Apple's New Mac Studio and Mac Mini Go on Sale, Spotlighting On-Device AI Demand

Apple (AAPL) began retail sales of its new Mac Studio, powered by M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips, on September 22, alongside a Mac mini featuring the new M6 chip. The Mac Studio, which Apple unveiled on August 25 and markets as its most powerful Mac, is drawing strong interest for on-device AI capabilities. The Mac Studio's 512GB unified memory configuration offers 1.2TB/s of bandwidth, enough to locally load and fine-tune large data sets. A 96GB memory, 1TB storage M5 Ultra model is sold out on Apple's website, with delivery pushed to mid-to-late November, while stores hold only two or three units, staff said. The M6 Mac mini, priced around 8,500 yuan ($1,190) after Chinese subsidies for the 24GB/512GB version, is the volume seller. Consumers increasingly cite rising cloud API costs as a reason to run large models locally, per local media reports.