5+ Things to Know About the Next Mac Studio

[Matt2012]

M5U could finally tempt me away from my Windows workstation for 3D animation. I use GPU rendering and it's so fast that i'd be willing to take what would be only a slight loss in speed going down to a M5U from a RTX5090. That's based on predicted specs. The savings in generated HEAT and summer electricity rates alone make it a consideration. The unified RAM, THAT, is the biggest sell, though. Gobs available for rendering. My current M4M Studio already clocks in around the same speed as a 4070Ti.

I'm in the same boat regarding losing some performance over the heat.

 

[Ethosik]

No one bought it. It was $3,000 more than the Intel model, and offered no memory expansion and very few options for PCIe expansion. The Intel 2019 Mac Pro fixed the flaws with the 2013 model, but then the Apple Silicon model killed it entirely. Miss the good 'old days. The Power Mac G3, G4, G5 and 2006-2012 Mac Pro were the best Pro models.

Apple has always made this way too overly difficult. All we needed was back in the Intel days just a basic "Dell-like" box with the i9 chip and slots/expansion. We didn't ask for an extremely over-engineered system. And if that Xeon/workstation class is too niche, a more Prosumer box, like Dell and consumer i9 grade hardware, would be just as good and would have saved their Top-end desktop lineup.

No motherboard, case and powersupply is worth $3,000 increase over the Mac Studio. Apple intentionally killed their top-end product.

 

[Ethosik]

No, the pro market has better a far better option in the Mac Studio. Apple Silicon made Mac Pros obsolete.

There is no solution out there now with basic internal storage expansion. And I cannot have a drive "permanently connected" to my Mac because it just 1) looks ugly just having a drive dangling there and 2) if I get a dock with a built-in NVME slot, I get constant disconnects.

 

[Ethosik]

The Studio and the Pro had exactly the same chips and ran the same speed - the only differences were the PCIE and Thunderbolt 5 is way more than 99% of what people need. I certainly agreed when thunderbolt 3 was the around in 2019.

If the Mac Pro was just $1,000 above the same-spec Mac Studio, I would have gladly purchased it. $1,000 alone is enough for me for the internal storage expansion. I was looking to get around 30+ TB internal. Was a 1% change but I was hoping for a Mac Pro refresh and they bring down the price a little bit so I can finally do this.

 

[theorist9]

Pricing

There haven't been rumors of pricing increases for the Mac Studio, so it could continue to start at $1,999, but Apple has raised the prices of other Macs this year.

Starting prices for the M5 MacBook Air and the M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro models increased, though Apple did soften the blow with higher starting storage. It's possible the Mac Studio price will go up, and the entry-level machine will start with a 1TB SSD instead of a 512GB SSD.

I predict the entry-level M5 Studio will have a 2 TB SSD and cost $2,399, for these reasons:

1) SSD size: The entry-level Studio will have an M5 Max chip. The starting SSD size on the M5 Max MBP is 2 TB, and I don't recall an instance where Apple offered lower-spec starting options on the Max Studio than on the same-gen Max MBP. Hence the Studio should start at 2 TB as well.

2) Pricing: As explained above, the only change we should see between the M4 and M5 Max Studios is the same change we got between the M4 and M5 Max MBP's: An upgraded SoC, with the same starting RAM but an increase from 1 to 2 TB in the starting SSD. Apple charged $400 for that change in the MBP (the same as Apple's upcharge for that SSD upgrade), and thus we should see the same increase for the Studio. Thus the M5 Max Studio should start at $1,999 + $400 = $2,399.

 

[2128506]

Really MR?? Pushing the RAM shortage nonsense and Apple capping RAM lower on the new models narratives? Are you even familiar with Apple?

I expect better from you guys. Apple has no history of reducing RAM (or even general specs) in new "upgraded" models including the newly released M5 products and in fact, the new models either stayed the same or increased.

Also, there's no relevance related to the M4/M3U Studio because they use different RAM than the M5s do as I mentioned in a previous post. Predicting a 256 GB cap is just uninformed/uneducated FUD. It's even more ridiculous than people who are overly optimistic about 1 TB of RAM which is 100X more likely than a 256 GB cap. Do better and learn about how supply chains work for products that are on the verge of being replaced.

Bottom line, there is no way Apple caps a pro level machine at 256 GB especially when they're leaning hard into using the MXU Studios for local AI models by sending maxed out M3Us to AI influencers to drive up demand ahead of the M5U debut... and you can take that to the bank.

Well, i honestly hope you're right and there will be 512 GB version launched.

Considering where Anthropic is heading and how good local models got, seriously planning to buy it.

 

[Onelifenofear]

Now that the Mac Pro is discontinued...and my Mac Pro 2019 won't be able to be updated to the next OS.

I am deciding what to upadate to?

Incredible how far these have come.

Machine / chip	CPU cores	GPU cores	Geekbench 6 single	Geekbench 6 multi	Geekbench Metal	FP32 TFLOPS
Mac Pro 2019 (Xeon W-3245 + Vega II Duo)	16	Vega II Duo	1353	10560	138422	28.3
M1	8	8	2349	8442	33270	2.61
M1 Pro	10	16	2386	12352	68200	5.30
M1 Max	10	32	2375	12270	116099	10.60
M1 Ultra	20	64	2398	18446	162405	21.20
M2	8	10	2642	9787	46689	3.55
M2 Pro	12	19	2661	14564	82388	6.75
M2 Max	12	38	2805	14915	146409	13.49
M2 Ultra	24	76	2776	21414	223566	26.98
M3	8	10	3041	11674	47769	3.55
M3 Ultra	32	80	3201	27748	245179	28.40
M4 (Mac mini 2024)	10	10	3788	14708	57205	4.26
M4 Pro	14	20	3821	22442	110289	8.01
M4 Max	16	40	4030	26192	191773	17.04
M5	10	10	4225	17459	75944	5.13
M5 Pro	15	20	4085	25068	137248	10.27
M5 Max	18	40	4140	28803	227292	20.53
M5 Ultra (theoretical)	36 (est.)	80 (est.)	~4200–4400(est.)	~52,000–58,000(est.)	~430,000–500,000(est.)	~41.1 (est.)

 

[SBlue1]

Really MR?? Pushing the RAM shortage nonsense and Apple capping RAM lower on the new models narratives? Are you even familiar with Apple?

I expect better from you guys. Apple has no history of reducing RAM (or even general specs) in new "upgraded" models including the newly released M5 products and in fact, the new models either stayed the same or increased.

Also, there's no relevance related to the M4/M3U Studio because they use different RAM than the M5s do as I mentioned in a previous post. Predicting a 256 GB cap is just uninformed/uneducated FUD. It's even more ridiculous than people who are overly optimistic about 1 TB of RAM which is 100X more likely than a 256 GB cap. Do better and learn about how supply chains work for products that are on the verge of being replaced.

Bottom line, there is no way Apple caps a pro level machine at 256 GB especially when they're leaning hard into using the MXU Studios for local AI models by sending maxed out M3Us to AI influencers to drive up demand ahead of the M5U debut... and you can take that to the bank.

The article is probably just an AI summarization and was posted without anybody checking.

 

[CWallace]

Besides, Mac Pro sold 3 times more than Mac Studio and it's the only B2B product that Apple has.

Please quote your source for that claim.

A report by CIRP in early 2024 that noted the Mac Pro made up around 3% of Mac shipments while the Studio was 1%.

MacBook Pro and MacBook Air overwhelmingly drive Apple Mac sales

New research claims to have details on exactly how dominant MacBook Pro and MacBook Air sales are, versus desktop contemporaries.

appleinsider.com

I predict the entry-level M5 Studio will have a 2 TB SSD and cost $2,399, for these reasons...

I don't need 2TB (I have only filled half of my current 1TB drive), but 2TB would future-proof me even more so I would still ante up the extra $200 for it, especially if it was noticeably faster than the 1TB option thanks to more cells.

 

[drlunanerd]

The only thing premium abut the 12” MacBook was that it was the first to get the Retina display. It seems like Apple wanted the 12” MacBook to replace the MacBook Air but they couldn’t get the price down enough with that screen. It took a few years after that before they could finally put the retina screen on the Air without raising the price.

Nope. Retina displays arrived with the 2012 15” & 13” MacBook Pro, 3 years before the 12” MacBook.

 

[MacGizmo]

Please quote your source for that claim.

His imagination? 😜

 

[zedsdead]

A report by CIRP in early 2024 that noted the Mac Pro made up around 3% of Mac shipments while the Studio was 1%.

MacBook Pro and MacBook Air overwhelmingly drive Apple Mac sales

New research claims to have details on exactly how dominant MacBook Pro and MacBook Air sales are, versus desktop contemporaries.

appleinsider.com

I don't need 2TB (I have only filled half of my current 1TB drive), but 2TB would future-proof me even more so I would still ante up the extra $200 for it, especially if it was noticeably faster than the 1TB option thanks to more cells.

Those reports are simply not correct and have not been for a while.

Apple has stated many times the MacBook Air is their best selling Mac. It is not the MacBook Pro. And now with the Neo we have to see how that shakes out.

Apple would not have killed the Mac Pro if it sold 3x the Mac mini and Mac Studio. These numbers are off. People self reporting Mac Pro are likely to be MacBook Pros.

Also, Apple's lack of interest in a larger iMac suggests the mini and Studio are also higher than they appear.

All that said, laptops are definitely around 90% at this point as it used to be 80% over a decade ago when Apple reported figures.

 

[tenthousandthings]

A report by CIRP in early 2024 that noted the Mac Pro made up around 3% of Mac shipments while the Studio was 1%.

MacBook Pro and MacBook Air overwhelmingly drive Apple Mac sales

New research claims to have details on exactly how dominant MacBook Pro and MacBook Air sales are, versus desktop contemporaries.

appleinsider.com

We do know a little bit about CIRP, despite their total lack of transparency with regard to research methods. They started out by breaking down Apple's iPhone sales numbers by model, something that Apple itself didn't do at the time (Apple provides even less information today). By all accounts, they use surveys, but without knowing who they send them to and the response rates it's impossible to make sense of their breakdown of Apple's numbers.

The numbers they release to the public are basically click-bait, designed to generate interest in their paid services. Presumably, if you pay, you sign an NDA and then you learn where the numbers come from, which allows you to interpret them.

The only positive thing that can be said about them is they do not appear to fake anything (because the desktop percentages in question are so implausible), but we don't really know what they are measuring. My guess is they have connections to the phone industry, carriers and the like, but their connections in other realms are not as good and the resulting data is not as useful.

 

[CWallace]

Those reports are simply not correct and have not been for a while.

Apple has stated many times the MacBook Air is their best selling Mac. It is not the MacBook Pro. And now with the Neo we have to see how that shakes out.

Yes the Air is Apple's best-selling Mac, but it is also two models compared to five for the MacBook Pro. So in aggregate, Apple almost certainly ships more MacBook Pro units then they do MacBook Air units.

Apple would not have killed the Mac Pro if it sold 3x the Mac mini and Mac Studio. These numbers are off. People self reporting Mac Pro are likely to be MacBook Pros.

We also need to note we are looking at a single year of sales in that chart - 2023. And that was the year the Apple Silicon Mac Pro launched. So it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the bulk of Apple Silicon Mac Pro sales was that year and sales then dropped off significantly in 2024 and 2025 which is why Apple did not bother to upgrade it with the M3 Ultra and eventually discontinued it earlier this year. The Mac Studio and Mac mini had both already had M1 versions and the 2023 M2 models were not a significant improvement so there was little incentive for M1 users to upgrade (I would not be surprised if most Mac mini sales in 2023 were the M2 Pro model). I only bought an M2 Max Studio because I could not find a great deal on an M1 model. 😉

Also, Apple's lack of interest in a larger iMac suggests the mini and Studio are also higher than they appear.

I think the interest in a large iMac is massively overblown by the people on this forum who push for it to happen. And many of them probably were complaining in the late 2010s about having to replace the entire iMac every few years. 😛

 

[theorist9]

I don't need 2TB (I have only filled half of my current 1TB drive), but 2TB would future-proof me even more so I would still ante up the extra $200 for it...

As I mentioned, I expect it will be an extra $400, the same as the upcharge on the M5 Pro MBP:

I'm nearing capacity on my 2 TB, so I need to decide whether to spring the $600 to go from 2 TB to 4 TB.....

....especially if it was noticeably faster than the 1TB option thanks to more cells.

According to this analysis of the M1-M4 SSD's, while large sequential R/W speeds increase with size, random 4k, esp. QD1, does not. And I recall from anantech's articles about this that most real-world tasks, and thus general machine responsiveness, depends on the latter rather than the former.

So outside of large file transfers, I'm not sure if a larger SSD would be perceptibly faster.

 

[1d1otic]

Please quote your source for that claim.

MacBook Pro and MacBook Air overwhelmingly drive Apple Mac sales

New research claims to have details on exactly how dominant MacBook Pro and MacBook Air sales are, versus desktop contemporaries.

appleinsider.com

 

[1d1otic]

Apple solves that problem by giving their unified memory huge bandwidth.

The Graphic/AI GPU workstation does not seem to be a business that Apple wants to be in. It would require them to completely change their tech stack for a small return.

I suspect that “3 times” number is a revenue not unit sales number. The Mac Pro base price was about three times the base price of the Mac Studio so no big surprise there.

And they made more problems.

Tell that to Apple themselves and all pro users. You are abandoning the entire market for that.

And yet, it sold a lot more than Mac Studio especially since it's the only B2B product.

Clearly, Apple killed pro markets.

 

[tonmischa]

There is no solution out there now with basic internal storage expansion. And I cannot have a drive "permanently connected" to my Mac because it just 1) looks ugly just having a drive dangling there and 2) if I get a dock with a built-in NVME slot, I get constant disconnects.

Are you actually working in the "pro market"?

I am an admin for a Post Production Audio company with around 80 DAWs.
Our biggest mixing stage for Dolby Atmos Theatrical Content is running on an M2 Max MacStudio (Base Config), a Sonnet Chassis with PCIe slots for 3 AVID HDX cards, an M2 Pro MacMini and an external OWC Envoy NVMe enclosure for temporary storage of Dolby Atmos Master files. We are running AVID ProTools on a 24-channel S6.

Given the kind of content we are producing, this is a very small and very cheap setup.
The most important factors were "cost" and "efficiency".
"Looks" was not even on the list.

 

[tonmischa]

MacBook Pro and MacBook Air overwhelmingly drive Apple Mac sales

New research claims to have details on exactly how dominant MacBook Pro and MacBook Air sales are, versus desktop contemporaries.

appleinsider.com

Thank you. While technically a source, the CIRP data is a very unreliable source.
@tenthousandthings and @zedsdead already explained it very good in their posts above.

I agree with them that these numbers seem very unplausible. But to be fair, I have to admit that I don't have any evidence to backup my gut feeling.

 

[1d1otic]

Thank you. While technically a source, the CIRP data is a very unreliable source.
@tenthousandthings and @zedsdead already explained it very good in their posts above.

I agree with them that these numbers seem very unplausible. But to be fair, I have to admit that I don't have any evidence to backup my gut feeling.

Refusing sources is totally meaningless and only proves you wrong and doesn't change the fact that Mac Pro sold a lot more than Mac Studio as it also needs to cover B2B markets with mass purchases.

 

[Ethosik]

Are you actually working in the "pro market"?

I am an admin for a Post Production Audio company with around 80 DAWs.
Our biggest mixing stage for Dolby Atmos Theatrical Content is running on an M2 Max MacStudio (Base Config), a Sonnet Chassis with PCIe slots for 3 AVID HDX cards, an M2 Pro MacMini and an external OWC Envoy NVMe enclosure for temporary storage of Dolby Atmos Master files. We are running AVID ProTools on a 24-channel S6.

Given the kind of content we are producing, this is a very small and very cheap setup.
The most important factors were "cost" and "efficiency".
"Looks" was not even on the list.

See #2 in my post please. Docks/ external SSDs / enclosures etc CONSTANTLY disconnect for me on numerous Macs. Mix of M1 Max, M1, Ultra, M2 Ultra, M3 Ultra, M4 Max. They ALL suffer constant disconnects.

 

[theorist9]

Yes the Air is Apple's best-selling Mac, but it is also two models compared to five for the MacBook Pro. So in aggregate, Apple almost certainly ships more MacBook Pro units then they do MacBook Air units.

When Apple says the Air is their biggest seller, it seems overwhelmingly likely they mean in the aggregate, not per model. Further, Apple has made that statement before the 15" Air came out. So even w/o the 15", Air sales were higher than MBP sales.

I think the more likely explanations for why CIRP had a higher sales figure for the MBP than the Air are: (a) CIRP's figures are crap; or (b) Apple's figures refer to units, while CIRP's refer to dollars; or (c) both of the above.

 

[splifingate]

I can almost guarantee If i did buy the MBP, the Studio would be released shortly after my return closes but if don't buy it, the Studio will still be months away.

Well, then get to buyin' it so we can cut the wait 😉

 

[splifingate]

and ready-mixed RAM never tastes as good as mixing your own from powder

I see what you did there 🙂

 

[D_J]

I feel like this is one area where the Tim Cook era diverged from Steve's ideology a bit. Prior to Steve's death Apple was more likely to not be the first to market, but the first to do it "right" once they did enter the market. Or at least in the case of the iPhone, they only entered once it could be done well enough. But the trashcan Mac Pro was just too ahead of it's time, and same with the 2016-2019 macbook Pro's where Intel couldn't provide a cool enough running chip, but Apple moved forward anyways with a bad thermal design for the power they needed. The technology is here now to effectively do those things, but it just wasn't back when they did it. If they brought back the TrashCan design, with accessible M.2 slots you could add, I'd buy one in a heartbeat (assuming it didn't start at $7000 F'ing dollars like the Mac Pro did...) I wanted a Mac Pro so bad when they announced it, but the price was just a hard pass for what it provided at the base entry.

The Mac Studio really needs a standard M.2 slot in it, and an easier way to take it apart just to clean dust out. The TrashCan design made that super easy.

I use the TG Pro app on my M1 Max Studio, every few months I wipe off the bottom intakes and use the app to crank the fans to Max for 30 seconds or so and it really blows some dust out at times (should have seen it when we were remodeling). Anyway, it's also nice having the app to keep an eye on temps so you can tell if it's getting dusty.