synopsis

Apple began accepting pre-orders for both gadgets on Wednesday, and they will be commercially available on March 12.

Close on the heels of launching the budget iPhone 16e model, Apple, Inc. (AAPL) announced its latest MacBook and Mac Studio offerings. The tech giant also launched the new, faster in-house M3 Ultra chip.

The product announcements did not benefit the stock, which has been moving sideways since it pulled back from its all-time high in late December.

MacBook Pro: The latest MacBook Pro is armed with the M4 chip, has up to 18 hours of battery life, and has a new 12MP Center-Stage camera. It also supports up to two external displays and the built-in display. 

The newest Mac laptop has 16 gigabytes (GB) of starting unified memory and the capabilities of macOS Squoia with Apple Intelligence. Its starting price is $999, about $100 less than the previous iteration.

The new laptops are available in 13- and 15-inch sizes. 

Mac Studio: Apple also announced its new Mac Studio desktop computer, featuring M4 Max and the new M3 Ultra chip. The company said it delivers “groundbreaking” performance and extensive connectivity with Thunderbolt 5. 

Apple said, “Mac Studio can tackle the most intense workloads with its powerful CPU, Apple’s advanced graphics architecture, higher unified memory capacity, ultrafast SSD storage, and a faster and more efficient Neural Engine.”

The new Mac Studio provides a big performance boost from the previous generation. 

The company promoted it as a powerhouse for artificial intelligence (AI) capable of running large language models (LLMs) with over 600 billion parameters entirely in memory

Apple is accepting pre-orders for both gadgets on Wednesday, with the commercial availability beginning on March 12.

On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment toward Apple stock stayed ‘extremely bearish’ (20/100), and the message volume stayed at ‘normal’ levels.

AAPL sentiment and message volume March 5, as of 1:55 pm ET | Source: Stocktwits

A bearish watcher wondered whether it was a “sell-the-news” day.

Another user fretted over the stock’s valuation and said it should have been at $160 by now.

Apple stock fell 0.14% to $235.60 by the afternoon session. The stock has lost about 6% year-to-date.