Apple Announces New Mac Studio With M4 Max and M3 Ultra Chips, Thunderbolt 5, and More

[deconstruct60]

Then why didn’t Apple update the Mac Pro? They ALWAYS do the bare minimum with their desktop line. Ever since the 2010 or even 2012 Mac Pro Apple has been fumbling the ball on any headless Mac system. They barely put up the effort.

Pretty likely because the Mac Pro doesn't have a M4 tie in like the Studio does. The Studio has a M4 Max option that is probably is more than half of Studio sales. If sales of the MBP 14/16" are coming up short consuming M4 Max dies then the Mac Pro can't 'sop up' those extra dies with the Mac Studio can. So they launch Studio first.

There is always some 'analog clock is right twice a day' crowd that says that the Mac Pro "has to come at WWDC". I wouldn't bet on WWDC though. (more later ...)


If this a M3 Max+ die ( some small tweaks to a UltraFusion back in and tweak the Thunderbolt controllers ) then it may be ramping up . The Mac Studio Ultra demand may be enough to concume the entire supply for 4-5 months. Once there is a slack in supply they drop the Mac Pro into the mix to get a later demand burst.

The Mac Pro 2013->2019 6years . MP 2019 -> 2023 4 years. If Apple does 2023-2025 , then they would be relatively on record pace for Mac Pro updates for the last decade. The Mac Pro updates slowly at Apple; that is pretty much established track record. If all the Mac Pro is getting is just M3 Ultra ... then there is going to be almost as much backlash as there is going to be new demand.
[ There is a small chance that the Mac Pro may need some macOS 16 (next gen) updates and hence not ready.
If Apple has done something with the PCI-e backhaul and there is some synergy between that and new cards ...
( I highly doubt discrete GPUs are coming, but some other value-add for the Mac Pro to build a user base on).

the Studio doesn't have those issues. So little rational reason to hold the Studio back. ]

 

[ILoveCalvinCool]

I don’t see any reason why the world’s richest company couldn’t handle the release of several Macs at once.

Another possibility is that they're the world's richest company because they do business the way they do business. In other words, because Apple has not shackled every team to the same schedule regardless of the many different audiences, engineering challenges, marketing efforts, and sales projections of completely different platforms, they are the world's richest company. If they did try to make the iPad team and the Studio team (and every other team!) release both devices on the same day, it would be an unmitigated disaster.

 

[pksv]

...impressions that the Mac Studio and/or Mac Pro are going to remain. If Windows wasn’t so trash I would be back with PCs. At least they are consistent.

Hard to understand this logic when neither Mac Studio nor Mac Pro is upgradeable. Its performance and capabilities are not affected by either earlier or later Apple hardware. So why does this "consitenct" matter if a given generation meets your requirements? Curious.

 

[DanneP]

The Mac Pro is in a weird place now:

M2 Ultra, 64GB RAM, 1TB storage - $6999

vs Mac Studio:

M3 Ultra, 96GB RAM, 1TB storage - $3999

Heck, you could even option for 256GB RAM on the Studio and it would still be cheaper than the Pro!

You got to have some really specific needs to justify the Mac Pro?

 

[deconstruct60]

Interesting question. Apple’s website does not provide any direct performance comparisons between the two models.

They do for the MBP 14/16"

https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/

"go deeper on the M4"

on that screen scroll down to the M4 Max . Choose the 16" model. Then look at 7 different benchmarks versus previous Max SoCs.



For the M3 Utra ... it is typical Apple in that they only compare versus previous products.

Mac Studio

The ultimate pro desktop. Powered by M4 Max and M3 Ultra for all-out performance and extensive connectivity. Built for Apple Intelligence.

www.apple.com

Again 7 benchmarks but only against M2 Ultra and M1 Ultra.

 

[0049190]

I don’t get this. The M5 chip family is likely to be announced before the end of 2025. Why bother with the M4 Max in the Mac Studio at this late date?

I think their chip development cycle is built around the MacBook Pro and iPad Pro. Everything else has to fit around them which is why there are so many confusing discrepancies.

 

[0049190]

They do for the MBP 14/16"

https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/

"go deeper on the M4"

on that screen scroll down to the M4 Max . Choose the 16" model. Then look at 7 different benchmarks versus previous Max SoCs.



For the M3 Utra ... it is typical Apple in that they only compare versus previous products.

Mac Studio

The ultimate pro desktop. Powered by M4 Max and M3 Ultra for all-out performance and extensive connectivity. Built for Apple Intelligence.

www.apple.com

Again 7 benchmarks but only against M2 Ultra and M1 Ultra.

Not much help if I want to compare the performance of the new Max vrs Ultra models.

 

[Pezimak]

The Mac Pro is in a weird place now:

M2 Ultra, 64GB RAM, 1TB storage - $6999

vs Mac Studio:

M3 Ultra, 96GB RAM, 1TB storage - $3999

Heck, you could even option for 256GB RAM on the Studio and it would still be cheaper than the Pro!

You got to have some really specific needs to justify the Mac Pro?

Well its been like that since the very first Apple silicon Mac Pro, because their are hardly any expansion cards that will work with it.

 

[hans1972]

Fully specced (32/80/32 M3 Ultra; 512GB; 16TBSSD) is now $14,099. I don’t know if that’s competitive in the high-spec space, but pksv’s comment, above, suggests that it is.

It's extremely competitive for people working with LLMs locally. And for that kind of work, you don't need 16Tb internal SSD either.

 

[theorist9]

Have you confirmed that this M3 Ultra cannot do hardware accelerated 8K encoding? That seems like a stretch that it wouldn't, given the fact that the M4 Max can.

Edit: I just saw that another commenter replied with a screenshot showing the encoding capabilities of the M3 Ultra. It will clearly do 8k hardware encoding.

Could you link that screenshot? Did a quick scan through this thread and didn't see it.
Edit: NVM, found it at https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/03/apple-reveals-m3-ultra-taking-apple-silicon-to-a-new-extreme/

Though the M2 Ultra could do this as well. From https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/06/apple-introduces-m2-ultra/ :

 

[krell100]

Wow that has to be the lamest update Apple have ever released. What a joke.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Tell that to all the manufacturers of keyboards and mice. I’d love to drop those ports but they are still needed.

No, they are not still needed. Keyboards and mice require negligible bandwidth. One USB-C port can service an eight-port USB-A hub. Please stop asking Apple to waste ports on USB-A! Buy a dirt-cheap hub, or a dirt-cheap dongle for each keyboard and let Apple provide high bandwidth TB ports instead of asking for lame USB-A.

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

Why not M4 Ultra? Guess it’s not ready yet??

Very strange release imo.

 

[Ethosik]

No, they are not still needed. Keyboards and mice require negligible bandwidth. One USB-C port can service an eight-port USB-A hub. Please stop asking Apple to waste ports on USB-A! Buy a dirt-cheap hub, or a dirt-cheap dongle for each keyboard and let Apple provide high bandwidth TB ports instead of asking for lame USB-A.

macOS has a horrible time with docks and hubs. I have spent almost $1,000 on them and they all have issues. Even the $400+ ones from places like OWC.

 

[bzgnyc2]

The Mac Pro is in a weird place now:

M2 Ultra, 64GB RAM, 1TB storage - $6999

vs Mac Studio:

M3 Ultra, 96GB RAM, 1TB storage - $3999

Heck, you could even option for 256GB RAM on the Studio and it would still be cheaper than the Pro!

You got to have some really specific needs to justify the Mac Pro?

Basically PCIe slots:

Mac Pro
Six full-length PCI Express gen 4 slots​

Two x16 slots​

Four x8 slots​

​

300W auxiliary power available:​

Two 6-pin connectors delivering 75W of power each​

One 8-pin connector delivering 150W of power​

What people use this for given Apple's gatekeeping on kernel extensions and prohibition on dedicated graphics cards in particular, I'm not sure.

The only common thing I can think of is putting NVMe drives inside the system. Though I understand TB5 has less overhead than TB3, the potential sequential I/O of the above should be higher than even the 4-6 TB5 buses of a Studio. Putting aside the cleaner/less fragile benefits of internal drives, you have to be a bit niche to need more than the 30-50 GB/sec of I/O that this new generation of Studio should be able to do.

Or maybe the ability to put a USB-A dongle inside a lockable tower is worth $3K+ to some people...

 

[RyanFlynn]

This is the exact computer I've been waiting for. I just preordered a maxed out version.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I predict a sales bump of the Mac Mini M4 Pro as people, me for instance, no longer have to wait for this Studio announcement before making a purchasing decision.

Personally I find the announced configurations to be quite strange & confusing, particularly the M3 Ultra option. Clearly I'm not the only one. But I'll probably wait and watch the reviews and see how this all shakes out.

Yes the configurations are confusing, especially the lowest end choice of only 32 GB RAM in the powerful Studio. IMO the Mac mini with Pro chip usually is a poor choice, unless one needs 64 GB RAM but not a Max chip or ports. The Studio with Max chip is usually a better choice.

Personally I find the +$400 to 64 GB RAM the minimum a Studio buyer should probably choose.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I agree with those saying that releasing the Ultra as an M3 doesn't make sense.

So I conclude Apple did this only because they weren't able to produce an M4 Ultra in time. They must be struggling to merge the two Max chips. To make up for this, and keep the model relevant for AI development, the max RAM on the Ultra is, for the first time, 4x the max RAM on the Max (512 GB vs. 128 GB) (rather than 2x) which should be appealing to those who are working on very large models. Though it still does have (two of) the older (20 TOPS) M3 neural engines, rather than the newer (38 TOPS) engine on the M4, and Apple promoted the latter as being a valuable advancement for AI.

This Ultra also differs from past Ultras in that its max storage is upped to 16 TB, twice the Max's, where before they had the same max storage.

Definitely a win for Gurman, but I have to wonder how Apple feels about him stealing their thunder. Normally you'd think Apple wouldn't like this, but I wonder if Apple authorized these leaks, thinking Gurman's audience would bring more attention to this announcement (?).

Your conclusion is flawed because your premises are flawed. M4 was never intended as an Ultra platform; it lacks the necessary connection points.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Then why didn’t Apple update the Mac Pro? They ALWAYS do the bare minimum with their desktop line. Ever since the 2010 or even 2012 Mac Pro Apple has been fumbling the ball on any headless Mac system. They barely put up the effort.

You referenced and/or Mac Pro. I agree that Mac Pros remain a clustermess.

 

[deconstruct60]

Not much help if I want to compare the performance of the new Max vrs Ultra models.

Multiply the M3 Max laptop by 2 versus the single M4 Max score. That is a pretty good proxy for the parallel workloads.
If primarily concerned with just single threaded stuff then there little about Max vs Ultra that makes a difference.

 

[DanneP]

Basically PCIe slots:

Mac Pro​

Six full-length PCI Express gen 4 slots​

Two x16 slots​

Four x8 slots​

​

300W auxiliary power available:​

Two 6-pin connectors delivering 75W of power each​

One 8-pin connector delivering 150W of power​

What people use this for given Apple's gatekeeping on kernel extensions and prohibition on dedicated graphics cards in particular, I'm not sure.

The only common thing I can think of is putting NVMe drives inside the system. Though I understand TB5 has less overhead than TB3, the potential sequential I/O of the above should be higher than even the 4-6 TB5 buses of a Studio. Putting aside the cleaner/less fragile benefits of internal drives, you have to be a bit niche to need more than the 30-50 GB/sec of I/O that this new generation of Studio should be able to do.

Or maybe the ability to put a USB-A dongle inside a lockable tower is worth $3K+ to some people...

It would be nice to know what the use cases are. Seems like storage are the only thing that these ports are suitable for? But why would you chose an expensive Mac Pro as a storage device?

 

[ILoveCalvinCool]

It would be nice to know what the use cases are. Seems like storage are the only thing that these ports are suitable for? But why would you chose an expensive Mac Pro as a storage device?

I don't really understand what the Mac Pro is supposed to be. It feels like the Studio is filling the high-end performance niche much more capably than the Pro has in a very long time.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

macOS has a horrible time with docks and hubs. I have spent almost $1,000 on them and they all have issues. Even the $400+ ones from places like OWC.

Most of the problems folks have with docks is folks asking them to do weird things expanding the bandwidth that they are attached to; or using unpowered hubs. I have never had one issue with a powered USB-A hub [all the unpowered ones flaked], and USB-A is what was discussed. Cables other than the very best cables OTOH are frequently problematic.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Also this release is just weird. M3 Max doesn’t have Thunderbolt 5. M4 is what introduced it. M* ultra is two M* Max connected. So M3 Ultra is not REALLY two M3 Max, since the ultra has Thunderbolt 5. So what other changes are included?

Yes the M3 TB5 thing is very curious. Also the 512 GB RAM available on the M3 Ultra is curious. Did Apple modify the chips just for the Ultra? That seems cost-ineffective unless some kind of testing is going on.

 

[JSRinUK]

While waiting for this release, I had my mind set on 128GB RAM for the AI/LLM stuff I want to explore.

The only real way of getting that pushes the M4 Max to 16/40 which hits £3,600. It’s amazing to think they can charge £1,000 to go from 48GB to 128GB.

The SSD is going to have to be 1TB minimum which puts it at £3,800. This, in typical Apple manner, is just £400 less than the £4,200 M3 Ultra (96GB/1TB).

I’m kind of curious what performance difference I’d see in my use case between the M4 Max and M3 Ultra but, to be honest, £3,800 is already £600 more than I’d been anticipating so I think I know where I’m going.

If the base Ultra had been M4 and 128GB, I think I’d have more of a dilemma.