Apple’s latest MacBook Air, Mac Studio put its new chips to good work

Apple’s M4 chip, which debuted in the iPad Pro last year, has made its way to the entire portfolio of Macs, bringing improvements in processing and graphics as well as AI.

We’re taking a look here at the changes to the new MacBook Air models as well as the highest-end desktop computers.

There wasn’t much about the M3 MacBook Air from last year that needed improving, but here we are. This is essentially the same machine, but with a more powerful M4 chip and a more sensible amount of memory (16GB) as the baseline. Bottom line is that nobody should be leaping to replace a 2024 MacBook Air with this new one, but if you’re looking to upgrade from an older machine, this is a slightly more attractive prospect.

The port selection is still limited to just two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4, and the display still has that silly notch around the webcam, but those are my only complaints about the MacBook Air. It’s light, it looks great, the M4 tears through general work tasks and creative projects such as 4K video files, and will last several work days without needing a charge. It comes in a new “sky blue” colour, but it appears to have been created by the same silver-obsessed designer who developed the colours for the most recent iPads. This is a silver that you would only ever describe as blue when placed on top of a more yellow-tinted silver.

The new laptops start at $1700 for the 13-inch and $2100 for the 15-inch, which on paper is $100 less than last year’s models, but that cheapest option comes with a bit of a catch.

The $1700 device has 16GB of unified memory, 256GB of storage, and an M4 chip with a 10-core central processing unit (CPU) for general processing and 8-core graphics processing unit (GPU) for graphics. All other models have a 10-core GPU, meaning slightly reduced graphical performance on that cheapest model.

The MacBook Air can now connect to two external screens, while open.

That’s not a bad compromise if price is the No.1 concern, but paying $150 more for the 10-core GPU is going to be a smart move for longevity’s sake. Considering last year’s model launched with only 8GB of RAM, you’re getting a significantly better machine for only a $50 bump.

Going a little bit further, upgrading the base model to 512GB of storage automatically upgrades the chip as well, meaning that for $2000 you get a 13-inch machine with a 10-core GPU and half a terabyte of storage, which stacks up very well against previous years. This is the configuration I tested, though in the 15-inch variant.

You can go wild and create a machine with 32GB of memory and 2TB of storage at $3900. Most people won’t need to, but it means you have an alternative to the MacBook Pro in a thin and light design. Thanks to the M4, all MacBook Airs can now connect to two external displays while using the built-in screen as well.

The MacBook Air is the default Apple computer for a lot of people, and though Apple notably doesn’t offer a new less-expensive model (in previous years it’s tended to hold on to one version with an older chip), the current version is so good that most people will never need to look at a MacBook Pro or a separate desktop machine. For those who use iPhones and other Apple products, MacOS has also become a no-brainer thanks to seamless settings sharing and copy-paste between devices, as well as features like Apple Intelligence.

The Air is a great machine for gaming too, with console-like performance. Running Rise of the Tomb Raider at maximum graphical settings and native resolution, the M4 managed a locked 30 frames per second without breaking a sweat. Bumping down to medium settings at Full-HD resolution got me 60fps, in all but the most effects-filled situations.

In the desktop space, Apple’s line-up of Mac Minis and Mac Studios presents a much less-clear array of choices than its MacBook Airs and Pros. The latest entry-level Mac Studio comes equipped with the beefy M4 Pro Max chip. But if you want to get really extreme with the specs, you’ll have to go for a model with the new M3 Ultra, which is what I’ve been testing.

The choice here is a confusing one on the surface, but it comes down to the workloads you’re targeting. You can configure the M4 Max with up to a 16-core CPU, a 40-core GPU and a 16-core neural engine, plus up to 128GB of unified memory that has bandwidth of more than 500GB per second. That’s a huge amount of capability for practically any creative work, and will cost between $3500 and $9350.

So why are the M3 Ultra versions more expensive? Especially since that chip has a 3 in the name instead of a 4? The chip is based on the older silicon, meaning the M4 Max may technically have a very slight advantage when it comes to single-core performance. But the M3 Ultra allows for a massive increase in core count – the number of processing units, which allow it to run more tasks simultaneously.

The top-end M3 Ultra has a 32-core CPU, 80-core GPU and 32-core neural engine, which you’ll note is double what the M4 Max is capable of. It has support for up to a stunning 512GB of memory, a fourfold increase, which has a bandwidth greater than 800GB per second. This is a machine that will cost between $7000 and $22,000.

The Mac Studio is the ultimate machine for creative work, but deciding which model to buy is not straightforward.

Do most creative professionals need such a ludicrous build? Of course not. But this is Apple staking a claim to the same kind of workstations Nvidia is eyeing – desktop machines that require immense local AI power and huge GPU compute across as many cores as possible.

If you’re working with large language models with billions of parameters, or rendering 3D scenes or 8K video, or running a DNA sequencer (which is always an example Apple specifically calls out for some reason), this is a machine that can do it incredibly quickly without needing a connection to the cloud or a server, without even taking much room on your desk or making a lot of noise.

Benchmarks would indicate there are no commercial machines on the market that can touch the M3 Ultra for multicore processing. Even though the version with M4 Max isn’t nearly as powerful, it’s way more power efficient than Windows chips, including the latest Ryzens and Intels.

Externally, the Mac Studio is unchanged. It has an SD card reader and two USB-C ports out front (supporting Thunderbolt 5 on the M3 Ultra models), and on the back are four Thunderbolt 5 ports, a 10 gigabit Ethernet, two USB-As and an HDMI 2.1.

Of course, you’d never buy a machine like this for gaming, but you might like to stretch all those GPU cores for some fun after hours.

In my testing, the results are impressive, but as always with Mac games, it will depend on how they’ve been built and optimised. I set the demanding No Man’s Sky to high settings at 1440p with a 120 frames per second cap, and it achieved it very well with no further tweaking necessary.

At ultra settings and no cap, I got a fluctuation between 80 and 170, but tweaking the resolution scale or MetalFX settings helped. Most other native Mac games I tested had no trouble staying at 144 frames per second, with the notable exception of Baldur’s Gate 3, which at the highest settings didn’t like to get above 100.

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