Which Mac Desktop Should You Buy? Apple's Mac desktops have become some of the most sought-after computers this year, driven by surging interest in agentic AI. Here's which model to buy depending on your use case. MacBooks have taken most of the spotlight away from Mac desktops in recent years. Now that mobile performance and battery life have improved so much, there's less of a reason to buy a desktop that chains you to your office. But Mac desktops are getting a resurgence.

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The new fourth-gen Mac Studio unexpectedly dropped with a bang in August 2026. That's a pretty odd month for a Mac-related product announcement, but per The Information, enterprise customers demanding more capable machines for running local AI models forced Apple's hand. Meanwhile, the M5 Ultra runs to 36 CPU cores, an 80-core GPU and up to 512GB of memory from 5,499, though that build isn't due to release until late October. Against the M3 Ultra, Apple is pitching the M5 Ultra as a chip with up to 4.3 times the AI performance, 1.8 times the graphics, and 1.3 times the CPU, along with storage up to twice as fast and Wi-Fi 7 from Apple's N1 networking chip. The cores have changed shape, too, with the usual performance-efficiency split giving way to so-called "super" cores running alongside performance cores.

The Mac Studio can run frontier-level AI language models locally. It's only a preview of what's to come. There are cheaper AI boxes out there. The Mac Studio has a new calling in life. For awhile, it seemed like overkill for just about anyone, regardless of profession.

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