Posts Tagged → mac studio

Where Apple’s Price Increases Will Land

Tim Cook just told the Wall Street Journal that Apple is raising prices. The cause is a memory chip shortage. “Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” Cook said. He added that Apple has been trying to shield its customers, “but the situation has become unsustainable”.

So prices go up. The question is where.

My money is on the high end taking most of the hit. Apple has spent the last couple of years pulling people onto Apple silicon and into the idea that a Mac is a real machine for local AI. I expect they’ll keep the gas pedal firmly down on the MacBook Neo and protect that entry price, even if it means the maxed-out configurations carry the weight. The person shopping for a base laptop is exactly the person Apple least wants to scare off.

There’s another issue related to this shortage. It’s the actual shortage part.

A shortage doesn’t just raise prices. It limits what you can build. When the next Mac Studio shows up, will there still be a 512GB configuration on the menu? Apple clearly wants the Mac in the local AI conversation, and big, unified memory makes that possible. You need the room to load large models. Wanting to offer 512GB and being able to source the chips for it are two very different things.

And if they pull it off, what will it cost? My guess: a lot.

I’ll be watching the high end.

The M5 Mac Studio Crystal Ball

Several Mac mini and Mac Studio configurations are “currently unavailable” from Apple. No delivery estimate. No order option.

The affected models include the Mac mini with 32GB or 64GB of RAM and the Mac Studio with 128GB or 256GB. Apple had already removed the 512GB M3 Ultra Mac Studio a few weeks prior.

Two things are probably driving this. Mark Gurman has Apple’s 2026 Mac roadmap including M5 and M5 Pro Mac mini models and M5 Max and M5 Ultra Mac Studio refreshes. I expected those to get released at WWDC in June, but that seems a ways off for them to stop selling it in April.

There’s also the global DRAM shortage, driven by AI demand. Both explanations are credible, and they’re not mutually exclusive.

My money was on the M5 refresh being the bigger factor. Maybe that was partially wish-casting because I’m thinking I’m about due to update my M2 Mac Studio. But Mark Gurman’s recent reporting says the Mac Studio may be pushed to October. The longer we wait, the more likely I expect Apple to raise its memory prices.

Apple Drops 512GB RAM Option on M3 Ultra Mac Studio

Zac Hall at 9to5Mac spotted that Apple quietly removed the 512GB unified memory option from the M3 Ultra Mac Studio. When the machine launched a year ago, Apple made a big deal about that configuration. It could run large language models with over 600 billion parameters entirely in memory. Now the top option is 256GB, and Apple didn’t say a word about the change.

The 256GB model is still available, and for most people that’s more than enough. But the 512GB configuration was a statement. It said Apple was serious about local AI on the desktop. Pulling it quietly suggests memory supply constraints from AI server demand are hitting even Apple’s premium hardware.

I suspect we won’t see 512GB come back until the M4 Ultra ships. And even then, maybe. This also makes me wonder if the M5 Mac Studio will be where Apple starts raising memory prices. I say this as an interested party.

The Mac’s Gaming Moment Still Isn’t Here

Quinn Nelson recently did a solid job of breaking down the launch of Assassin’s Creed Shadows on the Mac. If you’re not tracking these things, that’s a big deal: it’s a flagship AAA game that released on the Mac the same day as on other platforms. That kind of same-day launch is rare for the Mac.

So I bought the game. Not because I’m a hardcore Assassin’s Creed fan (though who doesn’t want to sneak around feudal Japan?), but because I was curious. How would it perform on my M2 Max Mac Studio?

The answer: not great.

Actually, worse than not great. The frame rate was inconsistent, often dipping well below 30 frames-per-second when the environment got the least bit complex. There were moments where the game froze entirely. I went through every resolution and graphics setting, from high to medium to low. I even dropped it all the way down to 720p with the lowest possible settings, and it was still unplayable. Perhaps this is because I use a Pro Display XDR? The above screenshot is what my screen looked like often while trying it out.

This is the first time I’ve ever requested a refund on a Mac app.

I want to root for Apple’s gaming ambitions. The company has been talking more about bringing serious titles to the Mac, and Assassin’s Creed Shadows looked like a step in the right direction. But if Apple wants to make a credible push into AAA gaming, they’ve still got a lot of work to do, both on the software optimization side and with developer support.

Sticking with My M2 Mac Studio: A Surprising Decision

If you listened to the most recent episode of Mac Power Users, you heard me struggling with a decision: should I upgrade my Mac?

As you may know, I’ve been happily using an M2 Mac Studio with 8TB of internal storage. It’s a powerhouse, and it fits perfectly in Endor Studios (my home studio). I’m a big believer in contextual work, and when I sit at my desk, I’m instantly in production mode. My workflow is optimized for this machine, and until recently, I hadn’t seriously considered replacing it.

But then, something happened.

I got a call from an old lawyer friend who, for various reasons, needed a Mac with 8TB of storage. He made me a generous offer (more than Apple would have given me for a trade-in). It was likely the best offer I’d ever get for this Mac, and for a moment I thought: “Well, of course, I should upgrade!”

That’s when things got complicated.

I started looking at different options: MacBook Pro with M4 chip, a new M4 Mac Studio but with a smaller SSD—and I even placed multiple orders, only to cancel them later. That’s not like me. Usually, when it’s time to upgrade, I just do it. But something about this wasn’t sitting right.

At first, I thought maybe I was just being indecisive. But when I looked more closely at the benchmarks between the M2 and M4, it hit me: I don’t actually need this upgrade.

Apple’s M-series chips have fundamentally changed upgrade cycles. In the Intel days, new Macs felt like necessary upgrades every few years. But now, my M2 Mac Studio is still ridiculously fast — it’s a rocket ship — and the M4 is just another rocket ship that flies a little faster. But my M2 still gets me into orbit.

Beyond that, I really love having an 8TB internal SSD. I’m making hundreds of videos a year between the MacSparky Labs and the Field Guides, and this giant drive makes that painless. It allows me to keep all my files on one machine, making my backup and restore process effortless. A new Mac with the same storage would be very expensive, and anything less would force me into an external storage setup, which wouldn’t be terrible, but is also more friction than I currently have. If Apple’s SSD pricing were more reasonable, maybe I would have gone for it; but that’s not the case today.

While the idea of a MacBook Pro was tempting — being able to take my full production machine on the road — realistically, I don’t need that. I already have a MacBook Air that handles my mobile work just fine, and when I’m traveling, I rarely feel the need to do full-scale production. Plus, the MacBook Pro would have added downsides, like louder fans and a bit more hassle in my workflow.

So, after all the internal debate, I came to a conclusion that still feels a little strange to me: I am not upgrading.

That’s not to say I’ll never upgrade. I’m sure at some point, I’ll talk myself into a new Mac. And I totally understand why some folks are jumping from M2 to M4 — Apple’s chips keeps getting better. But for me, right now, my M2 Mac Studio is just too perfect to replace.

So, that’s where I landed. Have you ever found yourself going back and forth on an upgrade decision? This is a new experience for me. 🙂

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Hands-On with the Mac Studio and Studio Display

Over the weekend I got to spend some time in the Apple Store with the new Mac Studio and Studio Display. This post just barely qualifies as “hands-on” since I only got about 30 minutes with the setup before moving along. Nevertheless, I have thoughts:

The Mac Studio

  • The Mac Studio looks nicer than I thought it would. When I first saw images of the Mac Studio, I thought it was kind of ugly, but in person it has a utilitarian “let’s get some work done” feel to it. I found myself running my fingers over its curves and kind of digging it. Still, I think I would have leaned into the idea of a cube more, but that’s what you’d expect from an old(er) Apple fan, right?
  • So much input/output. This was no surprise, but seeing a Mac in an Apple Store with I/O on the front seemed kind of great.
  • The only Mac Studio they had on the floor was the M1 Max model and performance-wise it felt exactly like my M1 Max MacBook Pro that I’m writing this on. No surprise there. It’s essentially the same computer.
  • I put my hands over both the ventilation input and output. You could definitely feel airflow. I put my ear next to it and couldn’t hear anything (but I was in a crowded Apple Store). Also, the ventilation holes are both smaller and more numerous than I expected.

The Studio Display

  • Maybe I’m an outlier, but Apple displays without the Apple logo or the chin look better to me than the old Thunderbolt monitors with all the branding.
  • The display looks great. Viewing angles are good and the colors look nice. The difference with this display and the Pro Display XDR in terms of color depth, screen size, and black blacks is obvious, but you could also buy three of these for the cost of an XDR (and all three of them would have stands).
  • The speakers sound good, but not particularly better than the MacBook Pro.
  • The video camera looked okay (but not great) to me. I know there is a software issue with these new displays but I’m with John Gruber. For this much money, I really wish they had put in the camera module from the back of the iPhone. (The display is much thicker than an iPhone.) If you buy one of these displays, it should last you a long time. That camera is going to look pretty bad before the display goes bad.
  • The stand looks nice, but is going to be too low for most people.

Overall, the pairing of a new Mac Studio and a Studio Display is a great-looking combo. I think a lot of people are going to really dig this setup.

Mac Studio and Studio Display Review Day

The Mac Studio and Studio Display reviews are dropping today. Some reviews of note include:

Jason Snell, Six Colors on the Mac Studio

“The Mac Studio isn’t for everyone. But for the people who have been dreaming of something in between a Mac mini and a Mac Pro, something that wasn’t an iMac, it’s the fulfillment of a dream.”

Monica Chin, The Verge on the Mac Studio

“There are very legitimate reasons that the Mac Studio is the wrong computer for all kinds of people. And as a reviewer scoring this product, I care so much less about those than I do about the sheer reliability of this device: the smoothness as you scrub the timeline, the snap of windows opening and closing, the wonder in people’s voices as they say “Wow, this is fast.””

John Gruber, Daring Fireball on the Studio Display

“I’ve been waiting years for Apple to release a good desktop display for under $2000, and in every single regard other than the camera, the Studio Display meets or exceeds my expectations.”

Also on YouTube…