The refreshed Mac Studio is here, and it appears that Mark Gurman's reports were accurate once again. The system was updated with the M4 Max and the M3 Ultra SoCs - and once again, that is not a typo. For whatever reason, Apple refused to fit the Mac Studio with an M4-flavored Ultra SoC, instead settling for an undeniably confusing product lineup. The M4 Max, with up to 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores, will undoubtedly have the upper hand in single-core performance by as much as 30%, whereas the M3 Ultra will have superior multithreaded and GPU performance, courtesy of its 32 CPU cores and 80 GPU cores. Moreover, the price gap between the base M3 Ultra and M4 Max SKUs will remain the same, despite the former being based on an older generation.

However, the M3 Ultra will allow the system to be configured with up to a whopping 512 GB of unified memory, with memory bandwidth of 819 GB/s. While that number is not particularly mind-bending for a workstation-class system, the fact that the M3 Ultra's 80-core GPU will have access to over half a terabyte of fast-enough memory is a game changer for select few ultra-high-end workloads. Of course, this amount of VRAM is not intended for the average Joe, but the Ultra SoCs were always meant to be a halo product. The M3 Ultra variant can also be equipped with up to 16 TB of storage - at Apple's ridiculous pricing, of course. Needless to say, Apple's performance claims are as vague as always, and interested customers will have to wait for independent reviews and benchmarks to make sense of Apple's confusing SoC strategy with the new Mac Studio.In terms of connectivity, the Mac Studio shines. The ports array includes dual USB-A, four Thunderbolt 5, HDMI 2.1, 10G Ethernet, and an audio jack on the rear. On the front, the M3 Ultra variant gets dual Thunderbolt 5 ports, whereas the M3 Max gets dual USB-C ports. Both variants get an SD card slot, of course. Wi-Fi 6e and Bluetooth 5.3 take care of wireless networking - no Wi-Fi 7 for either variant, which is rather disappointing. Prices start at $1,999 for the binned M4 Max variant with 36 GB of memory, and $3,999 for the binned M3 Ultra variant with 96 GB of memory. The highest-end variant with the full M3 Ultra SoC, 512 GB of memory, and 16 TB storage costs a cool $14,099. A more sensible variant would perhaps be the one with an unbinned M3 Ultra SoC, 256 GB of unified memory, and a 2 TB SSD commanding a somewhat more reasonable $7,499 price tag.