The Mac mini and Mac Studio occupy two distinct points in Apple’s lineup of desktops, but lately, they’ve had something in common: They’re popular for local AI inference and software development thanks to the advantages of their unified memory architecture and the fast CPUs and GPUs on their systems-on-a-chip.

20 years ago today, Steve Jobs took to the Apple WWDC stage to unveil the first-ever Mac Pro desktop computer. As well as marking the beginning of a whole new Mac line, this was the first Apple workstation desktop to transition from PowerPC to Intel x86.

The AI angle is particularly important. Apple said the M6 Neural Engine can deliver up to twice the peak compute of previous generations, while the chip's GPU provides nearly 30% more peak AI compute than M5 and more than eight times that of the original M1.

Apple is rumored to be developing a budget-friendly desktop Mac, informally referred to as the “Mac Neo.” This potential device could serve as an accessible entry point into the macOS ecosystem, targeting cost-conscious users and addressing a notable ...

The Mac Studio has reportedly caught on among developers as a good platform to use for working with large artificial intelligence models.