M4 Mac Studio: What to Expect from Apple's Upcoming High-End Desktop

Late last month, Apple unveiled the first Macs with the M4 chip: the MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac mini. That's about half the Mac lineup, leaving the MacBook Air, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro. Of the two remaining desktops, the Mac Studio is by far the more popular, though it's a bit dated, still sporting the M2 Max and M2 Ultra. Here's everything we want from the next Mac Studio, even though it's a little lightweight.

Faster connectivity

With the M4 Pro Mac mini, as well as the more expensive MacBook Pros, Apple introduced Thunderbolt 5, which delivers speeds of up to 120Gbps, three times the theoretical maximum of Thunderbolt 4. Apple will likely bring Thunderbolt 5 ports to the Mac Studio, too.

Here's how Apple describes Thunderbolt 5:

The M4 Pro and M4 Max MacBook Pros feature Thunderbolt 5 ports, which more than double the data transfer speed to 120Gbps, enabling faster external storage, expansion chassis, and powerful docking and hub solutions. For example, with just one cable, professionals like music producers can now light up their entire studio.

Apple could also introduce Wi-Fi 7 support, as they did with the iPhone 16 lineup. However, for some reason they didn’t do this with the first M4 series Macs, so that’s a little more questionable.

Wi-Fi 7 supports speeds up to 46Gbps, which is more than five times faster than Wi-Fi 6E’s 9Gbps. Wi-Fi 7 also operates on 320 MHz channels and supports the 6 GHz band, which greatly reduces interference and signal congestion.

M4 Max and M4 Ultra Chips

Apple has already introduced the M4 Max chip in the new MacBook Pro, and it is currently one of the fastest chips on the market. It features a 16-core CPU and 40-core GPU, which means that the M4 Ultra will theoretically be about twice as fast — with a 32-core CPU and 80-core GPU, thanks to Apple's UltraFusion technology.

The M4 Pro Mac mini is currently the fastest desktop Mac, as well as the smallest computer Apple has ever made. However, once the new Mac Studio comes out, that won’t matter anymore.