• Apple has announced price hikes will be coming to its products
• These increases could be ‘fairly imminent,’ according to one reporter
• The price changes are due to ongoing component shortages

A few days ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the disappointing news that “unfortunately, price increases are inevitable” for his company’s products, all thanks to the ongoing computing component crisis. And if you were hoping that you could weather the storm a little longer, we’ve got some bad news: Apple device costs could be going up sooner rather than later.

That’s the expectation of Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman, at least, who posted on X to say that he saw the price hikes as being “fairly imminent.” Indeed, rather than waiting until later in the year, Gurman argued that the changes were “happening soon,” before adding that they were “not a fall thing.”

Gurman also noted that Apple’s back to school sale — which usually occurs over the summer — is also “imminent,” and that Apple might have announced the price rises now so that it can soften the blow with a summer sale, with costs ticking upwards once it is over.

That means that events like Amazon Prime Day or Apple’s back to school sale could be your last chance for some time to grab one of the best iPhones, Macs and iPads for a decent price. Because with parts like memory and storage still being sold at inflated levels, it doesn’t look like there’s much relief on the way.

Even more premium

Apple has created a reputation for itself as a premium brand with devices that tend to be on the more expensive side of things. But even if you’re used to that positioning, price rises can hurt.

And as Apple pundit John Gruber has pointed out, “For Apple, prices are part of a product’s brand, so they don’t fluctuate with component costs.” That means that once the higher costs come into play, we should “expect those prices to stick,” Gruber believes.

We’ve seen this in the past: the “trash can” Mac Pro’s price remained at $3,000 even when its specs were well out of date. Similarly, Apple adjusted UK prices to be more in line with those in the US after the 2016 Brexit vote and hasn’t reversed course a decade later.

Gruber also points out that if Apple thinks that component prices will continue to rise throughout 2027, it will simply implement one large price hike now rather than put them up again later on. So, that means we could see a single $200 / £200 / AU$400 jump rather than two separate $100 / £100 / AU$200 increases, for example.

If you’re considering picking up some new Apple tech, this all means it might be wise to act sooner rather than later. But it’s worth noting that there might be a slight difference between Gurman and Gruber when it comes to timing.

While Gurman says the changes are “imminent” and will happen before the fall, Gruber feels that Apple could wait until the new iPhone 18 Pro launches in September.

Still, whatever date Apple picks to implement its price adjustments, you don’t want to wait if you’ve got your eye on some shiny new Apple kit. Before too long, we could see Apple become even more premium than it already is.

• Apple's CEO has warned that "price increases are unavoidable" for its products
• That means more expensive Macs, iPhones and iPads for starters
• Price hikes will likely be substantial, and there are concerns that product lines could be adjusted as seen recently with the Mac mini – is the entry-level MacBook Neo to suffer the same fate?

CEO Tim Cook has warned that Apple is going to substantially hike prices on its products due to the RAM crisis.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal (as spotted by Wccftech), Cook said: "Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable. We're doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we've been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable."

The spiralling costs of both memory and storage (SSDs) means that Apple needs to put up prices, and the hikes will be "substantial" the report suggests (as did Cook's previous comments whereby the CEO said that from June, Apple will be facing "significant" cost increases for memory and this will "drive an increasing impact" on Apple's products).

So, this wasn't unexpected, but now it's crystal clear that these price increases are coming due to the "unsustainable" situation around memory chip supply (which is being eaten by AI and data centers to the detriment of consumer products).

What we don't know is the magnitude of these price increases, or what products they might apply to, as Cook didn't furnish us with any specific info along those lines.

It's a safe enough bet that Apple's core products are going to get pricier, though, meaning the iPhone, iPad and Macs. The WSJ even theorizes that the iPhone Pro 18 might cost from $1,299 in the US based on some rough maths.

Analysis: time to buy a Mac?

How soon these price hikes might happen is another key question, of course, but given Cook's previous comments about June, Mac rises could be imminent, as the WSJ indicates – particularly given that we've already seen the Mac mini get pricier at its baseline level. If you recall, Apple discontinued the most affordable entry-level model with 256GB of storage, effectively making the cheapest Mac mini a third more expensive.

The upshot is that if you're thinking of buying a Mac, now seems to be the time to pull the trigger, before these devices get pricier. Any deals that pop up on MacBooks for Prime Day could well be worth pouncing on, and there's already been a discount applied to the MacBook Neo (in the UK).

Grabbing that deal might be a particularly smart move to make, actually, because if the Mac mini is anything to go by, the current base version of the MacBook Neo may not survive the coming quarter. As one of a few such comments on this Reddit thread puts it: "The $599 MacBook Neo was fun while it lasted."

As to what all this means more broadly for Apple pricing moving forward, another interesting point that Cook brings up in the interview with the WSJ is that he says Apple is willing to use its "balance sheet to help be a part of the solution."

By that, the CEO doesn't mean Apple is about to fund the building of its own chip production facilities, and Cook explicitly states that. What it indicates is that the company is going to invest in this side of the tech industry, but exactly how is up for debate.

Some (like Jukan on X) theorize that what Cook is referring to is Apple prepaying to secure more memory supply – and that'll require a serious amount of upfront cash to compete with the major AI players. Others believe this could mean that Apple might help fund expansion plans for memory chip makers as part of some kind of deal to lock in more favorable longer-term pricing for iPhone, iPad and Mac memory supply.

Meanwhile, Jukan also highlighted a message from President Trump on Truth Social which states that "Apple has agreed to work with Intel to design and build its chips in America", as has been previously rumored as a way of diversifying away from Apple's reliance on TSMC.

Tim Cook said before that Apple is exploring a "range of options" in terms of dealing with the RAM crisis, and it seems there's a lot going on behind the scenes right now. Hopefully we'll learn more about the details soon enough, but for now, I'm nervously watching what happens with the MacBook Neo and other Apple laptops.

• More Mac models have now been pulled by Apple
• Mac minis and Mac Studios now available in fewer configurations
• AI and the associated memory shortage is to blame

With AI data center demand sucking up the world's supply of RAM, consumers are feeling the effects: having already removed some configurations of the Mac Studio and Mac mini from its store last month, Apple has now reduced the available options even further.

As spotted by MacRumors, you can no longer buy Mac mini models with 32GB or 64GB of RAM, while the M3 Ultra Mac Studio with 256GB of RAM has also been taken off sale — so right now that particular computer is only available with 96GB of RAM.

Both the M3 Mac Studio and the M4 Max Mac Studio, meanwhile, are showing delivery estimates of 9-10 weeks. Even if the configuration you want can be purchased through the store, you might be waiting a long while for it.

As for Mac minis, you're left with a 48GB of RAM option for the M4 Pro model, and 16GB or 24GB for the standard M4 version. The 256GB SSD storage option has been removed in recent weeks, too, raising the starting price.

'Supply demand balance'

Outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook has gone on record as saying "the ‌Mac mini‌ and ‌Mac Studio‌ may take several months to reach supply demand balance" — and Cook specifically mentioned AI and agentic tools as reasons why these computers are so in demand.

These Macs are being squeezed in two ways: not only are they ideal for running AI models and software, which increases their popularity, but that same demand for AI processing power is also significantly reducing stocks of memory to go inside these computers.

And there's no sign of the situation getting any better in the short term. The biggest players in the business have been warning that it's going to take a while before supply can catch up, which isn't encouraging for availability and pricing going forward.

Reaction online has been understandably negative: "I've come to despise AI," admits one Redditor, while other commenters want to see more done to limit the number of machines that can be purchased at once (most commonly for large, complex AI projects).

• Apple's entry-level $599 Mac mini with 256GB of storage and 16GB of RAM is no longer available
• It now starts at $799 for 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM
• Apple's still quoting over a month for delivery as well

Less than 24 hours after Apple’s earnings call in which CEO Tim Cook commented on supply chain issues hitting the Mac mini — shipping dates for the popular entry-level Mac desktop unit have been slipping — the price has gone up, and the former mid-range model is the new entry-level model on Apple.com.

Prior to this story's publication, Apple’s entry-level Mac mini was priced at $599 and came with 256GB of solid-state storage and 16GB of RAM, though that model was out of stock for over a week. That’s no longer an option, though, and the Mac mini now starts at $799 for 512GB of solid-state storage and 16GB of RAM.

MacRumors was the first to spot this change, and the price has increased internationally as well. The Mac mini now starts at £799 in the UK and AU$1,299 in Australia, both with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.

Essentially, the $599 / £599 / AU$999 model with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage is discontinued, and the previous mid-range $799 / £799 / AU$1,299 Mac mini with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage is now the entry-level. Same hardware specs and cost, but that previous step-up price is now the entry point.

As we noted in our review when this refreshed Mac mini hit the market, it delivered significant value, especially at the $599 price point in the United States. That value’s a bit tougher with a $200 MSRP increase, but one could say the MacBook Neo takes that spot — albeit with less power — while still staying affordable.

Considering the ongoing RAM crisis, which is bleeding into storage, and slipping times for Apple’s Mac mini already stretched out by weeks, this is likely a way for the supply chain teams within the Cupertino-based technology giant to manage the model.

On the earnings call, Cook didn't give many specifics or tease this forthcoming change, but did say, "We think, looking forward, that the ‌Mac mini‌ and ‌Mac Studio‌ may take several months to reach supply demand balance."

Even with the new entry-level model, the Mac mini is still showing a multi-week delivery estimate. If I were to order it now, the estimated delivery is between June 9, 2026, and June 16, 2026 — actually after WWDC 2026 starts.

We've reached out to Apple to request comment on the changes to the Mac mini and will circle back when we receive a response. And in the meantime, let us know what you think about this change to the Mac mini starting point.

Tim Cook’s reign as Apple boss is coming to an end. The long-time leader of one of the world’s largest tech companies is stepping down on September 1 and installing the company’s hardware chief John Ternus as his replacement. A new Apple era is almost here.

Ternus has been at the company for around 25 years, so we’ve had plenty of time to get acquainted with him. That hasn’t stopped fevered speculation surrounding what he might do to shape Apple in his own image. Yet there are plenty of ways that things will stay very much the same with this old hand at the wheel. If you’re curious to see what lies in store under Ternus’s watch, read on to learn five ways that Apple probably won’t change — and two ways that it might.

Hardware and software integration

Apple is world-famous for the way it controls the whole widget, to paraphrase Steve Jobs. The company makes its own hardware and software and integrates them together incredibly well. Could that change under Ternus’s leadership?

Don’t bet the farm on it. Given that Ternus has been part of the Apple furniture for a quarter century, building hardware and software that work together impeccably is now part of his DNA. And while he might currently be the firm’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, he’s also played a role in much of Apple’s software. He strongly pushed for the creation of iPadOS, for example, and took on the role of “executive sponsor” for design in recent months, which unsurprisingly includes software. If you’re expecting him to break with Apple tradition when it comes to integration, you’ll be disappointed.

Emphasis on design

As executive sponsor for design, Ternus is becoming intimately attuned to the design situation at Apple. His role involves explaining current projects and sticking points to Apple’s board, requiring a deep understanding of how the cookie crumbles at a company defined by design.

According to Bloomberg, Ternus and Cook held a staff meeting after the CEO transition was announced. There, Ternus reportedly told employees: “We’re going to keep focusing on design, because design is core to what we do at Apple. Apple’s brought truly incredible design to more people than any company in history.”

What’s more, there’s no way Ternus could have ascended to the lofty heights that he has without a proven grasp of Apple’s design inclinations. With that being so, the likelihood of him suddenly rewriting the playbook in this area is next to zero.

Durability over repairability

In his role as head of Apple’s hardware, Ternus has been repeatedly questioned about the company’s policies on product repairability. And on this subject, he’s been clear that Apple prioritizes durability rather than repairability, with the logic being that a product that lasts a long time doesn’t need to be repaired.

Speaking to TechCrunch, Ternus explained: “Repairability in isolation is not always the best answer.” As he went on to describe, “The reality is repairability is a means to an end. The goal is to build products that last, and if you focus too much on [making every part repairable], you end up creating some unintended consequences that are worse for the consumer and worse for the planet.” One example could be a removable part that introduces a new point of failure, thereby negatively affecting the device’s longevity in the long run.

Given Ternus has long been responsible for setting Apple’s hardware priorities, you can expect this emphasis on durability over repairability to remain. Although he has insisted that “We want to make things more repairable,” the focus will continue to be on making long-lasting products that, with any luck, won’t need to be repaired during their lifespans.

Privacy and security

Steve Jobs liked to insist on user privacy, but it was under his successor Tim Cook that the company really made this a defining trait. Now that John Ternus is next in line, you might be questioning whether that commitment to privacy and security will endure.

The good news is that it almost certainly will. In the comments reported by Bloomberg, Ternus told Apple staff that he will continue to work on these efforts, with no change in policy on this front. As before, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise – you don’t get as far within Apple as John Ternus has without believing in the program.

Environmental policy

In those same remarks cited by Bloomberg, another core Apple policy that Ternus pledged would not change is its stance on the environment. During Cook’s time in charge, Apple has made strenuous efforts in this area by reducing packaging and cutting emissions, so much so that Apple aims to ensure that both the company and its entire supply chain are carbon neutral by 2030.

Speaking to Apple employees, Ternus explained that: “there are some things that can never change and won’t change,” with action on the environment being one of them.

A renewed focus on hardware

Despite all those aspects that Ternus has promised will remain the same, there are a few areas where the new CEO might want to put his own stamp on affairs. Naturally, given his background, one of those could be a renewed focus on hardware. After all, Ternus has headed up Apple’s hardware division for many years now, so it seems reasonable to assume he’d bring plenty of that acumen to the table.

Tim Cook cut his teeth in operations and was not, by all accounts, a product person. John Ternus, though, most definitely is, and he’s been ultimately responsible for ensuring Apple’s physical products are up to scratch for years. With that in mind, we might see the company double down on hardware quality and innovation, which could be just what troubled devices like the Vision Pro need going into the future.

A drive into home tech

Before he got started in the world of work, Ternus studied mechanical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. There, his senior project was a mechanical feeding arm designed for use by people with quadriplegia. I say this because it coincides nicely with a product that Apple is rumored to be working on: a smart home display that’s mounted on a robotic arm.

This device is just one of Apple’s mooted smart home products that are reportedly just around the corner. These devices were initiated under Tim Cook, but with Ternus heading up the company, we might see a new push into this arena. Given the parallels between his senior university project and at least one of Apple’s smart home devices, that could be a fitting change for Apple to embrace.

The online world is buzzing with the news that Apple is going to have a new chief executive later this year. Tim Cook has announced that in September, he'll be handing over the reins to John Ternus, who is currently Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering at Apple.

In short, Ternus is head hardware honcho across all Apple's products, but not for much longer, as the big promotion is less than half a year away.

You may not know a whole lot about Ternus, as he hasn't been in the limelight as much as some of Apple's other major execs. Cook said of his replacement: "John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor."

What he is, by all accounts, is a reliable presence, and a steady hand — with a similar temperament to Tim Cook — to take over the rudder of the company and steer it through whatever choppy waters the RAM crisis may bring for the remainder of this decade. He's also 50 years old, which, interestingly enough, is the exact same age at which Cook took the top job at Apple back in 2011.

However, while there are clear similarities between the two execs, there are notable differences, too, which we're going to explore in this list of surprising and perhaps even weird ways that Ternus definitely isn't Cook.

1. The hardware guy who started in VR

While John Ternus may have a measured and more risk-averse demeanour (as Bloomberg reports), which is close to Tim Cook's nature, one clear difference is that he's an engineer at heart. Ternus has been intimately involved with the ins and outs of hardware in his career, and the hope of many is that the presence of an engineer in the CEO job is going to be reflected in the design and implementation of future Apple products.

Given his background, when it comes to top-level decisions, Ternus should be in a better position to understand the nuts and bolts of what Apple is trying to do with its hardware. And interestingly, his first job after leaving university was with a VR company. From 1997 through 2001, before he joined Apple, Ternus was a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems, working on VR headsets. Bear in mind that this was still early days for VR, of course.

For one thing, this experience should give Ternus a unique position and understanding to help develop the Vision Pro headset, which has certainly had its issues (notably the price tag, though it's making strides of late as an entertainment powerhouse).

2. Robotic arm

Before Virtual Research Systems, Ternus attended the University of Pennsylvania, where his senior project was a mechanical 'feeding arm', as Apple Insider reports. This was an invention for quadriplegics that could be controlled by their head movements.

It's interesting to note that Apple has a rumored project in the works, which consists of a robotic arm with a screen attached, and Ternus would be a very well-informed CEO for this venture. Mind you, Apple's tabletop robot is just a theory and is likely years away (if it ever comes to fruition). But still, it's another interesting element of potential product-based synergy with the appointment of Ternus.

3. Rush to the top

As highlighted on Reddit, apparently, Ternus is a fan of the rock band Rush. This comes from what's reportedly his yearbook quote: "Some are born to move the world to live their fantasies."

It's a lyric taken from the song "Losing It" by Rush, and seemingly, Ternus isn't the only Rush fan at Apple. Apparently, Craig Federighi may also enjoy hearing "The Spirit of Radio" or similar (as per Wikipedia), possibly singing the prog rock band's hits at office karaoke parties. (But not Tim Cook — well, I'm guessing, and presumably not all of Apple's top execs are Rush addicts, unless that's a hitherto hidden qualification for entrance to the C-suite inner circle).

4. The other side of Ternus

If you think Ternus might be a typical hardware nerd, think again. As Fortune reports, he was quite the swimmer in his youth, and Ternus was an 'all-time letter winner' for the men's swimming team at the University of Pennsylvania.

Bloomberg also highlighted that he's a keen cycling enthusiast, and very much into car racing, seemingly taking Apple colleagues to upstate Washington for a spot of off-road rallying now and then. Underneath that calm exterior, then, there appears to be something of an adrenaline junkie.

5. Ternus has a LinkedIn page — of sorts

Unlike Tim Cook, Ternus does have a LinkedIn profile — but you've got to wonder why, seeing as it's been left as a truly barebones effort.

Again, this was picked up by an eagle-eyed Redditor, who spied the page for Ternus, which is as sparse as can be (and is barely ever looked at by the incoming CEO, by all accounts — although most denizens of Reddit consider that to be a good thing, mind).

There wasn't even a photo on the profile page when the Redditor took a screenshot, but interestingly, now there is — maybe Ternus will populate it a bit more thoroughly going forward. Or maybe the exec will just delete it. Watch that space.

It looks like the global RAM shortage has claimed more victims, as it’s becoming increasingly difficult to buy new Mac desktop PCs.

As Mac Observer noticed, if you try to order a Mac mini or Mac Studio from Apple’s online store you could end up waiting several months for your new device — especially if you add extra memory.

I’ve tried this myself to confirm, and the situation does indeed appear bleak. Attempting to buy a standard M4 Mac mini from Apple's US store, the website informs me that shipping will be four to five weeks — that's a big delay for people expecting the usual next-day delivery.

Upping the memory from the default 16GB to 24GB extends the delivery estimate to 10 to 12 weeks, and increasing the memory again to 32GB pushes it back to 16 to 18 weeks, which means some people could potentially be waiting over four months for their new Mac.

It’s a similar story in the UK and Australia, with waits of up to 18 weeks for the Mac mini with 32GB of memory.

This is a real shame, as the current Mac mini is one of my favorite products of all time — if you’re looking for a compact PC, there really is no better alternative. However, it’s difficult to recommend to people if they can’t get hold of one.

Is this why we’ve not had an M5 Mac mini yet?

The fact that changing the amount of memory on the Mac mini makes the delivery delays worse certainly suggests that Apple isn’t as immune to the global RAM shortage as some had thought.

Because Apple uses what it terms ‘unified memory’, which is soldered directly onto its M-series chips and shared between computing and graphics tasks, rather than that off-the-shelf RAM that other laptop makers use, it had initially looked like Apple might escape the worst impacts of the memory shortages, but it seems not.

This could also explain the absence of an M5 Mac mini (and Mac Studio), despite Apple releasing M5 versions of its MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops. If the company is struggling to get enough memory for its existing portfolio of products, I can understand why it would be reluctant to launch any more.

On the other hand, could Apple be holding some of its memory stock in anticipation of the M5 versions? Apple is typically tight-lipped about these things, so we can only guess.

What I do know, however, is that if you want a Mac mini that will be delivered in a relatively reasonable time, you’re going to have to either buy one from another retailer, or stick with the base 16GB model if you buy from Apple.

It’s important to remember, however, that because of the compact design of the Mac mini, as well as Apple’s frustrating antipathy to designing products that can be upgraded and fixed by its customers, if you do buy a Mac mini (or Studio) with a reduced amount of memory, you won’t be able to add more later.

You’ve just got a shiny new MacBook Neo and you’re keen to see what it can do. But before you go racing off to browse the internet or play some games, there are a few things it’s worth doing first.

Here, we’ll show you 7 of the best changes you can make to your Mac, from strengthening your privacy to customizing it to your liking. These quick fixes and adjustments will make all the difference to your macOS experience, and these tips are great for anyone new to macOS, no matter what Mac or MacBook you have.

Secure your Mac

The last thing you want to happen to your new Mac is for it to be compromised. Luckily, privacy and security are two of Apple’s core strengths, and macOS is well equipped to keep your digital life safe and sound.

First, you’ll want to enable automatic updates to ensure your Mac always has the latest security patches and new features. To do so, open the System Settings app and head to General > Software Update in the left-hand sidebar. From there, click the i button next to Automatic Updates and switch all the toggles on.

While the entry-level MacBook Neo lacks Touch ID, the more expensive model comes with Apple’s fingerprint recognition system. To register your fingerprint with macOS, go to the Touch ID & Password section of the System Settings app and click Add Fingerprint, then follow the instructions.

If your MacBook Neo model doesn’t have Touch ID, you can still protect your login details with Apple’s Passwords app. This is the free, built-in password manager that comes with macOS, and you’ll find it in your Mac’s Applications folder that’s accessed using the Finder. Just open it up and follow the on-screen instructions. Make sure you click Passwords > Get Browser Extension in the app’s menu bar to install it in your favorite web browser. That way, you can save and fill passwords on the web without needing to leave your browser.

It’s also a good idea to turn on FileVault. This encrypts your files so that even if you lose your laptop, no one else can access your private documents and information. To set it up, open System Settings and go to Privacy & Security > FileVault in the sidebar, then enable the toggle to start protecting your files. Just make sure you make a note of your Mac’s password so you don’t get locked out. Your Recovery Key is also synced to every Apple device you own with iCloud Keychain enabled.

All about apps

While iOS is very restrictive about where you get your apps (although that’s beginning to change), Mac users have long been able to install apps from anywhere they like. But in order to do that, you’ve got to change a simple setting first.

Go to the Privacy & Security section of the System Settings app, then scroll to the bottom of the page. Under the Security header, you’ll see ‘Allow applications from.’ Click the pop-up menu and select App Store & Known Developers. This gives you wider access to apps from outside the App Store while maintaining the security of your device.

Once you’ve installed a few new apps, it’s a good idea to change which ones are used to open certain files. After all, you might not always want videos to open using QuickTime, for example. There are a few ways to change your default apps.

Firstly, let’s say you want to change the app that’s used to open JPG images. Right-click a JPG file, click Get Info, then expand the Open with section and pick an app from the pop-up menu. Click Change All to make sure every JPG file opens with this app rather than just the one you selected.

To switch to a different default web browser, open System Settings, click Desktop & Dock in the sidebar, then scroll down to the Widgets section. There, next to ‘Default web browser,’ click the pop-up menu and pick a new app.

Finally, you can change your default email client by opening the Mail app and clicking Mail > Settings in the menu bar. Now click the General tab and choose a new app from the ‘Default email reader’ pop-up menu at the top of the page.

Customize your Dock

The macOS Dock permanently houses all your favorite apps, shows recently opened apps, and has spots for downloaded items and the trash. It’s a pretty powerful tool when you know how to use it.

To rearrange app icons in the Dock, just drag them to a new position. You can add new apps by dragging them onto the Dock and remove apps by dragging them out until the word Remove appears, then letting go.

By default, the Dock shows recent apps on the right-hand side. That can be handy, but can also clutter the Dock. To change this, open System Settings and navigate to Desktop & Dock in the sidebar, then disable the toggle next to ‘Show suggested and recent apps in Dock.’

You can also hide the Dock itself by adjusting the ‘Automatically hide and show the Dock’ toggle. It disappears by default and will reappear if you move your mouse pointer to the bottom of your Mac’s screen.

Finally, Apple’s standard configuration has apps use a ‘Genie’ effect when they’re minimized. This sucks them down into the Dock at an angle, but it’s not to everyone’s taste. If you don’t like it, change Genie Effect to Scale Effect next to ‘Minimized window animation’ in the same System Settings window.

I’ve written about the Dock in more detail, including highlighting some clever tricks to help you get even more out of it. Check that guide out if you want to learn a bit more about this macOS feature.

Set up Time Machine

If anything was to go wrong with your Mac, you don’t want to find out you’ve lost all your files. One way you can prevent that is by using Time Machine to back up your Mac. For this, you’ll need an external storage drive with enough space to hold your Mac’s files.

Now, ensure your drive is connected to your Mac, then open System Settings and go to General > Time Machine > Add Backup Disk. Choose your external drive from the list and click Set Up Disk. Once you’ve followed the on-screen instructions, you should be good to go. Your Mac will now automatically back up as long as your drive is connected.

Make full use of your trackpad

Apple’s MacBook trackpads are some of the best in the business, and even though the MacBook Neo doesn’t use a Force Touch trackpad, its offering is still incredibly well refined. You’ll find a range of intuitive gestures are enabled by default, like pinching your fingers together to open the Applications pane or moving four fingers upwards to show all your open app windows.

But you can unlock extra trackpad gestures that are hidden in your Mac’s settings. The first one can be found in System Settings by scrolling to the bottom of the sidebar and clicking Trackpad. From there, click More Gestures, then click the pop-up menu next to App Exposé and choose a gesture. App Exposé shows all the open windows of just the foremost app – rather than those of all currently open apps – allowing you to quickly flick between them.

The second secret gesture relates to dragging and dropping files. Sometimes, you might find you run out of space on your trackpad when moving a file. But if you go to System Settings > Accessibility > Pointer Control > Trackpad Options, you’ll find some handy ways to fix that. At the bottom, enable the toggle next to ‘Use trackpad for dragging,’ then pick one of the options from the pop-up menu. These choices let you do things like let go of the trackpad to reposition your fingers as you move a file, all without dropping it, making the process a lot easier.

Keep your battery going for longer

The better you look after your MacBook Neo’s battery, the longer it’ll serve you. Apple’s laptop batteries are already some of the most effective in the industry, but a few quick tweaks could help you get even more out of them.

The first thing to do is head to System Settings > Battery. Next to Charging, click the i button, then enable Optimized Battery Charging. This learns your daily usage routine and charges at optimal times to prevent overcharging.

Back in the Battery section, scroll to the bottom and click Options, then enable ‘Slightly dim the display on battery’ to make sure your screen isn’t eating into your battery too much while you’re not using a charger.

If you really want to eke as much juice out of your laptop as you can, click the pop-up menu next to Low Power Mode and select a scenario. This disables certain features to prolong your battery as much as possible.

Tune up your display

MacBooks have beautiful displays, and the MacBook Neo is no different. A few little changes here and there, though, can make it even better.

If you tend to use your laptop at night, you know how painful it can be to have your eyes blasted by a bright screen. To put that right, go to System Settings > Displays > Night Shift, then click the pop-up menu next to Schedule. Night Shift automatically changes your screen’s color temperature, which helps ease the strain on your eyes. You can either set up a custom schedule or use Apple’s Sunset to Sunrise option.

Back on the Displays pane, enable the toggle next to ‘Automatically adjust brightness.’ As the name suggests, this detects the brightness of your surroundings, then changes your display to match. It can help ensure your screen is never too bright or too dark for your needs.

Apple’s latest M5 Pro and M5 Max chips have taken Mac performance to a new level, and there’s no doubt that gaming on Apple’s computers is in better shape than it’s been in for years. The days of Mac gaming being a distant pipe dream are well and truly over.

But at the same time, we’d be remiss to say Mac gaming performance is anywhere near that of the best graphics cards like Nvidia’s RTX 5090. Chances are you’re still going to have to make a few accommodations on your Mac if you want to get good performance in any of the best and most demanding games.

And that’s what this guide is all about. Here, we’ll show you the little-known hacks and tweaks you can make in macOS that will improve your Mac gaming performance like never before. Put these changes into effect and you’ll get an enjoyable experience, no matter what your favorite Mac game is.

Start with Game Mode

Back in 2023, Apple introduced Game Mode for Mac users. This feature makes a range of automatic adjustments – like giving the game priority access to your CPU and GPU, reducing background tasks, doubling the Bluetooth sampling rate, and more – in order to improve gaming performance.

Game Mode runs automatically, providing you’re playing a game in full screen mode and have macOS Sonoma or later installed on your Mac. Because of that, you might not realize it even exists.

Luckily, switching it on and off is easy. While your game is running, press Command + Esc or click the rocket ship icon in your menu bar to open the Game Overlay (the rocket icon is replaced by a controller icon in macOS Sonoma and macOS Sequoia).

In the Game Overlay, click the settings button, then click Game Mode to enable or disable it. Your Mac will remember your decision, so there’s no need to enable or disable Game Mode repeatedly.

Modify your game's settings

All games come with varying graphical demands, and while one game might run well on your Mac, that’s not a guarantee that another will. To ensure you consistently get smooth, playable frame rates across your favorite titles, it’s a good idea to delve into each game’s graphics settings and make a few adjustments.

The choices you get here will depend on the game in question. Often, games give you presets (such as Low, Medium and High, for example) that change a range of settings in one go. It’s a good idea to start on the lowest preset, see if the performance is good enough, then move up to a higher preset and test the performance again (some games have built-in benchmarks that show your performance at various settings). A good target to aim for is 60 frames per second (fps), although higher is always better if you can get there without sacrificing too much visual quality. Once you’re more or less happy, you can then start adjusting individual settings to your liking.

One of the most consequential settings you can change is the game’s resolution – simply put, the higher resolution, the more pixels your Mac has to render, leading to greater strain on your hardware. Many games are starting to integrate Apple’s MetalFX Upscaling, which renders the game at a lower resolution, then uses artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the graphical fidelity. It’s a good way to get a crisp picture while reducing the load on your Mac’s chip.

Some games, such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Crimson Desert, have a graphical setting called For This Mac. Click this and the game automatically adjusts settings based on your computer, providing a more tailored approach than the broad Low, Medium and High presets. Give it a try if it’s available.

Finally, many games are incorporating another AI technology that can help gamers: frame generation. This uses AI to add generated frames alongside those actually rendered by your hardware, giving you higher frame rates than you’d normally enjoy. Apple calls this MetalFX Frame Interpolation, but whether it’s called that or “frame generation,” try enabling it to see if you can get smoother gameplay.

Native Mac games

With Mac gaming gaining in popularity, increasing numbers of developers are starting to optimize their titles specifically for Apple’s computers. You can see that in both Cyberpunk 2077 and Crimson Desert, mentioned above, due to their For This Mac options. But there are plenty of other game developers that have worked hard to ensure their products work well on macOS.

The ideal situation is finding a game where the developers have worked directly with Apple to ensure their game takes advantage of Apple’s software, APIs and more, which will give you the best experience. After that, games optimized for macOS (without Apple’s direct involvement) should also offer good-quality performance.

But even a game that works natively on macOS – even if it’s not been painstakingly optimized for Apple fans – will perform better than one that only works on your Mac through a compatibility app like CrossOver.

A quick way to tell what kind of performance you can expect is to simply check the game’s compatibility information. If it has detailed Mac requirements, you know it’s compatible, although that doesn’t tell you if it’s well optimized. Once you know it works on macOS without needing software like CrossOver, you can research how well optimized it is. And if it is – well, that’s a good sign that performance should be up to par.

Opt for Ethernet

Not every game requires you to be online while playing, but those that do will obviously benefit from having a strong, stable connection. If you’re running up against lag spikes and frustratingly poor performance while gaming online, you might need to start looking beyond your Mac.

One of the best ways to improve your internet connection is to hook up an Ethernet cable directly into your Mac. A wired connection will almost always be more reliable than internet beamed over Wi-Fi, as it doesn’t get affected by thick walls and signal black spots.

That said, there is a significant caveat: many modern Macs have ditched their Ethernet ports. You won’t find Ethernet slots on any MacBook (of the Air, Pro or Neo variety), but desktop Macs – including the iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio and Mac Pro – all either possess Ethernet by default or can be configured to come with it. Be sure to check before you buy.

The good news is that even if your Mac doesn’t have an Ethernet port, there are other ways of getting a wired connection. Ethernet can be run over USB-C and Thunderbolt ports, at least one of which is preset on every modern Mac. To get Ethernet running this way, you’ll just need an adapter or a docking station.

Try cloud gaming

These days, even the most affordable low-end Mac can run the most demanding games. How? By tapping into cloud gaming services like Nvidia’s GeForce Now and Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass.

Instead of loading games locally on your Mac’s hardware, these services run on powerful computers connected to the internet, then stream the gameplay to your Mac. That takes your hardware out of the equation – as long as you have a reliable internet setup, you’re good to go.

Of course, this option puts even more emphasis on having stable internet than regular gaming (giving you another good reason to try Ethernet). Cloud gaming services can also quickly get expensive. The cheapest paid GeForce Now membership, for example, costs $9.99 a month and limits both your play time and frame rates. Higher tiers cost upwards of $19.99 a month, and while there is a free option, it’s ad-supported and cuts off your gaming sessions after an hour.

Still, cloud gaming could be a good option if your Mac hardware can’t handle the games you want to play. While it requires an ongoing payment, it might still be cheaper than buying a new Mac.

Bonus: Spec your Mac out for gaming

Speaking of buying a new Mac, there’s one more important consideration in all of this. So far, all of our tips focus on things you can do after you’ve got a Mac. But one of the most important decisions you can make for Mac gaming comes before you pull the trigger.

Simply put, make sure you configure your Mac with adequate hardware specs for the games you want to play. It’s no good cheaping out by picking the lowest-end components if you want to play Cyberpunk 2077 at 120fps, after all. And considering how difficult – or impossible – Macs are to upgrade post-purchase, you don’t want to make a costly mistake.

The key aspect here is your Mac’s graphics capability, indicated by the chip’s GPU. If gaming is your thing, you’ll probably want to opt for the most performant GPU – with the highest number of graphics cores – that you can afford.

The CPU is also of high importance, and many games rely more on this than the GPU. Again, choose the best CPU within Apple’s chips that you can afford, and make sure to research whether your favorite Mac games harness the GPU or CPU more before starting.

Both the GPU and CPU are built into your Mac’s chip (they’re not discrete components, as they are in the best gaming PCs), so that’s where you’ll want to look when speccing out these components.

Next, consider memory (also known as RAM). This is less important than your Mac’s chip but could have an impact. Thankfully, modern Macs all start with at least 16GB of memory, but the most demanding games might benefit from having more (do you research before needlessly spending extra here, though). Apple uses what it calls “unified memory,” which allows the CPU and GPU to draw from the same memory pool. This means that 16GB of unified memory often offers better performance than 16GB of regular PC memory, so be sure to check Mac benchmarks rather than PC ones when it comes to RAM in order to get an accurate idea of what you need.

Aside from that, consider your prospective Mac’s display. The MacBook Pro’s screen, for example, offers refresh rates up to 120Hz, while the MacBook Air tops out at 60Hz. The former costs more but will offer much smoother gameplay (provided your chosen chip can provide the power needed for high frame rates, of course).

Finally, there’s storage. Apple’s SSDs are incredibly fast, which should ensure speedy loading times when it comes to games. Just make sure you opt for enough capacity to hold all the games you want to play.

Take all those considerations into account and you should be well positioned for an enjoyable spot of Mac gaming, whatever titles you have in mind.

I’ve been a long-time Windows user, going back to when Windows 95 was the operating system of the times. I’ve been through every iteration of Microsoft’s OS since, with Windows XP and Windows 7 being my favorite editions. Moving to Windows 10 was a natural progression when I purchased a Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 in 2018 and used it with no complaints until I upgraded to Windows 11 in 2021 on the same machine.

Windows 11 increasingly became frustrating to use, with the ads on the start menu and the constant push to make me use Edge and OneDrive. AI functionality and Copilot were being suggested just as aggressively, with even the most basic programs like Notepad and File Explorer getting AI buttons.

The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, exacerbated by Microsoft’s planned Windows 10 obsolescence in October 2025, which basically rendered several older and still-functioning PCs obsolete. In my case, the Lenovo hardware still holds up — Intel Core i7 processor and 16GB of RAM — and is enough for most of my needs but, alas, Microsoft forced my hand and thus began my hunt for a replacement.

macOS: On the outside looking in

With the ongoing RAM shortage and other components like storage getting expensive, I was worried that I had made this decision at the wrong time. Thankfully, most laptops and computers with fixed components were still unaffected by these shortages, so prices haven’t gotten out of control just yet. Interestingly, the best deal to me was switching OS and going down the Apple route.

I’d played around with Linux a bit, trying Ubuntu in the 2010s and, while it was fine, I kept retreating to the familiarity of Windows. macOS, on the other hand, felt more user-friendly and suitable as a full-time replacement for Windows.

The only reason I never switched earlier is because I felt Macs were overpriced before Apple’s own silicon made them compelling options — and since my Lenovo was still going strong, I erred on the side of monetary caution these last few years.

Gradually, Apple started to bump the RAM of its base-model Macs from 8GB to 16GB while retaining the same price. And that’s when the M4 Mac mini became a standout with its starting price of $599 / £599 / AU$999, making it hard for most PCs to beat in terms of the same computing power.

The base configuration with 16GB RAM and 256GB of storage was enough for my personal needs, and I finally made the switch to macOS.

Easy, quick setup, but still a learning journey

Apple makes getting set up on a Mac device very easy — I was only asked to sign in to my Apple ID, which is optional if you don’t have one or don’t want to create a new account.

In comparison, a fresh Windows install mandates a Microsoft account during setup, and you need to be connected to the internet to move to the next steps (or employ some increasingly locked-down workarounds). I'd previously even get rid of some bloatware like the Xbox app and Clipchamp, some apps even requiring third-party software to remove.

A fresh Mac install, on the other hand, has a comparatively clean and streamlined experience.

I’m not a complete beginner with macOS, but I’m still finding my feet — it’s a bit of an adjustment coming over from Windows and I haven’t quite memorized all the keyboard shortcuts yet. I’m also still getting my head around all the menus.

The overall experience, however, is such a massive improvement from Windows 11 — everything just works, and not a single ad or upsell to distract me.

Now, macOS isn't perfect, and I agree with my colleague Matt when he says Windows has a better clipboard (the built-in Clipboard Paste feature is sorely missed), and snapping two separate windows to either edge of the screen to have them take both halves of the screen equally still works more effortlessly on Windows.

And yes, it has to be said that gaming is still much better on Windows than on a Mac, even though it's getting better now.

But can it run Crysis?

Gaming was not top of mind when I decided to get the M4 Mac mini, so I wasn’t too fussed when I found that a lot of the games I used to play aren’t natively supported on macOS. There are plenty of workarounds, including a third-party program called Crossover, to allow Windows-only games to run on Macs, but I don’t feel the need to buy it just yet.

There are still a lot of titles in my Steam library that run on macOS natively — from less-demanding games like Stardew Valley to some graphically-intensive ones like No Man’s Sky. I was happy to hit anywhere between 40-60 frames per second as my monitors only have a 60Hz refresh rate and, for the most part, the M4 Mac mini can easily hit that mark with most of my games (albeit with some resolution adjustments).

Getting the upgraded M4 Mac mini can yield better results than that if gaming is a key criterion when choosing a new Mac. If you’re curious about what games can run well on this machine, MacGamingDB has user-reported benchmarks on a range of titles tested across all of the M-series Macs.

And yes, the M4 Mac mini can run Crysis, but only through Crossover.

The best deal in computing amidst this RAM crisis?

I live in Australia where the M4 Mac mini is still in stock at several retailers, but reports suggest it’s starting to sell out in some regions.

In any case, the M4 Mac mini still hasn’t received a price increase from Apple, and the RAM and storage upgrade costs remain unchanged — well, at least for now — making it a competitively priced option.

My experience with the M4 Mac mini has been very positive — snappy performance, a cleaner user interface, seamless integration with my iPhone 16 Pro Max, Apple TV and iPad mini (6th Gen), plus it's a surprisingly capable gaming machine too. It’s definitely money well spent.

• A new report says the touchscreen MacBook Pro will get the Dynamic Island
• This feature comes from the iPhone and will be found in the OLED display
• Don’t expect Face ID, as the report makes no mention of this feature

We’ve been hearing for some time now that Apple is planning to release a touchscreen MacBook Pro later this year. Now, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman has boosted that idea by revealing fresh details about Apple’s plans — but there’s one key thing missing.

Gurman outlined what we can expect in a new report, wherein he explained that the forthcoming MacBook Pro will likely use the Dynamic Island currently found in all the best iPhones, as well as a new touch-oriented interface that adapts to your actions.

Starting with the Dynamic Island, Gurman says the implementation of this feature in the MacBook Pro will differ from the version found in the iPhone 17 series. That’s because the MacBook Pro version will be “built around a hole-punch-sized cutout for the computer’s camera,” Gurman contends, making it “smaller than the pill-shaped notch in current iPhones.” That should complement the redesigned Dynamic Island that is set to launch with the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro that are due to arrive later this year.

As for the new interface, this will apparently be integrated into an OLED display with touchscreen capabilities. Gurman believes that Apple has created a system that adapts to your input, whether that’s the traditional mouse and keyboard or a finger. If you use the latter, macOS will enlarge the on-screen controls to make them easier to tap, for example.

This interface also involves the addition of a new type of menu that surrounds the user’s finger, putting controls close at hand. Certain menus, such as the emoji selector, will have touch-optimized interfaces if you’re using touch controls. And you’ll be able to use common gestures found in iOS, such as fast scrolling and pinching to zoom in on photos.

Where’s Face ID?

The influence of iOS on both the rumored Dynamic Island and the touch interface is clear to see. It would reflect a growing crossover between iOS and macOS, which has seen Apple introduce universal apps and tools like iPhone Mirroring and Universal Control in recent years.

However, one key feature that apparently won’t make the leap to the Mac is Face ID, despite it being a vital part of the iPhone’s Dynamic Island. Gurman’s report makes no mention of Face ID, and it looks like Mac users will have to stick to Touch ID for the time being – especially considering Gurman previously claimed that Face ID on the Mac is “years away” from being realized.

That said, Apple has published numerous patents over the years concerning the process of incorporating facial recognition into a Mac, so it appears that the company is at least considering adding it to its laptops. But for now, it appears that Face ID is one feature that will remain absent from the MacBook Pro.

Apple is expected to release the touchscreen MacBook Pro near the end of 2026. Before that happens, a new version of the laptop – with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips but lacking the Dynamic Island and touchscreen display – is slated for this spring, or sometime between March and May.

• Apple plans to build some Mac Mini computers in the US
• Tim Cook made the announcement while showing off some behind-the-scenes manufacturing video
• AI may be one of the driving forces here

The suddenly hot Mac mini will soon be made in the United States. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the move on Tuesday in a post on X.

"As part of our $600B commitment, Mac mini will be produced in the US for the first time later this year!" wrote Cook.

The $600B investment he refers to is the billions Cook promised US President Donald Trump last year he'd be funneling into US manufacturing efforts as part of a new "American Manufacturing Program" (AMP). He made the promise while also presenting Trump with a golden plaque featuring the words "Made in America."

This Mac mini news, though, may be far more valuable to American consumers interested in buying one of Apple's increasingly popular tiny desktop computers.

A mini piece of the pie

The Mac mini has accounted for only about 1% of Apple's Mac sales in recent years, but the mini's star is on the rise. According to recent reports, 2024 M4 Mac minis have been selling out (along with Mac Studios). Why? Blame AI. The tiny box computer is considered a perfect fit for handling localized agentic AI tasks, and so they're apparently flying off the shelves.

Now, it's unclear if all those sales are helping the Mac mini draw closer to, say, it's best-sellign MacBook Air or MacBook Pro counterparts. That seems unlikely, but the US production, set to begin at a new Houston, Texas, facility later this year, should increase mini-production levels.

An entire production facility devoted to just one thin slice of Apple's Mac market doesn't make much sense. However, AI's appetite for hardware goes far beyond the mini. Apple will also be building AI servers that should help support the company's growing Private Cloud Computer and other AI aspirations.

How mini are these operations

Tim Cook's post offers scant details on exactly when the facility will open and become operational, or how many Mac minis it will produce each quarter. It's likely the factory will only build a fraction of all the Mac minis Apple produces for sale. Perhaps, it will build all those sold in the US, while other global manufacturing facilities serve the rest of the world.

However, we do now know a bit more about how Apple builds products through its supply chain and with its manufacturing partners, thanks to a new video report from The Wall Street Journal.

The report focuses largely on Apple's efforts to get its Apple Silicon built in the US. Apple does not produce any chips; it relies on a series of partners to produce the high-powered silicon. However, it's clear from the video that Apple's fingerprints are all over the process.

When asked by The Wall Street Journal, "Who is the most demanding customer you have?" the Global Wafers exec answered quickly, "Apple."

Apple's deep involvement and its size give it the power to push partners like these chip supply chain partners to move more operations to the US.

iPhone next?

Apple's promise to begin building some Mac minis in the US this year does not signal a massive shift to making all Apple products in the US. And when Apple executives were asked by The Wall Street Journal about making the iPhone in the US, they gave a circuitous answer about future innovation, but offered no insight into future iPhone build operations.

Ultimately, the Mac mini's new manufacturing home represents a small but perhaps important return to US manufacturing for Apple, which famously built the original Macintosh in Fremont. California.

There's no indication Apple is planning a broad return to US manufacturing, but the push for US-based operations for chip manufacturing is perhaps a stronger possibility because of the growing need for chips (and memory) in the US.

For now, the majority of silicon and RAM are made outside the US. Once again, the global AI race is creating unprecedented demand, shortages, and the need for, in the US, closer-to-home supply chains.

In a way, this Houston-based operation is also a proof of concept. If it goes well, and Apple can also bring some Apple Silicon manufacturing to the US, we may finally see a wider swath of Apple products arriving without the support of imports and the potential burden of tariffs.

Will that mean cheaper Mac minis and eventually other products? Only time will tell.

• Apple's Mac mini and Mac Studio are suffering from long shipping delays
• This pertains to the models with more than a baseline level of RAM
• It's seemingly the consequence of the AI boom and popularity of local AIs, notably OpenClaw, which is causing, or at least contributing to it

If you were thinking of ordering a Mac mini with lots of RAM from Apple, then you could be in for something of a wait – and that's even more true for the Mac Studio.

Tom's Hardware noticed a post on X from Alex Finn, the CEO of Creator Buddy (an AI tool), who observed that: "Something big is happening. First Mac Minis. Now Mac Studios. Completely sold out. When I bought 2 Mac Studios a month ago, my wait was 14 days. Now the wait is 54 days."

The theory is that people are catching on to the potential of AIs that are run locally – meaning on your own PC, rather than accessed in the cloud – and this is being driven ahead at a fast pace by the popularity of AI agent OpenClaw (among other factors).

So, people are looking for a PC with a beefy enough loadout of RAM to run such local AIs. Apple's Mac mini and Mac Studio, which you can load up with an absolute ton of memory, are good candidates for the job. (The RAM comes at a correspondingly high cost, it should be noted.)

If we look at the Apple store in the US currently, the evidence is plain enough to see. The base Mac mini with the vanilla M4 chip is available for immediate dispatch in its 16GB form, but if you want 24GB or 32GB of RAM, you're looking at a wait of two to three weeks for delivery.

With the Mac mini M4 Pro model, you are also going to be waiting two to three weeks for the PC to arrive, with the only exception being the base model again – in this case, the lower-tier CPU with 24GB of RAM, which can be sent out immediately.

For the Mac Studio, the wait is even longer. With the PC that has the M4 Max higher-tier variant, if you want this model with 64GB of RAM, there's currently a delay of four to five weeks. Go for the 128GB model, and you'll be drumming your fingers for five to six weeks before your Mac Studio shows up. (Disclaimer: finger drumming for extended periods of time is not recommended.)

The M3 Ultra version of the Mac Studio, with a whopping 512GB of RAM, is also showing a five to six week shipping delay from Apple. All of these delivery timeframes are accurate at the time of writing, but may have altered by the time you read this.

Analysis: mini mania

The Mac mini, packed with a whole load of RAM, is a great solution for running an AI locally, with that unified memory (shared by the CPU, NPU, and GPU) being seriously nippy and ideal for such tasks.

And this is seemingly being reflected in sales of these compact computers, and the beefier Mac Studio, too. As Tom's points out, there's a growing number of companies that are using "clusters and clusters of Mac Studios" which are "perfect for long-running agentic tasks and local private LLMs" (Large Language Models, or AIs).

While there clearly are some pretty long lead times for ordering RAM-packed Macs, we can't jump to the conclusion that this is entirely due to a local AI boom. But there's clearly something going on in that respect, and it's not going to help if Apple is facing supply pressures at this point in terms of securing memory inventory. (And even Apple's huge resources will start to creak at some point).

If we see this trend continue, it's not difficult to imagine where all this is headed – these Macs are going to get very expensive (which is true with the RAM crisis as it is, anyway), and maybe even difficult to get hold of at all.

In short, if you were mulling the purchase of a Mac mini (or indeed a Mac Studio) with more than a baseline amount of memory, you might want to think about pulling the trigger sooner rather than later.

• The process for buying a Mac on the Apple Store has changed
• There are no more preconfigured Mac or MacBook options
• The site takes you step-by-step through choosing your specs

For several years now, if you were in the market for one of the best Macs or best MacBooks available, you would go to the official Apple website and start with one of the preconfigured options – but that's now changing in a significant way.

As spotted by MacRumors and others, you now no longer begin the purchase process by choosing a preconfigured Mac or MacBook. Instead, you start from scratch and choose your components one by one, with the display size and color first up.

In other words, buying an Apple computer is now much more like buying one of the best iPhones or best iPads. It gives you a little bit more control over your new Mac or MacBook, but requires a little bit more knowledge about what exactly you want.

There has always been the option to tweak specs and RAM and storage on your Mac after choosing a preconfigured computer, but that initial stage has now been ditched – perhaps for better consistency across Apple's various product lines.

All the options

There's been no official word from Apple about why this change has been implemented, so we don't know for sure what the thinking is here. Another possibility is that people will be more tempted to upgrade to a higher spec if they can see all the options available.

It appears that all the choices that were previously available are still here: you can, for example, still opt to have certain professional apps like Final Cut Pro preinstalled on your Mac (though as yet there's no mention of Apple Creator Studio).

All of this comes while we're eagerly anticipating some new MacBook Pros to appear in the very near future, very possibly with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips inside. Perhaps the new online ordering system will help users assess all the various options available.

Head to the Mac page on the official Apple website to check out the new process for yourself (you don't actually have to buy anything to test it out). Is this a good move for the Apple Store or one that wasn't really needed? Let us know in the comments.

• Chrome 151 will drop support for macOS 12 Monterey
• That means certain older Macs will no longer get browser updates
• You can switch to a different browser, or get a new Mac

Over time, shiny new gadgets become outdated and obsolete ones, and Google has announced it will no longer be offering updates for its Chrome browser on older Mac computers from the end of July this year.

More specifically, Google Chrome version 150 will be the last to support macOS 12 Monterey, as per an update (via Notebookcheck) on the Chrome Platform Status site. Chrome 151 is "tentatively scheduled" to launch on Tuesday July 28, 2026.

In other words, if you're on a Mac that can't be upgraded to macOS 13 Ventura, you're not going to get the vital Chrome updates and security patches you need to stay safe from July onwards. You'll need to either upgrade your Mac, or switch to another browser.

If you are affected, Chrome won't suddenly stop working when version 151 arrives (we're currently on Chrome 143). However, you won't get any new features, and more importantly, you won't get important security updates from Google either.

Recent macOS history

macOS 12 Monterey was released in October 2021, with macOS 13 Ventura following the year after. We're now up to macOS 26 Tahoe for the latest Macs, which Apple pushed out to the masses in September of last year.

To check the version your Mac is running, click the Apple icon in macOS (top left), then choose About This Mac. If you're unable to upgrade to anything beyond macOS 12, then you must be using a relatively old Apple laptop or desktop, using an Intel chipset.

You can install macOS 13 Ventura on iMacs and iMac Pros from 2017 and later, Mac minis from 2018 and later, Mac Pros from 2019 and later, MacBooks and MacBook Pros from 2017 and later, and MacBook Airs from 2018 and later.

While Safari hasn't been updated on macOS 12 since July 2024, the latest versions of Firefox and Microsoft Edge do still fully support the older operating system. If you don't want to change from Chrome though, it might be time to invest in a new Mac.

On January 11, 2005, then Apple CEO Steve Jobs took to the stage at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco and unveiled the original Mac mini.

At the event, Jobs revealed that Apple finally had an answer to a question he kept hearing from consumers: “Why doesn’t Apple offer a stripped-down Mac that is more affordable?”

Cue the first-generation Mac mini. The entry-level model came with the following specs for a price of $499 / £339 / AU$799:

• 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 processor
• 256MB of 333MHz DDR SDRAM, expandable to 1GB
• 40GB Ultra ATA hard drive
• Combo (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) optical drive
• ATI Radeon 9200 graphics processor with 32MB video memory
• One FireWire 400 and two USB 2.0 ports
• 10/100 BASE-T Ethernet networking and 56K V.92 modem
• Internal support for AirPort Extreme wireless networking and Bluetooth
• DVI or VGA out (adaptor included), composite/S-video out with optional adaptor and
• Built-in speaker and headphone/line out

All of this was packed into an impressively small body that measured 2 x 6.5 x 6.5 inches / 51 x 170 x 170 mm, and was “the most affordable way to enjoy Mac OS X and iLife," according to Jobs.

One of the reasons Apple was able to keep the price down was because it was, as Jobs announced, “BYODKM” – Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard, and Mouse. It was Apple’s first Mac that didn’t come with a display and peripherals.

Boasting about what a product doesn’t come with is pretty bold, and it was an angle that Apple soon dropped. However, the fact that the Mac mini Jobs showed off in 2005 is remarkably similar to the Mac mini you can buy in 2026 is testament to how Apple nailed its compact computer.

What no one at Apple could have hoped for at the time – and certainly something I never imagined – is that 21 years after the first model launched, the Mac mini is easily the best PC on the market for most people.

Compact killer

While the device that Steve Jobs introduced to the world 21 years ago is unmistakably a Mac mini product, Apple’s diminutive Mac has had several redesigns over the years. In 2010 it got an aluminum unibody design that gave it a sleek and modern look that was so iconic Apple didn’t do much to change it until the Apple Mac mini (M4, 2024), when it kept the unibody design but made the overall size of the PC even smaller, while packing it with powerful components, including the M4 and M4 Pro chips.

The Mac mini also remains the most affordable way to get a Mac, with the latest model launching at $599 / £599 / AU$999, which isn’t a huge increase over the original model.

This is why I recommend the Mac mini to anyone looking for a new desktop PC (unless you want one for gaming – if that’s the case you’ll still want to get a Windows 11 desktop PC with discrete GPU). There really aren’t any Windows 11-based mini PCs that offer the same level of design, build quality and performance for anywhere near the same price.

Looking at our best mini PC buying guide, the closest alternative is the GMKtec NucBox G10 mini PC, which is certainly cheaper than the Mac mini, but doesn’t look quite as nice, and can’t compete power-wise.

There’s also the Geekom A9 Max mini PC, which definitely brings the performance, and the Mac mini-inspired design isn’t too bad (though still not a patch on the original) – but at $999 / £999 it’s almost twice the price of the Mac mini.

Of course, with the Mac mini you’ll be using the macOS operating system, but even if you've not used it before it’s not a huge culture shock these days, and you'll get used to it pretty quickly. And, with Microsoft seemingly breaking Windows 11 with every other update while also cramming in unwanted AI features, swapping operating systems isn’t a bad idea at all.

I’m no Apple fanboy, but I have to give the company credit for launching a product that in its 21st year continues to beat almost all of its competition – and hopefully we’ll see a new model with the M5 chip sometime soon.

The year is almost over, and there’s no doubt that 2025 was a significant one for all of Apple’s best Macs. From splitting up its chip launches to a radical redesign for macOS, we weren’t short of talking points over the last twelve months. Yet for all the successes, there were several notable failures, plus a host of disappointing absences with key products pushed to the back burner. Here, we’ll recap it all, putting Apple’s Mac efforts under the microscope and looking ahead to 2026.

Fresh-faced Mac upgrades

Apple began the year with the launch of a smattering of Macs, with one at the affordable end of the market and the other occupying flagship territory.

Starting with the former, Apple released the M4 MacBook Air in March 2025. This brought a few notable enhancements over the M3 MacBook Air from 2024 and was well-received when we reviewed it. Notable upgrades included the CPU core count rising from eight to 10, the front-facing camera being upgraded with a 12MP lens and Center Stage support, and the maximum memory increasing from 24GB to 32GB. Despite all that, the price actually dropped from $1,099 to $999. While it wasn’t an earth-shattering update to the MacBook Air, it was certainly a positive one in almost every way.

At the other end of the spectrum was the Mac Studio, which also received a fresh coat of paint in March. The most notable change here came in the form of two new chips, but the arrangement was not without its quirks.

In this case, Apple launched the Mac Studio with an M4 Max chip and an M3 Ultra option. That’s right, the high-end chip was actually from the previous generation compared to the chip below it in the hierarchy. That made for an awfully confusing decision for buyers: was the M4 Max better because it used a newer architecture, or was the M3 Ultra more powerful because it was from a higher tier?

In the end, it was the M3 Ultra that won out, and it produced some pretty incredible performance numbers. It also showed itself to be an excellent gaming chip, although it’s hard to justify on this point alone compared to a Windows PC, given its price. But speaking of gaming, Cyberpunk 2077 landed on the Mac in July, signifying that the platform is finally holding its own as a gaming destination - or so Apple hopes, anyway.

The M5 chip gets an unusual launch

Apple’s Mac releases used to be simple: every instance of a new chip, from baseline entries to high-end monsters, came out at the same time. The M5 changed all that, though, with Apple pushing the M5 in October 2025 without any sign of the M5 Pro, M5 Max, and M5 Ultra, which presumably are coming later.

For now, we just have to judge the M5 lineup on its entry-level model. The eponymous M5 has a Neural Accelerator in each core, which means 4x the peak GPU compute of the M4, and that’s really geared towards artificial intelligence (AI) output. Elsewhere, there’s 30% faster GPU performance and a 45% ray tracing improvement compared to the M4, while our review of the M5 MacBook Pro showed that its CPU got 20% faster multithreaded performance compared to the M4.

The only Mac that this chip found its way into in 2025 was the 14-inch MacBook Pro. Aside from the performance uptick, this laptop also got improved battery life: Apple says you’ll get up to 24 hours and our analysis largely confirmed that, with the laptop even outperforming Apple’s numbers in our web browsing test.

That said, we’re still waiting for the elephant in the room: the long-rumored MacBook Pro with a touchscreen OLED display. This has been rumored for years and failed to show its face in 2025, but industry whispers suggest it’ll arrive next year; let’s hope they’re right this time.

M5 Vision Pro: did Apple do enough?

It’s no secret that Apple’s Vision Pro headset has struggled to establish itself since it launched in 2023. No doubt the company was hoping to give it a shot in the arm when it updated the device in October 2025, but many will have been left a little underwhelmed at the changes that were made.

Why are we talking about it here in a piece about Apple’s Mac updates? Well, the Vision Pro was outfitted with the M5 chip that found its way into the MacBook Pro, giving it the same level of power as Apple’s most performant laptop. As well as that, its battery life was boosted, and it got a new headband to help distribute its weight more evenly. That’s got to be good, right?

Those changes might have been welcome, but they failed to address the biggest problems that have been plaguing the Vision Pro since its debut: its weight and price. Sure, the headband is designed to spread the weight more comfortably in use, but it doesn’t address the fact that the Vision Pro is still a heavy headset. The heft wasn’t reduced at all in the new version, making it just as bulky as ever.

As well as that, Apple didn’t touch the Vision Pro’s price, something that has been a major sticking point for years now. At $3,499, the Vision Pro has essentially priced itself out of reach for all but the most profligate or enthusiastic of consumers, meaning it’s struggled to become a must-have device for most people. While a cheaper model has been talked about endlessly for years, there are murmurings that it might have been put on hold. Even if it does eventually launch, it could be too little, too late for Apple’s virtual reality gamble.

The Liquid Glass revolution

As you can see, there were plenty of changes to Mac hardware over the past twelve months. But the software didn’t stand still either, with macOS receiving its most significant design overhaul in years.

In macOS 26, that took the form of Liquid Glass. That’s Apple’s name for its glassy, transparent interface that refracts light and imbues a water-like quality to moving objects. It’s certainly eye-catching.

The problem is that many people have also found it very difficult to use. Text can be hard to read when two panels overlap each other, while Apple’s option for clear app icons makes them exceedingly difficult to differentiate at a glance. There’s no denying that Liquid Glass is pretty, but is it actually all that usable? The jury’s still out on that one.

It was perhaps telling that the departure of chief interface designer Alan Dye from Apple -- the man largely seen as most responsible for Liquid Glass -- was met with cheers and hearty approval from some quarters. Liquid Glass is divisive, and it’ll likely continue to be so for some time to come.

• Apple just teased 'Something powerful is coming"
• The teaser shows a MacBook Pro unfolding, likely a new M5-powered model
• While the M5 chip is almost certain, a new color option might arrive for Apple's Pro laptops

Update October 15: Apple has just announced the new M5 MacBook Pro.

Original story follows:

While Apple CEO Tim Cook didn’t offer the teaser this time around – as he did for the Sky Blue MacBook Air and iPhone 16e – the Cupertino-based company’s SVP of Marketing Greg Joswiak just basically confirmed that at least one new Mac is on the horizon.

A post on X (formerly Twitter) captioned “Mmmmm… something powerful is coming” shows a video with what appears to be a MacBook Pro folded open to make a V, with “Coming Soon” flashed across in varying shades of blue. Now count the number of m’s he used and remember what roman numeral V is, and we’re pretty sure that this is a direct tease for an M5-powered MacBook Pro.

As far as when “Coming Soon” exactly means, given past teasers that Apple’s posted on social media, we’d expect this to come in hot later this week, potentially as soon as tomorrow morning, on Wednesday, October 15, 2025.

In recent years, as well, Apple has used October to launch new Macs and in 2024 debuted new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros, a redesigned Mac mini, a suped-up Mac Studio, and a new iMac, all with the M4 chip. Seemingly, we’re at least getting one new Mac, which appears to be a powerful variant of the MacBook Pro with M5.

It doesn’t come as much of a surprise, given Apple’s history of October launches and, more recently, rumors of the M5 Macs making their debut soon. The rumor mill thus far has been expecting Apple to keep the working, chunkier, and port-filled 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros, but to swap in the more powerful chip under the hood.

The M5 MacBook Pro will likely come as the base model as well as Pro and Max variants – that is, if Apple follows its existing naming convention.

However, while the M4 MacBook Pro comes in Space Black and Silver, I have a hunch that this latest teaser might be hinting at a new color option. Similar to how Apple finally gave the Pro iPhones a pop of color with Cosmic Orange and a new shade of blue alongside Silver, Apple might be finally getting ready to unveil a colorful version of its Pro laptop.

From the teaser, it appears that the MacBook Pro in question might have a hint of blue, so while not as pastel or flowy as the Sky Blue MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro might usher in a deeper navy.

Of course, we’ll need to wait for Apple to make it official, but with a teaser from none other than Apple’s own SVP of Marketing, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a new Mac launch imminently. And TechRadar will be the place to be as we’ll break it all down as it arrives.

• New MacBooks and Macs are rumored to be incoming
• These models are due across 2025 and 2026
• Almost every Apple computer model could get a refresh

We saw rumors around the new M5 MacBook Pro earlier this week, and now a fresh leak may have revealed Apple's entire Mac launch roadmap for the rest of this year and across next year – through details in the macOS Tahoe 26 software development timeline.

Sources speaking to AppleInsider, who are apparently familiar with macOS Tahoe 26 development and testing, have suggested that the M5 MacBook Pro is indeed going to be unveiled in the not-too-distant future.

Then, we're going to get the 13-inch and 15-inch M5 MacBook Air refresh early in 2026, these sources say. Those models would replace the current M4 MacBook Air model, which we had lots of nice things to say about in our M4 MacBook Air review.

As per this leak, the new MacBook Air is making its debut at the same time as macOS Tahoe 26.2. The M4 version of the laptop was launched in March 2025, also with a macOS update – macOS Sequoia 15.3. So the parallels are there.

Desktop computers

After that, we're apparently getting the high-end MacBook Pro variants, running M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. It sounds as though these models will show up soon after the M5 MacBook Air, completing the M5 MacBook Pro lineup.

Apple has more Mac plans for 2026, it would seem: a new Mac mini and a new Mac Studio are then tipped to show up in the middle of 2026. They might be joined by a new iMac, but the sources behind the leak seem less confident about this model.

These desktop computers would all replace the current versions, of course: the most recent desktop Mac launch we've had was in March 2025, when the M3 Ultra Mac Studio made its debut, so updates will definitely be due by next year.

It looks as though it's going to be a busy time for Apple across the end of 2025 and 2026, and there'll be lots more from the company besides these Macs too: new iPad Pros and potentially the iPhone 17e are expected over the coming months.

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• A Mac Pro has again been rumored for launch later this year
• It'll come with an M4 Ultra based on clues drawn from Apple's internal code
• M4 UItra could run with a 32-core CPU and an 80-core GPU in theory

The next iteration of the Mac Pro might see Apple powering the computer with an M4 Ultra chip, we've heard again.

It's been a couple of years since the last incarnation of the Mac Pro, which used the M2 Ultra, so it would be a considerable leap in performance to upgrade to a theoretical M4 Ultra – but Macworld reports that this is what's in the cards.

This is based on Apple's internal code that Macworld caught a glimpse of somehow, which contained the identifier 't8152' – and we're told this suggests the use of the M4 Ultra, codenamed 'Hidra' (a name that's previously been aired on the rumor mill via Bloomberg).

There's not much else to this rumor, and Macworld doesn't have any details on the spec, although it theorizes that the M4 Ultra could run with a 32-core CPU and an 80-core GPU.

As ever with this kind of leak, it could be genuine and yet never come to fruition. It might just show us that Apple has been testing a Mac Pro configuration along these lines – but it's possible that this machine may never see the light of day, ending up canned at some point in prototyping.

Analysis: M4 or wait for M5?

This leak tells us a couple of things. Firstly, that Apple staff can't spell 'Hydra' (well, okay, alternatively let's say Apple engineers can't think up decent codenames). And, being serious, that it does appear increasingly likely that a new Mac Pro design is going to pitch up later this year.

Indeed, the Mac Pro coming out later in 2025, complete with M4 Ultra, was suggested over a year ago now, so this latest nugget of speculation backs up the previous buzz on the grapevine.

On top of the weight of rumors starting to add up, there's also the fact that for Apple, the Mac Pro is in something of an odd predicament right now. This is due to the M4 Pro flexing some considerable performance muscles, and outgunning the Mac Pro's M2 Ultra. The upshot is you can buy a Mac mini (with M4 Pro) and get better performance – at least in terms of raw CPU power – than the Mac Pro, which isn't a good look for the seriously pricey computer.

Not that the Mac Pro is competing with Apple's compact Mac mini, of course – it's a heavyweight pro-targeted PC that offers a lot of advantages in terms of hefty memory loadouts and PCIe expansion options. It is a very different beast indeed, but still, Apple needs to keep the Mac Pro on a reasonable footing in relative performance terms - again meaning that the rumored refresh with an M4 Ultra seems more likely.

A two-year gap also seems a fair enough timeframe for a refresh, and it feels somewhat unlikely to me that Apple would want to wait until the M5 series before pushing out a new Mac Pro given the above reasons.

That said, there are those who've argued that the M4 Ultra isn't going to happen – due to issues around jamming two M4 Max chips together, which is what the Ultra chips do – and that Apple will indeed wait it out for the M5 series to make another Ultra model.

So, everything's rather up in the air for now – but if an M4 Ultra is going to happen, it will surely be in a new Mac Pro, and we're likely to see more leaks soon enough. If the whispers go quiet over the next couple of months, that'll tell its own story.

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Imagine a sunflower. Now imagine a computer that looks like one. Now imagine a sunflower-style computer running an interface that mimics the look and feel of glass. That's what I'm staring at – online at least – and I can't look away from this iMac G4 running Liquid Glass.

It's quite the mashup. The iconic iMac G4 launched 23 years ago with OS X and Liquid Glass is part of the macOS Tahoe 26 Public Beta, which launched just days ago. The project, spotted by 9to5Mac, is the brainchild of Colby Sheets, who first took the 2002 all-in-one, gutted it, and installed an M1 Mac Mini in 2021.

He posted about that on X and in this most recent follow-up, displayed a few images of what macOS 26 would look like on the iMac G4's floating, 15-inch active matrix LCD screen.

In a word, it looks lovely, but it's not just that the macOS 26 interface tries to ride the fine line between frosted glass mimicry and readable interface elements. I'm not sure I'd be as entranced if it weren't on the all-but-forgotten first floating-screen, all-in-one iMac.

I have a certain affinity for this system because it takes me back to a pivotal moment in tech history.

It was a recession, not a great time for computing or even the Internet, which was experiencing the aftermath of the rapid deflation of the dot-com bubble. Our industry needed something.

The last design and development spark had come, unsurprisingly, from Apple, which under returning CEO Steve Jobs' guidance introduced the first candy-colored all-in-one iMac that was both a design and commercial hit.

Things had been relatively quiet since then, with only the original iPod, more of a consumer electronics device, to inspire the Apple minions and gadget enthusiasts at large. On the computing side, it was the doldrums. Many of the Windows whitebox PC companies had either been acquired or were disappearing (Gateway, eMachines, Zeos), and what the rest of the industry was producing were mostly uninspiring tower PCs.

Blooming technology

The iMac arrived as a cover story in Time Magazine on January 14, 2002. It was weeks before the unofficial unveiling of the product at Macworld, so we all pored over the story and marveled at the images of this utterly unique system.

With just a 10.4-inch in diameter, circular, domed white base, chrome arm, and floating thin panel display, the iMac G4 looked nothing like the last iMac or any of the All-in-One PCs then filling Best Buy, Circuit City, and Micro Center shelves.

The design was quite intentional. Jobs recounted to Time the conversation he had in his backyard flower garden with then Apple Designer Jony Ive about how the new iMac should differ from the previous and arguably still quite popular model.

"Why have a flat display if you’re going to glom all this stuff on its back? Why stand a computer on its side when it really wants to be horizontal and on the ground? Let each element be what it is, be true to itself.” Instead of looking like the old iMac, the thing should look more like the flowers in the garden. Jobs said, “It should look like a sunflower.”

And so it does. The iMac G4 (for the CPU inside) is arguably the most plant-like of all iMacs before or since. New iMacs still have a floating display, but the base is flat and devoid of components, which now all fit neatly inside the screen panel body. Any other design, and Colby Sheets probably could not have squeezed Mac Mini components inside the classic iMac.

Up close and still out of reach

A few months after the Time Magazine article and the Macworld launch, an iMac G4 finally arrived at PC Magazine, where I worked in 2002. In person, it was even more impressive. Our first look lauded the new system's design, though we weren't thrilled with the "insubstantial" keyboard and one-button mouse. Still, the bundled software that included iMovie, iTunes, iDVD (the system could burn CDs and DVDs), and iPhoto stood out among PC offerings.

My romanticism of that design is a direct result of its brevity. Apple shifted away from the sunflower look within two years, replacing it with the iMac G5, which set the design language for all future iMacs.

I, though, have reason to think of the iMac G4 every so often. On many of my weekly walks with my wife, we make our way through our small town, walking by all the business storefronts. Inside one, quite close to a window, is an iMac G4. I've never seen it turned on, but each time, I fantasize about marching into the business and asking the proprietor to sell it to me.

Maybe someday. And then I guess I'll gut it and run macOS 26.

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Windows 11’s position as the default operating system for PC gamers could at last be coming under threat, with an increasing list of games being natively ported to rival platforms such as Linux and macOS.

A prime example of this is the recent launch of Cyberpunk 2077 on Macs. After a rocky launch on PCs and consoles in 2020, it has blossomed into one of my favorite games of all time, and I’m thrilled that people with compatible Macs, as well as new Nintendo Switch 2 owners, can now experience this brilliant game.

Cyberpunk 2077’s arrival on Macs is particularly exciting for me. Despite one of my earliest memories of PC gaming being playing Lemmings on a Macintosh (in black and white!), it’s fair to say that gaming on Macs hasn’t really taken off, with only a fraction of PC games being ported to macOS.

This has led to PC gamers only having one choice: buy a Windows machine. For people who don’t like Microsoft and its way of doing things, this was less than ideal.

With the rise of gaming-centric Linux distros like SteamOS and high profile games finally making their way to Macs, could this be the start of an exciting new chapter for PC gamers looking for Windows alternatives? Might we even one day see some of the best MacBooks also appear in our best gaming laptops buying guide?

Another exciting aspect about Cyberpunk 2077 arriving on Macs, is that this is a game that remains a graphical showcase with advanced effects, such as path tracing for ultra-realistic lighting and reflections, which unless you’re playing on the latest consoles, usually means you need a pretty high-end (read: expensive) gaming rig with a modern graphics card.

Modern Macs don’t have that; instead, Apple’s M-class chips that power the devices combine the central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU), with shared (Apple calls it ‘unified’) memory. This design, based on Arm architecture and sometimes known as a system-on-chip (SoC), greatly differs from traditional gaming PCs and gaming laptops, which have separate CPU and GPUs, with GPUs having their own dedicated memory.

The conventional wisdom has been that for a game that’s as graphically-demanding as Cyberpunk 2077 when playing at high PC presets, you need a system with a dedicated GPU (often this means a graphics card like the Nvidia RTX 5080).

With Cyberpunk 2077 now available for Macs with integrated graphics, while promising to offer PC-level graphical fidelity (read: superior to console graphics), this is an exciting moment for PC gamers – could it prove that you don’t need a discrete GPU for playing modern AAA games, as well making macOS a viable alternative to Windows 11 for gaming?

Go big or go home

While Cyberpunk 2077 is now available to buy through Apple’s App Store on the Mac, you can also buy it from storefronts such as Steam and GOG – and if you’ve already purchased it for PC, you should be able to install it on your Mac without having to buy it again – I was able to download it onto my Macs via GOG Galaxy without having to rebuy – and it also allowed me to continue my playthrough from where I’d left off on PC thanks to cloud saves and cross progression, which makes switching to Mac pretty painless for PC gamers.

I’m lucky enough to have access to a range of modern Macs and MacBooks, so as soon as Cyberpunk 2077 became available, I wanted to test it out on the most powerful Mac I could get my hands on – and that just so happened to be the Apple Mac Studio (M3 Ultra), kitted out with a 32-core CPU, 80-core GPU and 256GB of unified memory.

It’s one of the most powerful Macs Apple has ever made – and also one of the most expensive, with a $8,099 / £8,299 / AU$13,149 asking price that would make even the most dedicated PC gamer wince.

While the Mac Studio, even with these specs, is not a gaming device, I was looking forward to seeing what it was capable of with Cyberpunk 2077.

To be honest, that was probably a mistake.

Taking inspiration from the Steam Deck?

Unlike PCs, which are made up of various components from different manufacturers, and which are usually built by other companies (or users themselves), Apple has a tight grip over the hardware of its Macs, and that has allowed it, along with the developers of Cyberpunk 2077 to offer a bespoke graphics preset called ‘For this Mac’ which should give you the best graphics and performance for the Mac or MacBook you’re running the game on.

It's a cool feature on paper, as it should mean that Mac users who aren’t as comfortable with tweaking every graphical setting in a game to eke out as much performance as possible as seasoned PC gamers are, should be able to play Cyberpunk 2077 and get the best experience without even having to open the settings menu (as the ‘For this Mac’ preset is selected by default).

This reminds me of a similar feature of Valve’s Steam Deck gaming handheld PC, where ‘Steam Deck verified’ games use a default graphics preset for Steam Deck hardware, again to offer the best possible experience without users having to delve into the settings menu of each game.

Both of these features promise to make playing PC games a lot more like playing games on a console, where tweaking is kept to a minimum so you can just jump straight into a game and start playing. It’s also a feature that PCs can’t really offer due to the sheer quantity of hardware configurations there are.

When running Cyberpunk 2077 on the Mac Studio using the ‘For this Mac’ preset, I thought it was playing it a bit too safe, as it set the resolution of 2560 x 1440 (despite being plugged into a 4K gaming monitor), ray tracing turned off, and Apple’s own MetalFX technology, which like tech from AMD, Nvidia and Intel, renders the game at a lower resolution, then upscales it for impressive-looking games that don’t stress out your hardware too much.

With MetalFX set to ‘Dynamic Resolution Scaling’, at the target framerate set at 60fps, the amount of upscaling will fluctuate to keep the game feeling smooth, and in my tests it did a good job of sticking to 60fps.

However, the game didn’t look nearly as good as it does on my gaming PC. Now, admittedly I usually play Cyberpunk 2077 on a PC with an Nvidia RTX 5090 graphics card installed, which is an incredibly powerful GPU, so I might be a bit spoiled when it comes to comparing the game’s performance on PC and Mac, though over the years I’ve also played the game on much weaker hardware.

Part of the issue is the shorter draw distance, and anti-aliasing seems to introduce a more pixelated look on some objects. Also, in the neon-lit world of Night City (where the game takes place), ray tracing lighting effects make a huge impact, especially when the lighting reflects off puddles and other reflective surfaces (using even more advanced path tracing tech). Without ray tracing, the overall look of the game takes a big hit.

So, having established that the Mac Studio can play Cyberpunk 2077 out of the box at 60fps, my next mission was to tweak the settings to see if I could improve the visual quality of the game, while keeping framerates playable.

Keeping most of the settings the same, I upped the resolution to 4K (3840 x 2160), turned on ray tracing (to its highest settings) and path tracing. This time, the average frame rate dropped to 20.74fps – far too low to produce anything close to a playable frame rate.

Turning on AMD FSR 3.1 Frame Generation, a feature that uses AI to generate frames that get inserted in-between normal rendered frames with the aim of increasing the frames per second without impacting the hardware too much, and changing the MetalFX scaling to ‘Quality’ to see if that helped improve the look of the game did result in an improvement in graphics, but the slight bump in framerate to 25.69fps was still too low.

Switching MetalFX to ‘Balanced’ upped the framerate again to an actually playable, though far from ideal, 30.82fps.

Turning MetalFX’s setting to ‘Performance’, which lowers the rendered resolution for improved performance, and relies more on upscaling (at the cost of visual fidelity), boosted the frame rate further to 38.61fps.

Dropping the resolution back down to 1440p (and turning off ray tracing) saw a huge uptick in frame rates to 89.67fps. You’re not just relying on MetalFX to upscale the game, however, as you can switch to AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) tech, which is used in a wide range of PC games already, and unlike Nvidia’s rival DLSS tech, which is limited to Nvidia’s most recent GPUs, AMD FSR isn’t exclusive to AMD hardware. The tech is a lot more established than MetalFX for upscaling games, and switching to FSR saw frame rates more than double to 196.98fps.

This result is far more in line with what I was expecting from the hardware, and it meant I had headroom to increase some of the settings to improve the graphical fidelity of the game. Increasing the resolution back up to 4K brought an expected hit to frame rates, but it still hit on average 135.51fps, which is still excellent (and as the 4K monitor I’m playing on has a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz, it means I still have some headroom to increase settings, as anything above 120fps will be a bonus).

With that in mind, I turned ray tracing back on, but limited it to reflections and medium settings for ray-traced lighting. The game looked much better, though the framerate dropped to 69.59fps, a major fall that shows how demanding ray tracing is on the GPU.

As the Mac Studio is not a gaming device, I wanted to keep the frame rate at an achievable 60fps, rather than sacrificing too many graphical bells and whistles to boost the frame rate into triple digits.

So, changing AMD FSR to ‘Performance’ I turned on more ray tracing features, including sun shadows, and upped ray-traced lighting to ‘Ultra’. This dropped the framerate to 60.83fps on average, which meant I’d hit the sweet spot between performance and graphical fidelity.

M3 Ultra is no RTX 5090 killer

Now, getting an $8,000 PC to hit 60fps may seem disappointing, especially for PC gamers who are used to splashing out lots of money and getting incredible results. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 on my PC with the RTX 5090 means I’m used to having all the graphical settings at their very highest settings, along with the demanding path tracing feature also enabled, and seeing frame rates in the high 100s.

This shows that despite its power, the Mac Studio is not a gaming machine, but the addition of Cyberpunk 2077 and its solid performance means that it is a workstation PC that can also play games – and with good (if not spectacular) results.

What about MacBooks?

I also tried out Cyberpunk 2077 on a 15-inch MacBook Air (M4), a much more mainstream and affordable Mac. While it offers only a fraction of the performance of the Mac Studio, it’s far more popular – and it’s this kind of Mac that most people will be playing on.

Because of the entry-level specs of the MacBook Air, which features an M4 chip with 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU, plus 16GB of unified memory, I left Cyberpunk 2077 on the default ‘For this Mac’ preset, which uses the ‘medium’ texture quality and a resolution of 1710 x 1068, which is a step down from the native Retina resolution of the MacBook Air’s screen, which is 2880 x 1864.

MetalFX is set to Dynamic Resolution Scaling with a target of 30fps, and ray tracing is (unsurprisingly) turned off. With these settings, the game hit a rock-steady 30fps – and it actually impressed me far more than the Mac Studio performance. Let me explain.

Set your expectations

The reason I wasn’t that impressed with the Mac Studio’s performance with Cyberpunk 2077 is that my expectations were too high, whereas with the MacBook Air, my expectations were much lower (and more realistic), and that meant they were surpassed.

While 30fps might not sound like much (it’s certainly the lowest frame rate I’d consider playable), the fact that you’re running such a graphically-ambitious game on a device that not only doesn’t have a discrete GPU, but also a laptop that doesn’t even feature fans, is seriously impressive.

This is a very thin and light laptop and runs completely silently – a big contrast to most gaming laptops that are usually big and bulky, and pretty noisy when the built-in fans kick in to keep the hardware cool.

The solid out-of-the-box performance also means it’s a great example of how bringing Cyberpunk 2077 to the MacBook Air, a laptop that’s less expensive than a lot of gaming laptops, allows people who wouldn’t usually buy a gaming PC to play one of the best PC games ever made.

The smaller screen of the 15-inch MacBook Air compared to the larger 4K monitor I tested on also helped, as rough edges and other graphical blemishes that can be visable when you start lowering graphics settings and resolutions are far less noticeable (and more forgivable) on a smaller screen.

Using what I learned from playing the game on the Mac Studio, I turned on Frame Generation and switched the upscaling to FSR, and got a frankly excellent 69.83fps. This gave me scope to increase the texture quality to ‘High’, and it appears with minimal impact as I then got 65.32fps on average. But would turning on ray tracing prove too much?

Yes. Turning ray traced lighting to ‘Medium’ saw the frame rate drop to 39.12fps. Not disastrous, but it definitely makes the game feel less smooth. Changing AMD FSR 3.1 to Dynamic Resolution Scaling with a target of 60fps saw the framerate climb to 51fps, but the fluctuating image quality used to try and maintain that target meant it wasn’t worth the sacrifice for ray tracing. Turning it off, I was back to well over 60fps, and the game looked good and played well despite running on a non-gaming laptop. However, while the fanless design of the MacBook Air means the laptop remains silent, it does get quite toasty, with the space between the top of the keyboard and the hinge of the screen getting noticeably warm.

I do worry that during long play sessions (which many people, myself included, often indulge in with games like this) the MacBook Air could overheat which could result in reduced performance and even crashes where the game becomes unresponsive. However, during my time playing on the MacBook Air or the Mac Studio, I didn’t get any game-ending crashes.

After playing on both ends of the Mac spectrum, with the ultra high-end Mac Studio and affordable MacBook Air, I have to say I was most impressed with the MacBook Air, especially after a bit of tweaking that allowed me to play the game at above 60fps. For people who have never set foot into Night City, the Mac versions are a great choice, though PC gamers might not be that impressed.

There were also three surprising things that really stood out to me while playing Cyberpunk 2077 on the Mac, some of which I’d love to see in the PC version.

1. Spatial audio could be a killer app

Cyberpunk 2077 on Mac supports spatial audio via Apple’s AirPods earbuds, and I was very impressed with the results. Apple has a lot of experience in this field, with its AirPods devices offing impressive virtual surround effects for films, TV shows and music mixed for Dolby Atmos.

I used the AirPods Max while playing Cyberpunk 2077 and was extremely impressed with the results. The audio quality was fantastic, and the noise from the hustle and bustle of Night City really did feel like it was coming from all around me, making the game world feel even more immersive.

It was far better than most virtual surround sound systems I’ve tested with gaming headsets, though it still doesn’t quite compare to a real, physical surround sound setup.

The reason why it’s so successful is because Apple incorporates head tracking into the AirPods’ spatial audio, so the way you move your head influences the volume of the sounds you’re hearing in each ear. I’m massively oversimplifying it, but it’s an element I’ve not experienced with PC gaming headsets, and I was impressed with how well it worked with this game.

It’s limited to Apple’s own headphones, which (especially in the case of the AirPods Max) are quite expensive, but I could definitely see spatial audio support becoming a real selling point for gaming on Macs in the future.

2. 'For this Mac' presets are a great idea

When I first heard about the ‘For this Mac’ presets, I thought it was a good idea, allowing non-technically minded people get a solid gaming experience that’s tailored to the hardware you’re using.

In practise, it does mean you can fire up the game and get playing without any tweaking, which takes away some of the complexity that PC gaming has developed a (not entirely unfair) reputation for.

It’s definitely something I’d like to see more of with Mac gaming – especially considering it’s not really possible to do on a Windows PC – and it could encourage more people to try out gaming.

However, I found the settings were a bit on the cautious side, which is understandable but does mean that some Mac gamers could miss out on performance and effects if they stick to the preset.

It does offer a good springboard, however, for tweaking if a gamer does want to push the hardware and eke out better performance.

3. Cross platform saves mean Macs can be a great gaming backup

One thing I really liked was that the Mac version of Cyberpunk 2077 is available on the Steam and GOG game stores (as well as through the App store), and as I had already bought the PC version from GOG, the Mac version was sitting there for me to install without having to repurchase it.

It also offers cross platform progression, so when loading up the Mac version I was able to carry on from my last cloud-based save, essentially letting me continue from where I left off on my gaming PC.

This means my MacBook Air is now a viable gaming alternative if I’m travelling away from my gaming PC and desperately want to play Cyberpunk 2077 (it happens) – and it could make a MacBook a more enticing prospect for PC gamers looking for a non-gaming laptop.

It could work the other way as well, with Mac gamers who fall in love with the game potentially investing in a gaming PC, though if you buy the App store version you’ll need to buy it again on PC, as the App store isn’t available in Windows 11. You won’t have to buy a copy for every Mac you use, however.

Overall, Cyberpunk 2077 doesn’t mean gamers can throw out their graphics cards and dump Windows 11 for good, as gaming PCs are still the best place to play a game like this, but it’s an exciting glimpse of what the future holds for gaming on Macs.

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We’ve been hearing for months that Apple is planning to bring AAA game Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition to macOS, and yesterday we finally got a release date: it’s due to arrive tomorrow, July 17. It’s the news Mac gamers have been waiting a tortuously long time to hear.

As someone who games on both a PC and a Mac – and who absolutely loves Cyberpunk 2077 and has been playing it for years – I’m super excited to try out one of the best single-player games on my Mac. Because this isn’t just one of my favorite games on one of my favorite computers. No, it looks like Apple and CD Projekt Red are going above and beyond to make this an experience custom-built for Mac gamers. And that means there’s a lot to look forward to.

Game-changing performance

As an Apple gamer, I’m used to performance that lags behind my PC. Don’t get me wrong, Apple silicon has been an absolute gamechanger for Mac gaming, and I can still get decent frame rates in most games on my MacBook Pro. But despite Apple’s lofty claims, it’s always seemed like wishful thinking to imagine that the integrated GPU you find in Apple’s Mac chips can compete with any of the best graphics cards.

That’s why the key detail that leapt out at me from Apple’s announcement was the claim that Cyberpunk 2077 will be able to run on a Mac at 120 frames per second (fps) when using ultra settings. Considering how incredibly demanding Cyberpunk 2077 is, that’s bona fide gaming PC performance and would be a massive step up for Mac players.

If that’s what you can potentially eke out of a game like Cyberpunk 2077, then other, less-demanding games could perform even better. Sure, MacBook Pro displays are limited to 120fps, but you might be able to max out all settings and still hit that refresh rate in other titles. It’s an enticing thought.

Of course, everything depends on which chips will be able to achieve this kind of output. Apple hasn’t given any specifics here, but when we went hands-on with Cyberpunk 2077 on a Mac, it reached 120fps at ultra settings using an M4 Max chip. It’s unlikely that lower-rated chips will hit those numbers too – I’m not holding out too much hope for my M1 Pro MacBook Pro – but we’ll have to see how they perform when we get some testing time with the game.

Interestingly, software is seemingly just as important here as hardware. Yes, a high-end chip will undoubtedly help you reach those sky-high numbers, but some of the most interesting tidbits from Apple’s Cyberpunk 2077 announcement were related to software.

For instance, Apple said that MetalFX Upscaling would be available on launch, with MetalFX Frame Interpolation and MetalFX Denoising coming later this year. Starting with MetalFX Upscaling, this renders the game at a lower level than your display’s native resolution, then uses artificial intelligence (AI) to scale it up. Nvidia and AMD already have similar techs, and they do a fantastic job (in some cases, the upscaled version actually looks better than the original), so this could be a major boost for macOS.

MetalFX Denoising, meanwhile, will allow “real time path tracing on the game’s highest quality graphics settings,” Apple says, and that’s something that could provide an incredible boost to visual fidelity.

The AI revolution

What’s fascinating to me is that these are all AI technologies. They come at a time when Apple’s headline AI (specifically, Apple Intelligence) is widely perceived to be seriously lagging behind rivals like ChatGPT and Copilot.

Yet while most people envisage chatbots when they think of AI, artificial intelligence is actually far broader, as these gaming techs show. Apple has long been a strong AI performer – its image processing and Siri suggestions being two examples you’ve likely encountered on an iPhone.

Of course, we don’t yet know how well all of these MetalFX techs will perform, with MetalFX Frame Interpolation and Denoising not expected until later this year. But they could counter the argument that Apple is falling behind in AI (a contention that was never the full picture anyway).

Of these AI features, MetalFX Frame Interpolation is the one that has piqued my interest the most. Apple says this generates a new frame for every two input frames, resulting in much smoother gameplay than you would normally be able to achieve.

This is sure to reignite the impassioned “fake frames” debate that has been playing out ever since Nvidia and AMD introduced their own frame-generation features. Yet provided Apple can avoid stutters and jerkiness, I think this is unlikely to bother Mac gamers – for most Apple fans, being able to enjoy smooth framerates on Mac hardware is likely to outweigh any high-level concerns about whether the frames are “real” or “fake.” The true test will be at more modest hardware levels rather than the M4 Max and M3 Ultra we’ve seen Cyberpunk played on so far.

A serious gaming test

And then there are all the other interesting additions that are unique to the Apple edition. This version comes with “dynamically calibrated HDR optimized for Apple XDR displays,” Apple says, alongside Spatial Audio with head tracking (providing you’re listening with a pair of the best AirPods), plus “For this Mac” graphical presets that are “individually optimized for every Apple Silicon Mac model.”

That all makes me think that Apple is trying to do this the right way. It’s making use of its other products and adding its own techs that are tailor-made for its devices, rather than just plugging in upscaling and frame generation tools from Nvidia or AMD and hoping for the best.

The last few years have shown that Apple is taking Mac gaming seriously. Cyberpunk 2077 will be the sternest test of that commitment – but if Apple does it right, it could also be its biggest success story so far.

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• Apple could be working on a system to update Macs while they're still boxed
• This is based on clues in the latest developer beta of macOS 26
• Such a system is already used with iPhones, though it's not clear how Apple would get this to work with Macs

Apple's Macs could leave the shelf with a fully up-to-date installation of macOS on board in the future, preventing any need for a day-one update from the buyer, if clues in the latest developer beta are any indication.

9 to 5 Mac reports that the macOS Tahoe 26 beta 3 contains the groundwork (initial references and code) for such a system, which is already in place for the iPhone.

It's called Presto and it allows boxed iPhones to be updated to the very latest version of iOS by retailers - without removing the hardware from its sealed package - if the devices need an update beyond the version of the operating system they shipped with.

This saves the customer the trouble of applying an update right out of the gate, which is incredibly convenient.

The Presto hardware itself is a rack with six bays that can have six iPhones placed within. It uses wireless technologies to switch the phones on, update them, then turn them off. (MagSafe and NFC to turn the devices on, by all accounts, and Wi-Fi to pipe the actual update through.)

Analysis: Boxing clever

If Macs are going to get the benefit of having fully up-to-date software when they're taken home by the buyer, it begs the question: how is Apple going to pull this off with laptops and PCs? The system might have to work very differently for a bigger piece of hardware, and Macs don't have NFC either - so it's not clear how the sealed PC could be triggered to power on in its box (and off again afterwards).

9to5Mac suggests that maybe Apple could add NFC back to its macOS devices, or that perhaps a different mix of wireless tech could be used with Macs. Whatever the case, it's not clear how Apple would pull this off as it does with iPhones, but it may require a substantially different spin on the concept.

Furthermore, just because a potential feature is spotted in the background of beta software doesn't mean it'll ever come to fruition. That said, the presence of the code here does indicate that this is at least something Apple is seriously considering - watch this space, I guess.

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• A huge leak has revealed Apple’s Mac plans for the next 18 months
• It contains data on close to 20 upcoming Mac desktops and MacBooks
• There are a few intriguing surprises nestled inside the leak

Apple is known for keeping its upcoming products a closely-guarded secret, but that doesn’t stop information leaking out from its fortress-like walls. That’s just happened again, and this time a mother lode of Mac data has seemingly emerged from inside the company’s labs.

This leak comes from AppleInsider, and the news outlet says it sourced it from “our own data and information shared with us.” It includes records on close to 20 of the best Macs that Apple is set to release over the next year or so, giving us a rare sneak peek at the company’s future plans.

AppleInsider’s sources shared product codenames and other related information, which AppleInsider has used to piece together what might be on the menu. In some cases, this takes the form of simple common sense: Apple is planning to upgrade all of its MacBooks to the M5 chip series, for example.

There are a few interesting tidbits, though, such as AppleInsider’s contention that an M5 iMac might be in the works, alongside a new Mac Pro with either an M3 Ultra or M5 Ultra chip. Both the iMac and the Mac Pro have gone years without a significant upgrade.

We can also glean an intriguing detail about Apple’s M6 MacBook Pro, which is likely to launch in late 2026. Rumors have claimed that this could come with an extensive hardware overhaul (including an OLED display), but the device’s alleged identifier numbers – K114 and K116 – imply that the laptop might retain its current size options.

If the 14 and 16 in K114 and K116 correspond to screen measurements, that suggests that the M6 MacBook Pro could be keeping its current 14-inch and 16-inch options.

Nearly 20 new Macs in the works

Almost all of the report’s device codenames could be matched with existing devices based on past releases.

For instance, the Mac mini with M4 Pro chip used the J773s model number, so the new J873s codename in AppleInsider’s data likely corresponds to an M5 Pro variant. Yet there was one mysterious device that could not be identified, and AppleInsider speculates that it could be the much-rumored MacBook powered by Apple’s A18 chip. Time will tell on that one.

Besides the expected models we’ve discussed above, AppleInsider’s report omitted model identifiers for a few Macs you’d expect to see. While the outlet discussed the Mac mini with M5 Pro chip, for example, it says it was not informed about the entry-level M5 Mac mini – although it added that this device is surely a given if the M5 Pro model is also in development.

There’s a lot of data to sift through in AppleInsider’s report, so we’ve put it into a table below for simple viewing. We’ve included predicted release dates alongside the Mac models, although these are only estimates and could change over time. The table only includes devices with identifier numbers provided by AppleInsider, so variants like the M5 Mac mini are not present.

As this is all merely rumored information, we’ll have to wait to see how accurate it proves to be. Much of it lines up with previous reports, though, so it might not be entirely wide of the mark – which makes it a handy resource if you're thinking of upgrading your Mac in the near future.

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We’ve known that Cyberpunk 2077 is eventually coming to the Mac, and developers CD Projekt Red (CDPR) have been hard at work – and still are – at getting the title fit to run on any Apple Silicon-powered device. That means the massive AAA title, which has been frequently used to benchmark systems, will be able to run on the M1 chip or newer.

It was reconfirmed at WWDC 2025 – Apple’s week-long developer conference – that it would be arriving later this year, and back with the launch of the new Mac Studio, TechRadar saw a demo of it running on that super-powered computer.

Now, though, I had the chance to get another demo of Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition – a newer version of the in-development title – on a 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M4 Max chip and 128GB of RAM.

It was on ‘Ultra’ settings with a buttery smooth and excellently rendered 120 frames per second. And yes, this performance is derived from Apple’s M4 Max chip – no discrete GPU required. Further, this was fully taking advantage of Apple's Metal 4, coming later this year, including MetalFX Frame Interpolation.

It looked fantastic and was responsive, but that had me thinking about the plans to launch this on any Apple Silicon Mac.

I was curious about performance on less powerful chips within Apple’s lineup, as the requirement for the title is expected to be Apple Silicon, meaning it should run base M1, M2, M3, or M4 chips as well as the more powerful creations.

I asked Pawel Sasko, Associate Game Director of CD Projekt Red, about what performance might look like on other Macs with different levels of performance from various chips, like even a MacBook Air.

He first explained that Cyberpunk 2077 is running on CDPR’s proprietary Red Engine Four, which is designed to be scalable. “It's trying to use everything that given platform provides,” Sasko explained and called out that the title is available on a variety of devices already, including the Nintendo Switch 2 ahead of its release on the Mac.

"Red engine is basically trying to check what hardware you have and squeeze out the max you can have,” he continued. Meaning that Cyberpunk 2077 will work to run and deliver the best performance based on the chip you have inside. Sasko couldn’t give a specific number yet based on the chip or a potential Mac SKU, but that’s because the game is still not finalized – CDPR is still working on it and polishing it.

Sasko even shared that they’ll work on optimizing performance until the very end, and recently CDPR figured out how to optimize cloth, also known as what a character is wearing, to make it look better.

Suffice to say, he shared that “We're trying to squeeze everything that given hardware gives us,” meaning it will run the best it possibly can on the Mac – which likely means that a more powerful chip, like an M4, M4 Pro, or M4 Max, will deliver the best results.

And the good news is that we’re likely only a few months away from one of the biggest AAA titles arriving on the Mac – the CDPR team wouldn’t give an exact time frame, but Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition will arrive in 2025.

I also got to see this demo of the title shortly after Apple unveiled macOS 26 Tahoe, which will introduce the Games app. Although CDPR hasn’t announced if it will be integrating with the new hub, it will work with the new ‘Game Overlay.’

This is a sidebar that can be brought to the top right-hand side of the screen, making it easy to enable game mode, adjust brightness or volume, and even switch controllers, as well as connect with friends. You can also opt to push your MacBook further with different energy modes.

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• It generates an extra frame between two input frames for better performance

Apple's WWDC 2025 keynote unveiled various improvements coming to Macs in in macOS Tahoe 26 – and the boosts to the Cupertino giant's gaming efforts are certainly noteworthy.

As highlighted in the keynote (streamed on YouTube), Apple's new Metal 4 graphics rendering API will introduce MetalFX Frame Interpolation and MetalFX denoising for macOS Tahoe 26, providing an Nvidia Frame Generation-like gaming experience. The new dedicated gaming app will also introduce a gaming overlay that's very reminiscent of Discord's updated overlay.

This comes at an ideal time with games like Assassin's Creed Shadows already available on the platform, and Pearl Abyss' Crimson Desert on the horizon; if implemented well, frame interpolation should bring a significant enhancement to graphically-demanding games, especially if base frame rates are at a decent standard.

With MetalFX denoising and upscaling, ray-tracing will become a stronger possibility for powerful M-based Macs, with better performance and visual quality than before. The game overlay looks set to provide a more gaming-friendly user interface, especially with the mini social hub for quick communication with friends.

All of the new features may bring Apple's macOS closer to becoming a stronger gaming platform. It's still early days, so there's likely plenty more for Apple to reveal closer to macOS Tahoe 26's launch this fall, but it's a promising start.

Analysis: So Apple, how about that gaming handheld?

M3 and M4 MacBooks are all set for improved gaming once macOS Tahoe 26 becomes available. While gaming performance with those M-based chips is great as it stands, the addition of frame generation and denoising technology is a significant upgrade.

Apple's M-based chips are power-efficient thanks to their Arm-based architecture, and as I've mentioned previously, this would be perfect for an Apple gaming handheld. So Apple, I guess it still isn't time for one? I beg to differ, because despite the gaming library, which still needs more growth, I can easily see an M-based handheld being a powerhouse and outshining others.

Usually, there are tons of leaks and rumors before Apple officially unveils surprises, so I didn't expect to see a handheld at WWDC 2025 – but I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that we'll see one at next year's keynote.

Wishful thinking? Probably, but I think Apple is missing out on easy win, as the handheld gaming market is arguably blooming more than ever before right now.

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Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference - aka WWDC - is upon us once more, and the 2025 edition looks like it could ring in some big changes for Apple. The rumor mill says that there are major redesigns planned for iOS on the iPhone, as well as iPadOS, macOS, WatchOS for the Apple Watch, and even tvOS for the Apple TV streaming box. Lots of people will be hoping for news on Apple Intelligence too (although I wouldn’t hold my breath on that if I were you).

But, in the words of the immortal Spice Girls - I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want – and that’s more games for the Mac. I am that rare breed of creature known as the Mac Gamer. It’s a small, select group, mainly consisting of me and Whoopi Goldberg, but it’s growing all the time and after decades of completely ignoring games on the Mac it looks as though Apple is finally showing some interest.

Game On

Apple has never liked games. John Carmack, one of the creators of Doom and Quake at id Software, once said that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs “didn’t think very highly of games”, and Jobs’ attitude meant that Apple effectively ignored gaming on the Mac for decades (“I never took it personally,” said Carmack).

That state of affairs didn’t really change until WWDC in 2023. After making headlines with the debut of the Vision Pro headset, Apple very quietly released a new software tool called the Game Porting ToolKit (GPT) that was designed specifically to help developers produce Mac versions of their PC games.

This seemed to mark a real change in Apple’s attitude towards games, and the launch of GPT did help to bring a few AAA titles to Mac for the first time, including Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Control, Death Stranding, and multiple Resident Evil games. But the fact remains that most A-List PC games never get released on the Mac at all, so here’s my wishlist for the Mac games scene at WWDC in 2025.

More Powerful Hardware

Even the best Macbooks and Macs have often been mocked for lacking the power to play games with modern 3D graphics – in fact, Macs couldn’t even handle ray-tracing until Apple introduced its M3 processors about 18 months ago.

Even now, many Mac games still require very expensive, top-of-the-range Mac models in order to run at high graphical settings. There are some pretty good gaming PCs available for less than £1000/$1000, and Apple needs to bring real gaming power to more Mac models in order to create a larger audience for new Mac games.

In Apple's defense, though, there's no denying that the best gaming laptops can get pretty expensive - and many people need a single lightweight system for work as well as gaming, not a desktop-replacement powerhouse machine that can't last more than two hours away from a wall outlet. So the potential is there; Apple just needs to step up.

More Tools For Games Developers

The Mac operating system (aka macOS) relies on a piece of Apple software called Metal to handle 3D graphics in games. In contrast, PC games generally rely on Microsoft’s DirectX graphics software instead, and converting – or ‘porting’ - DirectX games to run on Macs is a huge technical challenge for game developers.

That’s where the Game Porting Toolkit comes in, as it is specifically designed to help with this conversion process. Apple did introduce GPT 2.0 at WWDC in 2024, so releasing another update at this year’s WWDC would reaffirm Apple’s commitment to gaming. Apple could also simply buy Codeweavers, the developer of the open-source CrossOver software that GPT is partly based on (codeweavers.com). The CrossOver team has enormous experience in getting Windows games to run on Macs, and that could help Apple to smooth the path onto the Mac for many PC-based games developers.

Open Up The App Store

At the moment, many Mac games are only available via Apple’s own Mac App Store. Even if you’ve already bought Control: Ultimate Edition on Steam or the Epic Games Store then you’ll find that you still have to buy the Mac version separately on the Mac App Store – so you’re effectively paying twice for a game that you already own. Games on the Mac App Store also tend to be more expensive than on Steam or Epic – where the PC version of Control: Ultimate Edition is currently on sale at a bargain price.

This applies to lots of other Mac games too, so Apple really needs to allow developers more freedom to sell their Mac games outside the Mac App Store. Unfortunately, Apple’s long-running legal battle with Epic over selling Fortnite on the App Store suggests that this is pretty unlikely. However, games such as Baldur’s Gate 3 and Hades 2 do allow you to buy the game once on Steam and then download either Mac or PC versions as required, so that’s something I’d like to see from more games in the future.

Revamp Apple Arcade

Apple makes billions of dollars from its subscription services, and Apple Arcade was meant to provide an Apple alternative to gaming services such as Microsoft’s Game Pass for Xbox and PC. But while Game Pass tempts players with newly-released hit titles such as Oblivion Remastered and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Apple Arcade is full of aging mobile games like Angry Birds that were originally designed for the iPhone or iPad.

The selection of Mac games is seriously underwhelming, so Apple needs to work with game developers to bring some heavyweight A-list titles to Apple Arcade. Mac users know that Apple often makes splashy announcements at WWDC about forthcoming games for the Mac, but it needs to continue that commitment for the other 51 weeks of the year if it really wants the Mac to be taken seriously as a gaming platform. Zigazig ah!

WWDC 2025 is almost here, and you can follow all of the last-minute rumors on our WWDC liveblog. But I’ve also got a last-minute prediction to slide under the wire – or, more accurately, an anti-prediction, because there’s one thing I’m practically convinced we’re not getting at Apple’s big event.

Where’s the gaming content, Apple? It feels like every few years, you take a big swing at the gaming arena – with stuff like Apple Arcade, the new Metal 3 developer kit, or, uh… Death Stranding coming to macOS four years late? – but frankly, it’s starting to feel like an afterthought.

Let me be clear about this: the games industry is worth more than the music and film industries combined. You like money, right, Apple? There’s a deep well of untapped potential here, but I’m afraid it’s going to take more than simply bringing a handful of triple-A titles to Mac. Oh, and you probably shouldn’t have tried to stop one of the world’s most popular games from being played on your hardware.

Apple and gaming: oil and water?

It’s a strange thing; Apple products are everywhere, from the seemingly omnipresent iPhone to the best MacBooks and Macs. Hell, Apple makes a pretty big deal about the MacBook Air being the ‘world’s best-selling laptop’ (this claim requires a little fudging of the data to ring true, but I’ll give it to Apple just this once).

But despite the no-doubt massive Venn diagram overlap between Apple users and gamers, the company seems largely disinterested in pushing gaming as a major feature of its products.

And those products are perfectly capable of gaming. The new M4 chips – which can be found in the latest 2025 MacBook Air, amongst other products – are actually pretty beastly. Even the older M2 chip offered some admirable performance in our own Roland Moore-Colyer’s recent gaming tests. The hardware is not the problem here.

So, perhaps the software is the issue? It’s a fair claim: macOS is not the operating system of choice for most non-console gamers, with Windows holding a mammoth 95.45% of the user share in the most recent Steam Hardware Survey, split mostly between Windows 10 and 11. For comparison, all the combined macOS versions totaled up to a measly 1.85%.

It’s hard to deny that gamers simply don’t see macOS as a viable platform for gaming, and by extension, developers don’t see macOS as a viable platform for developing games. But here’s the thing: that’s Apple’s fault.

Making a commitment

See, for all its faults, Microsoft has never shied away from the gaming space. The Xbox 360 was arguably one of the most iconic consoles of recent decades, the increasingly popular Game Pass is now available across console and PC, and Microsoft has long included gaming-related features in Windows. Hell, the company even has its fingers in the game development pie, with Xbox Game Studios hoovering up multiple smaller dev teams over the years.

This is what Apple needs to do, if it has any designs whatsoever on making itself relevant within the gaming market. My lovely colleague Isaiah Williams posited that Apple should make a gaming handheld earlier this year – and while I agree, I don’t think that’ll solve the problem here. No amount of new hardware will make people want to game on Apple products; the excellent gaming performance of the M4 chip proves that, frankly.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: what Apple needs to do is actually make games. You’re running one of the world’s richest companies here, Tim Cook; time to put some of those iPhone billions behind an established dev studio, create a macOS game publishing division, and deliver the killer app that makes gamers want to buy a Mac. If Apple wants people to believe that it’s serious about gaming, we need to see big titles coming to Mac on day one – or better yet, completely exclusive.

We’re not going to get this commitment at WWDC 2025, of that I have zero doubt. Perhaps Cyberpunk 2077 will finally get its long-awaited Mac release (after it came to the Nintendo Switch 2), but that’s just about all I’m expecting here. I’m not losing hope, though. It’s never too late to put your money where your mouth is, Tim. I’m sure we can afford to lose a few Apple TV originals.

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• A well-known leaker has said Apple’s 18.8-inch foldable is still inbound possibly as early as 2027
• Amazon also has a ‘similar’ large foldable in the pipeline, though
• With Huawei recently airing a foldable laptop, Apple may feel it’s falling behind rivals – and we still don’t even know the exact nature of its device

Apple’s rumored big foldable device – which might be a MacBook that’s all-screen and no physical keyboard, or a huge iPad tablet – has popped up on the grapevine once again with a claim that it could be here in 2027. However, Amazon might beat Apple to the shelves here, we’re told.

As Wccftech noticed, renowned Apple leaker Ming-Chi Kuo posted on X to let us know that Apple’s 18.8-inch foldable is still set to go into mass production in either late 2027 or 2028 (a timeframe he’s previously mentioned, and I’ll return to that point later).

This comment came after Huawei revealed its MateBook Fold laptop at Computex 2025 earlier this week, which is an 18-inch device, so very similar in size to Apple’s theoretical product here. (I should note that both this and the rumored Apple foldable are 18 to 19-inches when fully unfolded, so that’s the total size of the device).

Kuo further observed that Amazon is developing a “similar product” which has yet to be made official, but it could be due to hit the production lines in late 2026, or perhaps 2027 (add plenty of seasoning with all of this).

Analysis: Falling behind rivals?

The hint being dropped here, then, is that Apple is falling behind the pacemakers in the giant foldable device arena, with Amazon’s timetable apparently being a year in advance of Apple’s. Although that said, for something which isn’t even officially underway yet, the Amazon device debuting at the close of next year seems like a pretty fast track through development.

The key question, of course, is will Apple be producing an 18.8-inch foldable MacBook or iPad? (Incidentally, if a foldable laptop seems like an odd term – and it is, given that all notebooks fold up – it refers to a folding screen, rather than chassis. This is a notebook that doesn’t have a keyboard, and instead uses a virtual keyboard displayed on one half of the screen).

This is where things get a bit odd as rumors have suggested Apple’s foldable device could be either a laptop or tablet. Kuo comparing it to Amazon’s foldable – which is surely a Fire tablet – would seem to suggest it’s a huge iPad. But then a direct comparison is also made to Huawei’s foldable laptop. Furthermore, the leaker notably uses the neutral term ‘device’ rather than any hint of mentioning a laptop or tablet.

What that suggests to me is that Apple is working through concepts on both sides of the fence, tablet and laptop, and still hasn’t made the decision of which OS to go with, macOS or iPadOS, and what’ll be more useful: a MacBook with a folding screen (and virtual keyboard), or an iPad that can fold out to be a giant display.

Personally I think the MacBook idea is the frontrunner (and rumors about Apple working on a notebook with a virtual keyboard have been around for ages). Although more innovative and attention-grabbing, that is the riskier move, admittedly, in terms of getting Mac fans to accept the ditching of a physical keyboard in favor of a screen-based effort. It’d have to be a very good virtual keyboard, that’s for sure. A big iPad would be a safer avenue to tread when you look at these ideas in that light.

What’s also interesting is that Kuo hasn’t changed the release timeframe for this 18.8-inch foldable since talking about it in mid-2024, which could be read as Apple being on track with its development schedule here. Or Kuo simply hasn’t heard anything else, especially regarding that decision on whether to make the hardware a laptop or tablet.

All in all, that’s a bit of a worry, but if this large foldable device really is coming from Apple, we should receive some firmer hints soon enough. And it’s certainly true that plans from rival laptop (or tablet) makers will help spur Apple’s thought processes and the realization of this product, or I’d imagine so, anyway.

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• Apple's ushered in a new continuity feature with iOS 18.4 and macOS Sequoia 15.4
• You can now use an iPhone or iPad to help set up your Mac
• While relatively small, this could be a huge time-saver

Part of what makes the Apple ecosystem so good – and appealing to newcomers or folks just buying new devices – is the continuity between them, even including set-up. For instance, to set up an Apple Watch or AirPods, just hold the device near your iPhone.

Setting up an iPad? Hold it near your iPhone, follow the steps, and scan the glowing blue orb. Setting up a new iPhone? Hold it near your old iPhone. This takes a lot of the manual nature out of a new device setup and even helps authenticate your account.

While iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, and macOS Sequoia 15.4 didn’t bring with them the next major set of Apple Intelligence features, they did bring with them something awesome. And if you are getting a new Mac, planning to get one, or frequently reset your old ones, you’re in for a treat.

As long as you’re up to date – meaning your Mac has the latest version of Sequoia and your iPhone or iPad is running iOS or iPadOS 18.4, you can now set up that new Mac with your other Apple device. Really neat, and it could save you time. As with the speedy setup, you’ll need Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled for these two devices to connect.

So, what does this quick setup speed up? All-important Wi-Fi credentials, design choices like dark mode or icon size, accessibility features, and more are included. Plus, since you’re authenticating and signing in with your Apple Account (formerly Apple ID), you can elect to turn on iCloud features like a shared desktop, your photo library, Messages in the Cloud, your long list of passwords, notes, and other items.

How setting up your Mac with an iPhone or iPad works

Now, the good news is that this whole process really speeds up the setup process for your Mac – and that goes for whether it’s a desktop, like the Mac mini, Mac Studio, or iMac, or a laptop, like the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro.

You’ll still boot up the Mac and select your language, but then, under the familiar screen that asks “Transfer Your Data to this Mac,” you’ll find a new option:

• From a Mac, Time Machine, or startup disk
• From a Windows PC
• Set up with iPhone or iPad
• Set up as new

That third option – Set up with iPhone or iPad – is what you’ll need to select to do just that. From there, your Mac will then start looking for a nearby device, and you’ll want to unlock your iPhone or iPad and bring it close by.

Then just like when setting up a new iPhone or an iPad, a splash screen will appear on the bottom asking if you want to use your Apple Account to “Set Up New Mac.” Simply hit continue and then you’ll scan a pattern displayed on your Mac with your iPhone. That’s the final step for authentication here.

After that, you’ll be asked if you want to enable any accessibility settings and then create your Mac account. The last step is a bit of a waiting game as your Apple Account syncs up with your Mac, and then you can wrap up the setup.

Basically, you’re speeding through the authentication process and getting some of the previously customized settings associated with your new Mac.

It’s nice to have, and if you’ve ever dreaded setting up your new Mac, you might question how you’ve lived without it.

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There's no denying that handheld gaming PCs now play an integral role in the gaming market. We can thank Valve for reigniting the old flame of portable enjoyment, with the launch of the Steam Deck in 2022 inspiring competition from the likes of Asus, MSI, and Lenovo. However, I've always felt that one obvious potential competitor is missing from the battle - and that's none other than Apple.

We're still waiting on the Lenovo Legion Go 2 (which is still a prototype), the Asus ROG Ally X's successor, and a Steam Deck 2 - and the latter isn't coming any time soon, according to Valve - so what's next? What could be the next monumental handheld gaming PC that would take the market by storm? That's right, an Apple M-based handheld gaming PC.

With Apple's recent M4 family chips and even previous lineups like the M2 series, there is so much that could be done with an Apple handheld gaming PC. These processors (notably the M4 Max and M3 Ultra) have opened the gateway to stronger gaming experiences, utilizing more CPU and GPU cores - and it's clearly a viable avenue, as more game studios are porting titles over to macOS.

Before I go any further, I know that a potential handheld gaming PC from Apple would more than likely come at a big expense for consumers (especially with stronger configurations). However, for what we could get, I'm more than willing to see Apple give it a shot.

The M-based chips are almost perfect for handheld gaming... almost

While it's great that manufacturers consider high-end APUs for the best performance on these portable devices, it's not exactly that simple: battery life and temperatures are crucial to a fully functional portable device, and luckily enough, Apple's M chips are suited just for that.

Since they are based on Arm architecture, the M-series chips thrive at power efficiency while still being able to deliver fantastic performance - and that's exactly what I desire with a handheld gaming device. That's not me saying that current devices like the MSI Claw 8 AI+ aren't already great with power efficiency and performance for games, but I'm willing to bet that Apple's processors could do a better job.

However, there's one major downside - these devices would more than likely be using macOS to run games. While I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing for the user experience (especially compared to Windows 11 for handhelds), most AAA games don't come to the operating system for a long while after release, let alone on day one.

The great thing is that there are some cases where games do indeed arrive on day one, with a recent prime example being Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Shadows. Unfortunately (you might have guessed it), it doesn't run very well - which I would imagine is because of the forced ray tracing. It's exactly why I say the M-based chips are only almost perfect for handheld gaming devices.

Apple should consider game studio acquisitions or deals

Again, more and more games are being ported to macOS, notably CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077. Besides the concern of when these games will arrive on Apple's OS, the other most important factor is optimization: as powerful as the M-based chips are, no amount of processing power can brute force through poor game optimization.

I'm sure it's safe to say that most PC devs don't consider macOS when creating games, as the main platform for this is Microsoft's Windows 11: performance in games is more than likely going to be better on Windows PCs (excluding some of the recent ports), so it can be a gamble for macOS players.

There's a rather obvious resolution to this, though: Apple should either acquire or make a deal with a triple-A game studio. After all, Apple has the cash; buying out a popular studio to push forward macOS game development would be a wise move. And while I'd hope to see that happen without any exclusivity involved, it might be necessary to push the wider industry into viewing macOS as a legitimate platform for gaming. We've seen a similar thing happen with Microsoft and its acquisition of Activision - some feared that it would mean Call of Duty would be exclusive to Xbox and PC, but that ultimately wasn't the case (especially because it would've been a significant financial loss).

I believe that if Apple truly plans to give gaming on macOS a stronger focus, this would be the right step to take. It won't mean that every title coming to Mac devices will have dev priority, no. But what it would mean is that Apple would be taken seriously as a part of the gaming space, and games that do have dev priority will be better optimized for macOS.

Do I think this will happen? Absolutely not, and I'd even agree if you said I was delusional. But one can only hope...

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The growing popularity of Macs and MacBooks in enterprises can in part be attributed to their “secure by design” reputation. And generally, macOS is considered a safe platform, a view widely shared across the tech community.

Although macOS is widely perceived as more secure than Windows, 2024 revealed a worrying trend – a notable increase in Mac-targeted threats. From infostealers like Amos Atomic and Poseidon to advanced nation-state campaigns like BeaverTail and RustBucket, threat actors are exploiting macOS design elements to compromise corporate environments.

An over-reliance on the security mechanisms built-in to macOS can leave organizations vulnerable to attacks, so it’s key for organizations to recognize these risks and understand how to mitigate them effectively.

The Rise of macOS crimeware

There is a growing concern about the presence of malware on macOS, a problem that was relatively minor ten years ago. One contributing factor is the increased prevalence of Macs in business environments, a significant shift from the late 2010s, that has made them more attractive to attackers.

Threat actors have realized there is money to be made from Mac users. As a result, cybercriminals are increasingly targeting them, recognizing the value of these devices for conducting malicious activities.

Additionally, there are more targeted attacks in business environments. Beyond general attacks, Mac users in business environments face targeted attacks from sophisticated threat actors who aim to steal sensitive company data or disrupt operations.

Today, there are more threats to Macs than ever before, but awareness of these threats remains low. In contrast, most Windows users are generally aware of the need for the best antivirus software. However, Mac users often believe their devices are safe by design, a misconception that needs to be reconsidered given the current threat landscape.

Mac myth-busting

While the myth that “Macs don’t get malware” has been thoroughly debunked, a lingering perception persists that macOS is inherently safer than other OSes. This belief stems from comparisons to Windows, which faces a staggering volume of malware, but it doesn’t mean that threat actors aren’t actively targeting Macs, too.

2024 saw a significant uptick in macOS-focused crimeware. Infostealers-as-a-service, such as Amos Atomic, Banshee Stealer, Cuckoo Stealer, Poseidon and others, represent a significant portion of these threats. These tools are designed for quick, opportunistic attacks, aiming to steal credentials, financial data, and other sensitive information in one fell swoop.

Amos Atomic, which reportedly began as a ChatGPT project in April 2023, has quickly evolved into one of the most prominent Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) platforms targeting Mac users. Initially a standalone offering, Amos Atomic has splintered into multiple variants, including Banshee, Cthulu, Poseidon, and RodrigoStealer. These versions are now developed and marketed by competing crimeware groups, spreading rapidly and affecting businesses throughout 2024.

What sets this malware family apart is its shift in distribution tactics. Instead of focusing on cracked games or user productivity apps, it now spoofs a wide range of enterprise applications, significantly broadening its reach and posing a greater threat to corporate environments.

Safe – or unsafe – by design?

For convenience, Apple designed Macs so that a single password could be used to unlock the device and allow administrator functions. This means that by default, the same password is used for logging in, installing software, and unlocking the Keychain – the database built into macOS that stores other passwords, including online credentials saved in the browser, application certificates, and more.

In addition, a built-in AppleScript mechanism makes it easy for attackers to fake a legitimate-looking password dialog box. Malware that successfully spoofs a password dialog box to install a fake program is then able to access all the sensitive data stored in the Keychain.

This straightforward yet effective approach is widely adopted by the rash of infostealers currently plaguing macOS businesses and home users. Given how deeply these features are integrated into the system itself, this technique is unlikely to be mitigated by Apple any time soon.

Advanced adversaries: Staying hidden in plain sight

Rather than the quick-hit tactics of smash-and-grab infostealers, advanced adversaries such as nation-state actors also aim to persist on the device over time. Their goal is to maintain long-term access to compromised devices, often for espionage or other high-value objectives. With Apple introducing user notifications for background login items in macOS Ventura, attackers have adapted by exploring new ways to remain undetected.

Common techniques include trojanizing software, which consists of compromising popular or frequently used applications to ensure the malicious code runs regularly. This can involve infecting development environments such as Visual Studio and Xcode with malicious payloads.

Additionally, leveraging Unix components, threat actors are exploiting overlooked command line elements like zsh environment files (“.zshenv” and “.zshrc”), which execute whenever the user opens a new terminal session, granting the attacker persistent access to the system.

Such tactics underscore the importance of scrutinizing trusted applications, development tools, and the underlying command line environment.

Defensive strategies for organizations

To protect against the rising tide of macOS threats, organizations should implement proactive and comprehensive security measures. Key defensive strategies include:

• Control user actions: Recognize that most malware on Macs comes through user interaction. Use device management to control what users can change and do on their devices and limit admin privileges to reduce the risk of malware installation.
• User education: Educate employees on the risks of using Apple’s built-in Passwords app and Keychain for storing corporate credentials. Instead, mandate the use of trusted third-party password managers that provide stronger security and compartmentalization.
• Ensure visibility: Implement software that provides visibility into the system to monitor changes and detect suspicious activities. Understand how to check for malware and what tools to use for confidence in the system's security.
• Adopt robust security solutions: macOS’s built-in XProtect malware detection is updated infrequently and offers limited coverage. Organizations should deploy an advanced security solution that provides real-time threat detection and prevention.

Rethinking macOS security

The perception that macOS is inherently more secure can create a dangerous blind spot for organizations. Macs are not necessarily more “secure by design” than any other computing platform, and the evidence from 2024 demonstrates that threat actors are increasingly targeting them.

Organizations must treat macOS as a primary target in their security strategy, adopting a layered defense approach and educating users about the risks.

By recognizing and addressing these vulnerabilities, organizations can mitigate the risks of betting too heavily on macOS security – and avoid becoming sitting ducks for the next wave of attacks.

We list the best antivirus software for Mac.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

• Apple's M3 Ultra defeats most desktop CPUs in terms of power efficiency
• This is thanks to its ARM-based instruction set compared to x86 used for desktop processors
• It does lag behind the M4 Max in power efficiency, however

Apple's new Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) has received critical acclaim from multiple reviewers thanks to its M3 Ultra processor, despite apparently losing out to the M4 Max in single-core processes. However, its performance capabilities aren't where the praise stops - a new benchmark suggests there is another, equally important benefit to using the M3 Ultra chip compared to other processors on the market.

As highlighted by Wccftech (based on the Ars Technica Mac Studio review), the M3 Ultra's benchmark in Handbrake (a video encoding program that can be used for benchmarking both CPUs and GPUs) reveals that it's only slightly less power efficient than its Mac Studio M4 Max counterpart - and it also proves to be far more efficient than other powerful desktop processors. This is likely due to Apple opting for an Arm-based architecture instead of x86, which is used for most mainstream desktop CPUs, notably those offered by Intel and AMD.

Ars Technica's analysis shows that the Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) draws 77.3W of power on average in Handbrake, slightly lagging behind the M4 Max variant which uses an incredibly low 50.2W. While the latter is more efficient, the M3 Ultra arguably makes up for it with its better performance in multi-core processing based on benchmarks - albeit at a much higher price.

Up against x86 processors, the M-based chips are the clear victors - the prime examples are the Intel Core i9-14900K using 233.6W, and the AMD Ryzen 9950X using 194.6W on average. It's worth noting that none of there aren't any other ARM processors among the comparisons; Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips are also highly power-efficient, but were likely omitted as they’re still a long way off the likes of the M3 Ultra in terms of performance.

Buy the M3 Ultra Mac Studio if you can, but the M4 Max model makes more sense for most users…

There’s no denying that these power-efficiency claims are impressive. But unless you're looking for the absolute best hardware available with deep pockets to justify it, the M3 Ultra Mac Studio is overkill in my eyes.

It might be more powerful than the M4 Max (specifically for gaming and multi-core processes), but I'd argue it may not be a significant enough margin to justify spending more. The M4 Max model starts at $1,999 / £2,099 / AU$3,499 while the M3 Ultra starts at $3,999 / £4,199 / AU$6,999 - bear in mind, the M4 Max isn’t that far behind the M3 Ultra in terms of performance, while also being more power efficient. I don't know about you, but the M4 Max model seems like the easy choice here.

If Apple's M3 Ultra Mac Studio is on your radar for its gaming capabilities, I would still argue the M4 Max is the reasonable option - or even the shockingly impressive M4 Mac mini. We all want great performance from our hardware in some capacity - but it's always worth considering factors like power consumption and whether the price tag is justified, and this is a perfect example of that.

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Apple Mac Studio (M3 Ultra): Two-minute review

Apple’s announcement of a new Mac Studio for 2025 took a lot of people by surprise. While many of us had assumed (correctly) that Apple was gearing up to announce new M4-powered MacBook Airs, few were expecting a new Mac Studio.

That’s understandable – by its very nature, the Mac Studio is a product that's aimed at a more niche market than a thin and light laptop. Mac Studio devices are powerful, professional-grade computers that offer a level of performance that was once only found in Mac Pro desktop PCs, but built into a stylish and compact body that looks like a super-sized (yet still small) Mac mini.

The latest Mac Studio continues that tradition. The design keeps the iconic (and technically impressive, considering the hardware) compact look of previous Mac Studios, with dimensions of 3.7 x 7.7 x 7.7 inches (9.5 x 19.7 x 19.7cm) and a weight starting at 6.1lbs / 2.74kg. It’s a device that would look at home in any modern office or studio, and its size means it can be easily installed, and moved, wherever and whenever you want.

You are, however, missing out on the modular and upgradable nature of desktop PCs. You won’t be able to swap out the GPU or increase the internal storage in a few year’s time – two upgrades which are relatively simple with traditional PCs.

That said, for many people one of the upsides of buying a Mac is that they don't need to fiddle around with internal components, and a lack of upgradability is a small price to pay for a compact device that's well-built and works dependably. And, depending on the configuration options you choose when buying your Mac Studio, it’s unlikely that you’ll need to upgrade for a long, long time.

The new Mac Studio comes with a choice of two chips – one that was expected, and one that has come as quite a surprise.

The base model of the new Mac Studio features the M4 Max chip – the same chip that debuted late last year in the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros. There’s no option to have the standard M4 or M4 Pro chips, which is in line with Apple’s pitching the Mac Studio at power users and professionals who need the very highest levels of performance. If your requirements (and budget – I’ll get to prices in a moment) are more modest, then the aforementioned MacBook Pros will be better picks; or if you want a desktop PC, then the brilliant Mac mini from last year will do the trick, and can be configured with either an M4 or M4 Pro chip.

According to Apple, the Mac Studio with M4 Max offers 1.6x faster image processing in Adobe Photoshop compared to the Mac Studio with M1 Max, and 2.1x faster code compilation in Xcode. Video transcoding in the Compressor app is claimed to be 1.2x faster, and video processing in Topaz Video AI 1.6x faster.

While any speed increase that makes workloads faster is welcome, those aren’t mind-blowing numbers, so most people using the now three-year-old Mac Studio (M1 Max) won’t feel any pressing need to upgrade to the M4 Max model, and that will be even more true for owners of the Mac Studio (M2 Max). Apple hasn’t supplied performance comparisons for that model, but you’d imagine the differences are even smaller. That said, you could argue that this speaks to the longevity of these devices, and the high price tag and lack of upgradability of the new Mac Studio becomes easier to swallow if it’s still going strong in 2028 and you have no need or desire to upgrade it.

As with previous M-class releases, the real leap in performance comes when comparing the Mac Studio with M4 Max to an Intel-based Mac, which Apple stopped producing in 2020 with the launch of the M1 chip.

Again according to Apple, you’re getting around 3x the performance with the Mac Studio M4 Max compared to a 27-inch iMac with an Intel Core i9 CPU, with Topaz Video AI processing seeing up to 5x faster video rendering. These are all vague performance promises by Apple, so take them with a grain of salt and refer instead to our benchmark tests below, where you'll be able to see just how well the new Mac Studio performs. Still, taking Apple’s claims as hints of the kind of performance the new Mac Studio is capable of suggests that people using Intel-based Macs will see the biggest benefit from upgrading.

Apple also surprised us by announcing an even more powerful Mac Studio, powered by the brand-new M3 Ultra chip. The reason why this is particularly surprising, and potentially confusing, is that the M3 Ultra is, as the name suggests, based on the previous generation M3 chip architecture, rather than the newer M4.

As with previous Ultra chips, the M3 Ultra is made up of two Max chips (in this case, two M3 Max chips), which are connected via an ultra-fast bridge to turn them into a single, extremely powerful, chip.

So, while you’re getting up to a 16-core CPU, 40-core GPU, 128GB unified memory, 546GB/s memory bandwidth, and 16-core Neural Engine with the M4 Max, the M3 Ultra offers up to a 32-core CPU, 80-core GPU, 512GB unified memory, 819GB/s memory bandwidth, and 32-core Neural Engine.

Essentially, even with previous-gen tech (the M3 Max was launched in October 2023), the M3 Ultra blows past the M4 Max. Apple hasn’t explained why it went with M3 rather than M4 as the base, though there have been suggestions that the M4 Max lacks the high-speed bridge (known as UltraFusion) needed to combine two of the chips into an M4 Ultra. However, we also heard similar rumors about the M3 Max, and that has been proven to be incorrect with the announcement of the M3 Ultra.

The M3 architecture has seen a few additions with the M3 Ultra, which makes it able to compete feature-wise with the M4 Max. The M3 Ultra now supports Thunderbolt 5 USB-C ports and speeds of up to 120Gbps, and supports up to 512GB of unified memory, both upgrades over the M3 Max.

So, currently, the most powerful Apple silicon is not an M4 chip, but an M3 chip, and that could be a bit confusing – as such, I’m pleased that Apple is being transparent about the M3 Ultra being based on M3 Max chips, rather than fudging the naming conventions to call it an M4 Ultra.

While the Mac Studio with M4 Max will offer performance that most people might not ever need, the M3 Ultra Mac Studio goes even further, promising to offer the kind of performance that will only be needed by large enterprises – think the likes of Pixar when it comes to 3D animation, rather than smaller businesses and individuals, for whom the M4 Max model will likely be more than enough.

Price will also be a factor here, as unsurprisingly these are expensive machines that are professional investments rather than something you’d buy on a whim. The Mac Studio with M4 Max starts at $1,999 / £2,099 / AU$3,499 while the Mac Studio with M3 Ultra starts at $3,999 / £4,199 / AU$6,999 – and these can all be configured to add more power (and cost).

Apple Mac Studio (M3 Ultra): Price and availability

• How much does it cost? M4 Max model starts at $1,999 / £2,099 / AU$3,499 
• What about the M3 Ultra? M3 Ultra model starts at $3,999 / £4,199 / AU$6,999
• When is it available? Available to pre-order now, ships March 12, 2025 

Apple announced the new Mac Studio on March 5, 2025, and opened preorders at the same time, with the compact PC going on sale on March 12, 2025 globally.

The base model of the new Mac Studio comes with an M4 Max chip featuring a 14-core CPU, 32-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine, plus 36GB of unified memory and a 512GB SSD, and costs $1,999 / £2,099 / AU$3,499.

This is essentially the same starting price as the previous Apple Mac Studio (M2 Max, though there's a slight price increase for Australian buyers (the M2 Max model cost AU$3,299). It’s good to see launch prices remain the same in the US and UK, and the new Mac Studio remains a lot cheaper than the $6,999 / £7,199 / AU$11,999 Mac Pro, while offering a more compact design and similar, if not better, performance.

The more powerful M3 Ultra model of the new Mac Studio, meanwhile, starts at $3,999 / £4,199 / AU$6,999. That’s quite a leap, but the specs go some way to justify the high price (while also hopefully making it clear that this machine will be overkill for most people). You get the new M3 Ultra chip with a 28-core CPU, 60-core GPU, and 32-core Neural Engine, plus 96GB unified memory, and a 1TB SSD for storage.

As usual, you can configure the new Mac Studio before you buy, and considering that it’s basically impossible to upgrade the hardware within the machine, it’s important to make sure you take this opportunity to adjust the configuration to suit both your needs and your budget. Adding more powerful components does increase the price, sometimes considerably. The fully-maxed-out Mac Studio comes with an M3 Ultra chip with a 32-core CPU, 80-core GPU, and 32-core Neural Engine, 512GB unified memory and 16TB SSD – those are stunning specs, and they come with an equally stunning price tag of $14,099 / $14,299 / AU$22,149.

Of course, you don’t have to max out all of the specs, so you do have some flexibility; but make no mistake, any configuration of the Mac Studio is going to be extremely expensive. You need to see it as an investment for a business or creative professional. For individual users who want a great-performing compact PC, but don’t need nearly the power on offer with the Mac Studio, then I highly recommend the latest Mac mini, which comes with an M4 chip starting at $599 / £599 / AU$999, or with an M4 Pro starting at $1,399 / £1,399 / AU$2,199. In my view, the M4 Mac mini remains the best Mac Apple has ever made thanks its combination of price, performance, and an all-new design, but creative professionals looking for more power will likely need to choose between the Mac mini M4 Pro or the Mac Studio M4 Max, and in that case the price difference is smaller, though still substantial.

What about non-Mac alternatives? The fact is that there remains no real rival to the Mac Studio in the world of Windows PCs – no one else is making compact workstation PCs that offer professional-grade performance. However, if the size of the machine doesn’t matter, and you don’t mind doing a bit of tinkering, you could put together a workstation PC (or get someone to build it for you) that offers similar levels of performance for less money, although you'd miss out on the Mac Studio’s compact design and ease of use.

• Price: 3.5 / 5

Apple Mac Studio (M3 Ultra): Specs

Here are the specs for the Apple Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) at a glance.

Apple Mac Studio (M3 Ultra): Design

• Looks the same as previous models on the outside 
• Now comes with Thunderbolt 5 ports 
• M3 Ultra model is slightly heavier

Perhaps the biggest selling point of every generation of Mac Studio has been its design, and while the new Mac Studio doesn’t feature any major changes, that remains true.

It’s a testament to Apple’s designers and engineers – and to the power efficiency of M-class chips like the M4 Max and M3 Ultra, which enables Apple to put powerful hardware into compact designs without them overheating.

The latest Mac Studio is unmistakably an Apple product. Its compact dimensions of 3.7 x 7.7 x 7.7 inches / 9.5 x 19.7 x 19.7cm, with a weight starting at 6.1lbs / 2.74kg means it’s easy to find space for it on a desk, and you can hide it behind a monitor if you want, and it also means it’s easy to pick up and move if needed.

The silver body (you don’t get any fun color choices with the Mac Studio, this is all about professionalism) is sleek and minimalist, with a black Apple logo on the top. On the front of the Mac Studio are two USB-C ports (which if you get the model with the M3 Ultra will be Thunderbolt 5), alongside an SDXC memory card slot (always welcome for professional photographers) and a small white LED power light.

The rear of the Mac Studio features four Thunderbolt 5 USB-C ports, a 10Gb Ethernet port, two USB-A ports for legacy peripherals, a HDMI port and a headphone jack. Much of the rear is a grille-like vent that's used to expel hot air.

The most recent Mac mini got a major design overhaul to make it look more like the Mac Studio, and for the most part the new look was a triumph. However, Apple’s decision to place the Mac mini's power button on the underside of the device did frustrate some people, as you have to lift up the Mac mini to turn it on or off.

The good news is that Apple hasn’t seen fit to move the Mac Studio's power button to the underside of the device to match the new Mac mini – it’s still located on the rear of the Mac Studio on the left.

As someone who likes using big, ugly desktop PCs I’ve never had a problem with having a power button on the front of a device for easy access, and some people might find having the button hidden at the rear makes it a little awkward to reach. It does mean, though, that the Mac Studio’s front looks clean and minimalist, which many Apple fans will appreciate, and at least you don’t have to lift up the Mac Studio to reach the button. If you have other Apple devices, particularly the Studio Display, then the new Mac Studio will fit in brilliantly.

The Mac Studio is made with 30% recycled content, according to Apple, with 100% recycled aluminum used for the case, and doesn’t contain mercury or PVC. The packaging is also entirely fiber-based, and is part of the Apple 2030 project, which aims to make the company’s entire carbon footprint neutral by the end of the decade.

Overall, while some people might be clamoring for a bold redesign, the reason why the latest Mac Studio still looks identical to the first one launched back in 2022 is because, frankly, Apple nailed the design first time. It looks modern, and more stylish than any Windows-based compact PC; and with the Mac mini having recently been redesigned to look more like the Mac Studio, I think this look is going to stick around for a long time.

The one major drawback with the design is that it’s essentially impossible to open up the Mac Studio and upgrade or repair components. This might not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Apple’s products, but it does impact the flexibility of the Mac Studio when compared to traditional tower desktop PCs, which are usually quite straightforward to upgrade. It also undermines Apple’s environmental credentials a little, though the company does offer an upgrade program whereby you can trade in your older Mac for money off the new model.

Also, despite the new Mac Studio coming with some of the latest and most powerful components on the market, Apple's designers have for some reason decided to stick with older wireless technology: Wi‑Fi 6E (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5.3, which means you're missing out on the performance benefits of Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.

While the wireless tech in a professional-grade workstation might not be at the top of most people's list of priorities (you'll likely be using an Ethernet cable for networking), it's still a bit of an odd omission considering the no-holds-barred design approach Apple has taken to the rest of the Mac Studio's design.

• Design: 4.5 / 5

Apple Mac Studio (M3 Ultra): Performance

• The M3 Ultra is now the most powerful chip Apple has ever made 
• It's likely to be overkill for most people 
• The new Mac Studio remains quiet even when under load 

When I learned that Apple was sending me the new Mac Studio with the M3 Ultra chip, I was both excited and apprehensive. Excited because I really wanted to see what such a powerful, even over-the-top, piece of silicon could do.

While the M4 Max chip is certainly no slouch, we’ve had the chance to see how it performs since the launch of last year’s MacBook Pros. However, the M3 Ultra, despite being based on the older M3 Max chip, is entirely uncharted territory, and has the potential to blow Apple's other chips out of the water when it comes to pure performance. The idea that I could play around with this ridiculously powerful hardware and try to push it as hard as possible got my nerd senses tingling.

So why was I also apprehensive? Mainly because how do you begin reviewing a hardware configuration that will be overkill for the needs of maybe 98% of our readers? No matter how good the M3 Ultra is (and I’ll get to just how good it is in a moment), for the vast majority of people I would still recommend they don’t buy it, and instead get the M4 Max model – and for most, the M4 Mac mini would be a much more sensible buy.

In some ways this is Apple’s problem – and it’s a good problem to have. Because its M-series chips have been so good, generational leaps can be less visible to mainstream customers. If you still use a Mac with an M1 or M2 chip there’s a good chance that it’ll still do almost everything you need it to. If not, then upgrading to an M4 Mac, such as the new MacBook Air or the Mac mini (sorry, I keep mentioning it, but I really love that little PC) is a much more affordable option that will keep you chugging along nicely. A smaller percentage of people who need more power for creative applications will find the M4 Max in the MacBook Pro or new Mac Studio more than enough; and if it isn’t enough power, then the M3 Ultra will be extremely welcome.

To be blunt, the number of people who will need the full power of the Mac Studio with M3 Ultra will be limited. But, if you do need an extremely powerful PC for rendering complex 3D models, animating feature-length films, or even developing and testing games, then the new Mac Studio with M3 Ultra will be a very attractive package indeed.

The Mac Studio Apple sent me to review comes with the highest-end M3 Ultra chip with a 32-core CPU (made up of 24 performance cores and eight efficiency ones), an 80-core GPU and a 32-core Neural Engine. It also has 256GB of unified memory, and a 4TB SSD. While it's not completely maxed out, this is an incredibly powerful bit of kit. The 256GB unified memory doesn’t just act like standard RAM in a PC, but is shared with the 80-core GPU, which means the Mac Studio I’m reviewing is an incredibly powerful device for graphic-intensive tasks. The fact that all this power is contained in a compact body that remains impressively quiet, even when under stress, is particularly impressive.

So it’ll come as no surprise to learn that for regular day-to-day tasks, the Mac Studio absolutely zips by, with macOS Sequoia and apps such as Photoshop running incredibly smoothly. Web browsing with Safari and Chrome, with multiple tabs open, certainly doesn't challenge the Mac Studio. Chrome might still be a memory hog, but with 256GB of the stuff you’re not going to miss a beat.

Even if you buy the Mac Studio in a less powerful configuration, the results will very likely be the same. Of course, you’re not buying an uber-powerful computer like the Mac Studio to browse the web and write up documents. The Mac Studio has been built to handle demanding creative tasks, and it’s here that it really excels.

Editing high-quality 4K footage in Adobe Premiere Pro was extremely quick and smooth, and I was able to scrub through the footage quickly to find points in the timeline, while previewing any changes I made instantly. The super-fast SSD meant that video files were loaded and complex projects saved very, very quickly (using the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test app, the SSD hit write speeds of 7,115.6 and read speeds of 5,799MB/s).

Even when working with large 4K video files and multi-scene projects (while browsing the web and writing up this review at the same time), I never felt like I was ever really pushing the Mac Studio (hence the apprehension I mentioned earlier), as I don’t have access to files and projects from professional movie studios, to pick a more demanding and likely use case for the new Mac Studio.

What I could see, however, is that the real value of the new Mac Studio lies in its potential to speed up creative workflows. If you can create, code, compile and more, so much more quickly, it means projects can be completed more quickly. This could in turn reduce costs for large-scale businesses, and it also allows professionals to take on more clients. Even with the lowest memory configuration for the M3 Ultra model, 96GB, there's plenty of headroom to run multiple tasks simultaneously, which again potentially makes a huge difference to productivity.

Throughout all my testing with the Mac Studio it remained incredibly quiet – a welcome change from the desktop PCs I usually use, which have fans that like to whirr into life at the drop of a hat. During some particularly demanding benchmarks I did notice the top of the Mac Studio got quite hot to touch, but it certainly wasn't alarming – and the fans still remained all but silent. I also didn’t notice any instances of the M3 Ultra being throttled (a process whereby components are deliberately slowed down to avoid overheating, which impacts performance), though again I wasn't subjecting the Mac Studio to industry-level workloads – but I really can’t imagine too many scenarios where the Mac Studio’s performance wouldn't be enough.

This is of course great news for people who need that performance, but it also underscores why the Mac Studio won’t be for everyone, especially considering the price.

• Performance: 5 / 5

Should you buy the Apple Mac Studio (M3 Ultra)?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if... 

Apple Mac Studio (M3 Ultra): Also consider

How I tested the Apple Mac Studio (M3 Ultra)

• I used the new Mac Studio for five days
• I ran multiple benchmarks
• I used the Mac Studio for editing raw 4K footage and high-resolution photos, as well as other intensive tasks

I've been using the Mac Studio since our review sample came in, using it as my primary work computer. As well as writing this review on it, and using it to perform my regular day-to-day tasks, I used it for intensive workloads, including editing and exporting raw 4K video footage in Adobe Premiere Pro, and photos in Photoshop, with the Mac Studio connected to an Apple Studio Display monitor. I also ran our suite of synthetic benchmarks to help give me an overall view of the Mac Studio's performance. I've been reviewing Macs for TechRadar for the past decade, including the original Mac Studio, as well as a range of Windows-based creative workstations, and my experience has enabled me to thoroughly evaluate Apple's latest Mac Studio.

Read more about how we test

• First reviewed: March 2025

• A new Geekbench 6 benchmark hints at the M3 Ultra for the Mac Studio only being slightly faster than the M4 Max
• The benchmark reveals the M3 Ultra's supposed 8% performance lead in multi-core processes over the M4 Max
• Its 80-core GPU may be the highlight, specifically for gaming

Apple has finally introduced a new Ultra chip, not yet for its recent M4 lineup but rather for the M3 family. The new Mac Studio is slated for launch on March 12, with configurations using both the M4 Max and the new M3 Ultra - however, the latter may only be a slightly stronger processor, at least in some ways.

As reported by 9to5Mac, an early Geekbench 6 benchmark of the new M3 Ultra chip suggests it may only be 8% faster than the M4 Max in multi-core performance while being 20% slower in single-core performance. The benchmark indicates that this is the top-end configuration of the upcoming M3 Max Mac Studio (it utilizes a 32-core CPU and an 80-core GPU).

It's important to note that the comparison made here is with the MacBook Pro's M4 Max, with its top-end configuration using a 16-core CPU and 40-core GPU. While we should wait for more benchmarks when the Mac Studio launches, it looks like the M3 Ultra's winnings over the powerful M4 chip could be present in its graphical processes, specifically gaming.

The high-end M4 Max model (using 1TB storage and 128GB of unified memory) is available for pre-order at $3,699.00 / £3,799.00 / AU$6,049.00, while the best M3 Ultra model (using 1TB storage and 96GB of unified memory) is available for pre-order at $5,499.00 / £5,699.00 / AU$9,249.00.

Based on the early benchmark (which should be taken with a grain of salt), the M3 Ultra may not be the ideal choice between the two chips for CPU processes (considering the supposed minor uplift and the significant gap in pricing), but should be right up the alley for gamers - and that may end up justifying its high cost.

This might be the best Mac gaming experience yet...

While plenty of Apple's Mac devices have provided capable hardware for great gaming performance, it looks like the M3 Ultra Mac Studio may be the best yet.

An 80-core GPU is an exceptional amount dedicated to graphical processing (and its price doesn't surprise me in the slightest), which means it should be able to storm its way through demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077. That's not to say the CPU and unified memory won't matter here, but it's safe to suggest that the GPU will do the heavy lifting for gamers.

Now it's all well and good that gamers will have a monster GPU at their disposal, but there's still more that needs to be done for Mac gaming - games are often optimized for Microsoft's Windows operating system and games aren't coming to Mac devices day one.

The addition of titles like Cyberpunk 2077 is a great sign of the Mac gaming library's rapid growth, and I'm hoping the M3 Ultra is Apple's way of telling us that gaming is now one of its main focuses.

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• Apple is believed to be stepping up the production of its M5 chipset
• It's currently slated for later this year or early 2026
• It's reported to stick with the TSMC 3nm process, with Apple yet to make a move to TSMC 2nm, which offers even greater power efficiency

We're still awaiting Apple's rumored M4 Ultra chip to be unveiled and complete the M4 family later this year (plus M4-powered MacBook Airs are rumored to launch soon) - but it looks like the Cupertino company is already looking at what lies ahead for its future devices.

According to South Korean media outlet ET News (reported by MacRumors), Apple's M5 chipset is already under mass production and could arrive as early as this year. These reports arrive amid speculation from Mark Gurman (who is known for his reliable Apple leaks) regarding the M4 Ultra chip, which is expected to outdo the M4 Max's 16-core CPU and 40-core GPU.

The new rumors also suggest that the M5 base model is currently the main focus during mass production, with the premium models such as the M5 Pro and M5 Max set for later. Apple is reported to stick with the use of TSMC 3nm (nanometer process technology) which allows for good power efficiency and performance with smaller transistors, as seen in current M4 chips - Apple supposedly won't be using TSMC 2nm yet.

While we've yet to see what the M5 chipset will have to offer, we are even seeing rumors that hint that the M6 MacBook Pro (expected for 2026) could feature the biggest redesign yet, with an OLED screen - and of course, a much faster chip with the M6, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.

Apple, please take gaming even more seriously this time around...

Now, I'm not suggesting that Apple hasn't already made an attempt to appeal to gamers (especially with the recent M4 chips) and the ever-growing library of AAA games that are now compatible with Mac hardware - but I really want the M5 chipset and future processors to better cater toward gamers.

This isn't just by providing stronger chips alone, and continuing to improve macOS' ability to handle games, but there is one way that Apple could win over new gamers - and that is with handheld gaming PCs. Seeing how powerful the M series of chips have been for Macs, it’s undeniable how much of a powerhouse this would be if stacked up against the current handheld gaming devices we already have like the MSI Claw 8 AI+ or the Asus ROG Ally X.

Apple clearly has experience in handheld gaming, with the M4 iPad Pro able to run AAA games, plus modern iPhone games are getting increasingly ambitious. The iPad Pro is arguably the closest we’ve got to a Apple handheld gaming console or PC so far, and it would be even better if it ran macOS instead of iPadOS - as it would give us access to Steam and multiple other desktop games.

While there would be a lot to be done on the part of game developers in terms of porting games to Mac devices at launch (something Apple has been working hard to make easier, to be fair), I think the Cupertino company could steal the spotlight with ease. I guess it's just a matter of whether it wants it enough...

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We compare the differences between the Mac mini M4 vs. Mac Studio M2. Apple’s desktop Mac line-up can be confusing, especially considering compact powerhouses like the Mac mini and Mac Studio. Both machines deliver impressive performance in small form factors but cater to different needs and budgets. 

For a long time, we've championed the Mac mini as the best mini PC for most people - check out our full Apple Mac mini M4 review for all the details. Meanwhile, our Mac Studio M2 review reveals why it's an absolute powerhouse for creatives.

This article compares the Mac mini M4 and the Mac Studio M2 against performance, features, connectivity, and price points to help you determine which machine best fits your workflow. Whether you are a creative professional, a student, or simply looking for a potent daily driver, uncover the key differences between these two outstanding machines and make an informed decision.

Mac mini M4 vs Mac Studio M2: Specs

Mac mini M4 vs Mac Studio M2: Prices & availability

The latest Mac mini comes with either an M4 or M4 Pro chip, featuring up to a 14-core CPU and a 20-core GPU. It offers memory options of up to 64GB and storage options of up to 8TB. The starting prices for the M4 and M4 Pro Mac mini are as follows:

• Mac mini, M4: $599
• Mac mini, M4 Pro: $1399

The Mac Studio offers options for the M2 Max or M2 Ultra chipsets and customizable RAM and storage. 

• Base: Apple M2 Max with 12‑core CPU, 30‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine, $1,999
• Base: Apple M2 Ultra with 24‑core CPU, 60‑core GPU, 32‑core Neural Engine, $3,999

Mac mini M4 vs Mac Studio M2: Portability

Regarding portability, the Mac Mini M4 outshines the Mac Studio M2. The Mac mini features a compact design measuring 2 x 5 x 5 inches and weighs only 1.5 pounds, making it extremely easy to transport. It can effortlessly fit into a backpack or bag, ideal for users who need to move their computer frequently or have limited desk space. In contrast, the Mac Studio M2, although still relatively small at 7.7 x 7.7 x 3.7 inches, is noticeably larger and heavier at 5.9 pounds. While it remains more portable than a full-sized desktop tower, it is less convenient to carry around. Therefore, if portability is your top priority, the Mac mini M4 is the more travel-friendly.

Winner: Mac mini M4

Mac mini M4 vs Mac Studio M2: Performance

Due to their Apple silicon, the Mac mini M4 and Mac Studio M2 are distinct in performance and cater to different user needs. The Mac mini M4, especially with the M4 Pro chip, excels in single-core performance, making it ideal for everyday tasks like browsing and programming. In contrast, the Mac Studio M2, particularly with M2 Max or M2 Ultra chips, shines in multi-core performance, benefiting users engaged in demanding workloads such as video editing and large-scale data analysis.

Graphics capabilities also set them apart, with the Mac Studio offering superior performance for graphics-intensive tasks due to its advanced GPU options. While the Mac mini M4 is suitable for less demanding creative work, graphic design or 3D artistry professionals may prefer the Mac Studio for its enhanced graphical processing power.

Ultimately, the best choice depends on individual needs. The Mac mini M4 is great for single-core speed and everyday tasks, while the Mac Studio M2 is better for heavy-duty workloads and graphics performance. Understanding each device's strengths helps users make informed decisions.

Winner: Mac Studio M2

Mac mini M4 vs Mac Studio M2: Upgradeablity

Neither the Mac mini M4 nor the Mac Studio M2 offers user upgradeability after purchase. Both machines have their RAM and storage soldered directly to the motherboard, making it impossible to add more memory or increase storage capacity later. This is a significant consideration, especially if you anticipate needing more RAM or storage. 

Therefore, choosing your configuration carefully at the time of purchase is crucial, factoring in your current needs and potential future requirements. If you might need more RAM or storage later on, opting for a higher-end configuration upfront is best, even if it means a higher initial cost. This lack of upgradeability is a common trend in Apple’s recent Macs, prioritizing a compact design and optimized performance over user serviceability.

Winner: Tie

Mac mini M4 vs Mac Studio M2: Connectivity

The latest Mac mini comes in two versions: one with the M4 chip and another with the more powerful M4 Pro chip. The M4 model features three Thunderbolt 4 ports, allowing high-speed data transfer and connectivity to multiple displays. In contrast, the M4 Pro enhances the connectivity options with three Thunderbolt 5 ports, which provide even higher data transfer rates and better support for daisy-chaining devices. Additionally, both models include two USB-C ports, an HDMI port, and an option for either Gigabit Ethernet or a faster 10Gb Ethernet connection, catering to casual users and professionals requiring robust network performance.

On the other hand, the Mac Studio is designed for those who need more power and connectivity. It offers configurations with the M2 Max or the M2 Ultra chip, making it suitable for demanding tasks like video editing and 3D rendering. The M2 Max variant features four Thunderbolt 4 ports, while the M2 Ultra takes it up a notch with six Thunderbolt 4 ports, providing extensive connectivity options for peripheral devices. Additionally, both M2 variants come with two USB-A ports, enhancing compatibility with legacy devices, while the M2 Max includes two USB-C ports for modern accessories. The Mac Studio also has an HDMI port, a 10Gb Ethernet connection for speedy networking, and an SDXC card slot, making it an ideal choice for creators who frequently work with camera media.

Overall, while the Mac mini is a great entry option with versatile performance, the Mac Studio stands out for professionals who demand high performance and numerous connectivity options.

Winner: Mac Studio

Mac mini M4 vs Mac Studio M2: Final verdict

The Mac mini M4 and Mac Studio M2, while both compact desktop Macs, cater to distinct user groups with varying needs and budgets. 

The Mac mini M4, particularly the base model with the M4 chip, is a fantastic entry-level machine for everyday users and those seeking a powerful yet affordable upgrade. It excels at everyday tasks like web browsing, email, productivity work, and even light creative tasks like photo editing. Its compact size and affordability make it ideal for students, home users, and those with limited desk space. The M4 Pro version offers a significant performance boost, making it suitable for more demanding workflows like professional video and photo editing.

The Mac Studio M2, on the other hand, targets creative professionals and power users who require top-tier performance for demanding workloads. Its M2 Max and M2 Ultra chips, coupled with powerful GPUs, make it a beast for video editing, 3D rendering, animation, and music production. The expanded connectivity, including multiple Thunderbolt ports and an SD card slot, caters to professionals with complex setups and high-bandwidth peripherals. 

The Mac mini M4 is a versatile and affordable all-rounder, while the Mac Studio M2 is a no-compromise machine for professionals who need the absolute best performance and connectivity.

Winner: For most users, the Mac mini M4 Pro. For ultimate creatives, the Mac Studio.

We've tested all the best MacBook and Macs and the best video editing Mac and MacBook models

Can't decide between the Mac mini M4 and Mac Pro M2? While both Apple machines offer exceptional performance, there are some major differences between the two. We compare the Mac mini M4 vs Mac Pro M2 - from specs to performance - to see which is right for you.

The Apple Mac mini M4 remains our pick for best mini PC - read our full Mac mini M4 review to find out why we love this compact desktop computer. But how does this small-form PC compare against Apple's top-end Mac Pro M2? Although both are designed for demanding users, they take different approaches to handle intensive tasks. This article provides a comprehensive comparison of these two powerhouses, examining their strengths and weaknesses in various areas, including processing power, graphics capabilities, expandability, and price. Whether you are a creative professional, a software developer, or a power user seeking the ultimate macOS experience, this detailed analysis will help you determine which machine is best suited to your specific needs.

Mac mini M4 vs Mac Pro M2: Specs

Mac mini M4 vs Mac Pro M2: Prices & availability

The latest Mac mini is available with an M4 or M4 Pro chip. These chips offer up to 14-core CPU and 20-core GPU. Memory is available up to 64GB and storage up to 8TB. Starting prices for the M4 and M4 Pro Mac mini are:

• Mac mini, M4: $599
• Mac mini, M4 Pro: $1399

The current Mac Pro model is designed to be highly customizable but significantly less so than previous Intel-based models. You must start by choosing between a tower and rack model.

After that, you must decide whether to purchase the Mac Pro with the M2 Ultra chip, which offers a 60-core or a 76-core GPU. Both configurations include a 24-core CPU and a 32-core Neural Engine. You can select from 64GB to 192GB of unified memory and 1TB to 8TB of storage.

• Tower, 60-core GPU, 64GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, $6999
• Rack, 60-core GPU, 64GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, $7499

Mac mini M4 vs Mac Pro M2: Portability

Regarding portability, the Mac mini M4 and Mac Pro M2 are at opposite ends of the spectrum. The Mac mini M4 excels in this area, thanks to its compact and lightweight design, which makes it incredibly easy to transport. You can easily slip it into a backpack or carrying case, making it ideal for users who need a powerful machine on the go or who have limited desk space.

In stark contrast, the Mac Pro M2 is a large, stationary workstation. Its tower form factor and substantial weight make it impractical for frequent movement. This machine is designed to be set up in a dedicated workspace and left there.

So, if portability is your top priority, the Mac mini M4 is the clear choice. However, if you require the extreme performance and expansion capabilities of the Mac Pro M2, you'll need to sacrifice some portability.

Winner: Mac mini M4

Mac mini M4 vs Mac Pro M2: Performance

The Apple M4 and M2 Ultra processors serve different tiers in Apple's silicon line-up, showcasing a notable performance gap. The M4 is designed for everyday tasks and some demanding applications, while the M2 Ultra is built for extreme workloads with more CPU cores, a larger GPU, and greater memory bandwidth.

Unlike a sports car, the M4 excels in balance between performance and efficiency, whereas the M2 Ultra is like a high-performance racing machine. The M2 Ultra features up to 24 CPU cores compared to the M4 Pro's 14, offering faster rendering, smoother video editing, and quicker computations. Its GPU can have up to 76 cores versus the M4 Pro's 20, enabling it to tackle graphics-intensive tasks easily. The M2 Ultra's wider memory bandwidth also allows faster data processing, making it ideal for handling large datasets and demanding applications. Both processors have powerful Neural Engines, but the M2 Ultra's is larger, enhancing machine learning performance.

Winner: Mac Pro

Mac mini M4 vs Mac Pro M2: Upgradeablity

There is a significant difference between the Mac mini M4 and the Mac Pro M2 when considering upgradeability. The Mac mini M4 has a compact design and limited upgrade options. Its memory is soldered onto the motherboard, which means you must select your desired RAM capacity at the time of purchase, as there are no options for upgrades later on. While the storage can technically be upgraded, the process is complex and likely to be avoided by most users.

In contrast, the Mac Pro M2 offers PCIe slots for expansion cards, allowing you to enhance networking capabilities or incorporate specialized hardware to meet your changing needs. Therefore, if you value future-proofing your machine and being able to customize it over time, the Mac Pro M2 stands out as the better choice for upgradeability. However, if you prioritize a compact and affordable machine and feel comfortable with the specifications you choose when you purchase, the Mac mini M4 still provides an attractive option.

Winner: Mac Pro

Mac mini M4 vs Mac Pro M2: Connectivity

These two machines offer similar connectivity features, but significant differences exist. Both support Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax). However, the Mac mini M4 Pro includes three Thunderbolt 5 ports, while the Mac Pro features eight Thunderbolt 4 ports, regardless of its configuration. Additionally, the Mac Pro has three USB-A ports for connecting older devices, whereas the Mac mini offers two USB-C ports.

Both machines have HDMI ports, but the Mac mini has one, while the Mac Pro has two. Regardingf Ethernet, the Mac mini supports Gigabit Ethernet or 100Gb Ethernet, while the Mac Pro supports Dual 10Gb Ethernet. Finally, the Mac Pro provides seven PCI Express expansion slots (with six available slots and one slot occupied by an Apple I/O card).

Winner: Tie (it depends on your needs)

Mac mini M4 vs Mac Pro M2: Final verdict

When comparing the Mac Mini M4 vs. Mac Pro M2, it’s important to exclude the entry-level Mac mini with the M4 chip, as it is significantly inferior to the Mac Pro. Comparing the Mac mini M4 Pro and the Mac Pro M2 is less straightforward and largely depends on your needs.

The Mac mini M4 Pro and the Mac Pro M2 are powerful machines designed for professional users but have key differences. In benchmark tests, the M4 Pro generally outperforms the M2 Ultra in single-core performance, which is crucial for everyday tasks and overall responsiveness. However, the M2 Ultra, with its higher core count, excels in multi-core performance, making it better suited for heavily multi-threaded workloads.

The M2 Ultra typically features a more powerful GPU with more cores, giving it an advantage in graphics-intensive tasks such as video editing and 3D rendering. Nonetheless, the M4 Pro still offers respectable graphics performance and can handle demanding tasks adequately.

Regarding expandability, the Mac Pro provides more options, including PCIe slots for adding dedicated graphics cards, additional storage, and other components. It also offers a greater variety of ports, including more Thunderbolt ports. In contrast, the Mac mini M4 Pro has a fixed configuration with no PCIe slots and fewer ports.

Price is another significant factor, as the Mac mini M4 Pro is considerably more affordable than the Mac Pro. This makes it a more accessible option for users who require a powerful machine but do not need the extreme expandability or top-tier performance of the Mac Pro.

The Mac mini M4 Pro is a compact and robust machine that delivers excellent performance for most professional users at a more budget-friendly price. It is ideal for software development, photo editing, and video editing. On the other hand, the Mac Pro is a high-end workstation designed for the most demanding workflows. Its expandability and superior performance make it perfect for tasks like 3D animation, visual effects, and scientific computing.

Ultimately, the best choice depends on your specific needs and budget.

Winner: For most users, the Mac mini M4 Pro. For ultimate creatives, the Mac Pro.

For more Apple machines, we tested out the best MacBook and Macs and the best video editing Mac and MacBook for creatives.

When it comes to Mac mini M4 vs iMac M4, it can be a challenge to know which device is best for you. After all, both Apple machines offer incredible performance and speed for a range of tasks, from running simple office and productivity apps to complex video editing.

We've extensively tested each of these computers. You can read our full Apple Mac mini M4 review and our Apple iMac 24-inch M4 review for our full thoughts. But here, we're going detail the big differences you need to know between the Mac mini M4 vs iMac M4. The Apple Mac mini is our pick for best mini PC, while the iMac stands out as one of the best business Mac devices around. But should you choose one over the other? We compare the Apple Mac mini M4 vs iMac M4 to see which is right for you.

Mac mini M4 vs iMac M4: Specs

Mac mini M4 vs iMac M4: Price & availability

The latest Mac mini is available with an M4 or M4 Pro chip. These chips offer up to 14-core CPU and 20-core GPU. Memory is available up to 64GB and storage up to 8TB. Starting prices for the M4 and M4 Pro Mac mini are:

• Mac mini, M4: $599
• Mac mini, M4 Pro: $1399

Every current iMac comes with a M4 chip. However, the two standard configurations differ depending on the number of CPU and GPU cores. From there, you can make adjustments to RAM and storage:

• iMac, M4, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, $1299
• iMac, M4, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, $1499

Mac mini M4 vs iMac M4: Portability

Regarding portability, the Mac mini M4 and the iMac M4 are strikingly contrasted. The Mac mini M4 is a compact and lightweight desktop computer, weighing around 2.6 pounds and measuring just 7.7 inches square. This sleek design allows users to easily slip it into a backpack or bag, making it an excellent choice for those who need a portable workstation. Whether moving between meetings, traveling for work, or simply shifting locations around your home, the Mac mini M4 can effortlessly accompany you without taking up much space.

On the other hand, the iMac M4 is an all-in-one desktop computer not designed for mobility. It features a large, stunning 24-inch Retina display with vibrant colors and exceptional detail, housed within a slim profile that weighs about 10.88 pounds. This makes the iMac M4 less practical for transport; it is best utilized in a stationary setting, such as a home office or a dedicated workspace. The iMac M4’s design prioritizes a powerful computing experience and a visually appealing setup, making it ideal for users who value aesthetics and performance in a permanent location.

Winner: Mac mini M4

Mac mini M4 vs iMac M4: Performance

The M4 chip powers the Mac mini M4 and the iMac M4, but the Mac mini generally outperforms the iMac. This performance difference is mainly due to the thermal constraints of the slim iMac design. The Mac mini features a more robust cooling system, which allows the M4 chip to operate at higher speeds for longer periods without throttling performance to manage heat. This advantage is particularly noticeable during demanding tasks such as video editing or 3D rendering, where the Mac mini consistently maintains better performance levels.

However, for everyday tasks like web browsing, email, and office productivity, both machines deliver comparable performance that is more than sufficient for most users.

It's also noted that the Mac mini is available with the M4 or M4 Pro chip, while the iMac is only offered with the M4. This is a huge difference for anyone who wants much more performance on their computer.

Winner: Mac mini M4

Mac mini M4 vs iMac M4: Upgradeablity

Regarding upgradeability, the Mac mini M4 and iMac M4 have their limitations, but in different ways. The Mac mini allows you to select your RAM capacity at purchase, but the RAM is soldered to the motherboard, meaning it cannot be upgraded later. In contrast, the iMac M4 takes this further by having the RAM and storage soldered in, making them non-upgradeable.

However, the Mac mini provides some flexibility with external upgrades. You can quickly expand your storage through its multiple Thunderbolt ports by adding external SSDs or hard drives. You can also connect external GPUs, although this is less common with Apple silicon and other peripherals. On the other hand, the iMac, with its limited ports and all-in-one design, offers virtually no upgrade options after purchase.

Winner: Mac mini M4

Mac mini M4 vs iMac M4: Connectivity

The iMac is equipped with four Thunderbolt 4 ports and a Gigabit Ethernet connection, assuming you opt for the model with a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU. The less expensive version has only two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports and is limited to Gigabit Ethernet.

In contrast, the Mac mini provides a wider range of connectivity options. The M4 version includes three Thunderbolt 4 ports, while the M4 Pro variant features three Thunderbolt 5 ports. All models also come with two USB-C ports, an HDMI port, and the option for either Gigabit or 10Gb Ethernet.

Winner: Mac mini M4

Mac mini M4 vs iMac M4: Final verdict

When deciding between the Mac mini M4 (or M4 Pro) and the iMac M4, your choice will largely depend on your specific needs and priorities.

If you value portability and upgradeability, the Mac mini is the superior option. Its compact design and capability to connect to external drives and peripherals offer significant flexibility. The M4 Pro version further enhances performance for more demanding tasks. However, keep in mind that you will need to purchase a separate monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

On the other hand, if you prioritize an all-in-one device with an aesthetically pleasing design and appreciate a high-quality built-in display, the iMac M4 is an excellent choice. Its sleek and space-saving design makes it perfect for those who prefer a minimalist setup. While its performance may be slightly lower than the Mac mini in demanding scenarios, it is still very capable for everyday use.

Ultimately, the "better" choice depends on your individual needs and budget. Consider what aspects of a computer are most important to you—performance, portability, upgradeability, or design—and select the machine that best aligns with your preferences.

For more Apple options, we reviewed the best MacBook and Macs and tested the best video editing Mac and MacBook models

• Apple M4 Mac mini users report issues with USB-C connections
• Accessories such as keyboards are reportedly disconnecting randomly
• Apple has yet to address the situation, and it's not clear what the cause is as of now

While Apple's latest mini PC is lauded as one of the best Macs ever which is highlighted in our Mac mini (M4) review, it is currently facing a big issue that seems to be annoying plenty of users.

Multiple users claim that they are experiencing random USB-C disconnections as reported by AppleInsider, with accessories such as keyboards suddenly disconnecting. This is corroborated by various reports from users, and one notable post on Reddit, which implies that the only way for the accessories to start working again is by disconnecting the cable and reconnecting which is an inconvenience, to say the least.

This could also cause problems when transferring files between the Mac mini and an external USB-C drive if disconnections are as frequent as reports suggest. It isn't exactly clear whether this is a fault on Apple's side, but all signs point towards this being the case - as AppleInsider highlighted, some users' errors stem from waking the Mac mini up from sleep mode which may be resolved by a future software patch from Apple.

What's the best solution for now?

While there are plenty of accessories that can only be used via direct connections, the best solution, for now, is Bluetooth - which is also another worry, as M4 Mac mini users also reported Bluetooth issues last December in a MacRumors forum.

Issues like this can quickly begin to annoy users and undermine some of the things the Mac mini does so well, so Apple needs to address this as soon as possible.

In the case of an accessory like the Magic Mouse, you wouldn't even be able to use it wired anyway - its USB-C charging port is placed on the bottom of the mouse, a massive point of criticism for many since Apple has stuck with this design from the previous model. Fortunately, it's a wireless mouse, so it will suffice while you wait for Apple to address the situation.

The M4 Mac mini was only released late last year in November, so weird bugs are to be expected. We'll have to wait and see what the exact cause is, and let's just hope that the wait doesn't last too long.

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CES 2025 is fast approaching, and as always, there’s one glaring tech industry omission from the expected lineup: it’s Apple, of course, which hasn’t officially attended the event since the early 90s. Despite being the world’s biggest technology trade show, Apple seemingly has no desire to participate in CES - though as usual, we can expect the iPhone giant to cast its long shadow over the event.

Almost every year, we see a flurry of post-CES articles remarking on how Apple’s influence is felt at the event - last year, they tactically dropped the Apple Vision Pro launch date a single day before the show kicked off, immediately grabbing attention away from any virtual/augmented reality hardware being showcased at CES.

Plus, you’re always going to see Apple hardware all over the event, whether it’s iOS- or macOS-compatible products being presented, carefully placed advertising campaigns around Las Vegas during the show, or simply industry professionals attending the event with iPhones and MacBooks in hand.

This year is likely to be no different. With the impressive M4 chip landing in iPads and Macs in late 2024 and no doubt more Mac products coming in the near future, Apple has thrown down the gauntlet for rival tech giants, especially those in the laptop and chipmaking arenas.

Who needs to beat Apple at CES?

We’ll start with CPUs and GPUs, since that’s the hot topic right now. Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and Nvidia are all likely to have a strong presence at CES this year, with Qualcomm’s 2nd-gen Snapdragon X Elite chips slated for reveal at the event and Nvidia teasing its new RTX 5000 GPUs weeks ago. Apple only broke into the first-party silicon industry in 2020 with the M1 chip, but ever since then, it’s been taking its chips - and the devices that use them - to impressive new heights.

Rumors have been circulating about the possibility of an M4 Ultra chip too, which could appear this month - possibly alongside a new Mac Studio or Mac Pro. Whatever happens, Apple is in a strong position right now when it comes to its desktop and laptop chip performance, something that its rivals will have to surpass to claim any sort of victory from CES.

It’s not purely about conventional processors and graphics these days, either. Neural Processing Units (NPUs) are swiftly becoming more important as AI tools seep into the cracks of our software and hardware, and the M4 generation’s ‘Neural Engine’ is pretty strong - although I personally suspect Apple might lose pretty hard in that department, at least when it comes to on-paper specs. The M4 NPU offers 38 trillion operations per second (TOPS), while the current-gen Snapdragon X Elite from Qualcomm can already reach 45 TOPS.

Laptops vs MacBooks: fight!

We’re practically guaranteed to see a flurry of new Windows laptop reveals at CES (we do literally every year), but whether any of them will be able to unseat Apple from its throne of MacBooks remains to be seen.

Apple will likely reveal an M4-powered MacBook Air this month - heck, they might have already done so in the time between me writing this and you reading it - since they rather hilariously leaked their new laptop themselves via a macOS update in December.

Apple describes the MacBook Air as “the world's best-selling laptop” - a claim I take a little bit of umbrage at, given that Apple seemingly classifies all MacBook Airs as one product while treating every other manufacturer’s different configurations as separate ones, but I can’t argue that it certainly is popular and sells well. Simply put, an M4 MacBook Air reveal so close to CES would be a major spanner in the works that could threaten to overshadow any laptop launches at the event.

There’s no doubt a number of manufacturers will be unveiling MacBook competitors during the show, likely under the watchful eyes of Qualcomm, AMD, and Intel. These three companies will be locked in CPU combat this year; ever since Qualcomm stole a chunk of the limelight from Team Red and Team Blue back at Computex 2024, the race to make faster and more powerful chips has only been heating up. But regardless of what they produce at CES, Apple’s M-series silicon will be there, lurking in the background.

That’s all I have to say: Apple doesn’t need to attend CES. After all, the Mac maker has repeatedly demonstrated that it’s perfectly capable of running its own major launch events, and Tim Cook is already living rent-free in the heads of every competing company’s executives - why should he pay for a space at the table? A basic small booth at CES apparently costs $50,000… I don’t even want to know how much the big companies pay for theirs.

Microsoft ushered in what the company billed as the future of computing this year, as 2024 witnessed the introduction of the Copilot+ PC, the hardware side of its huge bet on AI that began with the Copilot AI itself (formerly Bing Chat).

Those AI laptops were a highlight for Microsoft this year, make no mistake – although the software giant did make quite a few mistakes elsewhere, sadly. Notably with Windows 11 and that controversial Recall feature, alongside a stream of unfortunate bugs that plagued the OS. Join us for an in-depth look at the software woes, and hardware highs, that Microsoft experienced in 2024.

Copilot+ PCs finally took off

After hearing about how AI-powered laptops represent a ‘new era’ of Windows PCs for quite some time, as Microsoft relentlessly banged the hype drums for these machines, Copilot+ PCs finally arrived in June 2024.

In case you somehow missed this, one of the key aspects of a Copilot+ PC is that it must have an NPU (Neural Processing Unit) powerful enough to seriously accelerate AI tasks. When these machines first launched in June, the only chips that qualified for a Copilot+ laptop were the Qualcomm Snapdragon X range, which had a catch – they’re Arm-based CPUs.

Arm is an alternative type of processor built on an entirely different architecture to traditional (x86) chips for Windows laptops. That means Arm PCs have to jump through hoops to run software or games via an emulation layer (Microsoft’s Prism) – which doesn’t always work that well (especially for some PC games). The result is that software which isn’t natively written for an Arm chip can be flaky, or underperform somewhat, and that remains something of a fly in the ointment.

That said, these initial Windows on Arm laptops still had a lot to offer, and we fell in love with Microsoft’s new devices that were launched as its first Copilot+ PCs. The Surface Pro 11 stunned us, frankly, and in our review we heaped praised on the Arm-based hybrid as a powerhouse performer with superb battery life, and a great overall design. Furthermore, the Surface Laptop 7 with Snapdragon X Elite chip seriously impressed us with similar strengths.

So, even given the weaknesses of Arm as mentioned, these notebooks were a big win for Microsoft in 2024. Those initial Arm-based offerings were then followed later in the year by x86 chips, with AMD Ryzen AI 300 and Intel Lunar Lake-powered Copilot+ PCs coming to market – albeit in a very much thin-on-the-ground fashion.

Copilot+ PCs remain a potentially powerful force in the laptop arena, but for now, they haven’t made the mark that they’re predicted to eventually stamp on the wider computing world. Indeed, what sales figures we have seen indicate that Snapdragon X laptops remain a very niche proposition.

It’s still early days, of course, and this hardware remains very pricey – though more affordable options are in the works. First of all, we heard about ambitions to deliver Snapdragon X laptops at the $800 mark, and towards the end of 2024, Qualcomm revealed it’s bringing in a new entry-level chip to realize Copilot+ PCs around the $600 level.

Aside from being on the expensive side thus far, another reason Copilot+ PCs have made a rather muted impact is that while they’re excellent machines – or certainly some of them are great, high-quality laptops – the actual (unique) AI powers they can leverage remain underwhelming, which has people scratching their heads somewhat.

In short, those people who are buying Copilot+ PCs aren’t doing so because they’re AI laptops – as they are marketed – but just because they’re powerful portables and just plain good notebooks.

Windows 11 24H2 update – big changes under the hood

Windows 11 24H2 was a major piece of work for Microsoft this year, and it pitched up at the start of October (with the usual slow paced, phased rollout). Mind you, 24H2 actually debuted on Copilot+ PCs when they emerged earlier in the year, although lacking many of the key features that weren’t actually introduced until the full rollout to all Windows 11 PCs.

Those new features included a whole raft of interface tweaks, such as an overhaul for File Explorer that brought in integrated support for compression formats other than ZIP, Phone Link being bolted on as a side panel for the Start menu, a new improved Energy Saver mode, and the Copilot assistant being turned into a traditional app on the desktop (running in a resizable window). Plus we got a faster installation of updates with 24H2, too.

There were also features just for Copilot+ PCs on the AI front, such as powerful image generation capabilities, a very smart take on system-wide live captions, and Windows Studio Effects for applying effects (background blur, filters, and so on) to your video chats.

It’s also worth noting that there was a lot going on under the hood with 24H2, as it was built on an all-new Germanium platform that Microsoft designed as part of the move to Copilot+ PCs. This is why those initial Arm-based Copilot+ laptops ran Windows 11 24H2 early, because they required the new take on the OS.

With the wide-ranging, but invisible to the user, changes delivered in the background by Germanium, all Windows 11 PCs will eventually see the benefit of tighter security and performance boosts in terms of general responsiveness (or that’s the theory, anyway).

Overall, 24H2 proved a solid update, even if the new features weren’t hugely exciting in themselves. Although there were some elements of 24H2 that badly misfired, and we’ll move on to recall one of those next (ahem).

Can you Recall a bigger software faux pas in recent history?

Microsoft’s shining, halo feature for its Copilot+ PCs in 2024 was the AI-powered Recall, and it was an unmitigated disaster, pretty much.

It went something like this...

Microsoft: We’ve got this great new feature called Recall! It’ll revolutionize search on your PC and then some.

Everyone Else: Hold on a minute there – isn’t this a huge security risk? And a privacy nightmare? And badly implemented to boot?

Microsoft: Erm, right, okay – Recall is being delayed – we’ll get back to you on that.

For the uninitiated, Recall is a feature that takes regular screenshots of the activity on your PC in order to make them searchable by AI. You can use natural language queries (“find me that pie chart,” “where’s that document where I wrote about that Samsung smartwatch,” “find that image I saved of a MacBook”) and easily find stuff that a basic Windows search would never turn up.

The feature was announced in May 2024, causing controversy around privacy and security, after which Microsoft hastily backpedalled and said it wouldn’t launch Recall (in preview) with Copilot+ PCs after all, as planned, because it needed reworking. Months of silence passed, and we even started to wonder if Recall had been canned, before Microsoft announced it was back on the radar.

We were told Recall had been revamped and would be released for CoPilot+ laptops in November, after it was deployed for testing in October – before the feature was once again postponed. Recall finally debuted in testing towards the end of November, for those with Copilot+ PCs equipped with an Arm-based Snapdragon CPU. (In December, it also arrived for Copilot+ PCs running traditional x86 AMD and Intel processors, so those laptop owners didn’t have to wait long).

The overhauled Recall made a raft of changes to both shore up security and privacy, so, for example, Microsoft dealt with concerns about Recall screenshots having sensitive details like credit card info, or passwords, in them. It’s still in early testing, of course, and we’ll just have to see how Recall flies with this retooled version – although there’s already been some shakiness witnessed in terms of failing to avoid storing screenshots containing financial details.

We can expect the AI feature to finally be released in full at some point next year, and to say all eyes are glued on how this effort turns out is an understatement – particularly those in the cybersecurity industry.

Windows 11 bugs multiplied – and got weird

As well as the embarrassment around Recall, there was further trouble for Microsoft in that Windows 11 was under siege from all sides by bugs in 2024. Small ones, medium glitches, and some bigger, nastier bugs too – albeit nothing at a show-stopper level, like, say the file deletion bug that hit Windows 10 some six years back now.

Okay, so a number of glitches are par for the course when it comes to any piece of software the size of a desktop operating system like Windows 11. However, even by Microsoft’s standards – which have slipped in recent years – this year was a bad one, and the big 24H2 update felt particularly shaky.

We witnessed update installation woes with 24H2, alongside printer problems, and internet connections falling over, alongside a rash of downright odd bugs like vanishing mouse cursors, weird lengthy pauses when Alt-Tabbing to switch apps, and File Explorer menus disappearing off the top of the screen.

Entire preview releases were dedicated to fixing some of these oddities, in fact, and our personal theory is that much of this weirdness was caused by Microsoft moving to that new Germanium platform we mentioned. That’s a sizeable under-the-hood change, and it seemingly released a number of gremlins scampering into the internal workings of Windows 11.

This run of heightened bugginess goes back further than version 24H2, with Windows 11 running into assorted problems throughout 2024, and overall it’s been a rather unfortunate and glitch-filled year for Microsoft’s operating system.

Windows 11 adverts kept on coming

We won’t bang on about the ads – or suggestions, as Microsoft calls them – in Windows 11 this year, but they continued to multiply inside the interface of the OS, sadly (or perhaps predictably, as this seems to be a direction the software giant is firmly intent on exploring).

Some of the worst offenders included that Game Pass ad in the Settings app, notifications pushing you to buy Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 from the Microsoft Store, not forgetting insisting Bing should be the default search engine as a ‘repair’ for your PC. (Not outside of China, admittedly, in that last case, but it’s such a startling example it bears mentioning).

Will anything change in this regard next year? Somehow we doubt it, and with Windows 10 hitting End of Life in 2025, expect a load of nagging and more pushing of upgrades to Windows 11, or indeed cajoling folks to buy a new Copilot+ PC.

Microsoft bestowed a precious gift on PC gamers

Early in the year, buzz erupted around a gaming-related innovation from Microsoft called DirectSR (DirectX Super Resolution). The excitement proved justified when Microsoft released DirectSR in preview at the end of May 2024 (a good deal earlier than anticipated, in fact).

So, what is DirectSR exactly? Well, it’s for upscaling, but it’s not actually an upscaling solution – rather, it’s an API that allows Windows developers to incorporate existing upscaling tech (DLSS, FSR, XeSS) more easily into their games. In short, this is helping game devs to more easily put those upscaling technologies into games, meaning faster frame rates for those titles.

The power of upscaling is increasingly a key factor in driving smoother gaming, so opening up the likes of DLSS or FSR to more and more games is an important step forward. That said, there’s still some way to go with DirectSR, which is still in preview at this point.

Crowdstrike chaos

Microsoft found itself embroiled in a massive controversy with the Crowdstrike debacle that happened in July 2024. If you need a recap, Crowdstrike is a cybersecurity firm that deployed an update for its Falcon security solution which carried a bug, and that glitch downed a whole load of Windows PCs. Sky News, Ryanair, airports, banks, health services, and many other organizations were affected, and it caused chaos on a new level for a software bug, frankly.

While this was not Microsoft’s fault at all – it was Crowdstrike that pushed the faulty update – it did take out a rather jaw-dropping 8.5 million Windows devices in total, and recovering fully from the incident was a tricky matter for Microsoft as well as Crowdstrike.

Lessons were learned, though, and lawsuits came too – with Microsoft not happy about EU rules that, the company argued, might be partly responsible for the level of carnage caused here following Crowdstrike’s ill-fated update.

Concluding thoughts

Last year, Microsoft’s hardware launches took a back seat to software (and AI), but in 2024, the new Surface devices released were excellent laptops – and a range of Copilot+ PCs burst onto the scene making quite an entrance. Even if much of the noise about those laptops, and specifically their AI powers, is overblown for now, and the sales figures we’ve seen are somewhat underwhelming.

If the analyst firms are right, though, Copilot+ PCs are going to be huge – and Microsoft’s Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 certainly deserve to be very successful portables.

The less said about Windows 11 this year, the better, in terms of adverts and quality assurance – but we can hope that Microsoft gets the pests under control with Windows 11 24H2 going forward, and that the latest version of the OS becomes less buggy next year.

What will happen with Recall is anyone’s guess, frankly. Early reactions from testers are somewhat mixed, and while there is positive feedback, certainly, there are some less impressed Windows Insiders, too. Overall, though, the way things have gone thus far doesn’t fill us with confidence in the crowning AI superpower of Copilot+ laptops.

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Qualcomm is a new entrant to the typical suspects we cover in our end-of-year report cards for the computing tech giants out there, but the firm has now gathered enough momentum in this sphere to grab our attention (and everyone else in the world of PCs).

That was achieved mainly through the launch of new Snapdragon silicon to power the first Copilot+ PCs to arrive in 2024, and those devices certainly made a splash. So, let’s dive into the other strong suits Qualcomm had this year – in terms of computers, that is, not the mobile space – and indeed discuss those weaker cards, too.

Copilot+ PCs arrive with Snapdragon X CPUs

Qualcomm is a name more associated with chips for phones, but it has, of course, produced Arm-based CPUs for laptops in the past (like the Snapdragon 8cx, for example, or custom Snapdragon processors for Microsoft’s Surface devices). However, it didn’t really turn any heads in the notebook space until 2024, with the release of the Snapdragon X range.

You might recall the excitement and hype spun up around Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X chips throughout the early part of this year. The Snapdragon X Elite headed up the range – actually first revealed late in 2023 – sporting 12-cores, backed up by lower-tier Snapdragon X Plus CPUs with 10-cores.

These SoCs did not disappoint when they arrived in Copilot+ PCs – the much-hyped AI laptops – proving to be powerful mobile CPUs, with beefy NPUs (Neural Processing Units) that were a requirement for these notebooks in order to accelerate AI-related workloads.

In May 2024 we were treated to a raft of revelations of different inbound Snapdragon X laptops, including the new Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 from Microsoft. Copilot+ PCs went on sale from June onwards, and these initial models were all driven by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon SoCs.

The new Surface Laptop totally blindsided us – considering we found some of the previous incarnations of this device rather underwhelming – scoring full marks in our review and storming to the top of our ranking of the best laptops out there. The Surface Pro for 2024 similarly blew us away. And yes, these were victories for Microsoft, but Qualcomm was a big winner here too, with the Snapdragon X being the engine of these compelling new laptops, and obviously key to their success.

We witnessed the Snapdragon X Elite achieve some impressive feats in terms of facilitating better battery life, nippy performance, and indeed powering thin-and-light laptops to be surprisingly capable in the gaming stakes.

But not everything was rosy in the Snapdragon garden. As you may be aware, there’s one main compromise with using Arm silicon, and running Windows on Arm, which is the thorny issue of software compatibility.

Admittedly, the compatibility gremlins have been tamed to an extent, thanks to Microsoft’s new emulation layer (Prism) for running traditional x86 apps on an Arm system (which has a fundamentally different architecture). This is akin to Apple’s Rosetta translation layer, which runs x86 apps on its M-series CPUs.

There’s no doubting Prism is a big step forward for Windows on Arm, but it’s still far from perfect. Microsoft itself admitted that some software doesn’t work on Arm-powered PCs, and even when it does, you may get some performance headwinds from running the emulation routines. There are many more compatibility stumbling blocks when trying to play games on these Arm laptops, too.

Still, we shouldn’t be too negative here, as Prism is still in its relatively early life – and will doubtless be honed by Microsoft. It’s also worth noting that Arm-based Copilot+ PCs were the only devices to get the halo AI feature, Recall, when that finally launched late in 2024 (though it’ll come to x86 devices later). Furthermore, there’s a small – but growing – list of apps that are written natively for Arm chips, so don’t need emulation, and will run readily, smoothly and speedily.

Snapdragon success – that didn’t translate into sales?

So, there were a lot of good things going on with the new Snapdragon X SoCs, but worryingly for Qualcomm, the initial sales figures we glimpsed didn’t exactly bowl us over. As we reported in November, apparently only something like 720,000 Snapdragon X laptops had been sold since the launch of these devices. In Q3, the units shifted represented 0.8% of the total PCs shipped, and while that’s hardly nothing, it’s not exactly a thundering start for Qualcomm.

The other worry in terms of competition is that Copilot+ PCs with x86 chips are coming onto the scene to challenge the Snapdragon X-powered laptops. Notably, these devices – packing AMD Ryzen AI 300 or Intel Lunar Lake CPUs – don’t have any of the compatibility wrinkles we discussed above. Those AMD and Intel processors are also seriously impressive in terms of being highly performant, too.

Big things are still predicted for Snapdragon

Despite some of these undoubted worries for Qualcomm, the company was very bullish regarding the prospects of its new Snapdragon chips. Indeed, both Arm and Qualcomm predicted that Arm chips will become the dominant force in Windows PCs by 2029, overtaking x86 silicon.

It wasn’t just a matter of Qualcomm blowing its own hype horn here, though, as analysts also forecasted that Arm-based Copilot+ PCs are going to explode in popularity from next year. We’re talking about a more than fivefold growth to over five million units shifted in 2025, and then by 2028, sales will supposedly reach 47 million.

However, those x86 AMD and Intel-powered Copilot+ PCs are predicted to do better – a lot better. To the tune of 34.2 million units shipped in 2025, and over 100 million units in 2028.

Still, that would in theory leave Arm chips with a third of the surging Copilot+ PC market – and while that doesn’t quite line up with Qualcomm’s own hopes of Windows PC domination by 2029, it’d still be a very impressive achievement. The hype being stoked is that Apple’s MacBooks could be threatened, but the reality, as ever – we’ll just have to see.

Another piece of the puzzle – more affordable Snapdragon X AI laptops

Aside from the issues we’ve mentioned around the weaknesses of Arm in the compatibility stakes, another drag factor on the sales of these Qualcomm-powered Copilot+ PCs has been the generally high price tags attached to these portables.

That pricing picture is changing, though, thanks to an 8-core take on the Snapdragon X revealed in September 2024 at IFA, as a cheaper processor to ensure more affordable laptops. That chip had the goal of bringing Snapdragon X laptops down to the $800 level, and then in November 2024, Qualcomm said it was introducing a new entry-level chip beneath the 8-core model to allow for even cheaper Copilot+ PCs around the $600 price point.

The key point is that the NPU won’t be watered down, to keep these fresh Snapdragon CPUs eligible for Copilot+ devices – and next year we should see much more reasonably priced Arm-based notebooks in the AI laptop category.

Dev Kit PC is announced – then comes off the rails

Qualcomm revealed the Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows in August 2024, a mini PC designed for developers to help them test and port over apps to the Windows on Arm platform. The more software coded natively for Arm, the better, as we already touched on, and this compact PC was an affordable way to help that happen.

Sadly, in October came the news that this dev kit had been canned by Qualcomm. Why did the PC get ditched? Apparently it simply wasn’t up to scratch, and there were issues related to the hardware, specifically the ports. The end result, though, is that this project that could have accelerated the arrival of native Arm software on Snapdragon-powered PCs has fallen by the wayside.

Concluding thoughts

In terms of PCs, the future looks promisingly bright for Qualcomm. At least if the company can realize those cheaper Snapdragon-toting Copilot+ laptops (at the promised $600 price bracket), and Microsoft’s Prism forges forward with facilitating the smoother running of x86 apps on these Arm devices. (Plus we’ll doubtless get more native software for Windows on Arm, too, something Microsoft will definitely be pushing for – though it’s a shame about the fate of Qualcomm’s Dev Kit mini PC).

Whether Copilot+ PCs running Snapdragon CPUs will be as big a hit as Qualcomm and Arm – and indeed some analyst firms out there – seem to think, well, that remains to be seen.

Not all of that is in Qualcomm’s hands, by any means, as while the company can – and surely will – push forward with more powerful, or indeed more affordable, Snapdragon CPUs, it could be the AI features that eventually determine whether Copilot+ PCs sell up a storm. And these devices are very much unproven yet in that regard, and the AI functionality ball is, of course, in Microsoft’s court with Windows, not Qualcomm’s.

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• Apple could redesign its Magic Mouse
• Many users complain about its design
• Don't expect any new mouse to come soon

It looks like Apple could finally be giving its Magic Mouse a much-needed design refresh, with renowned Apple leaker Mark Gurman claiming that the company is working on a “full overhaul” of the peripheral.

While I’m generally very fond of Apple’s Mac devices, I can’t stand the Magic Mouse that's bundled with certain products. Its smooth, button-less design doesn’t feel all that comfortable in my hand, but worst of all, Apple placed the charging port on the bottom of the mouse.

This baffling design decision means you need to flip the Magic Mouse over to plug it in – which means it can’t be used while it’s charging. Meanwhile, pretty much every other wireless mouse in existence has a charging port on the front of the mouse, allowing you to continue to use it while it charges.

Despite many Mac users – myself included – complaining about this, Apple appeared to stubbornly refuse to admit its mistake. Even when its latest version of the Magic Mouse recently came out with a new charging port (USB-C, rather than the proprietary Lightning port), Apple didn’t take the opportunity to move the charging port.

Thankfully, it looks like that could change. At least according to Gurman, who has a strong reputation when it comes to Apple leaks. He’ll certainly won't be getting any Christmas cards from Cupertino this year.

Good things come to those who wait…

As Gurman explains in his newsletter, the Magic Mouse has not had a major redesign in over 15 years, and while Apple and some users (including Gurman) think the charging port placement isn’t that big of a deal, as the mouse charges quickly and only occasionally needs charging, the fact is that there are a huge number of mice that do things better – and feel more ergonomic – than Apple’s Magic Mouse, and they are all Mac-compatible.

In my opinion, the Magic Mouse is well overdue a redesign. Any time a Magic Mouse is included with a Mac device I use, it remains in its box while I use more comfortable mice from the likes of HP and Razer.

It sounds like this long wait for a new mouse from Apple could be worth it. Gurman suggests this will be a massive reimagining that won’t just fix the charging port issue, but will make the mouse more comfortable to use as well.

Unfortunately, this does mean that we might have to wait even longer to see the new mouse, with Gurman stating that “I wouldn’t expect anything in the next 12 to 18 months,” as Apple’s designers and engineers will be taking their time to get this right.

If we really are getting a much better successor to the Magic Mouse, then this extra bit of waiting will be worth it. Until then, I’ll keep buying alternatives from our best mouse guide to use with my Macs, and I’m sure I won’t be the only one.

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If you’re considering getting the new M4 Mac mini, you’ve probably noticed that it costs a pretty penny if you want to upgrade the amount of storage it comes with. If you want to upgrade from the base 256GB Mac mini to the 512GB configuration, that’ll cost you $200 / £200 - then it’s the same amount for every additional half-terabyte after that. Luckily storage company Orico has just released MiniMate: an external SSD designed to accompany the new Apple M4 Mac mini, and it’s only $139.99 for 512GB of extra storage.

If you want additional storage for a Mac mini but don’t want to pay Apple’s tall prices, this certainly looks like a good option. The MiniMate is an easy addition that doesn’t require you to open up your Mac mini or deal with a complicated setup process, because it was designed from the ground up to work quickly and easily with the new Mac mini.

You can connect the MiniMate using one of the Mac mini’s high-speed Thunderbolt/USB4 ports and it can transfer data at speeds of up to 40Gbps, which is very quick. It’s worth noting that the speed will depend on the individual configuration of the MiniMate you get.

The MiniMate is made of aluminum, the same material that Apple uses for its devices, and it comes in a sleek silver color that will match a Mac mini perfectly. It’s made to sit on top of the M4 Mac mini and match your setup seamlessly.

Release dates, storage options, and price information

It packs a lot of data, with the base model starting at 512GB and configurations ranging all the way up to 8TB, and it uses NVMe SSD storage which is known for being fast and reliable. It’s also built to stay cool while working, so it won’t overheat even when you’re transferring large files. The M4 Mac mini vents from the underside anyway and doesn’t run particularly hot in the first place - at least, not compared to powerful creative CPUs from the likes of Intel - so you won’t have to worry about overheating from either one (while using it normally).

When it comes to price, you’re looking at $139.99 for the 512GB model, going up to $999.99 for the 8TB version. Expensive, certainly, but still a lot cheaper than what Apple will charge you; the maximum the M4 Mac mini can be configured up to is 2TB, which will cost you a hefty $800 on top of the base model. The MiniMate will be available for purchase on December 13, 2024.

If you’ve read all of that and aren’t planning to get a MacMini but wish you could use the MateMini, then good news: the MiniMate also works with other systems like Windows, Linux, and Android. It just won’t look quite as cute sitting atop a regular desktop PC.

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• Mac mini M4 has been rated for repairability by iFixit
• The compact computer scored a 7/10 with a laudable modular design
• There are sticking points with the proprietary SSD, though

Apple’s Mac mini M4 has been given the teardown treatment by iFixit, and there are generally positive findings here, albeit with some catches.

The website is famous for taking apart hardware and rating it in terms of design and repairability considerations, and iFixit begins its video teardown by underlining just how much smaller the new Mac mini is compared to the computer in the past.

Apple achieved this by cramming a lot of components into a small space in an impressive manner, and something to note is that the power supply has been changed from a single module to a board that runs across the top of the chassis.

There’s also a large fan inside the Mac mini M4 and an innovative cooling design which is doing a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of keeping the power used in check given the limited space in the more compact chassis.

Another interesting move on the cooling front is that the Mac mini with vanilla M4 has an aluminum heatsink, whereas the model with the M4 Pro SoC has a larger copper heatsink to better cool the more powerful processor, which makes sense of course.

There’s good news on the storage front: the SSD is removable, as we’ve already heard about, so upgrading to a bigger drive is possible. We say that, but there are caveats here, which we’ll come back to in a moment.

The plus point of removable and replaceable ports is also noted, at least on the front of the Mac mini – sadly the rear ports are soldered (as is the system RAM, alongside the M4 chip itself at the heart of the machine).

The controversial position of the power button on the underside of the Mac mini also gets a mention, inevitably, along with an observation that perhaps Apple is overly concerned about aesthetics here.

Overall, iFixit praises the thinking about the modular design, with the likes of those ports (on the front), and the storage, pinning a 7/10 (provisional) score for repairability on the Mac mini M4.

Analysis: Storage and Apple’s proprietary choice

Coming back to the issue of storage, while the SSD can be upgraded, there are catches as mentioned (which we already touched on in a previous report). The drives are physically different between the Mac mini with M4 and the computer with the M4 Pro, so you can’t swap SSDs between those models. However, iFixit did successfully upgrade a base Mac mini M4 with a 512GB SSD from another model replacing a 256GB drive.

The other fly in the ointment here is that the SSD is a proprietary Apple drive, so you can’t just go and buy any old solid-state drive and plug it into your Mac mini. You’ll need an SSD from another Mac mini, or one sold by Apple – if the company starts offering these (which isn’t the case yet). So, that rather limits the storage upgrade options as you can imagine.

There is the possibility that third parties will produce compatible SSDs for Mac mini upgrades, and indeed there have already been announcements to that effect. The downside of such a ‘fudged’ (well, unofficial) drive installation could be that Apple closes off this avenue via firmware updates that render the third-party SSD inoperable, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.

Let’s just hope Apple sells SSDs for Mac mini storage upgrades itself, but skeptics are already doubtful this might happen – and the point of the replaceable drive here is more about facilitating repairs, than upgrades.

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• The new M4 Mac mini’s power button is placed underneath the chassis
• It’s not the only strange design choice made by Apple recently
• Apple VP Greg Joswiak states that it’s due to the reduced size of the Mac mini

The new M4 Mac mini will be Apple’s smallest Mac ever and wields plenty of power, but not without a few odd design choices - and one that seems to have particularly upset some users is that the power button has been moved to the bottom of the tiny PC.

However, Apple seems ready to defend its decision. As noted by IT Home (in Chinese), a video posted on the Chinese social media platform Bilibili shows Apple’s VP Greg Joswiak address the matter when questioned, revealing the reasoning behind the design choice - it was simply down to the reduced size of the Mac mini and the idea that “you pretty much never use the power button on your Mac”.

Joswiak also said “I can’t remember the last time I turned on my Mac,” which suggests that Apple’s official position is that most users should leave the system in sleep mode instead. While this is certainly an option for Mac mini owners, it may not sit well with some users (especially considering most traditional desktop PCs and their prominent power button positions).

Will this impact the M4 Mac mini in any capacity?

There’s no doubt that the new placement of the power button is a bit of an odd choice, and we noted as much in our M4 Mac mini review, but it’s nowhere near as strange as what we’ve seen with the new Magic Mouse’s charging port still on the bottom and brand-new M4 Macs omitting Wi-Fi 7. Besides a minor change to how you power on your M4 Mac mini, this shouldn’t impact your experience in any significant manner.

Considering the reduction of the Mac mini’s size coming from the 2023 M2 chip version, this seems to be a small but worthy sacrifice - if placing the power button in a more convenient area meant losing out on the smallest Mac ever, then I stand by Apple’s decision here.

Despite this, I must say that leaving your Mac mini (or any of the best computers, for that matter) in sleep mode constantly probably isn’t the best idea - while it may be more convenient to dive right back into your tasks, it isn’t ideal for saving power (even if it isn’t using much in sleep mode) and periodically shutting down and restarting your devices is good for their performance as it enables you to apply any updates and refreshes your system cache.

While some of the design choices made in the new Mac mini may be worthy of scratching your head at, the power that the M4 chip provides in performance across the board and a price tag starting at just $599 (£599 / AU$999) still leaves this being one of the best Macs ever made.

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• The M4 Mac mini has removable storage, it's been revealed
• It also uses two SSDs for each configuration
• The changes could enable custom upgrades for the Mac

In our Apple Mac mini (M4, 2024) review we described it as potentially the best Mac ever – and certainly the smallest to date – and as users start to pull apart the dinky computer, we're finding even more to like about it.

First up, from an iFixit post (via @MudkipOnYT) we now know the internal SSD storage is modular and can be removed, rather than being soldered to the motherboard. That means there's the potential for custom storage upgrades.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, it's worth pointing out that the Mac Studio (M2 Ultra) has a similar storage setup, but custom upgrades are difficult to do: the computer uses Apple's own bespoke SSDs, you can't just slot in any off-the-shelf replacement.

We'll have to wait and see whether upgrades on the M4 Mac mini are as tricky, but Apple fans have already been able to identify the SSD in question and upgrade the Mac mini to 2TB of storage (you can actually get it with as much as 8TB straight from Apple).

Two for one

While questions remain about just how viable it's going to be to start swapping SSDs in and out – potentially at a lower cost than buying the equivalent configuration from Apple – it's a promising step forward for Mac mini repairability and customization.

The other upgrade over the previous Apple Mac mini (M2, 2023), as spotted by @ohgkg (via MacRumors), is that even the lowest 256GB version makes use of two SSD modules – allowing for faster read and write speeds, compared with a single chip.

As a consequence, there shouldn't be any difference in SSD speeds between the 256GB storage configuration and any other, which is reassuring for those thinking about buying the cheapest M4 Mac mini option direct from Apple.

Again, it's a welcome change, one that we've also seen happen on the 13-inch MacBook Air (M3, 2023). The Apple M4 Mac mini is available to buy now from Apple, with pricing starting at $599 / £599 / AU$999 for the base model.

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Apple iMac 24-inch (M4) Review: Two-minute review

The iMac has been the all-in-one computer to beat since the jump to Apple silicon and a well-received redesign. MacOS teamed with an Apple-made processor make for an excellent experience, and with an iMac you get everything you need to get off to the races in the box.

The 2024 iMac doesn’t majorly depart from this working formula – but three changes, err four, if you’re willing to spend a bit more, make one of the best gadgets around even better. First, Apple has dropped the price by $100 / £100 / AU$200, setting it at $1,299 / £1,299 / AU$1,999. For that, you get an M4 chip, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage – that’s better specs than the M3 version, so you're getting good value here.

The design is identical to the previous model from a year ago and the M1 iMac, which arrived in 2021. It’s an excellent-looking machine that can fit in almost any space – be it a proper desk, a kitchen counter, or even a shelf. It still only comes in one size – 24-inch – which might be a deal-breaker for some, but it appears that Apple wants those folks to get a Mac mini and pair it with a display.

Apple’s only big change with the design is new colors, and I love them. These new shades are more vibrant and match Apple’s other products better, and the finishes can vary depending on how the light hits them. You can get the M4 iMac in Purple, Blue, Green, Orange, Yellow, or Silver, and you’ll get color-matched peripherals – a Magic Keyboard with a Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad – which all finally feature USB-C ports. However, Apple didn’t see fit to redesign the Magic Mouse; the port is still on the bottom.

Under the hood, the M4 chip outpaces the M3, and delivers noticeable improvements over the M1-powered or previous Intel-powered iMacs. Applications open swiftly with no noticeable lag, and you can do much more on this iMac than on an iMac from years ago. MacOS Sequoia, complete with some early Apple Intelligence features, is preloaded.

The built-in FaceTime camera has also been upgraded with a higher megapixel count and Center Stage functionality to automatically keep you in the frame during video calls – you'll still be in the shot if you like to circle while talking.

So between a lower price for the entry model, the arrival of the M4 chip, and a swap in FaceTime cameras, there is a whole lot to like here, especially if you’re after a Mac – or a computer in general – that's ready to go out of the box. Further, though, if you want to ensure that you can use the screen in any lighting conditions, and plan to place it in a room where you can’t really control the lighting, the new nano-texture option does an impressive job of blocking reflections.

Between the new colors and the improved performance, the latest iMac is again the best all-in-one computer, and the complete package. If you have an M3 iMac or even an M1, I don’t think you need to run out and upgrade, unless you’re hitting a performance roadblock (which is unlikely); but if you have an older model you’ll be in for a treat. And, again, the colors are a delight.

Apple iMac 24-inch (M4) Review: Pricing and Availability

• How much does it cost? Starts at $1,299 / £1,299 / AU$1,999
• When is it available? Up for order now, with shipping from November 8

Along with the new Mac mini, 14-inch MacBook Pro, and 16-inch MacBook Pro, the iMac with M4 is up for order now, and begins shipping on November 8. The M4 iMac isn't only a better-specced machine than the M3; it's also cheaper. For $1,299 / £1,299 / AU$1,999, you get the 24-inch M4 iMac with an M4 chip (8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine), 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. You also get your pick of color, and you no longer need to spend more to get the shade you want.

The step-up model gives you a better M4 chip with a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine for $1,499 / £1,499 / AU$2,399. That is paired with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and a gigabit ethernet port. The top-of-the-line iMac, which we tested, costs $2,699 / £2,699 / AU$4,199 and comes with 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage. You can opt for the nano-texture display for an extra $200.

Apple iMac 24-inch (M4) Review: Specs

Apple iMac 24-inch (M4) Review: Design

• The same design as the previous two models
• New colors look great
• Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse finally get USB-C

When Apple likes a design, it tends to stick with it, and it's done so here. The new iMac with the M4 chip looks nearly identical to the M3 iMac, and even the M1 model that ushered in the all-new look in 2021.

Aside from an ever-so-thin build that will take up minimal space on a desk (it weighs in at under 10lbs / 4.5kg), the main feature here is the 24-inch Retina 5K display. I’ll touch on this a bit more below, but for now know that it’s a vibrant and visually rich viewing experience.

The screen offers a 4480 x 5250 resolution with 218 pixels per inch, and maxes out at 500 nits of brightness. Perhaps the most meaningful addition here is a new Nano Texture option, a coating that enables you to place the iMac in almost any space and be able to see the screen clearly – including a room with massive windows throwing sunlight directly on it. Yes, it’s an extra expense, but it adds to an already rich Retina viewing experience, with support for the Wide Color P3 gamut and Apple’s True Tone technology, which adjusts the brightness to make viewing the screen easy on your eyes.

As on the M3 and M1 models, the 24-inch screen is wrapped in a white border all the way around. On a potentially very colorful all-in-one, this is a sensibly neutral choice that allows you to focus on the screen. Tucked above the display is the most welcome addition, a new 12-megapixel ultrawide camera with support for Center Stage. This not only provides better visual for calls or photos but also offers a wide shot, and thanks to some smart software it will automatically keep you in the frame. That means if you squat down, it pans down, or if you jump up, it pans up, and if another person walks into the shot it will center you both. Very handy.

The new iMac still has a chin on the bottom, but I don’t think most folks will mind, especially since it’s color-matched to whatever shade you choose. And it's no longer the case that you might need to pay more to get the color you want, as all seven shades are available in any configuration of the iMac. I’ve been testing the new iMac in Purple, which perfectly matches the latest iPad mini and new AirPods Max – a lovely, light, and airy hue, with a lilac feel on the front and a deeper purple on the back and the accompanying stand. Apple also offers the iMac in Pink – the pink of your dreams, it looks stunning – Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange, and Silver.

As with previous models, a Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse or a Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad color-matched to the iMac are included in the box. The colors are most visible on the keyboard, where the white keys are set on top of the colored aluminum and on the Touch ID rim.

The other big change is that Apple’s accessories have finally switched to USB-C. So we can finally say bye-bye to Lightning, at least for the Magic Keyboard, Magic Trackpad, and Magic Mouse. With the latter, you might assume that Apple also swapped the port, but it did not. The USB-C port still lives on the bottom of the Magic Mouse, just as with the previous Lightning port, so when it comes time to charge your mouse, once you've plugged it in you won't be able use the mouse until it’s charged. Maybe next year. A positive is that you get a color-matched braided USB-C to USB-C cable in the box.

Like the M3 iMac and the M1-powered edition, the higher-end iMac I reviewed has four Thunderbolt 4/USB-C ports on the rear right when looking at it from the front. These are great spots to connect peripherals, and the power button is on the other side. The base $1,299 iMac comes with two Thunderbolt 4/USB-C ports, and both models feature a headphone jack on the left-hand side.

If you opt for the iMac to have a gigabit Ethernet port, it’s found on the power brick. You’ll connect the iMac to the power center on the back with a proprietary circular connector.

To keep the design here so thin, there isn’t much room for other ports. Many of the actual components live in that chin on the bottom of the iMac. The stand is quite small at just 5.8 inches but it supports the iMac well, and thanks to some articulation you can tilt the display vertically up or down for the perfect viewing angle. The overall dimensions and weight are the same as the previous version as well – 54.7 x 46.1 x 14.7cm (21.5 x 18.1 x 5.8 inches) and 9.74lbs / 4.42kg, or 9.79lbs / 4.44 kg for the more expensive models. Even so, four USB-C ports, even on the base $1,299 configuration, would have been a welcome addition.

While you won’t physically see them, Apple has also built in a six-speaker system with force-canceling woofers that support Spatial Audio, and a three-microphone array – both are unchanged year on year, and audio playback for music and videos sounds rich. I also found the onboard speakers great for video calls, ensuring clear audio and blocking out any reverb when speaking.

As a whole, Apple’s iMac is still the best-looking all-in-one on the market. While it’s similar to two previous editions, the new colors – especially the more vibrant shades – ensure it provides a refreshing experience in use. It also looks simply stunning in any space.

• Design score: 4.5/5

Apple iMac 24-inch (M4) Review: Display

• 24 inches is plenty of room for multitasking
• Display gets vibrant, but is only 60Hz
• Nano texture option is impressive at blocking reflections

Just like the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M4 or the iPad Pro with M4, the iMac now comes with the option of a Nano-texture glass finish. It costs an extra $200, but it drastically reduces visible reflections from light or other sources. Apple includes a special ‘polishing cloth’ for the finish in the box.

My apartment’s living room has a lot of windows, and gets direct sunlight for almost the entire day, so it was the perfect spot to put the Nano-texture to the test – I frequently have to move around when using a MacBook Air or Pro to reduce reflections. Thanks to the special coating I was able to keep the iMac on my kitchen counter and sit on a barstool, regardless of whether the light, whether natural or artificial, was reflecting on it. Yes, if it’s super bright you’ll notice it to a degree, but it usually diffuses quite naturally and lets you work in very bright environments.

Basically, it can cut down most glare, be it from natural or environmental sources, and if you’re already investing in a new iMac it will make it that bit more versatile. Regardless of whether you opt for Nano-texture, you still get a Retina 4.5K display with a 4480 x 5250 resolution aat 218 pixels per inch. It’s still only a 60Hz display, which is a bit disappointing, but if you’re not coming from a display with a higher refresh rate I think you’ll be right at home.

The display is excellent for daily web browsing, FaceTime calls, and other productivity use cases. I noticed inky blacks and crisp letters while writing this review and with emails. Streaming movies or TV shows on the display is a real treat, and might be a true use case if you use this in a family room or as the main device in an apartment. I could also easily edit photos in Photos, Pixelmator, or Photoshop, and even tackle video edits in Final Cut Pro.

While not as rich and with fewer contrast points, the iMac can be used to game comfortably compared to a MacBook Pro. The M4 chip does support dynamic caching and ray tracing, so titles like Resident Evil 2 were enjoyable here.

The one issuse I could see carried over from the previous models, and for new folks, is that the iMac only comes in one size – 24 inches. There are no longer 21.5-inch and 27-inch options, as there were when Apple offered Intel iMacs. I recommend getting a Mac mini and the display of your choice if you want a bigger or smaller screen.

• Display score: 4/5

Apple iMac 24-inch (M4) Review: Performance

• M4 chip provides plenty of power
• The iMac can handle work and play, including AAA gaming titles
• Apple Intelligence features – like Writing Tools and Image Playground – run well here

There are two main configurations of the iMac with M4, depending on the type of M4 chip you want. The entry-level model should be just fine for most folks, thanks to Apple upping the base RAM to 16GB. That configuration includes an M4 chip with an 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine. You can pay a bit more, starting at $1,499, for an M4 Chip with a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and a 16-core Neural Engine – the price will get higher as you up RAM and storage. The base configuration tops out at 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, while the higher-end versions go up to 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage.

I’ve been testing the iMac with the 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine M4, and 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage. Out of the box the new iMacs come with macOS Sequoia 15.1, and with it you're getting the first Apple Intelligence features like Writing Tools, a redesigned Siri with a rainbow glow, Clean Up in Photos, and Notifications in summaries, as well as general OS improvements like iPhone Mirroring, which is both super-handy and a little addictive.

In my daily testing, I could have Safari and Google Chrome both open with upwards of 20 tabs, as well as Slack, Messages, Pixelmator, Preview, Calendar, a couple more apps, and iPhone Mirroring open without the iMac losing speed. This was on the top configuration for the iMac, so your mileage might vary a bit, but as with most Apple silicon Macs should should find the iMac zippy, and be hard-pressed to get the onboard fan to kick in.

With so much power packed inside a modern, sleek build, this is a versatile machine that will be at home in a range of setups. It might be ideal for a shared computer amongst a family – macOS supports multiple profiles, and you’ll find parental controls. It has more than enough horsepower for casual mail and web browsing, and plenty of power for word processing or creating a PowerPoint. Similarly, it could be used for businesses that can load massive, thousand-row spreadsheets in Excel or Numbers and other more specific applications. You can also power through creative tasks like a large Logic file with several dozens of tracks and AI session players.

Even with AI or ML tasks, the iMac did quite well – I could ask for a summary of a lengthy and messy meeting recap in Notes, see a list of bullets in just a few seconds, and remove unwanted people from a group photo in seconds. I could perform a super-resolution boost to up the quality in Pixelmator Pro, and easily make automatic edits in LightRoom, all without a long wait time.

I also spent a few hours with the latest beta of macOS Sequoia 15.2 and its Apple Intelligence tools on the iMac with M4. Making custom visuals in Image Playground or my creative emojis in Genmoji is a lot of fun on this all-in-one. We can expect these features, alongside other new Apple Intelligence ones, to arrive before the end of 2024.

The iMac with M4 doesn’t disappoint on performance, and while the scores aren’t dramatically better than the M3 variant, those with an M1, especially if it's Intel-powered, will be ripe for an upgrade, and will reap the benefits in terms of speed. And considering the price drop of $100 / £100 / AU$200, it's kind of a steal for a brand-new Apple product.

• Performance score: 4.5/5

Should you buy the Apple iMac M4 (2024)?

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How I tested

After receiving the new iMac from Apple for testing, I unboxed it and then set it up as a new machine. I used the M4-powered iMac for seven days as my daily driver for work, general productivity, and play. I ran through all of my daily tasks in myriad applications like Safari, Google Chrome, Slack, and Pixelmator Pro, among others, and I also edited photos and videos, and played some AAA titles.

First reviewed November 2024