The Asus ROG Kithara brings Hifiman’s planar-magnetic drivers and signature design to the Mac gaming world with aplomb that’s sometimes undermined by unfortunate complexities.

In a world that’s full to the brim with mediocre gaming headsets, this Asus ROG and Hifiman collaboration is certainly different. Hifiman is known for its premium headphones aimed squarely at audiophiles with plenty of money to spend on their hobby.

By contrast, gamers aren’t known for their willingness to part with their hard-earned cash. Unless it warrants it, that is. And in the case of the Asus ROG Kithara, their $300 would be money well spent indeed.

I’ve spent the last few months with this headset (or headphones, depending on how you look at it.) I’ve used it to play some great games and listen to some not-so-great music. Go West fans shout out in the comments. I can’t be the only one.

In all that testing, one thing has become clear. Asus and Hifiman have made a great pair of headphones. Whether they made a great gaming headset will depend on how you plan to use it.

ROG Kithara review: Design and build quality

The first thing that you notice when unboxing the Kithara is its gargantuan size. It’s easily the biggest headset or headphones I’ve ever used, but with good reason. The size is dictated by the technology.

The technology in question is Hifiman’s 100mm planar-magnetic drivers, something that dictates both the size and quality of the Kithara. Apple’s AirPods Max 2 have custom 40mm drivers, just to put that into perspective.

ROG Kithara review: Hifiman’s planar-magnetic driver is huge

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Hifiman’s huge drivers are the reason for the Kithara’s mammoth ear cups, and part of the reason for the headset’s 420-gram (14.8-ounce) heft. The other reason is the metal construction. The headband is paired with an oversized metal structure that looks incredibly odd to anyone not wearing it.

The good news is that the band does a good job of distributing the weight across the head. The open-backed design of the ear cups also helps make for a more airy feeling than you might expect when you first see the sheer size of the Kithara.

Buyers of the Kithara will receive two pairs of ear pads in the box, offering a little customizability to proceedings: one set with thick memory foam for cushioned comfort and a faux leather finish and another, slightly smaller pair that features a lighter, cooler mesh material.

ROG Kithara review: Connectivity and features

A lot of premium gaming headsets are wireless, and that’s something that many gamers have come to expect. The Kithara takes a different approach, using a wired connection that ensures it can be used with just about any device you choose to play.

But this wired approach is where some of that complexity first comes into play. The Kithara comes with not one, but two cables in the box, each designed for different use cases.

One of the included cables incorporates a flexible microphone designed for multiplayer gaming. The second cable is for those who don’t need the microphone because they’re listening to music or playing a single-player game.

Each of the Kithara’s earcups has its own 3.5mm socket, so each of the cables connects to each cup separately.

The cable with the microphone also has an inline volume control and the option to mute the mic when needed. The other end of the cable terminates in a pair of 3.5mm connectors; one for audio, one for the microphone. There’s also an adapter that takes both of those connectors and converts them into a single USB-C connector.

This is another area where the Kithara is more complicated than I’d like. Plugging the headset into a PS5 or Xbox is as simple as plugging it straight into the controller.

But if you also want to use the microphone, you’re left with connectors for both audio and the mic itself. Controllers only have a single 3.5mm socket, which is a problem.

There are different workarounds depending on which console you own. PS5 owners can use the USB-C adapter, so long as the cable is long enough to reach its destination.

ROG Kitahra review: It’s hard to miss the ROG branding.

Xbox owners will need to buy a TRRS adapter that combines the audio and mic connectors into a single 3.5mm one. They aren’t expensive, but it’s a complication that needs to be considered if you’re an Xbox gamer.

The standard audio-only cable is clearly the one that buyers should use if they don’t need to use the microphone. If only for its flexibility.

This cable also connects to the headset via two 3.5mm connectors, but it’s the other end that’s interesting. It features a 3-in-1 connector that turns into any of the 3.5mm, balanced 4.4mm, or 6.3mm connectors that are included in the box.

This approach adds flexibility, allowing the Kithara to be used with consoles, PCs, and Macs as well as DACs and amps.

ROG Kithara review: Performance

I tested the Kithara headset with a variety of devices, but it spent most of its time connected to my 16-inch M4 Pro MacBook Pro, the family’s Xbox Series X, and our PS5. I used both of the cables and tested the microphone while playing multiplayer games like “Marathon.”

In terms of audio quality, the Kithara might just be the best-sounding headset I’ve experienced. The combination of the near-zero distortion and almost-instant response of Hifiman’s driver tech sees to that.

ROG Kithara review: Size apart, this is a good-looking headset

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The audio is pin-sharp, aided by the wide soundstage afforded by the headset’s open-backed design. Spatial separation is excellent, making distant footsteps in games like “Marathon” easier to locate.

Listening to music, the one possible knock I have for the Kithara is a slight brightness to the treble. Not too much, but just enough to be noticeable if you’re coming from something like AirPods Max 2.

At the other end of the EQ scale, bass is controlled and avoids the mushiness that can be a hallmark of gaming headsets. The Kithara is equally at home playing games as it is listening to music as a result.

This is helped by the surprisingly low impedance rating for this headset. At just 16 ohms, the Kithara can be driven by iPhones and similar devices just fine.

ROG Kithara review: Hifiman’s DNA wins the day

If you’ve read this far, it should be no surprise that I’m a big fan of the Kithara. It’s my go-to headset when I want to really settle in for a night of gaming or enjoy some music.

For more casual gaming, the Arctis Nova 7x Gen 2 is still the headset I reach for, though. The wireless features and less cumbersome design just make it the pick-up-and-play option.

ROG Kithara review: It’s all about cables with this headset

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But it just doesn’t sound as good, and that’s key here. Asus/ROG brought Hifiman on board to produce a headset that is all about audio quality first, everything else second.

It’s Hifiman’s planar-magnetic drivers that win the day for the Kithara, offering a listening experience that’s hard to match. I just wish the cabling situation wasn’t such a chore.

But that might not be a consideration for you. You might plug your Kithara into a Mac and never unplug it again. And you’ll be very happy that you did.

Sure, at $300, the Kithara isn’t cheap. But it’s considerably cheaper than AirPods Max 2 and, dare I say it, sounds even better.

ROG Kithara review: Pros

• Incredible sound quality
• Multiple cabling and connector options
• Surprisingly comfortable
• Optional microphone

ROG Kithara review: Cons

• Complicated cable options for some devices
• Large earcups won’t suit everyone
• Not for fans of wireless headsets

ROG Kithara rating: 4.5 out of 5

Where to buy the Asus ROG Kithara

The ROG Kithara has a $299.99 RRP but is on sale now at Amazon for less than $250. The headset currently sells for $259.99 on the Asus ROG website.

Men account for about 23% of elementary and secondary teachers in public schools, down from 30% in 1988, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. This statistic prompted the Male Educator Network & Policy Institute (MEN), the American Institute for Boys and Men and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago to survey male teachers about what attracts them to the profession — and what keeps them there.

Why Men Become Teachers

MEN recently released the results of an online survey of 145 practicing male teachers, which precedes a more comprehensive report to be released in the fall. The survey revealed that 78% of participants went into the profession to make a difference in children’s lives, and 74% said education can make the world a better place. Among men who worked with children when they were teenagers, 75% agreed that experience influenced them to become a teacher.

Many survey participants said others encouraged them to join the profession: 86% said a former teacher encouraged them, and 60% had a male teacher encourage them. Of those who were encouraged by a male teacher, 69% found this to be a “very” or “extremely” effective recruitment strategy. Although only 25% encountered recruitment specifically targeted toward men, 72% said it helped to convince them to join the profession.

Curtis Valentine, founder and president of MEN, says these results underscore the importance of male mentorship. “We see men in the profession as a good place to start [recruiting] — to speak highly of education to your students, to speak firsthand about what it means to be a teacher,” he explains. “[It’s also important] for communities and families to give young boys opportunities to get involved in the lives of those younger than them as camp counselors or as babysitters.”

Jeffrey Bradbury, a middle school digital media educator in Connecticut who began his career as a music teacher and orchestra leader, says that his elementary and high school orchestra teachers were major influences. “I always say I wouldn’t have the life I have without those two,” he notes. And he hopes to pay it forward to his male students. “I try to find a couple from the herd each year and push them in the right direction,” he adds.

More than half of the survey participants agreed that financial aid or loan forgiveness specific to the major (55%) and mentorship from other men during student teaching (52%) was or would have been helpful during the recruitment process. Many also cited various job perks as reasons for entering the profession: 72% valued a work schedule compatible with their family and personal life, 68% cited reliable income and benefits, and 60% expected job security and a steady career path.

How Male Teachers Are Treated

When men enter the teaching profession, many don’t feel welcomed or like they can be their authentic selves, Valentine says. “Those who do push through feel left out or feel like they’re marginalized,” he adds. “How do we build brotherhood around teachers, especially men, who are underrepresented in many districts? How do we build community across districts, across states and across the country?”

MEN has launched chapters on college campuses to help build that community of male education students. Some say they’re the only male education students in their schools, Valentine notes. That minority status continues once they get their degrees and head out into the working world, he says. “When you get into a school building, stereotypes abound that men have to push up against,” he explains. “Do you teach gym? Are you more disciplinary and less nurturing? Can you teach early childhood?”

Tim Needles, a technology integration specialist at Smithtown Central School in New York and a former art and STEAM teacher, says that he is used to female-dominated environments but hadn’t realized how much the percentage of male teachers has declined. “There’s obviously a general teacher shortage,” he says. “The occupation is just not as secure as it once was…. The job has also become way more politicized than it used to be.”

From early in his 27-year career, Needles, winner of a 2024 ISTE “Making It Happen” award, recalls an “old boys’ club” in which many men were recruited upward into leadership, which he theorizes might have been “one of the alluring factors” in past decades that kept some males in the profession. But he doesn’t want to resurrect that dynamic. 

“I was never included in that, but I did see it,” he admits. “Now, things have become more democratic. I celebrate female leadership, but it’s interesting, when you look at the data, how many fewer men there are.”

Why Recruiting and Retaining Male Teachers Is Difficult

Economic factors make some young teachers hesitant to remain in the profession, observes Bradbury, whose wife is also a teacher. “In many households, one person is a teacher, but not both,” he notes.

Cole Turner, director of teaching and learning at Concordia International School in Hanoi, Vietnam, has known men who left the profession for higher pay or prestige. He says having men involved in districts’ recruiting processes would help.

“[It could help] to show better pathways for advancement, if that’s something that would potentially hold somebody back — if they’re not seeing the big payoff further down the line,” he reasons. “If there’s a little more intentionality around recruiting online in places where males tend to go more, whether it’s sports-oriented or something like that, it could be a way to attract more men.”

As someone who helped set up the new teacher orientation in a previous district, Bradbury also believes proper welcoming is vital for any teacher, but especially those in the minority. “Whenever [new male] teachers walk into the building, I’ll always say, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ Setting up a system with a buddy or a mentor is vitally important,” he believes.

The ability to serve and be recognized as professionals is important to male teachers, argues Michael Harvey, director of artificial intelligence in teaching and learning at Lytton High School in Gisborne, New Zealand.

“It’s definitely not the money. The money is OK in New Zealand, but it’s not amazing,” he says. “The idea of serving my community, I see that as being important. . . . And also, it’s the professionalism: the idea of keeping teacher agency at the heart. You’re in control of your classroom rather than government edicts around how to teach.”

Benefits of Male Teachers

According to research analyzed by The Hechinger Report, a teacher’s gender does not meaningfully alter academic or behavioral outcomes for young students. But many believe male teachers provide students vital mentorship — a role that is deeply rewarding for the men themselves. Atlanta-based education consultant James Campbell, who taught history for nearly 20 years, remembers a coach and math teacher who had a particularly positive influence on his life. “I wanted to be that person who filled the gap for students who might be struggling, as people did for me,” he recalls.

Campbell felt a calling to be a role model for the boys in his classes, and says parents appreciated “that this person cares about my child, and they’re going to help my child be successful.” He recalls parents over the years who expressed gratitude to him, saying, “It’s good to have a man in the classroom space.”

At one school, Campbell was the only Black male teaching a core subject area, and one colleague said to him, “It’s important that our students see a Black man in a position of authority, as a teacher,” he notes. “Schools need to make sure they’re generating some type of belonging, and you’re not just hiring someone so you’ve ‘got one of them,’” Campbell adds. But he advises male teachers to make sure they’re not fitting the “drill sergeant” stereotype.

“We’re not going to get respect just because we’re men,” he says.

A company’s technical architecture is often at the core of everything it does, maintaining it is therefore a key priority.

Technical architecture, from an organisational point of view, is the software, hardware and networks that sit at the centre of a company and is largely responsible for both big and small objectives. That is to say, this form of architecture is crucial to a business and is essentially its foundation. 

SiliconRepublic.com spoke with various leaders in the STEM space about the importance of technical architecture, the challenges of maintaining it and how pipelines can be developed to support its development, as well as what it takes to conceptualise and implement future tech. 

“I believe that one of the biggest challenges is not designing the future architecture, but transitioning to it,” said Natasha Bornhorst, a senior software engineer at Rent the Runway. 

“This is particularly challenging when you’re re-architecting a cornerstone monolithic service into more manageable and scalable microservices. It’s tempting to want to simply build an entirely new system on the side and switch over in one large cutover, but this can introduce significant operational and business risks.

“Instead, we have found benefit in evolving the architecture piece by piece. We isolate individual components, pull them out and re-architect them, gradually cutting over to the new solution while keeping the existing system operational.”

This view was echoed by Mark Greville, the vice-president of architecture at Workhuman, who compared attempts to keep pace with AI and architectural demands to “juggling chainsaws on a single ski while being pulled by a speedboat”.

He explained: “Vibe coding has increased development velocity, but also opened new attack vectors. There is no standard AI SDLC [AI software development life cycle] and the right model today may be outdated in a month.”

He suggested adopting five main policies to be implemented in line with the transformation of architecture.

These included: an adherence to strong governance; the creation of a centralised AI group to enable a standardised system across teams; built-in infosec to identity and address threats from day one; written context in machine readable format for every step taken; and significant human oversight so as to never replace accountability. 

Man versus machine

For BearingPoint’s Declan Leonard, the director of technology architecture at BearingPoint Ireland, the biggest challenge is tied into the idea that advancements, however innovative, are always subject to a review and strict governance – and they can always be improved upon. 

He said: “At its core, architecture is about making informed design decisions that balance business objectives, legacy context, security, resilience, scalability, cost, usability, regulatory obligations and long-term maintainability. However, as organisations become increasingly digital and interconnected, the number and complexity of these considerations continue to grow. 

“For organisations delivering critical services, architecture needs to be intentional from the outset and continuously governed throughout the life cycle. Security, in particular, must be treated as a first-class design consideration, not something added at the end. 

“It needs to be embedded across the entire secure software development life cycle, from requirements and threat modelling through build, test, deployment, monitoring and continuous improvement.”

But, for technical architecture to be maintained and improved to a standard that supports a company’s evolution, a strong, highly skilled and consistent talent pipeline is critical, he said.

Top talent

“A consistent talent pipeline is important as it creates an environment of innovation and fresh thinking for the architecture group and growth for the individuals themselves,” said Eoin Honer, the managing director for technology and transformation at Deloitte Ireland.

“It can be the difference between architecture that evolves and innovates and architecture that perhaps doesn’t. Without a steady flow of skilled people, senior architects end up being overloaded or worse still, a single source of knowledge which can have negative outcomes.  

He added: “Architecture needs both seasoned professionals who understand the domain deeply and newer voices asking, ‘why do we do it this way?’. Invest in relevant training and pathways to prepare your people to be the architects of the future.”

“It is hugely important”, agreed Gerard McMahon, the vice-president and engineering leader for software delivery at Fidelity Investments Ireland. He believes that the best technical architecture comes from the people who understand how systems are actually built, how they are deployed, supported, secured and how they evolve over time. 

McMahon said: “AI will make architectural knowledge more accessible to engineers in the flow of work, but that does not remove the need for sound technical judgement. If anything, it raises the bar. 

“We will need people who can work effectively with AI, challenge its suggestions, understand the trade-offs and keep architecture grounded in real delivery. A strong talent pipeline should therefore develop engineers who can combine hands-on experience, systems thinking and AI-enabled governance, rather than treating architecture as a separate review activity.”

“None of us starts out as an architect”, noted Greville, who further explained that we all learn from those around us and by developing a strong talent pipeline, organisations welcome new ideas, challenge outdated ways of thinking and create a stronger business model based on a range of backgrounds and experiences. 

Forge your own path

Bornhorst finds that while it is important to take into account other people’s views, it is imperative that you learn how to solve problems independently. She said one of the biggest issues that held her back in the early days, as a fresh-out-of-college engineer, was the belief that there is only one right way to do things. 

“I leaned too heavily on those above me, assuming they had the correct answer. But solving problems in a codebase is not the same as taking an exam in college. There is rarely one right architectural solution, there can be many ways to solve a problem, each with its own pros and cons,” she said.

“Don’t be afraid to go into the details, ask questions, read the code and do the research yourself. This can help you become an expert in an area of the codebase that has no experts. Taking ownership of a complex or poorly understood area is a great way to build deep technical knowledge and develop the confidence needed to make good architectural decisions.”

Honer too believes in the value of building a good reputation early on, particularly a strong technical foundation that forms the basis for credibility.  

He said: “From there extend your curiosity beyond your immediate area and really think about how your work connects with everything else and ask yourself what purpose is being served in the broader context. Understanding how each piece fits in helping the organisation achieve its goals, that’s when architecture thinking starts to form.”

“Be curious, ask good questions, document your thinking and build a reputation as someone who can connect technical detail with practical business outcomes,” concluded McMahon. 

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Nitter, an open source project that allowed people to read X posts without logging into or even opening the X app, has received cease-and-desist letters from X demanding that it shut down. The news was shared via a brief message posted to the project’s website, and follows X’s earlier attempts to knock Nitter offline by technical means.

The service also powers a number of other sites, including XCancel, that allow people to view X posts directly.

This isn’t X’s first attempt to shut down Nitter. In 2024, Nitter’s flagship instance, Nitter.net, went dark temporarily after X rolled out new API restrictions. Nitter worked by fetching public X posts and then stripping out the ads, tracking cookies, and JavaScript, giving people a clean, clutter-free way to read posts without an account or the app.

After that crackdown, those who wanted to host a Nitter instance had to connect it to a real X account, according to the project’s GitHub page. Despite the restrictions, development picked back up and Nitter instances came back online.

This time, X is working to shut down Nitter and its instances via legal means. Nitter’s website states that the Nitter.net project is offline while its creator seeks legal advice after receiving a cease-and-desist letter. That creator, a developer who goes by the handle Zedeus, told TechCrunch by email that other Nitter instances received similar letters.

On Nitter’s website, the message currently reads:

On 24 August 2026 cease and desist letters have been sent by X Corp. demanding a permanent takedown of Nitter instances and the project’s repository.

nitter.net is offline and development has stopped for the time being. I’m seeking legal advice and won’t be commenting further on the specifics for now.

Thank you to everyone who used, hosted, packaged, donated and contributed to Nitter over the past seven years.

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The letter from X, which TechCrunch has viewed, accuses Nitter of an “unlawful use and circumvention of X’s Application Programming Interface (API) and associated data,” through its service, saying that X has evidence that Nitter scraped X data and accessed X accounts and session tokens in violation of X’s rules.

Lawyers for X said the actions are in violation of “various state and federal laws, including, but not limited to, the Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act (§ 143.001 and § 33.02) and the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. §§ 1114, 1125).” The letter gave Nitter until 5 p.m. EST on August 25 to shut down.

X is hardly alone in policing alleged scrapers. Meta has taken numerous scrapers to court, and most larger social networks today restrict the use of third-party readers, forcing users to log in and access the site’s content through the official app, where they can be tracked and shown personalized ads.

It’s an unfortunate development for lurkers, given that Nitter and its instances offered a handy way to keep up with certain people’s posts on X without an account. Now those people will either need to give up that access or, as X likely hopes, create an account and log in.

Some things are too bizarre to make up, and Sony’s inability to read the room is one of them.

Over the last week or so, the media giant has sent emails to PlayStation users with its entire Terms of Service, which includes a reminder that their digital games are “licensed” and not “sold.” The communication comes as gamers continue to protest Sony’s removal of physical media from the PlayStation 6.

As an isolated incident, Sony’s email isn’t really anything untoward. It lets the user know that they have recently accepted the most recent Terms of Service, Code of Conduct, End User License Agreement and Privacy Policy. The company even included full copies of each in the email. 

But the timing of Sony’s email appears intentional, not just unfortunate. PlayStation users are furious over the company’s decision to remove the physical disc drive from the PlayStation 6, as well as its announcement that it will stop producing game discs altogether as of January 2028. Sony announced the end of physical discs just a few days after removing several digitally purchased movies from users’ accounts.

The email was spotted by The Verge’s Tom Warren, who posted about it on X over the weekend: “Sony emailing everyone about PlayStation terms of use during a backlash over the end of discs and a lack of digital ownership is certainly a choice.”

The backlash has grown large enough to inspire a PlayStation boycott — starting Sunday — with players pledging not to buy, log in to or play games for a week to protest Sony’s abandonment of physical media for the console.

So, right in the middle of a protest centered on concerns about game ownership, Sony is reminding us we’re merely buying a license to use a game under the company’s terms.

The new normal: Lease, not own

A move like this from another multibillion-dollar company underscores the new normal in gaming and tech, where companies appear to be shifting further away from the idea of ownership. Instead, they ask consumers to retain access to products that may be revoked or restricted at the company’s discretion. These changes didn’t come in one dramatic wave, but in a steady stream of small consumer-facing microaggressions that have built up over time. 

Take the recent HP printer controversy, for example. HP programmed its printers to lock users out if third-party ink is detected. That means you can buy an HP printer and own it — but if you don’t fill it with the official (more expensive) ink cartridges, the printer can sass back like an angsty, spoiled teenager and refuse to work. 

There are subtler attempts to chip away at our agency (and purchasing power) as consumers. Apple raised MacBook prices this year, then started a program where the company will literally rent you one, presumably because you can’t afford it otherwise. You wouldn’t own the MacBook, so Apple could lock you out of your device if you missed a lease payment. 

When it comes to music and movies, streaming has been the norm for years — we’re dutifully reminded every so often that we’re renting the ability to listen or watch something rather than owning it. I’ll never forget a couple of years ago when the entire library from the rock band Coheed and Cambria’s was removed from YouTube Music due to a licensing dispute while I was in the middle of listening. 

Sony and other gaming companies are starting to adopt the same lending-access business model in software and digital entertainment: In this brave new world, mega corporations can own everything and make us “purchase” rentals entirely on their terms. That means they can change, restrict, discontinue or shut down access, but we can never keep, lend, sell or pass down a product.

The shift is leaving older generations (millennials like myself included) increasingly nostalgic for a time when buying something meant taking home something tangible — something that belonged to us.

AI and ml

The cost of memory makes this an expensive ML meal

Apple on Tuesday heralded the imminent refresh of its headless Mac kit with new versions of the Mac Studio and the Mac mini that you can pre-order now for shipping on September 22, 2026. The diminutive desktops promise a high level of local AI performance with memory prices to match. 

“[T]he new Mac Studio is our most powerful Mac ever,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s chief hardware officer, in a statement, citing the integration of Apple’s Neural Accelerators into processor GPUs and the utility of high-bandwidth unified memory to justify the assessment.

The Mac Studio became Apple’s high-performance standard bearer following the retirement of the Mac Pro in March.

With the “most powerful” slot taken, the Mac mini has been dubbed “our most versatile Mac,” as Srouji put it, highlighting the machine’s recently discovered role as “an always-on agentic device.” 

Earlier this year, the excitement around OpenClaw and open weight AI models led to a run on Mac mini hardware as AI aficionados found Apple’s compact desktop made a comfortable home for AI agents and local inference.

The Mac mini has unified memory – the CPU and GPU share the same RAM – making a Mac with ample unified memory (eg, 64 GB) well suited to GPU inference compared to a PC with 64 GB system RAM but only 16 GB GPU VRAM.

What’s more, Apple silicon hardware supports the company’s MLX machine learning framework, which provides respectable private inference performance on hardware that draws far less power than a desktop GPU workstation.

You have less power, but more money for memory. As outgoing CEO Tim Cook admitted in June, memory prices have been rising due to AI demand, and those costs are being passed on to customers.

The Mac Studio comes with two flavors of chip, M5 Max ($2,499) and M5 Ultra ($5,499).

The M5 Ultra, with up to 36 CPU cores and up to 80 GPU cores, is an inference beast, supporting up to 512 GB of high-bandwidth unified memory with 1.2 TB/s of unified memory bandwidth. 

That memory configuration isn’t available until October, but the existing 256 GB memory option for an extra $4,000 should give you a sense of how pricey a maxed-out Mac Studio will be ($18,299 for 256 GB RAM, 16 TB SSD).

The Mac mini can be had with an M6 chip ($899) or an M5 Pro chip ($1,699), but the base model has just 16 GB of shared memory and it costs a whopping $400 to step up to 32 GB. The M6 is the first Apple silicon to use a 2 nm process. It’s a 12-core processor, which Apple notes is “two more cores than before.” 

“Built using the cutting-edge 2 nm process, M6 combines a new CPU complex, two additional CPU and GPU cores, a Dual 16-core Neural Engine, and more unified memory bandwidth to power through workloads with amazing energy efficiency,” Sri Santhanam, VP of Apple’s silicon engineering group, said in a statement.

The M5 Pro offers more in the way of memory and memory bandwidth, making it a better choice for data-intensive development applications. The M6 supports up to 32 GB of memory and up to 170 GB/s of memory bandwidth, while the M5 Pro supports up to 64 GB of unified memory and 307 GB/s of memory bandwidth.

The Mac mini comes with Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, two USB-C ports that support USB 3, and a headphone jack. Its rear gunport comes with three Thunderbolt 4 ports for M6 and three Thunderbolt 5 ports for M5 Pro, not to mention HDMI and Ethernet (2.5 Gb or 10 Gb). Thunderbolt 5 allows for clustering, so multiple Mac minis can be connected together to run large AI models on-device.

The Mac Studio also does Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thunderbolt 5, with support for PCIe expansion chassis.

All of Apple’s incoming hardware comes with macOS 27, which is expected to debut in mid-September. ®