Apple's upgraded Mac Minis and Mac Studios begin shipping Tuesday, pitched directly at corporate buyers as a cheaper alternative to renting AI computing from cloud providers. The machines, which can cost nearly $20,000, will compete against new desktop hardware from Nvidia and PC makers that Microsoft is expected to showcase at a Windows event in San Francisco next month.
When Apple's new desktop computers start shipping Tuesday, executives will make an unusual pitch to corporate buyers: the machines are cheaper than renting data centers. The upgraded Mac Minis and Mac Studios, which can cost nearly $20,000, target intense AI tasks such as writing code without paying per-token fees to cloud leaders like OpenAI or Anthropic.
Apple chases Microsoft's enterprise turf
Apple has about 4.6% of the enterprise desktop market versus 91.3% for Windows, according to IDC's Linn Huang. Yet Apple has found itself in a strong position for AI desktops because of a longstanding focus on saving power.
When Apple rolled out its first Apple Silicon chips in 2020, it combined computing and memory into a unified architecture for better battery life. That same design, which Nvidia and others have only recently begun adopting, also made Macs well suited to AI workloads. Apple started selling out of Mac Minis as OpenClaw, an open-source agentic AI tool, took off in markets such as China.
Mac Studios add data-center-style networking
Mac Studios were initially built for video and music editors, but Apple has quietly added AI features such as RDMA over Thunderbolt, a form of chip-to-chip networking, over the past two years. At its launch event this month, Apple showed four Mac Studios linked together running an AI model with a trillion parameters to find and fix a graphics coding bug — a task that normally needs a data center but ran off a single wall outlet.
According to Reuters: "There's no cost per token. You're just using the machine again and again." Johny Srouji, Apple's chief hardware officer, made the comment while describing the value of owning the hardware outright rather than paying for cloud AI usage.
Microsoft and Nvidia respond
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is chasing the same on-device AI market and has said Microsoft plans to fold many AI features into a broad assistant app for Windows. Microsoft said it has been working with chip partners to streamline AI work through its Windows ML tools, adding that features such as RDMA remain an active area of investment.
Nvidia declined to comment. But at the launch of its new PC chip this summer, CEO Jensen Huang downplayed any intention to compete directly with Apple, saying Nvidia is focused on expanding what Windows PCs can accomplish. Srouji said Apple is pitching buyers on the idea that AI models built on its devices can scale up to its priciest Mac Studios or down to its cheapest iPhones and iPads, since the chips share common design principles.
Source: Investing.com
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