Apple's new Mac mini and Mac Studio are shipping, focusing on edge AI

Apple's new Mac mini and Mac Studio began shipping on Tuesday local time. Apple emphasized to business buyers that purchasing new machines is cheaper than renting cloud computing power. The new machines support on-device AI, capable of handling high-intensity tasks like coding locally, allowing users to avoid purchasing tokens from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others. Apple's Chief Hardware Officer, Johnny Srouji, stated: Buying the device and placing it on the desk is a one-time investment, and the product offers excellent cost-performance ratio, without needing to pay per token; the machine can be used indefinitely.

At the launch event, Apple demonstrated four Mac Studios working together to run a trillion-parameter AI model, searching for and fixing graphic code vulnerabilities, with the group of devices powered by a single wall outlet. The Mac Studio equipped with the M5 Ultra chip can be configured with up to 512GB of unified memory, supporting the formation of a cluster with multiple devices sharing a memory pool via RDMA. After networking four units, the distributed AI inference speed can reach up to three times that of a single machine. Apple claims that the underlying design philosophy of various chips is consistent, and on-device AI models can be deployed on high-end Mac Studios while also being compatible with entry-level iPhones and iPads.

IDC analyst Linn Huang's data shows that Apple holds about 4.6% of the enterprise desktop market share, while Windows accounts for 91.3%. NVIDIA and various PC manufacturers are launching new desktops to compete directly with the new Macs, and these new Windows machines are expected to be the focus of Microsoft's Windows event in San Francisco next month.