In this day and age, it means how well your systems run artificial intelligence. We know that every single one of these Macs will run Apple Intelligence, which is Apple’s platform-based approach to AI, so we can also surmise they’ll be able to handle large language models (LLMs) from third parties, as well.
Even the Neo will do this, given it’s just as capable as the iPhone 16 whose chip it uses, though memory will constrain performance; if you are searching for an AI PC, Apple will point you to its other more powerful Macs with higher multi-core performance.
AI is the future; Apple hardware is ready
If AI is the future, then Apple’s new Macs are built to run that future. That’s going to be of more importance as the rapidly compounding energy, political, security, and component crises highlight how AI services are best run at the edge, need to respect sovereign data privacy boundaries, and can be seen as commodities that need platforms on which to play.
