Last week, Apple surprisingly launched a new Mac mini with the M6 chip and a Mac Studio with the new M5 Ultra chip. It’s a bit of a surprise, since it was literally two weeks before the Apple Event. Usually, Macs get announced in October or November, after the iPhone. But there’s a good reason for Apple doing it now.
Apparently, according to The Information, Apple saw an unusually strong enterprise appetite for AI hardware. This also explains why most of Apple’s marketing for these new Macs and chips is focused on AI.
The AI-related boom in the Mac Mini and Mac Studio is the sole reason for launching these early. This was pretty noticeable because typically new Macs are available the same day or a day or two later, but most Mac Mini and Mac Studio SKUs aren’t shipping until the end of September.
While Apple might be “behind” in AI, they are right where they want to be in AI hardware.
Coincidentally, this is also part of the reason for Apple raising prices on everything
Apple has raised prices on everything except the iPhone and Apple Watch so far this year, and the surge in Mac Studio prices is a major reason for it. Seeing as so many are buying them for AI-related tasks, that’s exactly why prices have been going up. Everyone is buying as much RAM as they can, driving up prices, all so they can use it in data centers and AI servers.
Prices for these new Macs went up pretty substantially. While the Mac Mini only technically went up by $100, Apple did bring back the 256GB storage model that they had already discontinued on the M5 model. So, technically, it was a $300 bump to the starting price here. On the Mac Studio, it costs $4,000 to upgrade from 96GB to 256GB of RAM. I really don’t want to see the price of the 512GB model when that comes in October.
The post Apple Launched New Macs Early Because Enterprise AI Demand Was Too Strong to Wait appeared first on Android Headlines.
