstation-grade M2 Pro inside. But tiny workstations have drawbacks: they lack high-performance graphics, have limited connectivity, and cannot be upgraded. Wesion Technology plans to change this with its ultra-portable Khadas Mind workstation and a set of docks it intends to offer.  

However, those docks are not an ideal solution. While they look neat and plug securely into the system, Khadas Mind is only compatible with them and is incompatible with regular Thunderbolt 3/4 or USB 3.2/4 docks. Furthermore, these docks can only work separately and cannot work in concert. 

However, virtually all tiny workstations from all renowned PC makers feature a Thunderbolt or a USB4 port these days. They can add an external graphics card of your choice and plenty of extra ports using standard, widely available docks. While such setups will not look as impressive as the Khadas Mind, they will likely be cheaper and more feature rich than a Khadas Mind with its proprietary docks.

One thing that has to be kept in mind about the Khadas Mind is that it is still in development. Those interested can subscribe to the company's mailing list and wait until development is complete.

As for connectivity, the Minisforum HX90G has everything that one comes to expect from a compact PC these days: it has a 2.5Gb, four display outputs (two DisplayPort, two HDMI), one USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C connector, four USB 3.2 Type-A connectors (three USB 3.2 Gen2, one Gen1), and audio jacks. As for Wi-Fi, it can be added using an M.2-2230 slot.

Apple's first personal computers based on its next-generation M3 system-on-chip may be unveiled as early as this October, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who tends to have accurate information from Apple's supply chain. If Apple follows its traditional launch patterns, it makes sense to expect the company to reveal inexpensive M3-based laptops and desktops first. Yet, this is speculation at this point. 

Apple has scheduled a launch event in October, and based on past history, the company is set to introduce new Macs there, Bloomberg asserts. Given that Apple has just released numerous new Macs based on M2 Ultra and M2 Max system-on-chips, it is unlikely that the company will refresh its Mac Studio or even MacBook Pro with any new SoCs. Therefore, the company may well introduce new MacBook Air 13, Mac Mini, MacBook Pro 13, or even iMac (which has not yet gotten an M2 treatment) powered by shiny new M3 SoCs. 

Of course, the assumption about the M3 arrival this October could be entirely wrong. Instead, Apple could release an all-new iMac lineup based on M2, M2 Pro, and M2 Ultra SoCs. Yet, being a notebook-centric company, Apple could be more inclined to update its 13-inch laptops with a new SoC. 

An avid reader would probably ask what to expect from Apple's M3, which is rumored to be made on TSMC's N3 (3nm-class) fabrication technology that promises higher performance efficiency and higher transistor density compared to TSMC's N5P production node used for M2. At this point, it is hard to guess the exact improvements, but the company has a number of options, including increased general-purpose core count, enhanced GPU, and additional accelerators, just to name a few.

Keep in mind that the information comes from an unofficial source, and plans tend to change, so while it is logical to expect the arrival of Apple's first M3 machines about 1.5 years after the first M2-based products, it remains to be seen what Apple has to show in October.

Design of the MacBook Air 15-inch

If you've seen Apple's 13-inch MacBook Air with M2, this is that, but bigger. In fact, from afar, you might confuse the two. The 15-inch MacBook Air is a 13-inch MacBook Air, but bigger. That will be a trend throughout this review.

Ultimately, that's not a bad thing. You still get the sturdy recycled aluminum chassis (we tested it in the "midnight" color, a beautiful dark blue with a tendency to collect fingerprints), and a tone-on-tone Apple logo. It's sparse, but recognizable.

A 15-inch MacBook Air seems obvious. I've been told over and over again by industry insiders that 15-inch laptops are among the most popular on the market, and yet Apple hasn't made a notebook for this group of large-screen lovers that wasn't prohibitively expensive or designed for a pro. The Air was always considered one of the best ultrabooks, but sat at 13 inches.

After years of fans clamoring, that obvious laptop is here. The MacBook Air 15-inch is indeed exactly what Apple has promised: a bigger MacBook Air for most people. It's familiar: The keyboard is the same, the notch is still there, and it's still pretty thin (albeit noticeably heavier). The display is bigger, at 15.3-inches, and the six-speaker system is a noticeable improvement.

But mostly, it's a bigger MacBook Air. It's completely familiar, but aimed at the massive group of people who prioritize a bigger screen and don't want to spend $2,000 on their laptop. That's one way to raise interest among people considering a new machine.

The familiarity continues when you lift the lid. While the 15.3-inch display is a noticeable difference, the gist is the same. That includes the notch, which I still find a tad annoying (including on the MacBook Pro I own). Everything is just a bit bigger. The biggest visual change is the amount of free space on either side of the keyboard. On the MacBook Pro laptops, these have grilles for top-firing speakers, but here they're just metal.

Apple also used the exact same ports — and port placement — as on the 13-inch Air. That means Two Thunderbolt 3 / USB 4 ports on the left side, along with MagSafe 3 for charging. On the right side, there's a lone 3.5 mm headphone jack.

On the one hand, I get it — this means the basic layout of a 15-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air are fundamentally the same. It wouldn't surprise me if Apple was using the same motherboard in both systems. But it's also a shame that with all of the extra space, Apple couldn't add an extra USB-C port on the right side.

The new Air is 3.3 pounds and measures 13.4 x 9.35 x 0.45 inches. It's a noticeable difference, particularly in weight, from the 13-incher, which is 2.7 pounds and is 11.97 x 8.46 x 0.44 inches. The thin profile doesn't hide the fact that this computer is indeed bigger. There's no real way to do that.

Microsoft's 15-incher, the Surface Laptop 5, is lighter at 2.86 pounds but is larger in every dimension (13.5 x 9.6 x 0.58 inches). The Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED, another shot at the ultralight crown, is more of a competitor to the 13-inch Air at 2.43 pounds and 0.59 inches thick.

MacBook Air 15-inch Specifications

Productivity Performance of the MacBook Air 15

With Apple's M2 processor (the same 8-core CPU in the 13-inch model), 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, the 15-inch Air is up for most office work, web browsing, video streaming and other basic tasks. It really only faced issues in prolonged, strenuous workloads. This makes sense — despite its name, the MacBook Air doesn't have any fans. Still, for the average person, this is plenty.

We found that the MacBook Air 15's performance was pretty similar to the 13-incher. That's not much of a surprise, considering they're using the same CPU. We also compared it to the Microsoft Surface Laptop 5, using a 12th Gen Intel Core i7-1265U, the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED with a more recent Intel Core i7-1355U and a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra, which has an Intel Core i7-13700H and discrete graphics. (That last one is more of a fair comparison for the MacBook Pro, but let's see how this goes.)

On Geekbench 5, the 15-inch Air achieved a single-core score of 1,902 and a multi-core score of 8,932. These were very similar to the 13-inch Air's scores, and outperformed the U-series Intel chips in the Zenbook and Surface (both actively cooled) in both single and multi-core. The H-series chip in the Galaxy Book 3 Ultra won out only in multi-core, and that chip has 14 cores (6 more than the M2).

There was a surprise on our file transfer test. The 15-inch MacBook Air transferred 25GB of files at a rate of 1,342.38 MBps, beating the 13-inch Air (958.85 MBps) by a fair margin. Both the Zenbook S 13 OLED and Galaxy Book 3 Ultra were even faster.

Both Airs were more aligned on Handbrake, with the 15-inch transcoding a video from 4K to 1080p in 7 minutes and 46 seconds. The 13-incher took 7:52. Both were faster than the Zenbook S 13 (8:16) and Surface Laptop 5 (8:53), but more cores clearly helped the Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra at 5:26.

We tested the 13-inch MacBook Air before we implemented the Xcode benchmark, so this is our first time testing it on the vanilla M2. The 15-inch Air compiled a codebase in 122 seconds. You'll see the lag between the M2 Pro, M2 Max and M2 Ultra in the chart, but jumping up to the MacBook Pro could save you about 40 seconds. Part of the difference may have been cooling. The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros have active fans, which lets the M2 Pro and M2 Max perform at higher speeds for longer.

Additionally, we used our Cinebench R23 stress test to see what happens when the MacBook Air 15 is tasked with a strenuous, constant load. Typically, we run this to see if chips throttle, but in the case of the Air, which doesn't have an active fan, we expect it to throttle. This was the case with the Air 13 as well, and it followed a similar performance code. Though the MacBook Air 15 didn't fall quite as far — perhaps the 15-inch chassis serves as a bigger heatsink.

The 15-inch Air started with a score of 8,675 and slowly dropped through the 8,000's and then 7,000's, ending in the low 7,000's (the lowest score in the test was 7,187, in the last of 20 runs). We can't log the M2's clock speeds (Cinebench estimates 3.5 GHz at single-core and 3.2 GHz at multi-core, but take that with a grain of salt), but we are able to log temperatures using TG Pro. The four efficiency cores ran at an average of 91.82 degrees Celsius, while the performance cores reached 91.2 degrees Celsius. 

The MacBook Air is up for some basic gaming, too. I played No Man's Sky, which uses Apple's native Metal rendering, on the laptop at 1920 x 1200 on the high preset. As I mined for minerals and other resources, the game typically ran between 70 and 80 frames per second, though it occasionally dipped briefly below 60 fps.

Display on the MacBook Air 15-inch

Apple's 15.3-inch "liquid retina" display has a 2880 x 1864 resolution and a 60 Hz refresh rate. It's the biggest display ever on a MacBook Air, even if the notch for the webcam cuts into it (the extra 64 pixels in height mean you're not losing any usable space).

I find the notch a bit annoying (I say this as the owner of a 14-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro). On the bright side, it basically goes away when you watch video, which typically doesn't take up the whole screen. Some free apps like TopNotch black out the menu bar to attempt to hide it. I highly recommend dark mode.

That being said, the panel itself is pretty great. It's very bright and looks quite nice, but it can't match Windows-based competitors with OLED screens when it comes to color.

I used the MacBook Air 15 to watch the trailer for Oppenheimer. That trailer has plenty of dark shots of a bomb, as well as black and white high-contrast scenes. Both looked excellent on the Air, which has a very bright panel. The multiple red and orange explosion effects, though perhaps gratuitous on director Christopher Nolan's part, were striking compared to a number of blander desert scenes.

The 15-inch MacBook Air covers 111% of the sRGB color gamut and 78.9% of the wider DCI-P3 gamut. That's roughly on par with the 13-inch MacBook Air and just ahead of Microsoft's "PixelSense" screen on the Surface Laptop 5. Both the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED and Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra, both with OLED panels, covered more of each gamut.

But the MacBooks won in brightness. The 15-incher reached 473 nits, a little short of the 489 nits on the 13-incher (it can get a bit brighter with HDR content). That's far  more luminous than the Zenbook, Surface, and Galaxy Book, none of which broke 400 nits (the Zenbook, in particular, lost out at 321 nits).

The MacBook Air comes with True Tone turned on in macOS, which uses sensors to adjust the screen to look more natural based on ambient light. (For our brightness and color testing, we turn that off.) In general, I think it works well, and that most people should leave it on, though if you're doing any photo editing or other work that involves exact colors, you’ll probably want to temporarily disable it.

If your setup uses external displays beyond the MacBook Air, you'll have to consider some limitations. The Air, according to Apple's website, can run both the laptop's screen at full resolution and "one external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz". This was also a concern on the M1-based MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro. I suspect that most people won't have an issue with this, but power users may be disappointed.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the MacBook Air 15-inch

While I wish the MacBook Air's keyboard offered slightly more than 1 mm of travel, this keyboard is generally pretty great. It's effectively copied and pasted from the smaller model. That means you get the same full-height function keys, inverted T arrow keys, and Touch ID on the power button.

On the monkeytype typing test, I hit 120 words per minute on the MacBook Air, which is about as good as I do, with a 2% error rate. It was comfortable enough, but a little extra travel wouldn't have hurt.

The 5.9 x 3.6-inch touchpad is even bigger than on the 13-inch Air, and just as good. I've long said Apple's touchpads are the envy of the laptop industry. The touchpad here is smooth, feels premium, and the haptics are extremely convincing. Gestures in macOS, like using three fingers to show all my apps, or side swiping between virtual desktops always worked on the first try. I prefer to turn off "natural" scrolling in settings, but at least that's still an option.

Audio on the MacBook Air 15-Inch

One area where Apple did take more advantage of the bigger chassis is in the 15-inch MacBook Air's sound system. It has six speakers and a force-cancelling woofer, as opposed to just four speakers in the 13-inch Air.

For a laptop this thin, Apple has engineered something impressive. Maybe not as incredible as the MacBook Pro, but the 15-inch Air has bass. When I listened to Chvrches' "Over," the drums thumped on the low-end. There are gaming laptops more than an inch thick that barely accomplish that. It also produced what sounded like louder volume to my ear than the 13-incher, all with clear vocals and an even mix with lots of synths.

If you're fully entrenched in Apple's ecosystem and wear AirPods, the MacBook Air supports spatial audio, including dynamic head tracking on certain AirPods models.

Upgradeability of the MacBook Air 15-inch

Just because Apple has four screws on the bottom of the MacBook Air doesn't mean there's much you can do if you were to open the lid. First of all, these are pentalobe screws, and most people don't have those kinds of screwdrivers. If anything, that may be a warning sign.

If you were to get in, you wouldn't be able to fix much, anyway. Apple's M2 is a system on a chip, with the RAM on the package. Apple solders its SSDs to the motherboard, so what you configure the laptop with at purchase is what you'll have forever. Whatever specs you buy the MacBook Air with, you are locked into until it's time to replace it.

As of this writing, the 15-inch MacBook Air isn't on the Self Service Repair site, but by the time you're reading this that may change, as other Apple Silicon Macs have made their way there. I imagine most people will go to the Genius Bar for any hardware issues.

Battery Life on the MacBook Air 15-inch

The M2 chip's efficiency is on full-display when it comes to battery life. On our test, the 15-inch MacBook Air lasted 14 hours and 48 minutes while streaming video, browsing websites, and running simple OpenGL tests.

It's hard to complain about just under 15 hours of battery life, but considering Apple packed a 66.5 watt-hour battery into this chassis, which is an upgrade from the 52.6 WHr cell in the 13-inch Air that ran for 14:06 on our test, I would have loved to see a bit more improvement.

Still, the bigger Air beats Windows laptops down the chart. The closest was the Zenbook S 13 OLED at 11:02, while the Surface Laptop 5 and Galaxy Book 3 Ultra both lasted just over 9 hours.

Heat on the MacBook Air 15-inch

To see how hot laptops get while under a stressful load, we take skin temperatures on ultrabooks while running our Cinebench R23 stress test. The MacBook Air 15 got quite warm by the end of this test, though not unusably so. This laptop is an interesting candidate for this test because it's not actively cooled like the MacBook Pro line (or most Windows laptops).

During the test, the center of the keyboard, between the G and H keys, reached 41.9 degrees Celsius (107.42 degrees Fahrenheit), which is noticeably toasty. The touchpad, however, was far cooler.

On the bottom of the laptop, the hottest point reached 47.9 Celsius (118.22 F). While it won't get this hot if you're just listening to music or checking your email, if you push your MacBook Air, you may want to use it on a desk.

Webcam on the MacBook Air 15-inch

The benefit to the Apple's notch is that it houses a really good 1080p webcam. At my desk, my eyes appeared the perfect shade of blue, in contrast to the navy shirt I was wearing. I could see every hair on my head, and the camera wasn't phased by some fluorescent lighting in our office, nor some nearby open windows.

What Apple doesn't offer in its camera is facial recognition. Many high-end Windows PCs use infrared cameras to let you log in with your face. And while Apple has Face ID on its phones, that hasn't come to the laptops yet, despite the notch.

Software and Warranty on the MacBook Air 15-inch

We tested the 15-inch MacBook Air running macOS Ventura (version 13), which launched in October 2022. This is the same OS we tested on the Mac Studio and on the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros. The laptop will be eligible for an update to macOS Sonoma in the fall.

Apple's macOS comes with lots of software, but little bloat. You get a mail client, Messages (great for sharing your texts and iMessages with a phone or iPad), Safari web browser, Maps, FaceTime, Notes, Reminders, and more. Apple has its own services preinstalled, with apps for Apple TV, Apple News, Apple Music, and podcasts. A basic productivity suite, including Numbers, Keynote, iMovie, and Pages also comes free.

At this point in Apple Silicon's life cycle, a significant number of apps now offer native versions for M1 and M2 chips, or use universal binaries to work on both Apple SIlicon and Intel processors. If you try to run something that doesn't use one of those two solutions, you'll be prompted to install Rosetta 2, which can translate Intel x86 instructions.

The MacBook Air comes with a 1-year warranty. AppleCare+ costs $79.99 annually until cancelled, or $229 for a 3-year plan.

MacBook Air 15-inch Configurations

Our review unit of the 15-inch MacBook Air came with an M2 system on a chip boasting 8 CPU cores and 10 GPU cores, 16GB of unified memory, a 512GB SSD and the "midnight" dark blue colorway. This configuration is available by customizing the Mac on Apple's website.

The base model has the same M2 chip (Apple doesn't cut CPU or GPU cores on the base model 15-inch), with 256GB of SSD storage and 8GB of memory for $1,299. The other retail model is $1,499 with 512GB of storage and 8GB of RAM.

The MacBook Air tops out at 24GB of memory ($400 on top of the base price) and 2TB of storage ($600 on top of the base price, which is egregious with the price of SSDs these days.)

By default, Apple ships the MacBook Air with a 35W USB-C power adapter with two ports. If you use both ports, however, the devices split the wattage, so your Mac will charge more slowly. For example, with a Mac and either an iPhone or iPad connected, both devices get up to 17.5 watts. With a Mac and AirPods, the Mac will get up to 27.5W while the headphones go up to 7.5W. In the configurator, you can opt for a 70W USB-C adapter with one port that will let you fast-charge your Mac.

Bottom Line

If you want a MacBook Air, want a bigger machine than its traditional 13-inch offering, and don't need the power of a MacBook Pro, Apple is aiming the 15-inch MacBook Air squarely at you. It feels just like using the smaller machine, except with a bigger display, some more weight, and better speakers.

I do wish that Apple took a bit more advantage of the extra room and added an extra port or two. That seems like a missed opportunity. And while I wish the bigger battery added even more longevity than it does, it's hard to complain when your machine is running over 14 hours on a charge. 

Many 15-inch Windows laptops in this price range tend to add discrete GPUs, like the Dell XPS 15 or Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra. That sometimes makes for thicker chassis than what Apple is going for here. And those machines definitely aren't fanless. For a similar price, you can get a 13-inch MacBook Pro with M2 and put it under a fan, but you won't get the design made for Apple Silicon.

So for those who want something simple, quiet, and with a big screen, the MacBook Air 15-inch is exactly what Apple promised: the MacBook Air, but bigger. It’s not likely to win over many new converts, but will likely make a lot previous Air owners very happy.

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AMD's Ryzen Z1 series isn't far from being one of the best CPUs; however, the Zen 4-powered chips do wonders for handheld gaming devices, such as the ROG Ally, the primary rival to the Steam Deck. Despite being processors that consume no more than 30W, the Ryzen Z1 series can rival some desktop processors as long as the latter is a few generations old.

If you haven't been following the gaming handheld scene, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme is AMD's highest-performing processor for handheld devices. Wielding the latest Zen 4 cores, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme has eight cores, 16 threads, and respectable clock speeds to brag about. The octa-core chip has a 3.3 GHz base clock and a boost clock that hits 5.1 GHz. Nonetheless, Ryzen Z1 Extreme's RDNA 3-based integrated graphics is mainly responsible for the chip's graphics prowess. It features 12 RDNA 3 compute units at 2.7 GHz.

While other ROG Ally owners are busy gaming, Twitter user Mochamad Farido Fanani has benchmarked the Ryzen Z1 Extreme with Cinebench R23, providing a reference for comparison to see how much processing power is inside the tiny Zen 4 chip. The Ryzen Z1 Extreme inside the ROG ally has access to 16GB (2x8GB) of LPDDR5-6400 memory.

The Ryzen Z1 Extreme delivered 32% and 17% higher single-and multi-core performance than the Core i5-10600K. It's an impressive feat on one hand because the Ryzen Z1 Extreme is a 30W, reportedly running at 15W, while the Core i5-10600K is a 125W processor. That's a significant delta in TDP. On the other hand, the Core i5-10600K is a three-year-old chip, so it does take away some merit from the Ryzen Z1 Extreme.

It's logical the Ryzen Z1 Extreme cannot compete with a more modern model, like the Core i5-13600K. The margins were abysmal. The Core i5-13600K posted 20% faster in single-core performance and 113% in multi-core performance.

The Ryzen Z1 Extreme was superior to the Apple M1 (via Anandtech's review of the Mac Mini). The Zen 4 chip outperformed the Apple M1 by 10% in single-core performance and 38% in multi-core performance. The Ryzen Z1 Extreme was also 3% faster than the M2 Max (MacBook Pro 2023) in single-core performance. However, the M2 Max showed its strength in the multi-core benchmark, outpacing the Ryzen Z1 Extreme by 37%.

Asus has interim exclusivity to AMD's Ryzen Z1 series of high-performance processors for handheld gaming consoles. The processor's maximum potential remains a mystery. It'll be interesting to see if other manufacturers can squeeze more out of the Ryzen Z1 series.

When it comes to emulation, there’s nothing quite like the ingenuity of the Linux community. Today we’re sharing a neat project from maker and developer Paul Rickards, aka Biosrhythm. Using a handheld Linux platform known as PocketCHIP, Rickards has set up a Mac II emulator known as Mini vMac. If PocketCHIP sounds familiar, it's probably because we've previously covered a Raspberry Pi version designed to work with a Raspberry Pi CM4.

The PocketCHIP unit is battery-powered which makes it totally portable. It’s intended to work with Linux operating systems, but you do have a bit of flexibility when it comes to choosing an OS. It features a QWERTY keyboard for user input and also sports a 480 x 272px touchscreen for video output.

According to the official documentation, Mini vMac is an emulator collection designed to bring compatibility with old Macintosh software on newer hardware. Mini vMac is part of the Gryphel Project, which intends to preserve Mac software from 1984 to 1996. And thanks to this PocketCHIP project, you can now take the old-school Mac experience with you on the go.

When Rickards set out to run Mini vMac on the PocketCHIP, he was delighted to discover a package already put together by another maker known as Zzxzzk115 (you can find this package over at GitHub). This configuration is made just for PocketCHIP but required a little bit of work from Rickards to get up and running on the handheld.

Setting up Mini vMac will vary depending on what OS you’re starting with. In this case, Rickards is using the Jessie distribution of Debian so it took some extra steps to get off the ground — which might not be necessary if you’re running Bookworm (the latest). You can follow along with Rickard’s steps over at his official Biosrhythm blog.

If you want to recreate this setup, or even turn it into a Raspberry Pi project, check out the original blog post shared by Rickards — and look into the CM4 version of the PocketCHIP to make it Pi-flavored. 

Apple announced the new Mac Pro powered by its M2 Ultra processor at WWDC23. It launched in stores this week, and there's already a bug in the wild. In a support document, Apple disclosed a software bug with the Mac Pro where internal SATA drives would be disconnected when the computer goes to sleep. Apple has a fix on the way, but it won't arrive until the next macOS update.

The 2023 Mac Pro starts with 1TB of solid-state storage on the $6,999 base model. However, they can spec the machine for up to 2TB, 4TB, or 8TB for an added premium when purchasing the Mac Pro from Apple's website, or they can purchase upgrade kits directly from Apple. They don't come cheap, though. The 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB kits retail for $1,000, $1,600, and $2,800, respectively. These are not off-the-shelf SSDs (they actually work more like NAND and connect to the controller on the M2 Ultra) and can be pricey. Luckily, the device provides two standard SATA III ports, opening the doors for mainstream secondary storage options. The Promise Pegasus J2i 8TB Internal Storage Enclosure, which sells for $400, allows consumers to use conventional SATA hard drives or SSDs that are more budget-friendly. That's precisely where Apple found the nasty bug.

When owners wake their Mac Pro from sleep, they may be greeted by a "disk not ejected properly" window as if the SATA drive is ejected like a flash drive. The reason for the prompt is that some hard drive models would automatically disconnect from the device when the Mac Pro goes to sleep. However, Apple didn't provide a list of the affected drive models, only listing that it happens to "certain models of internal SATA drives". The issue can occur whether the Mac Pro enters sleep mode automatically or when consumers manually put the device to sleep.

Apple's current stopgap solution is for users to restart their systems when the problem occurs. It is also recommending that Mac Pro owners disable sleep mode. The option is called "Prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off," and is located in the advanced section of the Displays options under System Settings. In other words, you're better off never going to sleep, or shutting your Mac down entirely, to prevent the issue.

Fortunately, it's not a hardware issue. The problem resides on a software level, which Apple can mitigate through a macOS update. Apple will include the fix in the next macOS update for Ventura (probably macOS 13.4.1) but didn't provide a specific ETA. Until then, Mac Pro owners may want to avoid sleep mode if they have incorporated hard drives into the system.

This issue is particularly interesting because the new Mac Pro is the first time Apple is allowing user-added storage inside a system since Apple silicon released for Mac. (It's not available in the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac Mini, or Mac Studio). 

Emulating old computers is cool but building tiny versions of old computers is even cooler! Instead of just running an old OS on a modern machine, this maker, known online as The_Old_Wolf, is using our favorite SBC—the Raspberry Pi—to power tiny versions of some classic Apple desktops. These tiny Mac projects are super small and super cute, fitting easily in one hand.

The first model is dubbed the Tiny Mac III. It sports a Raspberry Pi 4 but you could get away with using a Raspberry Pi 3 inside. The other one is a little bit smaller and uses a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. Both are designed with advanced features that mimic the behavior of the original Apple desktops.

The projects were inspired by this tiny Mac project created by Cgenco which uses a Pi Zero. The_Old_Wolf decided to spice things up by adding things like an activity LED that flashes based on certain processes in real-time as well as a safe shutdown button that works when you don’t have a keyboard or mouse on hand. He also saw this as an opportunity to create a slightly bigger version that uses a full-sized Pi.

Both tiny Macs are housed inside custom 3D-printed shells that were printed using beige PLA filament for that weathered retro plastic look. All of the STL files are available for download over at Instructables. The Tiny Mac II uses a 2.8-inch Waveshare DPI LCD screen for the monitor while the Tiny Mac III uses the 3.5-inch version. There’s a complete parts list which includes everything you need from the LEDs to power switch buttons and every other component you need to pull it all together.

Software-wise, it runs Raspberry Pi OS with a few changes thrown in to mimic the feel of computing on an old Mac. The background was changed to a custom one and the taskbar has been moved to the top of the display. The_Old_Wolf also enabled silent boot and included a custom splash screen that loads when booting. All of the steps for making these adjustments were included in the guide.

You can find additional details about this Raspberry Pi project over at GitHub and see a full breakdown of the assembly process at Instructables.

When you picture a workstation, it's often a tower PC, something bulky to accommodate the components and cooling you need to edit video, render 3D images or process thousands of photos. But the recently refreshed Mac Studio (starting at $1,999, $6,799.99 as tested), offers the power of a workstation in a tiny, quiet box that fits easily on your desk.

The Studio also happens to be the home of the M2 Ultra, Apple's most powerful chip (the lower-end configurations come with M2 Max). It's rare that we test pre-built workstations, but when we got the opportunity to test the Mac Studio we took it as a chance to get a sense of what the 24-core CPU and 76-core GPU can do.

The short take: If you're a Mac user that needs a lot of power, we think you're going to come away impressed. The M2 Ultra delivers some significant improvements over Apple's other chips. But if you need expansion, the Mac Studio may not fit your bill, as it's not upgradeable. Those users may want to consider the Mac Pro, which also comes equipped with the M2 Ultra, but in a bigger case that includes PCIe slots to add sound cards, storage cards, and more.

Design of the Mac Studio 2023

As far as workstation-class machines go, the Mac Studio is petite. It's a desktop that has no problem fitting on, well, a desktop, even under a monitor. It tucks in nicely under the Mac Studio display, and that should be similar under many other screens.

It's an aluminum block with rounded corners and a big shiny Mac logo on top, that measures 7.7 x 7.7 inches wide and deep and 3.7 inches tall. Our model, with an M2 Ultra, weighs 7.9 pounds thanks to a beefy copper thermal module (the M2 Max configurations are 2 pounds lighter with an aluminum cooler).

The ports will be important for many professionals. On the front of the Mac Studio, there are two  40GBps Thunderbolt 4 ports (these are USB Type-C ports up to 10GBps on the M2 Max model) and an SD card reader with UHS-II speeds.

On the back, there are another four Thunderbolt 4 ports, a pair of USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A ports, an HDMI port, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. This is plenty of connectivity for external storage and peripherals.

The bottom of the desktop has a round base with "Mac Studio" engraved. That's surrounded by air intake holes, which suck cool air in and exhaust it out the holes in the back.

What you can't do is upgrade the Mac Studio. At all. If you want to add storage or RAM, you'll have to consider that at purchase. Those who want to make those types of upgrades or add PCIe cards will want to consider the much larger Mac Pro (though RAM, there, is also a permanent fixture of the SoC). 

Owners of the previous Mac Studio found that the storage module is technically replaceable, but these aren't the same as regular store-bought SSDs. These tie into the SoC as part of Apple's security and encryption protocols, don't have a controller (those are on the SoC) but do feature NAND. That is to say, just because you can take the storage out if you open it up doesn't mean it will help you. The Mac Studio may be for pros, but creatives will have to consider their long-term needs before buying.

Mac Studio (2023) Specifications

M2 Ultra Performance on the Mac Pro

Most people don't need the M2 Ultra. Are you a photographer or a videographer? Do you make 3D renders? Are you working on machine learning? Then maybe this is for you — but even then, only if you need a ton of horsepower.

The M2 Ultra is built on a 5 nm process and uses what Apple calls UltraFusion to connect the dies from two M2 Max SoCs (they appear as a single chip when it comes to apps). There are 134 billion transistors on what is easily Apple's largest and most powerful chip.

M2 Ultra has 24 CPU cores: 16 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores. The SoC's GPU comes with either 60 or 70 GPU cores (we tested the latter), and every M2 Ultra has a 32-ore neural engine. Apple uses a separate media engine to accelerate video processing with dedicated hardware for H.256, HEVC, and ProRes encoding and decoding. The M2 Ultra also has 800 GBps of memory bandwidth.

Frankly, we don't test very many pre-built workstations, but I still ran some benchmarks to put the M2 Ultra through its paces. In some cases, we compared it to the M2 Max, which we last saw in the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

But we also tested against workstation chips. On the Intel side, there's the Intel Xeon w9-3495X, the latest Xeon we've tested (and the only current one we have on hand). On the one hand, this is admittedly a bit of an unfair comparison, as that chip has 56 CPU cores (all performance cores) and, at a recommended customer price of $5,889, costs almost as much as the entire Mac Studio computer we're reviewing!  It does, however, pit Intel's best (which Apple opted not to use in its switch to Apple Silicon) against Apple's best. 

On the Ryzen side, we looked at the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5975WX, a 32-core workstation CPU on a 7 nm process with an MSRP of $3,299, though during our testing the chip was selling for $2,699. We also have some numbers for the 64-core Threadripper PRO 5995WX, with an MSRP of $6,499 (only $300 less than the Mac Studio we tested!) though it's selling for $5,699.99 as of this writing.  Both the Intel and AMD systems also used 128GB of RAM, like our Mac Studio.

Keep in mind, Apple hasn't just built a chip. It built a system. But to see its place in the pro realm, we do need to test against others' chips.

On Geekbench 6.1's CPU test, the Mac Studio with M2 Ultra earned a single-core score of 2,819 and a whopper of a multi-core score of 21,802. Compare that to the M2 Max, with a similar single-core score (2,810) but a lower multi-core score at 14,851. This makes sense: the Max is effectively one-half of an M2 Ultra, and they're the same core, so the single-core scores should align. It is possible, however, that we'd see slightly better M2 Max performance in a desktop chassis (it's also available in the Mac Studio. See the configurations section below).

The Mac Studio's 4TB SSD blazed along on our file transfer test, transferring 25GB of files at a rate of 2,440.7 MBps.

On Handbrake, the Mac Studio transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in 2 minutes and 45 seconds, which is a strong improvement over the M2 Max in the laptop chassis at 3:59. Both the Xeon and Threadriper 5975WX beat the Ultra, but by less than a minute.

On Macs, we use the Xcode benchmark to simulate compiling a large development project in Xcode. The Mac Studio took a commanding lead, finishing the task in 58 seconds. The 16-inch MacBook Pro with M2 Max took 83 seconds.

Cinebench tests the CPU's ability in rendering. Again, the M2 Ultra and M2 Max didn't show extreme differences in single-core scores, which makes sense. (1,755 on the M2 Ultra versus 1,620 on the M2 Max using laptop cooling). In multi-core, the M2 Ultra's 27,095 was a substantial difference over the Max (14,797). The M2 Ultra's single-core scores also beat out the Xeon (just barely) and both Threadrippers, showing the strength of Apple's cores in certain tasks.

Of course, with so many more cores on the x86 chips, those dominated in multi-core realm. AMD’s chip was nearly 3 times better than the M2 Ultra on this test. But again, the Threadripper Pro 5995 WX costs close to $6,000 for the CPU alone.

We ran our Cinebench R23 stress test, which we often run on productivity laptops, and the Mac Studio chewed through it with consistent scores in the low 27,000s. Apple doesn't report clock speeds, but Cinebench estimated 3.7 GHz single-core and 3.3 GHz multi-core. Take that for what you will. I usually use TGPro to measure CPU temperatures, though it didn't seem to work on the M2 Ultra just yet. It did, however, report a system temperature of 44.62 degrees Celsius (112.32 degrees Fahrenheit).

We put the M2 Ultra through its paces in Blender for 3D modelling and visual effects, using both the CPU and GPU test. The result here? Use the M2 Ultra's powerful GPU, which was far faster every time, completing Monster at 1,723.61 samples per second, Junkshop at 915.17 samples per second, and Classroom at 707.11 samples per second.

On the CPU Blender tests, the M2 Ultra was beaten out by the Xeon. On Monster, it notched 236.15, while the Xeon reached 347.26. Those kinds of leads continued in Junkshop (141.92 for the M2 Ultra, 225.86 for the Xeon) and Classroom (101.1 for the Ultra, 158.97 for the Xeon). The 5975WX was slightly ahead of the Xeon. Again though, the M2 Ultra’s GPU just destroyed any CPU-based result here.

For graphics, we went back to Geekbench 6's GPU benchmark, where the M2 Ultra notched a score of 223,549 on Metal and 126,945 on OpenCL. As you see in the chart above, having twice as many graphics cores does a lot over the M2 Max.

To get a more practical sense of what all this means in the real world, I took some sample 8K footage and imported a project in Final Cut Pro. The M2 Ultra played back the footage with a plugin for .R3D files from Red cameras without any stuttering at all. I was able to add music and visual effects without any issues. Granted, my project was pretty small, especially compared to professional projects. But considering how much headroom was left when I looked in Activity Monitor, I'm not terribly worried.

For more scientific FCP testing, I used the BruceX Final Cut Pro benchmark. It's a short timeline at 5120 x 2700 resolution and 23.975 frames per second. There are a bunch of transitions, titles, and a ton of layers, which requires a lot of RAM. The Mac Studio with M2 Ultra completed the test in 7.87 seconds.

To test the M2 Ultra's gaming acumen, I fired up Resident Evil Village. While the game looked gorgeous in 4K on the Mac Studio Display with HDR mode on, that limited the game to 60 fps. Instead, I turned off HDR, cranked the settings preset to the max, and added MetalFX upscaling. The game typically ran between 70 and 100 frames per second, depending on how much detail was in a scene. When I bumped it down one preset to "prioritize graphics" performance was in a similar place, though it did break 100 fps more often when not in combat.

The Mac Studio is overkill for my daily work. It had no issues with editing photos in Pixelmator Pro, and considering how much memory this thing has, running tons of apps and doing lots of research in browser tabs was no issue.

Perhaps what impressed me most was how the Mac Studio was effectively silent to my ears unless I put my head right up against it. Whether playing an intense game or editing 8K video, the Mac Studio was extremely quiet.

Software and Warranty on the Mac Studio

The Mac Studio comes with macOS Ventura (version 13. This is the same version we saw on the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro earlier this year, which introduced features like editable iMessages, Stage Manager, Continuity Camera, and more. This device will be eligible for macOS Sonoma when it releases this fall.

Unlike PCs running Windows 11, macOS is streamlined in comparison with very little bloat. The software includes Mail, Messages (great for syncing with your iPhone or iPad), Notes, Maps, FaceTime, and Safari. There are also dedicated apps for subscription services like Apple Music, Apple TV, Apple News and Podcasts. Productivity apps like Numbers, Pages, and Keynote are also free.

An increasingly large number of apps are native to Apple Silicon (or use universal binaries). For those that aren't, Rosetta 2 can translate Intel x86 software. A small group of games, like Resident Evil Village, Disco Elysium, RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 and Minecraft all have native Apple Silicon support and run using Apple's Metal API.

Apple sells the Mac Studio with a 1-year warranty. AppleCare+ costs $169.00 for three years of coverage or $60 per year of annual coverage until you choose to cancel it.

Mac Studio Configurations

We tested the Mac Studio in a $6,799 configuration with the top-end variant of the M2 Ultra, with a 24-core CPU, 76-core GPU, and 32-core neural engine, along with 128GB of unified memory and 4TB of SSD storage.

Another version of the M2 Ultra, which cuts the GPU to 60 cores, shaves $1,000 off the cost. With M2 Ultra, RAM starts at 64GB and goes up to 192GB — we tested the middle option. Each step up in RAM costs an additional $800. Yikes.

Storage starts at 1TB. Increasing storage is also expensive: 2TB adds $400 from the base model, 4TB is a $1,000 increase, and 8TB adds an eye-watering $2,200. Considering fast 4TB M.2 SSDs can be had for $299 or even less these days, getting one of those and installing it in an external Thunderbolt enclosure is well worth considering if you want to save some money.

The most expensive configuration, with the M2 Ultra in our review unit, 192GB of RAM, and 8TB of storage, is $8,799.

There are cheaper options. The Mac Studio starts at $1,999 with M2 Max (12-core Core-CPU, 30-core GPU, 16-core neural engine), 32GB of unified memory and 512GB of SSD storage. Where the M2 Ultra version has Thunderbolt 4 ports on the back and front, the M2 Max only has them on the back, while it puts slower USB-C ports on the front. If you were considering a jacked-up version of the Mac Mini with M2 Pro and 32GB of RAM, which is also $1,999, you might as well get the entry-level Max for the extra connectivity and GPU cores. 

The M2 Max also comes in a flavor with a 38-core GPU, a $200 upgrade over the base model. Max models top out at 96GB of unified memory (with the 38-core GPU chip) and still offers up to 8TB of storage.

All of the configurations come with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, which are improvements to the M1 Max and M1 Ultra versions, which used Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0.

None of these configurations include peripherals. I mostly used the Magic Mouse, Magic Keyboard, and Magic Trackpad that Apple included with our loaner unit. I would imagine most Mac users dedicated enough to get the Mac Pro have some peripherals ready.

Bottom Line

If you want the most powerful chip that Apple offers in a surprisingly small form factor, the Mac Studio is for you. While most people don't need that much performance muscle (many people would be served just fine by the Mac Mini with M2 or M2 Pro, or even a 24-inch iMac with M1), those who do creative work professionally and need all the power they can get for machine learning, rendering, video and photo editing, or music production will love the power Apple offers in such a tiny box.

The Mac Studio is quiet and compact despite all of that power. And while its mix of ports allows for plenty of expandability with peripherals and external storage, the one place it may fall short for pros is when it comes to upgradeability; the Mac Studio is stuck as you buy it. Those who want internal expandability may want to consider the new Mac Pro. Apple finally moved the Pro to its own silicon, and while it is far larger than the Studio, it has room for six full-length PCIe Gen 4 slots, with two x16 slots and four x8 slots.

Intel and AMD do make CPUs with more cores and, in some cases, more powerful cores. People who prefer PCs may want to consider systems with those chips, though the overall cost will be higher. Apple isn't only selling a chip — it's selling a small system that fits on a desk. Those Threadripper and Xeon processors require far more cooling. Also, those chips are extremely expensive, coming close to matching the price of our entire Apple review unit. Some people may prefer getting the storage and memory included there.

If space is a concern and you still want the most power Apple can currently offer, our benchmarks show that the M2 Ultra is a remarkably capable chip for the Mac. If you're a creative professional who does your work on macOS and you need nothing short of the best, M2 Ultra shines.

Benchmarks of the Apple M2 Ultra's GPU appear to have leaked online. Today, we spotted various social media posts sharing Geekbench GPU compute scores and GFXBench Aztec Ruins scores. On the surface, these results seem to show that the GPU in the new M2 Ultra is highly formidable, offering GPU compute performance somewhere between a GeForce RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4080. But we need to step back a bit and explain precisely what it is we're looking at.

We reported upon the new Apple M2 Ultra SoC reveal during the firm's annual WWDC earlier in the week. The chip will arrive in updated Mac Studio and Mac Pro designs, which are scheduled to ship next week. However, someone appears to be testing these new Mac computers/processors before consumers can get hold of them, as a raft of benchmarks has appeared online recently.

Yesterday, we picked through a selection of Apple M2 Ultra benchmarks, focusing on the SoC's CPU core performance. Today, we will look more closely at the potential compute capabilities of the M2 Ultra's GPU, thanks to the Geekbench and GFXbench leaks mentioned in the intro.

M2 Ultra Geekbench 6 Compute Benchmarks

It looks like several pre-release M2 Ultra Apple Mac system users have run Geekbench 6's Metal and OpenCL GPU benchmarks. Apple's Metal API is a proprietary graphics API developed by the firm for fast 'direct to the metal' hardware addressing, like an Apple optimized parallel to Microsoft's DirectX.

While these are very interesting synthetic compute benchmarks, we look forward to some thorough real-world testing of the new Apple Macs with M2 Ultra processors, shortly, particularly in gaming, which has been a pain point for Apple's chips.

Note that GPU compute tends to scale far better with multi-chip approaches than GPU graphics — think about Ethereum mining back in the day, where you could connect eight (or more) GPUs to a single modest CPU via PCIe x1 connections and they would all mine at basically 100% of their maximum performance. Not all compute workloads scale that well, but it's still very different than the scaling traditionally seen with real-time graphics used in games.

The new M2 Ultra chip's GPU, featuring up to 76 integrated graphics cores, looks impressive compared to the previous gen M1 Ultra with its maximum 64 graphics cores. In a direct comparison using Geekbench 6, the new-gen M2 Ultra scores about 220,000 or thereabouts, compared to about 155,000 on average for the M1 Ultra.

By this metric, M2 Ultra is over 40% faster than its predecessor in GPU compute tasks. It only has around 10% more graphics cores, so Apple has done well to achieve this scale of uplift.

Turning to a different comparison, the new Apple M2 Ultra's 220,000 Geekbench 6 Compute scores (Metal) sit between the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti (208,340 OpenCL) and RTX 4080 (245,706 OpenCL). For a direct Geekbench 6 OpenCL comparison, the Apple M2 Ultra Open CL scores of about 155,000 are much closer to PC GPUs like the Nvidia RTX A5000 and AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT.

Again, we need to note that Geekbench 6 OpenCL compute performance does not usually translate well to actual gaming workloads. Synthetic Geekbench 6 performance is very different from real-world graphics.

M2 Ultra GFXBench Benchmarks

Another user has put their M2 Ultra-powered Apple Mac through the GFXBench test suite. In the 4K Aztec Ruins offscreen tests, the new Apple SoC is over 55% faster than its predecessor. This seems to be an even better result than the Geekbench 6 GPU compute comparison. Theoretically, it should also give a better indication of 3D accelerations / gaming performance uplifts, since this is a graphics workload rather than compute.

However, GFXBench is not an ideal desktop GPU comparison tool as it doesn't usually scale well with the highest-end graphics hardware. The Aztec Ruins benchmark is more appropriate to smartphone SoCs than to GPUs like RTX 4070 Ti. Furthermore, we need to focus on the GFXBench "offscreen" tests, which assesses the rendering power of the GPU without worrying about the display resolution in use. Considering the entire benchmark suite weighs in at less than 1GB, it's a safe bet that it's not very representative of modern games that can total more than 100GB.

The screenshot above shows that the Apple M2 Ultra can achieve nearly 315 FPS in the 4K Aztec Ruins high-tier offscreen test (Metal API). Above, we mentioned that this score is over 55% faster than the M1 Ultra. A comparable score on the PC platform would again be something between the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4080 (DX12 API).

Big spoonfuls of salt are required here. Ideally, we need to see performance in games and other graphics and compute applications rather than these synthetic workloads that may not be representative of anything truly useful. We look forward to seeing some thorough real-world testing of the new Apple Macs with M2 Ultra processors, which should be available next week.

Apple's M2 Ultra is a mighty processor with 24 general-purpose cores and up to 76 integrated GPU cores. It is also probably faster than Intel's 28-core Xeon W found in the 2019 Mac Pro, so new Mac Pro workstation owners will feel a significant performance uplift. But according to a purported benchmark, this CPU cannot beat competitors from AMD and Intel in Geekbench 5 (via @VadimYuryev) as they boast very high clocks or feature a formidable core count.

Heavy-duty workstation-grade processors are different from desktop and server CPUs in that they should deliver both very responsive performance (like all client processors) and consistently high performance under heavy workloads. This means that they must feature high instruction-per-clock performance, high clocks, high core count, support for loads of memory, and feature loads of PCIe lanes. AMD's Ryzen Threadripper Pro W5995X and Intel's Xeon W9-3495X comply with these requirements with their 64 and 56 cores, respectively. In a nutshell, they use server silicon configured to offer extremely high clocks when needed. 

When it comes to Apple's M2 Ultra, it consists of two M2 Max system-on-chips that were designed primarily for MacBook Pro and Mac Studio machines. Those workstations have moderate power consumption and do not support expandability. M2 Max was not exactly architected for high clocks or for expandability, as you can only install so much memory and so much storage in a compact PC. Instead of boosting clocks to extremes when a computationally heavy workload emerges, M2 uses built-in special-purpose accelerators. It was also not designed for an extreme core count because of power and cooling limitations. While two M2 Maxes look formidable on paper, they cannot boast clocks of Intel's Core i9-13900K or the core count of AMD's Ryzen Threadripper Pro W5995WX. 

This is why the benchmark result shows Apple's M2 Ultra cannot beat Intel's Core i9-13900K in single-thread workloads and even fall behind in multi-core workloads in Geekbench 5. Intel's desktop offering supports simultaneous multi-threading and can process up to 32 threads instantly. Compared to its actual rivals — AMD's Ryzen Threadripper Pro W5995X and Intel's Xeon W9-3495X — it easily beats them in single-thread workloads but is dramatically slower when more cores are needed.

Some may argue that Geekbench 5 is a synthetic benchmark that does not reflect performance in real-world applications, which is a fair argument. But it gives a sense of what to expect from CPUs regarding their compute capabilities without any special-purpose accelerators. And this brings us to the fact that Apple's M2 SoCs have plenty of accelerators inside. Therefore, it may not need to have high clocks or extreme core count to offer great performance in many workstation-grade workloads. 

Then again, with so much compute horsepower under the hood, AMD's and Intel's workstation processors are designed to handle even the most demanding workloads. That said, it remains to be seen whether Apple's Mac Pro can actually beat workstations based on AMD's and Intel's CPUs in workstation applications.

Earlier this week at WWDC, Apple made several hardware announcements related to its Mac platform. The company launched the all-new 15-inch MacBook Air along with a Mac Studio and Mac Pro powered by M2 Ultra processors. However, the product that overshadowed the entire keynote was undoubtedly the Vision Pro extended reality headset.

We learned a lot about the headset, including its impressive dual Micro-OLED displays featuring a collective 23 million pixels. Each eye has access to over 4K resolution, resulting in a crystal-clear picture with no hint of pixels in view, according to people that had hands-on time with the headset. Now, a developer session from Apple's developer conference reveals that the Vision Pro's displays have a refresh rate of "usually 90 frames per second."

For reference, non-pro MacBooks, iPhones and iPads have a refresh rate of 60 Hz, while the Pro variants of each feature a 120 Hz refresh rate. The 90 Hz refresh rate of the Vision Pro puts it right in the middle. The Vision Pro doesn't meet the 120 Hz threshold, so it doesn't carry the ProMotion label attached to devices such as the iPhone 14 Pro, iPad Pro, and 16-inch MacBook Pro.

In the developer session entitled "Deliver video content for spatial experiences," the presenter also revealed that the 90 Hz refresh rate is not static. Apple says a maximum refresh rate of 96 Hz "may be used automatically" while playing 24 fps video content.

In addition to the high-tech displays, the Vision Pro is powered by a 5nm M2 processor in conjunction with an R1 co-processor tasked with wrangling the data from a dozen cameras, six microphones and five sensors.

Apple's Vision Pro is expected to launch in 2024 with a price tag of $3,499. That price puts it out of reach for most consumers, but many are hopeful that subsequent generations can hit more palatable price points, allowing for broader adoption. As my colleague Andrew E. Freedman wrote, "I firmly see this announcement as a first step in building the future, with Apple's dedicated third-party developers making experiences that will germinate here, but become invaluable down the line."

In 2020, as Apple introduced the M1 system on a chip, the company said it would switch away from Intel over two years. Here in 2023, it took a bit longer than Apple forecasted, but with the new Mac Pro with M2 Ultra, Apple has every single one of its computers on its own SoCs. I'm not sure I've ever seen the company this confident about the Mac.

The Mac Pro is an odd duck. Of Apple's computers, it's far from the most popular among consumers, but it's extremely important to creatives who need lots of power and are willing to spend the money for it. As the most powerful, flexible system in Apple's stack, it sets a tone for the rest of the line. Without Intel, it feels as if Apple can now act without restraint.

At WWDC in Cupertino, Apple has the Mac Pro out in its hands-on area with no cooler. That's right — Apple had a chip shot ready for anyone with a camera. M2 Ultra, its most powerful chip ever, was getting a bit of a flex. (Let us not forget, the more attainable Mac Studio also has M2 Ultra. There are two shapes in which to get Apple's most powerful processor).

The lineup is now as follows:

M1 Macs

• 13-inch MacBook Air (entry level)
• iMac (24-inch)

M2 Macs

• Mac Mini (M2, M2 Pro)
• 13-inch MacBook Air
• 15-inch MacBook Air
• 13-inch MacBook Pro
• 14-inch MacBook Pro (M2 Pro, M2 Max)
• 16-inch MacBook Pro (M2 Max)
• Mac Pro (M2 Max, M2 Ultra)

Intel Macs

• Nothing to see here!

When will Apple upgrade the M1 models? Whenever it damn well pleases. That's kind of the point. Apple now controls not just the system, but the chip. Apple may sell systems, but it builds chips to power them. The two are intertwined, whether it's a laptop or a desktop.

And that's before considering the other places the M-series chips have popped up, including the iPad Air with M1 and iPad Pro with M2. Apple's Vision Pro will be powered by an M2 chip in combination with its new R1.

But we're on the Mac. Apple could update any of these systems whenever it wants. It can also hold one on an older process node as long as it needs, whether because that's what it thinks its customers want, or because that's what the supply chain allows. It makes that decision for itself.

Everyone I spoke to at Apple seemed thrilled to be over the hump. But now, it has to truly beat Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and others at the game. And if those companies outdo Apple, it has no one else to point the finger at.

Apple is trying its best here. The company can claim that you can game on its machines. I've tried it. Resident Evil Village runs great. Stray and No Man's Sky are here. Hideo Kojima showed up in the WWDC livestream to announce that Death Stranding: Director's Cut is coming to Mac. Apple is doing some heavy lifting to get games on its platform.

And Apple is also interweaving the Mac with the iPhone and iPad more than ever before with macOS Sonoma. Sure, I had widgets when I had a Mac running Mac OS X Leopard, but sharing between these devices is an acknowledgment that the Mac is an integral part of workflows that also include iPhones. And that's a level of interoperability other ecosystems can't match, though I appreciate Intel and Microsoft trying to get iPhone support in, they can't match Apple on making your phone and PC workspaces that are tied together.

Heck, using the Mac is a showcase feature of the Vision Pro. Want the most power? Use your Mac on an AR/VR headset. Who said the traditional computer is going away?

And with the Mac Pro, we see Apple can still be flexible, allowing for PCIe Gen 4 cards for I/O, storage, audio and more, even if graphics are no longer supported.

WWDC, as a developer conference, pushed hard on the Macs for Pros, like the Studio and the Pro, the company's two most expensive and most powerful machines. But the 15-inch MacBook Air is a version of Apple's best-selling notebooks. In fact, it's an addition to the MacBook line, which has way more sizes and models than Apple has offered in recent memory.

Some Apple fans may be upset to see that the 24-inch iMac is still on M1, or that a 27-inch model never came back. I feel that. But that's also the type of decision that Apple has more power to make now, more than ever. Short of fabbing its own chips, Apple has all of the power of what goes into a system, and when. And that means it can design a system around any chip in its arsenal.

For many years, I wondered if the Mac was a second thought, sitting in line behind the iPhone and the iPad. From WWDC, it's extensively clear that's not the case. With Apple using its own silicon across platforms, with interoperability on the hardware and software level, the Mac feels like a key player at Apple again.

At WWDC on Monday, Apple's Vision Pro wowed a live audience at Apple Park here in Cupertino, as well as online around the world. CEO Tim Cook and a team that worked on the project detailed what they heralded as VR and AR's transformative properties as a computing platform.

And then, sitting in the live audience just inside Apple's flagship campus, I heard gasps. The Apple Vision Pro, at $3,499, would cost even more than the rumors suggested.

There's been a lot of skeptical talk on Apple's Campus today among the media and analysts (do we really want to use an AR headset to take photos of our families?), but also a lot of wonder that Apple has pulled off something so thin and seemingly so powerful. But everyone is mentioning the cost.

$3,499 is a lot. While that's not Mac Pro money, Apple is pitching this as a device that people will have in their homes, use to take photos of their families, watch movies and work like they would on their Mac.

But here's the thing. This is WWDC, and it is for developers. Apple is pitching the device months before release, which it typically does with products when it needs to get developers on board. Apple has pitched the Vision Pro as its future, but it can't do that without a boatload of apps.

And that's what the Vision Pro seems like: a $3,499 dev box. At least, in the short term, this will be the headset that developers use to design Apple's future, should the Vision Pro succeed. And those apps will trickle down, to cheaper headsets, potential AR glasses, and other rumored products. Those dedicated developers are the ones that can make something like the Vision Pro a winner, and Apple absolutely needs them on board.

I didn't get the chance to test the Vision Pro at Apple Park — those opportunities were few and far between, though I know they existed. But even without that, I can see a version of this that entices me more than the Vision Pro currently does, a few years down the road.

Sure, I could name some issues. For one, while the Vision Pro looks far slimmer than similar products, it still looks like it could be heavy on the head (again, I didn't get to try it), and it has a battery pack that hangs down off the back, which isn't ideal and feels very first generation, and offers only two hours of battery life when not plugged in. The other thing Apple needs is a killer app. There was no one dedicated reason to use Vision Pro that's better than an iPhone or a Mac. Apple needs its developers to make a lot of these, and to make them fast.

We've seen this before. Apple releases a product. It's expensive, out of reach, or not as focused as we'd like. But Apple knows how to whittle. Think back to the Apple Watch, which came out in 2015 with few customization options and an "Edition" model class with 18K gold. Heck, when it was revealed, a Gawker editor started a pledge not to sleep with anyone wearing one; today, that would mean he might have trouble finding a partner, as Apple ships more watches than many of the Swiss watchmakers.  But the Watch needed some editing. Since then, Apple has changed the focus to fitness and health and added multiple watch faces with customization options. I doubted it at first, and now I love mine.

We saw something similar with the HomePod, as the original kind of failed to launch. But with the cheaper, $99 HomePod Mini, Apple made something that, while still a luxury, better competes with Amazon's Echo speakers. The newer full-sized HomePod is cheaper than the original, was largely lauded as better by reviewers, but doesn't supplant the entry-level item. It's an improvement, but one we're still seeing in progress.

$3,499 is still a stretch for a new category. But the Vision Pro is the first play in a long game, which will compete with Meta, HTC, and likely a number of other players who we may not even know the names of yet.

But knowing history, Apple usually, eventually, gets hardware right. If AR/VR/XR takes off as a new frontier in computing, Apple will be on the leading edge, editing as it goes along. Maybe it will eventually get rid of the battery pack or focus more on certain types of apps. Over the years, it may increase the field of view, resolution or other specs (some of which Apple has not confirmed for this model yet!) Perhaps cheaper models will emerge. And as those things happen, it will get there with an App Store full of software from dedicated developers. And this time, it also has to launch beyond the U.S. Here, Apple is starting in just one country.

In between, Apple is still working on its Macs as productivity machines (a space it clearly hasn't abandoned, but has embraced with a new enthusiasm), and it's not like the iPhone is going anywhere. This will be a slow transition. Apple and its competitors have to prove that you want to wear a computer on your face. Meta's been trying for a few years and hasn't done that yet.

It's unclear if what we witnessed at WWDC is an iPhone moment. Like the iPhone, we won't know immediately upon launch what the Vision Pro — or the AR space — does with its impact. But Apple has the resources to keep iterating.

You do have to start somewhere. If it works as advertised, a headset that relies entirely on hands, eyes, and voice, with tons of apps from Apple's ecosystem ready to go, including specialized experiences from Disney, works as a great first step. But until I get to try it, I firmly see this announcement as a first step in building the future, with Apple's dedicated third-party developers making experiences that will germinate here, but become invaluable down the line. Those are the super-fans who will pay to plant a flag, even as everyone else lines up just to try one at an Apple Store.

Am I skeptical? Sure. But talk to me again in a few years. We'll see where I am then.

Note: As with all of our op-eds, the opinions expressed here belong to the writer alone and not Tom's Hardware as a team.

Today at WWDC, Apple announced the latest update to its desktop/laptop operating system, and it’s called macOS Sonoma. The update brings features introduced with iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, including an upgraded Messages app and new predictive autocorrect functionality. But perhaps the biggest announcement relates to gaming.

Apple says that Apple Silicon made it possible to bring new gaming experiences to the Mac platform. With macOS Sonoma, there’s a new Game Mode that prioritizes CPU and GPU usage for your games to provide more consistent frame rates. The Bluetooth sampling rate has been doubled to help improve support for PlayStation and Xbox controllers. 

A new Gaming Porting Toolkit for developer is designed to help significantly reduce the amount of time required to port games from the PC to Mac. More specifically, a “simpler conversion process” is included for shaders and graphics code in the Metal API. 

To put this new gaming focus into perspective, Metal Gear Solid auteur Hideo Kojima announced on the stream that hs is bringing Death Stranding: Director’s Cut to macOS later this year. The developer is also actively working to bring future titles to macOS. 

Apple is focusing on infusing macOS Sonoma with tools to improve your productivity. Stage Manager has been given a makeover to improve upon its somewhat shaky start in previous macOS versions by making it easier and faster to move between apps (and windows). Video overlay allows you to add AR effects to video, like when sharing your screen. These features are available in all conferencing apps, like Zoom, Teams, etc. You can now share passwords and passkeys to a person or a group from your iCloud keychain. Apple says that this feature is end-to-end encrypted for security.

Safari gains a new Profiles feature that allows you to have different profiles with separate favorites, cookies and extensions (among other settings).

Widgets were previously only available in the Notification Center. Now, you can break them out and place them on your desktop where you wish. (In a way, it is reminiscent of OS X from the early 2000's). For example, you could have Weather and Stocks permanently set on your desktop at all times; they then fade slightly from view when you focus on a new app window. 

MacOS Sonoma arrives this fall, when it will leverage all of the hardware capabilities of the new 15-inch MacBook Air, M2 Ultra Mac Studio and M2 Ultra Mac Pro.

Apple is finally finishing its move away from Intel with a new Mac Pro using M2 Ultra. It is configurable with up to 192GB of memory, will start at $6,299, and be available starting next week.

Every Mac Pro will use M2 Ultra, with 24 CPU cores and up to a 76-core GPU. The chassis shares its physical design with the last Intel Xeon Mac Pro, and vertical and rack-mounted options will be available.

Rather than using AfterBurner for ProRes video as an optional card, Apple says the new PC will have the power of seven AfterBurner cards. It can ingest 22 camera feeds direct to Pro Res.

There are 8 Thunderbolt ports, as well as dual Gigabit Ethernet. PCIe Gen 4 expansion cards are an option now, with five slots for video, networking, audio and video IO cards. However, there is no word yet on third-party graphics.

Apple initially said that its transition away from Intel chips would take two years. That was in 2020. While the Mac Pro pushed that into three-year territory, it seems the transition is now complete. Apple has finally moved its entire product line away from Intel.

Apple has added its newest — and most powerful — member to the M2 family of Apple Silicon chips here at WWDC. The new system on a chip, the M2 Ultra, will power an updated Mac Studio, alongside a configuration with M2 Max, as well as a new Mac Pro. This completes the company's transition away from Intel's CPUs.

M2 Ultra connects two M2 Max dies together, and Apple says it's the most powerful chip for a personal computer -- which is a hefty claim.

The M2 Ultra chip will have 24 CPU cores (16 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores) for 20% faster performance than the M1 Ultra, with options for up to 76 GPU cores. RAM will go up to 192GB. These are all increases over the M1 Ultra, which offered 20 CPU cores and was configurable up to a 64-core GPU, a 32-core Neural Engine and 800 GB/s memory bandwidth. The new Studio can handle six Pro Display XDR monitors.

The Mac Studio looks the same as the previous system, but the new chips should provide tangible benefits, especially in multi-core workloads. The M2 Max, which will be in the starting configurations of the Mac Studio, is already available in the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros.

Apple says that the Mac Studio will start at the same $1,999 price as its predecessor, or $1,799 for education customers.

It's been rumored that Apple would release a mixed-reality headset to the public for several years. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has steadily dripped details about the headset in recent months ahead of its expected WWDC 2023 unveil. 

Further fueling the flames of a WWDC announcement is that Ian Hamilton of UploadVR received an invite to the June 5th keynote. This is the first time UploadVR, which focuses primarily on augmented reality and virtual reality technology, has been invited to attend WWDC. Where there's smoke, there's usually fire, and it appears Apple is finally ready for the world to know what it has in store for customers.

So, what exactly should we expect from the headset, which is reportedly called the Reality Pro? Well, it's rumored that the Reality Pro will use dual 4K resolution micro-OLED displays (one for each eye), delivering a combined 8K resolution for the user (around 3,000 pixels per inch).

It's also reported that two Apple M2 SoCs will power the headset. These won't be watered-down chips but will instead be just as potent as the ones you'd find on current-generation MacBook Air and Mac mini computers. This would make the Reality Pro among the most potent standalone mixed reality devices on the market.

Gurman alleges that the Reality Pro will tethered to an external battery pack to trim down the headset's weight to make wearing it for extended periods less fatiguing. However, the cable connecting the battery pack to the headset is reportedly proprietary (it won't use Lightning or USB-C) and the battery pack is hot-swappable.

It's also alleged that the headset will have at least a dozen cameras facing inward and outward. Inward-looking cameras will reportedly track the position of your eyes, while the external cameras will allow you to see the outside world while wearing the headset. It's also possible that Apple will include iris-scanning biometric technology to authenticate purchases made using the Reality Pro.

Because of the robust hardware involved, the Reality Pro reportedly won't need to be tethered to an iPhone -- instead, it will use its own xrOS (Extended Reality Operating System). It will reportedly also come preinstalled with versions of existing iOS apps tailored to function in a 3D environment (i.e., Safari, Mail, Photos, Apple TV+, etc.). As you might expect, Apple is rumored to have partnered with game developers and sports leagues to bring a new level of immersion to those respective platforms.

We must remember that all of the information reported above is speculation primarily from one source: Mark Gurman. However, Gurman is a generally reliable leaker of Apple information and tends to back up his assertions thanks to his well-connected sources. Regardless, we won't have long to see what Apple has been brewing behind closed doors in Cupertino, as June 5th is less than two weeks away.

Apple's transition to its own-designed M-series silicon caused shockwaves throughout the industry that are still reverberating. As it prepares to debut its latest crop of Macs with M2 chips, a highly reputable insider has shared some of the key specs of the first Apple M3 chip, which is claimed to be already in testing. 

Based on his insider sources, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg outlines the upcoming Apple M3 Pro SoC as offering: 12 CPU cores, 18 graphics cores, and 36GB of onboard RAM. The M3 SoC is also claimed to be the first Apple Silicon M-series chip built at 3nm.

According to the report, the first tantalizing glimpses of the Apple M3 Pro have emerged because developers are testing systems based upon this new silicon for third-party app compatibility. This is one of the most common and reliable ways we get a bead on Apple's pre-release processors.

An Apple App Store developer shared their insider info with Gurman regarding what is thought to be the "the base-level version of what will be the M3 Pro coming next year." Remember, that Apple will be likely creating several variants of the M3, just like it did with the prior series, so later we will cover speculation about what an M3 Max and Ultra SoCs could deliver.

Focusing first upon the Apple M3 Pro, Bloomberg's sources indicate that of the 12 CPU cores there will be six high-performance cores (P-cores), accompanied by six power-efficient cores (E-cores). The CPU cores will be accompanied by 18 GPU cores, and 36GB of RAM. 

These numbers represent improvements across the board, but we don't know about any architectural improvements which will undoubtedly be present in the M3 chips. Additionally, the new TSMC N3 process should provide some clock / efficiency benefits, in addition to allowing Apple to pump up the silicon density / core counts in the same chip sizes.

* = pre-launch data from Bloomberg sources

Gurman reckons that the first Apple Macs with M3 chips will arrive around late 2023 / early 2024. His sources say that among the first machines getting this 3nm silicon upgrade will be "M3-based iMacs, high-end and low-end MacBook Pros, and MacBook Air."

We've covered the leaks, and are now moving onto unashamed speculation, so please get your salt shaker ready. Extrapolating the M3 Pro to the 'usual' Max and Ultra SKUs might mean that an M3 Max will sport up to 14 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores, and the M3 Ultra coming with up to 28 CPU cores and over 80 GPU cores.

Of course, Apple hopes the arrival of M3 silicon and new Macs will reanimate lack luster sales. The Apple M2 hasn't been inspirational, and Bloomberg highlights the recent 31% slide in Mac sales as testament to this. However, Apple had done comparatively well in the face of the general macroeconomic malaise until recently. Upgraders skipping a gen look like they will get a lot more cores for the money, more capacious base memory, as well as what could be some tasty architectural tweaks delivered with the M3 generation.

To get a measure of the newest current cream of the crop Apple Macs, please check out our review of the Apple MacBook Pro (2023) with M2 Pro and M2 Max processor options.

Earlier this month, it was discovered that Apple had included a copy of the Bitcoin whitepaper in every release of macOS since the 2018 release of macOS Mojave. However, now that's coming to an end. 9to5Mac found that in the most recent beta release of macOS Ventura (13.4 beta 3), the copy of the paper stashed deep in the system file is gone.

It's unclear why the whitepaper, authored by the presumably pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, ever ended up in shipped versions of macOS in the first place. The document was in a folder within the Image Capture software, including a tool called VirtualScanner.app, which was also removed from the beta. Virtual Scanner II may have been an internal tool for testing scanning without any actual hardware.

Why the Bitcoin whitepaper? It may have been a test document that was never supposed to be seen by the public. Whether it was an in-joke among developers or just an easy file to use will never be known for sure.

If you haven't yet updated, you can still find the document with the following command in Terminal:

open /System/Library/Image\ Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf

Presumably, the document and affiliated application will be removed from the final version of macOS Ventura 13.4.

Whether an in-joke or a vestige of testing, it makes sense that Apple is extracting the document from macOS. After technologist Andy Baio posted on his blog about the document, the press covered it thoroughly (including Tom's Hardware). At the moment, Apple has no business in cryptocurrency (outside of wallet and exchange apps allowed on its App Store), and the PDF emboldened conspiracy theorists claiming that Nakamato was actually Apple co-founder and long-time CEO Steve Jobs.

In November 2021, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that while he personally owns cryptocurrency "as part of a diversified portfolio," the company had no intentions to buy any.

Most Mac owners won't notice the change, but it was a fun gag while it lasted.

It's almost the end of the road for Steam on some Macs. After announcing plans to stop supporting Steam for Windows 7 and 8, Valve today announced it will drop support for Macs running macOS 10.11 El Capitan and 10.12 Sierra. The company made the announcement in a short blog post on its support site.

While the older versions of Windows will get dropped in Jan. 2024, the older macOS versions will get the boot earlier in Sept. 2023. Starting Sept. 1, 2023, the Steam Client will no longer run, and you'll have to update to macOS 10.13 High Sierra in order to play any games that run through Steam on your Mac.

Valve is dropping support for macOS El Capitan and Sierra for the same reasons it's dropping support for Windows 7 and 8: because "core features" of Steam use an embedded version of Chrome, which won't work on these older operating systems. 

"In addition, future versions of Steam will require macOS feature and security updates only present in macOS 10.13 and above," the unsigned blog post reads. 

This change will probably affect far fewer users than the Windows announcement, as Macs aren't nearly as popular for PC gaming. In the March 2023 Steam Hardware Survey, macOS and OS X consisted of just 1.41% of systems running Steam — and of the majority of those Macs were already running macOS 13.2.1 Ventura, which is the latest version. In fact, the oldest version even captured in the survey was macOS 10.15.7, an update to Catalina, and consisted of less than 1% (of the 1.41% of macOS/OS X users). So, yeah — these changes are likely to affect very few people.

Of the Macs in that survey, 54.88% were running systems with Apple Silicon, while the other 45.08% were still on Intel. El Capitan was released in 2015, with Sierra following in 2016. Security updates for those OS versions ended in 2018 and 2019, respectively. 

With free updates each year, there's little reason for Mac owners to not upgrade, as long as their system is still supported. Apple stopped supporting 32-bit applications in 2017, with macOS 10.13 High Sierra, which led to tons of Steam games becoming incompatible with macOS. 

That said, there's probably some people who will be affected by this announcement. But it looks like Valve is ready to modernize, even on this relatively minor platform.

It's a pity that the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo didn't make it outside Apple's ecosystem. Given its latest performance show, the dual Navi 21-based offering from AMD would rival the best graphics cards on the market.

The Radeon Pro W6800X Duo features not one but two Navi 21 (Sienna Cichlid) dies. They communicate with each other via AMD's Infinity Fabric interconnect. Unfortunately, AMD didn't let the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo leverage the full Navi 21 silicon. Instead, the chipmaker disabled 20 CUs (compute units) from each Navi 21, leaving the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo with just 60 CUs or 3,840 SPs (stream processors). Each Navi 21 dies also arrives with 32GB of 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit memory interface and 128MB of Infinity Cache.

AMD produced the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo specifically for the Mac Pro; therefore, the graphics card adopts Apple's proprietary MPX (Mac Pro eXpansion) form factor. The expansion module has no external power connectors, so Apple combines a standard PCIe x16 connector and a custom connector for added power delivery. The Radeon Pro W6800X Duo has a 400W, so a single PCIe x16 expansion slot isn't enough to provide the graphics card with enough juice.

Distinguished extreme overclock Roman "der8auer" Hartung got the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo to work on a standard motherboard with some clever modifications. First, he connected the graphics card to the PCIe expansion slot using a regular PCIe x16 riser cable and subsequently soldered two 12V and two ground wires from his  12VHPWR cable to the Apple connector.

Radeon Pro W6800X Duo Benchmarks

Hartung tested the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo on his latest Z790 platform with the Core i9-13900K and 32GB (2x16GB) of DDR5-6000 C30 memory. He specifically used 3DMark's Time Spy Extreme GT1 benchmark for comparison. Surprisingly, the regular Adrenalin drivers refused to install, implying that the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo isn't intended to work on a non-Apple device. However, Hartung found success with the Apple Boot Camp driver.

The Radeon Pro W6800X Duo delivered 4% higher performance than the Asus Strix GeForce RTX 4080. The RDNA 2 graphics card also outperformed AMD's latest Radeon RX 7900 XTX by 8%. Only the GeForce RTX 4090 could beat the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo. The Ada Lovelace flagship beat the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo by a significant 27% margin.

Radeon Pro W6800X Duo is a graphics card for professional users, but it's always cool to see how the hardware performs in gaming. Apple sells the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo MPX Module for $5,000, so it's not a toy that everyone can acquire to play with. Although Hartung paid slightly less for his Radeon Pro W6800X Duo, kudos to him for buying one to show us how it fares against modern graphics cards, even if it's just a generic gaming benchmark.

When Apple moved to its own silicon, its Mac computers lost a feature called Boot Camp, which let people dual boot between macOS and other operating systems, like Windows. Now, Microsoft is officially sanctioning running Windows 11 on Macs with M1 and M2 processors. Today, it published a new support page entitled "Options for using Windows 11 with Mac computers with Apple M1 and M2 chips."

The options to do so aren't necessarily new — Microsoft is pushing Windows 365 Cloud PCs or by using Parallels Desktop 18 — but it's the first time we've seen Microsoft provide Windows guidance to Mac users since Boot Camp went away. In general, it seems to be pointing it only toward business users.

Windows 365 Cloud PCs are currently available in business and enterprise plans, starting at $31 per user per month. In this case, you can stream Windows 11 to a Mac (or any device) through the software-as-a-service. The benefit of this is that Windows 365 offers nested virtualization, allowing you to run emulators and get full compatibility with features that require virtualization, like running Android apps from the Amazon app store.

Using Parallels Desktop 18 may be more accessible for most people, but the standard edition for home and student use starts at $99.99 a year, with professional and business edition subscription services at $119.99 and $149.99 per year. Microsoft says it's authorized for running Arm versions of Windows 11 Pro and Windows 11 Enterprise.

Windows 11 on Arm has many of the same restrictions on a Mac as it does on PCs designed for Windows. "The Arm version of Windows 11 has limitations that can impact your ability to use various types of hardware, games, and apps, including those that rely on DirectX 12 or OpenGL3.3 or greater," the support page reads. In other words, don't expect to use your M2 Max's GPU cores for gaming with Windows 11 on Arm.

But going the Parallels route also doesn't allow for nested virtualization, so you won't be able to run the Windows Subsystem for Android or Linux (to run Android apps from the Amazon app store or run a GNU environment in Windows), or the Windows Sandbox or Virtualization-based security (VBS) to separate some memory from the OS.

Additionally, 32-bit Arm apps from the Microsoft Store in Windows don't work on Macs with M1 and M2 processors (Apple stopped supporting 32-bit apps with macOS Catalina). But Microsoft says that 32-bit Arm apps "are in the process of being deprecated for all Arm versions of Windows." Ideally, you would run 64-bit Arm apps on Mac, but you can also emulate x64 or x86 apps.

We don't expect that this news means that Microsoft will also make the Arm versions of Windows 11 more available to the public. Microsoft explicitly told me that "Parallels Desktop is currently the only authorized option that supports Windows 11 in VMs on Macs." Parallels has been used to run Windows 11 for quite some time on M-series Macs, however, and installing Windows 11 is a simple part of the app's setup.

It isn't clear why Microsoft is now publishing this page, other than to make it explicit which methods of getting Windows 11 on a Mac are officially sanctioned. But hey, if it helps someone find what they're looking for, we're all for it. It's not as exciting as the prospect of dual-booting macOS and Windows 11 on Arm, though. We can only dream.

Nearly all of Apple’s Macs have transitioned to homegrown Apple Silicon, erasing the company’s dependence on Intel processors. However, there is still one holdout left: the Mac Pro. The current generation Mac Pro was launched in 2019 and hasn’t seen any meaningful updates since then. However, a new version is on the way that will finally make the transition to Apple Silicon. 

Earlier this month, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggested that the new Mac Pro would support modular graphics courtesy of an expansion port on the motherboard. However, Gurman reversed that claim yesterday, suggesting that the Mac Pros “may lack user upgradeable GPUs.” Apple’s current Mac Pro is powered by Intel Xeon processors and AMD Radeon Pro W6000X Series RDNA2 graphics cards. No explanation was given for this pullback from his initial reporting, but that’s not the only bad news.

Gurman further states that the new Mac Pro won’t support external GPUs. If this reporting is accurate, customers should think carefully about their future graphics needs at the time of purchase. In this case, the new Mac Pro’s GPU will allegedly be available in up to a 76-core configuration or double what’s available with the maxed-out M2 Max SoC available on the new 2023 MacBook Pros.

We already knew that the Mac Pro would lack user-replaceable RAM, so adding the GPU to the mix will be a bitter pill to swallow for Apple enthusiasts. However, Mac Pro customers will still have the option to upgrade their SSD storage via two internal slots or external Thunderbolt 4 ports.

The limited upgrade options for the Mac Pro will make for an interesting comparison with the similarly upgrade-averse Mac Studio. The Mac Studio is currently available with M1 Max and M1 Ultra SoCs, and will likely soon receive upgrades to M2 Max and M2 Ultra SoCs. It’s possible that Apple could reserve the high-end 76-core versions of the M2 Ultra for the Mac Pro.   

The Mac Studio starts at $1,999 with a M1 Max SoC ($3,999 with a M1 Ultra), while the Mac Pro starts at $5,999. The Mac Pro costs nearly $54,000 fully decked out with a 28-core Xeon W processor, 1.5B of DDR4 memory, dual Radeon Pro W690X GPUs, an Afterburner card and an 8TB SSD.

When Apple announced its latest M2 Pro- and M2 Max-based MacBook Pros last week, the company boasted about performance gains (up to a 20 percent uplift for the CPU, up to 30 percent for the GPU) and improved battery life. Unfortunately, it appears that one area of performance has taken a step backward for M2 Pro-based MacBook Pros, at least for the $1,999 base model with a 512GB SSD. 

Multiple reports confirm that the SSD on the 2023 14-inch MacBook Pro (M2 Pro, 512GB) is significantly slower than the one found in the 2021 14-inch MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, 512GB). The first word about the performance downgrade came from @ZONEofTECH, who compared the two systems. The M2 Pro system scored 2929 MBps write and 2703 MBps read using the AJA System Test Lite benchmark. Its M1 Pro-based predecessor scored 3450 Mbps on the write test and 4081 MBps on the read test.

In his tweet, @ZONEofTECH opined, "Apple is likely using single SSD modules again (like the base 256GB M2 Air and M2 MacBook Pro)."

Further confirmation came this afternoon from Mac-centric website 9to5Mac, which also noticed slower performance with the new base model MacBook Pro. The publication used the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test on the 2023 MacBook Pro (M2 Pro, 512GB) and recorded writes of 3154.4 MBps and reads of 2973.4 MBps. For comparison, the 2021 MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, 512GB) on hand put up higher numbers at 3950.8 MBps and 4900.3 MBps, respectively.

Given the performance degradation, 9to5Mac decided to open the case on the new MacBook Pro to see if the chip configuration had changed compared to the previous generation. "Sure enough, where the 512GB M1 Pro MacBook Pro had two NAND chips visible on the front of the motherboard and another two on the back, the M2 Pro MacBook Pro had only one visible on the front of the board," the publication wrote. "There is likely a second NAND chip directly opposing this, as the M1 had."

According to iFixit, the 2021 MacBook Pro's 512GB SSD is split among four 128GB NAND chips. Its 2023 MacBook Pro counterpart instead uses two 256GB NAND chips in parallel. That could account for the performance decrease for the new MacBook Pro.

Interestingly, this performance downgrade extends to the 256GB variant of the 2023 Mac mini with the M2 SoC. When Apple announced the M2- and M2 Pro-based Mac minis last week, the company also reduced prices for the base model. The M1 Mac mini had a starting price of $699, while the new M2 Mac mini dropped that price to just $599.

Now, we know how Apple was able to achieve at least some of those cost savings: it skimped out on storage performance. The 2020 Mac mini (M1, 256GB) uses two 128GB NAND chips in parallel and achieves 2733 MBps write and 2854 MBps read with the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, according to Twitter user @t4bl3r0n3. Conversely, the 2023 Mac mini (M2, 256GB) sees its results roughly halve to 1431 MBps and 1482 MBps, respectively. Brandon Geekabit also confirmed these storage performance drops in a YouTube video.

If all of this sounds familiar, Apple performed the same SSD switcheroo with the base version of the MacBook Air (M2, 256GB). Using slower SSDs on the 2023 MacBook Pro and 2023 Mac mini could impact file transfer performance and overall system performance. In addition, any applications that exhaust the available physical memory would need to fall back to the SSD for virtual memory. The Mac mini would likely be impacted more by paging out to the SSD, given that the base 256GB storage configuration only comes with 8GB of RAM.

Apple's decision to lower storage performance in exchange for a $100 price cut on the entry-level Mac mini is somewhat understandable. However, the step backward in storage performance on the $1,999 MacBook Pro is less defensible. For customers paying top dollar for a "pro level" machine, you wouldn't expect storage performance to take such a dramatic hit.

A ghost from the past emerged on a Reddit thread the other day. A user has managed to get his hands on a Radeon Pro prototype that leverages the entire Vega 20 die.

AMD has produced many graphics cards and accelerators based on the Vega 20 silicon. But only the more exclusive and niche models came with the fully-enabled Vega 20 die, which houses 64 CUs, equivalent to 4,096 shading units. The small list includes the 2018-era Radeon Instinct MI60, which targets the AI and deep learning market, plus the Radeon Pro Vega II and Radeon Pro Vega II Duo, which wound up in select Mac Pro machines. Sadly, the retail market got to reap the full benefits of what Vega 20 had to offer.

The mysterious Radeon Pro from the Reddit thread sports the same aesthetics as the Radeon Pro V420, a professional-grade graphics card that also never made it to the market. Photographs of the PCB reveal the big Vega 20 silicon, which measures 331 mm², with four stacks of high-speed HBM2 memory. In addition, the prototype features one 8-pin PCIe power connector and a 6-pin PCIe power connector, a suitable configuration for up to 300W.

Since it's unreleased hardware, GPU-Z had difficulty figuring out the Radeon Pro graphics card. However, according to the software, it has the same device ID as the Radeon Instinct MI60. In addition, the utility reports SK hynix as the manufacturer of the HBM2 memory, but in reality it's Samsung.

According to the owner, the Radeon Pro graphics card comes with two different sets of firmware. The primary firmware has a higher power limit with 32GB of 1,600 Mbps memory, whereas the second firmware features a more modest power limit with a memory quota of 31.984GB. In addition, the graphics card sports the typical blower-style cooler, which looks pretty good and even has a bit of RGB lighting to it. The Redditor reported temperatures less than 80 degrees Celsius
under load, with the cooling fan hitting speeds of 3,800 RPM. For reference, the cooling fan has a maximum rotational speed of 5,000 RPM.

The Radeon Pro prototype hits 1,700 MHz, so it's well within the range of the other Vega 20-powered SKUs. The Radeon Pro Vega II tops out at 1,720 MHz, and only the Radeon Instinct MI60 flaunts a 1,800 MHz boost clock speed.

Performance could be better, in part because it's a prototype and needs proper software-level support. As a result, the Radeon Pro graphics card doesn't perform 100% during real-world tests. Nonetheless, it delivered a double-precision performance of up to 6.4 TFLOPs, around 14% slower than the Radeon Instinct MI60.

It remains a mystery why AMD backpedaled and didn't launch the Radeon Pro V420. It would have been a very competitive professional graphics card at the time.

The first reviews of Apple's refreshed MacBook Pro and Mac Mini are here, and, with them, we're getting to see impressions of Apple's new M2 Pro and M2 Max processors. The design of the machines are effectively the same (minus some port changes on the Mac Mini), so the big changes are all in the silicon.

While we still hope to get our hands on the new processors to run them through their paces, we're pouring over the existing results to see what reviewers think of the new chips. We're particularly interested in two things: performance and battery life. That's not to say the new system's designs aren't important — I own an M1 Pro MacBook Pro and like it very much, minus the notch — but we're focusing on what's been changed and improved.

The general consensus seems to be that the new chips bring some solid performance upgrades, especially for those looking to upgrade from older Intel-based systems.

The M2 Pro can be found in all three of Apple's new computers: the Mac Mini, 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros. The base model has a 10-core CPU and 16-core GPU, but most of the reviews out there have a step up: the full 12-core CPU and 19-core GPU. The 16-core neural engine is the same across both chips. Some reviewers saw the M2 Pro in the laptop, while others saw it in the Mac Mini.

The M2 Max is only in the laptops: the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros. It starts with a 12-core CPU and 30-core GPU, and the upgrade nets you a 38-core GPU. Both have a 16-core neural engine.

We've collated some scores from our sister sites Laptop Mag and Tom's Guide, as well as some of our prior review data on the 2021 models.

The performance scores those sites have published are fascinating. The two CPUs both have 12 cores, but the M2 Pro has 32GB of RAM and the M2 Max has 64GB. The other big difference is the GPU: The M2 Pro has a 19-core GPU, while the M2 Max has a 38-core GPU.

I was initially surprised to see that these chips produced the scores they did in Geekbench 5, with the M2 Pro slightly ahead of the M2 Max. My thoughts are that these scores are pretty close, and Apple should be using the same CPU cores here. While the M2 Max's 64GB of RAM should be helping a bit, these may be within standard error. It's also possible that, because the M2 Max has so much going on on the chip, it may have been hampered slightly in multi-core when those GPU cores weren't being used. We're hoping to get our hands on the hardware soon to see what we can learn about it.

On battery life, it appears the M2 Pro-based machine is on par with the 2021 model, while the M2 Max machine took a surprising dive. Of course, battery life is going to depend on what you're doing with the device. 

In Rise of the Tomb Raider, the Max shows its might with the highest frame rate at 1920 x 1200. Keep in mind that this is an older game, and not one designed for Apple Silicon or Metal. The M2 Max is also playable at 2024 x 1964 at 34 fps.

Other New Features

As an M1 Pro owner, the most appealing features are the upgraded Wi-Fi and HDMI standards. The M2 chips bump up these laptops to Wi-Fi 6E, HDMI 2.1, and Bluetooth 5.3. Will I use these all? Probably not, but I love to future-proof (and I do have a Wi-Fi 6E router).

HDMI 2.1 means you can even push 8K monitors at 60 Hz, which is overkill for most but may fit some creative workflows. For most people, the benefit is that you can get 4K at more than 60 fps. Apple claims you can reach 240 Hz, but you may have a hard time finding a monitor that actually supports that. 

We hope to get our hands on these laptops soon to see for ourselves, but initial impressions are good. It sounds like Apple's second round of pro-grade Apple Silicon can hang with other high-end chips. If the new MacBooks have the same great displays, keyboards, and speakers, these will be great for Mac users willing to cough up the cash (and deal with the notch).

Despite reports that M2 Pro and M2 Max-based products were delayed yet again, Apple today announced the launch of new MacBook Pros and Mac Minis using the new SoCs. The M2 Pro and M2 Max are more powerful versions of the M2 launched last year in the MacBook Air.

As Apple explains, the M2 Pro “scales up” the M2, giving customers 10 or 12 CPU cores and up to 19 GPU cores. The 12-core configuration has eight high-performance cores and four efficiency cores. For comparison, the M2 in the MacBook Air comes with an 8-core CPU and either an 8- or 10-core GPU. The M2 Pro can also be paired with up to 32GB of unified memory.

Apple claims that the 12-core M2 Pro is up to 20 percent faster than the 10-core version of the M1 Pro in multi-threaded apps. With the new 19-core GPU (three more than the M1 Pro’s GPU), performance is up to 20 percent faster. 

For a real-world example, Apple says that the 16-inch MacBook with the M2 Pro is 25 percent faster than its M1 Pro counterpart while compiling in Xcode. It’s also allegedly 2.5x faster than the legacy 16-inch MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i9 processor. In addition, image processing in Photoshop is reportedly 40 percent faster than the M1 Pro and 80 percent faster than the Core i9. 

The M2 Max is the flagship SoC and has the same 12-core CPU as the M2 Pro but doubles the maximum number of GPU cores to 38. Performance is further enhanced by doubling unified memory bandwidth to 400 GB/s compared to 200 GB/s for the M2 Pro. As a result, graphics performance is up to 30 percent faster than the preceding M1 Max. While the M2 Pro can be paired with a maximum of 32GB of memory, the M2 Max triples that figure to 96GB. 

The M2 Pro and M2 Max are built on a 5nm process node, packing 40 billion transistors and 67 billion transistors, respectively. The two chips also share a 16-core Neural Engine capable of executing nearly 16 trillion operations per second (a 40 percent uplift compared to the previous generation). Other features include an enhanced version of the Secure Enclave security platform and a beefed-up media engine.

The M2 Pro is available in refreshed versions of the Mac mini, 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro. The M2 Max is only available on the new MacBook Pros. All of the M2 Pro- and M2 Max-equipped Macs ship on January 24th.

Apple has quietly refreshed its 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros with new M2 Pro and M2 Max processors, promising longer battery life and, on the M2 Max versions, up to 96GB of RAM. The new laptops are available for pre-order today, and will launch on January 24.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro will start at $1,999, while the 16-incher will begin at $2,499. Those prices are with the M2 Pro, and prices will scale as you go up to the M2 Max and add more RAM and storage.

Apple didn't announce the laptops in a planned event, but rather subtly dropped a new video and a press release.

While the chassis isn't changing at all, there are some serious changes beneath the hood. The M2 Pro model will start at a 10-core CPU and 16-core GPU (it will go up to 12-core CPU and 19-core GPU), 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD storage. The M2 Max laptops will start with a 12-core CPU and 30-core GPU (it goes up to a 38-core GPU), 32GB of memory and 1TB of storage.

The M2 Pro models have 200 GB/s memory bandwidth, twice of what the normal M2 allows. Apple claims The MacBook Pro with M2 Pro is 20% faster than the previous generation device at rendering in Motion, 25% faster in compiling in XCode and up to 40% in processing images in Photoshop.

Meanwhile, the M1 Max gets 400 GB/s of unified memory, doubling what M2 Pro offers, and goes up to 96GB of unified RAM, which Apple says makes it a graphics powerhouse. Apple claims color grading in DaVinci Resolve is 30% faster than last generation, and that rendering effects in Cinema 4D is as much as 30% faster.

Apple has moved wireless from 6 to 6E, and its "more advanced" HDMI port can support one display at 8K (at 60 Hz) or 4K (at 240 Hz). The laptops can support up to four external displays (one through each Thunderbolt 4 port and HDMI).

Among the parts that aren't changing are the Liquid Retina XDR display, 1080p FaceTime HD camera, six-speaker audio and MagSafe 3.

In addition to the MacBook Pro laptops, Apple is launching the Mac Mini with M2 and M2 Pro, starting at $599 with M2 and $1,299 with M2 Pro. The latter gets four Thunderbolt 5 ports and can support an 8K display. It's also getting Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.

Apple is reportedly planning to add touchscreens to its MacBooks, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. It's a seismic change in the Mac world, as Apple has long held that touchscreens in clamshell laptops don't go together.

According to the report, the company has engineers "actively engaged" in working with touch, and that it is considering possibly releasing its first touchscreen Mac in 2025, in the form of a MacBook Pro refresh with an OLED screen.

At the moment, Gurman claims that Apple is planning for that MacBook Pro to keep its clamshell design with trackpad and keyboard, and that touch could come to more models down the line. Gurman's sources say the screen would work with both touch input and gestures, similar to Apple's tablets and phones.

OLED would also be a big move. Apple's 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros use Mini LED technology, but haven't moved to OLED, which can be found with touch on many Windows notebooks. Gurman claims OLED will also come to the iPad Pro in 2024. 

In theory, adding touch should be quite a bit of work, as macOS would also need to be retooled for larger touch targets. But some of the work is done: Apple already allows developers to put iPhone and iPad apps on Mac, so those should be great examples of how to develop other software (In fact, some of the apps feel awkward using a traditional touchpad, because of their touch-first design).

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs railed against touchscreens. "Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical," Jobs said in 2010. "It gives great demo but after a short period of time, you start to fatigue and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. It doesn't work. It's ergonomically terrible." Current CEO Tim Cook has also said touch didn't work with a clamshell laptop. If you want touch, Apple has maintained, get an iPad.

But as Apple designs its laptops around its own silicon, it seems the company may be reconsidering some of those previous ideas. If Gurman's sources are right and a touchscreen Mac ships, it would offer choices that many of the best ultrabooks running Windows have had for years.

Apple has previously offered a tiny touch screen — the Touch Bar, on the 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pro (it still lives on in the smaller size), but that never gained a huge following.

Apple has one more computer to convert to Apple Silicon: the Mac Pro. And it sounds like it will be more familiar than we expected. According to Mark Gurman's "Power On" newsletter for Bloomberg, an upcoming refresh will appear identical to the 2019 version.

To some, that's a bit of a shame, as many of Apple's designs featuring its own silicon have been evolving. But more interesting to us here at Tom's Hardware is what's going on inside. Previous Bloomberg reports suggested that a high-end Mac Pro with 48 CPU cores and 152 graphics clusters was languishing, and now Gurman says it has been canceled. Instead, he writes that Apple will release the Mac Pro with the M2 Ultra, an evolution of the M1 Ultra found in the Mac Studio.

Apple Silicon chips have all had RAM onboard, and that makes for an odd setup for the Mac Pro. Gurman's newsletter suggests that unlike the Intel Xeon-based model from 2019, the upcoming Mac Pro won't have upgradeable RAM. That being said, he reports that there will be two SSD storage slots and room for "graphics, media and networking cards."

It's extremely interesting to see the suggestion that graphics cards will be modular here, as Apple has been relying on its own integrated graphics on all Apple Silicon devices. (Apple claimed the Mac Studio with M1 Ultra rivals the RTX 3090, though independent testing suggested that wasn't the case, especially in gaming.) I suppose it's possible that somewhere, Apple is writing drivers for AMD or Nvidia's cards. Or it could be using something like the Apple Afterburner card, which it introduced with the 2019 Mac Pro for Video editing in the ProRes and ProRes RAW codecs. The existing Mac Pros are based on Intel Xeon chips and work with AMD Radeon Pro graphics (the most recent are W6000X cards designed exclusively for Apple's tower, bringing AMD's RDNA 2 graphics in 2021).

When Apple released the Mac Studio, it said in its announcement video that the beefed-up Mac Mini wasn't replacing the Mac Pro. There will be a question, however, of which to get if upgradeability is limited anyway, especially if the Mac Studio gets a bump to M2 Ultra. But it's likely that the Mac Pro will cost far more than the Studio currently does.

In other Mac news, Gurman reports that the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, some of the best ultrabooks, will get spec bumps with M2 Pro and M2 Max chips in the first half of the year, and that there's still a planned 15-inch MacBook Air sometime in 2023.

The iPad, Apple Watch and AirPods are likely to see small bumps, with no news for Apple TV hardware. Some of this is due to Apple's focus on announcing a mixed-reality headset, possibly called Reality Pro, ahead of its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, reportedly to launch in the fall.

When Apple introduced its first M1 system-on-chip for PCs in mid-2020, it said that it would transition all of its Macs to its Apple Silicon SoCs in about two years. By now, the company should have introduced its Mac Pro workstation featuring its own processor. But that hasn't happened, and it is actually unclear when this desktop will emerge, according to a Bloomberg report. 

At first, Apple planned to build its new Mac Pro around its M1 Ultra dual-chip processor, but that device ended up in the most powerful Mac Studio desktop, and the company scrapped plans to produce a Mac Pro on its M1 generation. Eventually, the company decided to use its dual-chip M2 Ultra and quad-chip M2 Extreme processors for its top-of-the-range workstation.  

The M2 Ultra is said to feature 24 general-purpose cores and 76 graphics clusters, whereas the M2 Extreme is projected to feature 48 general-purpose CPU cores as well as 152 graphics clusters. Furthermore, the M2 Ultra is reportedly designed to support at least 192 GB of memory, so expect the M2 Extreme version to support up to 384 GB of DRAM. 

But it looks like Apple has scrapped plans to produce M2 Extreme processor because of complexity and costs. A Mac Pro based on the alleged M2 Extreme processor would cost around $10,000 and would be an extremely niche product that may not be worth development costs, engineering resources, and production bandwidth, Bloomberg says. 

Yet, the Mac Pro is supposed to be an extremely capable workstation for a relatively small niche market. A key thing that should be kept in mind about Apple's Mac Pro is its audience. While the Bloomberg report vaguely mentions demanding users like "photographers, editors, and programmers," Mac Pro is much more than a powerful PC. Mac Pro systems are often used for cinema and video production, and such workloads are getting more demanding as resolutions and color depths increase. And such systems not only need performance, but the also versatility and flexibility of a desktop PC, as they need to install a variety of add-in-cards, accelerators, advanced storage devices, and so on. To add these boards, a new Mac Pro would need advanced I/O, which is somewhat of a departure from Apple's SoC ideology that entails a very high level of integration.  

One of the features that Apple's Mac Pro has — and something that the company's other systems lack — is upgradeability. A user of previous Mac Pros would often buy the tower, then install a new graphics card, add more memory, or Apple's Afterburner accelerator. It is unclear whether an Apple Silicon-based desktop would be upgradeable, but from what we see with the Apple Studio machine, the company is reluctant to offer such capability even to its professional customers.  

It is noteworthy that in addition to switching its Mac Pro to its own Apple Silicon processors the company is mulling transferring its production and final assembly from China and the U.S. to Vietnam. This will somewhat lower its costs, though given the price of Mac Pro, this will hardly have any difference for end users. 

One of the things that the Bloomberg report does not touch upon is when the new Mac Pro is set to hit the market. So far, Apple has only introduced its M2 SoC, and it yet has to roll out its M2 Pro and M2 Max SoCs. Meanwhile, multi-chip M2 Ultra and potential M2 Extreme are typically introduced months after single-chip SoCs, which means these processors probably won't arrive until mid-2023 at the earliest.

Apple of course does not comment on its future plans, though it is about time for the company to offer an upgraded version of its Mac Pro, as the current-generation machine was launched in 2019.

Significant news arrives from Asahi Linux, the project that’s attempting, and actually succeeding, to get an operating system that’s not macOS running natively on Apple Silicon Macs. It has hit an important milestone: a graphics driver that brings work-in-progress OpenGL 2 support to the distro. Meanwhile, the M-chips’ journey toward mainstream Linux support took a step forward too.

The new driver, which hasn’t passed OpenGL conformance tests and is very much an alpha, can run desktop environments such as Gnome and Plasma with hardware acceleration. The developers are still working on the driver, bringing in more OpenGL 2 features and a planned Vulkan expansion in the works. “We estimated that we could ship working OpenGL 2 drivers much sooner than a working Vulkan 1.0 driver, and we wanted to get hardware accelerated desktops into your hands as soon as possible. For the most part, those desktops use OpenGL, so supporting OpenGL first made more sense to us than diving into the Vulkan deep end,” reads a blog post authored by Alyssa Rosenzweig and Asahi Lina.

The driver is an opt-in release, meaning you’ll have to install it on your Linux-Mac using the pacman package manager. It’s unclear at the moment whether the driver can run Crysis, but Quake 3 in 4K at 60fps appears to be within its capabilities, and it runs desktops at the same speed.

In other news, support for M-series chips in the mainline Linux kernel also saw an important improvement this week, with an Apple Silicon CPU frequency-scaling driver being merged into the Linux kernel’s 6.2 release. 

Hector Martin, Asahi Linux’s lead developer, explained on kernel.org: “This driver implements CPU frequency scaling for Apple Silicon SoCs, including M1, M1 Max/Pro/Ultra, and M2. Each CPU cluster has its own register set, and frequency management is fully automated by the hardware; the driver only has to write one register. There is boost frequency support, but the hardware will only allow their use if only a subset of cores in a cluster are in non-deep-idle. Since we don't support deep idle yet, these frequencies are not achievable, but the driver supports them. They will remain disabled in the device tree until deep idle is implemented, to avoid confusing users. This driver does not yet implement the memory controller performance state tuning that usually accompanies higher CPU p-states. This will be done in a future patch.”