With the M4 here, there are two Macs you now shouldn’t buy

The M4 chip update for the Mac was quite a shakeup. Apple simultaneously introduced the M4 Pro and M4 Max, while also bumping RAM across the starting configurations of the new Mac mini and MacBook Pro. All in all, these are great changes that have sweetened the deal on these new M4 products.

But all the changes in the lineup have left two Macs completely in the cold — and until they get updated, you shouldn’t buy them.

Mac Studio (M2 Ultra)

The performance of the M4 Pro Mac mini is kind of insane when you consider the size of this mini PC. All that performance feels extra impressive because the M3 generation was skipped for both the Mac mini and Mac Studio, making for quite a leap in performance with the latest Mac mini.

In fact, it’s so big a jump that it makes the current Mac Studio kind of a nonstarter. The M4 Pro Mac mini gets very close to outperforming the M2 Ultra Mac Studio in lots of benchmarks, despite having significantly less cores. The GPU performance is probably the most exciting bit, as the 20-core Mac mini actually beat the 40-core Mac Studio in the Cinebench R24 GPU test. That shows you just how far Apple’s graphics have come these past couple of years.

And while the $4,000 M2 Ultra Mac Studio might have a bit more thermal headroom and stronger sustained performance, it’s also twice the size and cost. Of course, you could opt for the starting $2,000 M2 Max configuration, but for the same money, you can get a configuration of the M4 Pro Mac mini with more memory. And remember, this thing is much smaller — and apparently even has storage that isn’t soldered down.

I’ve no doubt that the rumored M4 Ultra Mac Studio will be an absolute rock star, but you’re better off sticking with the Mac mini or waiting for that upgraded model right now.

MacBook Air 15-inch (M3)

The decision point between the 15-inch MacBook Air and 14-inch MacBook Pro has always been tough to…