Mac Studio is a professional-grade macOS desktop. Although not technically Apple’s premiere model, it’s available with insane power.
The latest version can be configured with either a speedy Apple M4 Max chip or an even faster M3 Ultra processor. It can be pre-configured with up to 32 CPU cores, 80 GPU cores, 512 GB of RAM and 16TB of SSD storage.
The desktop offers a wide array of ports: up to six Thunderbolt 5/USB-C ports, up to two USB-A ports, HDMI, Ethernet and more. The exact number of ports varies by configuration.
Apple’s latest Mac mini and Mac Studio computers don’t just come with faster M-series chips. They also pack certain underlying upgrades that make them even more capable and appealing than their predecessors.
That includes faster storage, better connectivity and boosted memory bandwidth. Here are five important Mac mini and Mac Studio upgrades you might have missed.
The Mac mini and Mac Studio are apparently a huge hit among AI companies. OpenAI reportedly purchased tens of thousands of Macs from Apple for reinforcement learning and “computer-use” AI agents.
Anthropic, which offers Claude AI, is renting Mac minis through Amazon Web Services (AWS) for similar reasons.
This heavy demand helps explain why Apple launched new versions of the Mac mini and Mac Studio last week, months before the usual fall release window.
This week on the Cult of Mac podcast: Apple sent out invites for its Surprise and Shine event this week, and the big question is, will there actually be any surprises on September 9?
The invite itself doesn’t reveal much, naturally. And a crazy deluge of rumors and leaks already painted a pretty thorough picture of what to expect from the iPhone 18 Pro, the first folding iPhone and more.
Still, it’ll be incoming Apple CEO John Ternus‘ first time running an event, and surely he’ll want to make it special. We discuss how he might make the event shine.
Also on the Cult of Mac podcast:
Listen to this week’s episode of the Cult of Mac podcast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video version, embedded below.
Apple pitches its new M5 Ultra Mac Studio as a way to end your AI subscription bill for good. But the math tells a different story.
“Mac Studio lets users run massive models entirely on device with complete privacy — without counting tokens or worrying about rising cloud costs,” Apple said in a press release announcing the computer’s surprise launch Tuesday.
While Apple’s marketing frames the Mac Studio as a way to run AI coding models locally instead of paying for an AI subscription every month, a pricing breakdown shows the payback stretching into years, not months.
Apple just gave its most powerful desktop Mac a major performance boost. The company on Tuesday introduced an upgraded Mac Studio powered by the M5 Max processor and the all-new M5 Ultra, promising substantially faster AI, graphics and CPU performance in the same compact design.
“Mac Studio is the ultimate desktop for on-device AI and the world’s most demanding pro workflows, relied on by users for its tremendous performance and extensive pro connectivity, all in a quiet, compact design that sits right on your desk — and today, we’re pushing the boundaries even further,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s chief hardware officer, in a press release.
The Mac mini shortage isn’t over. Three months after Apple CEO Tim Cook admitted that the company was caught off guard by demand, buyers are still stuck waiting.
Base models are easier to find now than they were in the spring, but bump up the memory, and you could wait months. Prices have climbed, too, thanks to the ongoing global memory chip shortage.
Missing a payment on your newly leased iPhone won’t nerf your device. Despite recent rumors, Apple confirmed that there’s no Apple Upgrade restricted mode.
The clarification caps a week of speculation over hidden iOS 27 code that described a system for restricting financed devices when payments went unpaid.
Apple reportedly planned to use “Extreme” processors in the Mac Pro to deliver unrivaled performance, beating even its “Pro” and “Ultra” chips. But eventually, pricing and demand concerns led the company to scrap the idea.
Besides M2 Extreme and M3 Extreme chips, Apple also worked on an Intel-powered upgrade for the Mac Pro, according information that leaked out on Sunday.
The Mac Studio, Apple’s top-of-the-line desktop, delivers extraordinary CPU and GPU performance in a surprisingly compact enclosure — but many users simply cannot add as much RAM as they need.
However, change is apparently on the way. Apple is reportedly developing an M5 Ultra chip that supports more unified memory than the current version. And the subsequent M7 Ultra chip will be even better — it will supposedly handle as much as three times more RAM. That’s a dramatic leap beyond the best of today’s Macs.
Apple reportedly wants to source memory from two Chinese suppliers — CXMT and YMTC — for its products. Previous rumors suggested Apple lobbying for CMXT’s approval from the US government.
However, a new report from Bloomberg suggests the company is also looking to secure DRAM from YMTC.
Apple plans to launch an M5 Ultra-powered Mac Studio later this year. But it’s reportedly working on a bigger Mac Studio upgrade for 2028.
Besides a faster M7 Ultra chip, the 2028 Mac Studio will apparently get a beefier cooling system.
Can’t understand why the rising cost of memory chips forces a hike in Mac prices? Apple silicon processors include Unified Memory, so Apple has no need to buy RAM chips, right?
No, that is not how it works. Mac processors include RAM that Apple must purchase from outside suppliers.
Still confused? Here’s what’s going on.
Apple CEO Tim Cook says the iPhone maker must raise its prices to offset the impact of the rising memory and storage chip prices. According to one estimate, this year’s iPhone 18 Pro could cost as much as $1,299!
“Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” Cook said Wednesday in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable.”
There’s a moment, familiar to anyone who has experienced it, when you move from a dual-monitor setup to a single ultrawide and realize the bezels were never doing you any favors. One seamless, curving (or not) expanse of glass — from 34 inches to 49 inches and beyond — that wraps gently around the periphery of your vision, eliminating the dead stripe down the middle of your workspace where two screens met. We found the best ultrawide Mac setups from years of Cult of Mac coverage.
If you’ve been on the fence about buying a Mac, you might want to stop waiting. A growing DRAM and NAND shortage is about to make all kinds of computers more expensive and harder to find.
Right now, Apple is still (somewhat) ahead of that curve. But that window is closing fast. So, if you need to buy a Mac, now’s the best time to pull the trigger.
Apple no longer offers RAM upgrade options for the Mac Studio on its online store. As a result, you can get the Mac Studio with a maximum of 96GB memory — over 5x lower than its previous maximum of 512GB.
Likewise, the M4 Mac mini is now unavailable with 32GB memory.
Customers are buying Macs in such high numbers that even Apple’s vaunted manufacturing expertise can’t keep up — and current Mac supply constraints could extend for months.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said Thursday that a couple of factors mean the Mac mini, the Mac Studio and the new MacBook Neo laptop might not be easy to find.
The wait for Apple’s much-anticipated M5 refresh of the Mac Studio just got longer. The company will reportedly delay the launch of the next big MacBook Pro refresh to 2027 as well.
The ongoing DRAM and NAND flash shortages are to blame for the delay, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
Apple no longer accepts orders for certain high-end Mac mini and Mac Studio models. As of Sunday, the company’s online store lists the computers as “currently unavailable.”
This comes after delivery times for most Mac mini and Mac Studio models slipped to a few months.
Order a Mac Studio or Mac mini that’s loaded up with RAM, and you’ll wait until August for the delivery. Yes, August.
A rumor going around blames the shortage on people snapping up high-end machines to run local AI models. But there’s another explanation.
Getting your hands on a Mac mini or Mac Studio might be harder than expected. Delivery times for even the basic configurations now stretch to four weeks, with high-end models showing lead times of up to five months.
Apple either appears to be struggling to meet demand or gearing up for an imminent M5 refresh.
Apple officially pulled the plug on the Mac Pro on Thursday, scrubbing its most expensive desktop computer from its website. Links that used to go to the top-end machine now redirect to the overall Mac page.
Quietly killing the machine brings an ignominious end to the $6,999 computer that Apple had not updated in years.
Apple released no fewer than seven products last week, including the MacBook Neo, the M5 MacBook Air, the iPhone 17e and much more. But there are still three more products likely to be coming out of Cupertino this spring — and one of them is among Apple’s most popular offerings.
Here’s what new Apple products we can look forward to in the next few months across multiple categories.
Since Apple introduced Mac Studio in spring 2022, the powerful and compact desktop machine has become a favorite centerpiece for ambitious computer workstations. It’s not hard to see why, considering its amazing design and computing chops. But it is pretty hard to choose the best Mac Studio Studio setups we’ve seen. Yet we’ve done so below, with the top 10 Mac Studio setups.
You can no longer buy an M3 Ultra Mac Studio with 512GB of unified memory from Apple. Instead, the machine can now be configured with a maximum of 256GB of memory.
Apple also raised the price for upgrading the memory from 96GB to 256GB by $400.