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

[Lounge vibes 05]

That configuration is such a niche of a niche of a niche.

The Mac studio is a niche of a niche of a niche, and according to recent estimates, makes up less than 1% of Mac sales.
So I don’t really get your point.
You are also completely forgetting that Apple uses these ultra chips in their own AI servers, those “ niche of a niche of a niche” specifications are created for their own use as well.

 

[dredlew]

The M3 Ultra is partly an M4 chip as it has Thunderbolt 5 ports.
The single core performance of M3 Ultra vs the single core performance of M4 Max will tell us more.
If it's the same then the M3 Ultra is actualy an M4 Ultra with a marketing strategy.

That would be a terrible marketing strategy.

 

[moulderine]

The business MBA's have completely won at Apple over engineering.

What a complete mess. Whatever extra they get from pushing a few more people into a useless Mac Pro they lose in brand loyalty and long term revenue. I have been in the market for Studio for two years. I will get the Mini and fully move my GPU intensive work to the 5090 on my windows machine instead.

What a joke.

 

[bzgnyc2]

It sucks to be in the market for a powerful desktop in 2025.

I am not sure it sucks...Perhaps we don't have all the permutation of options and/or the prices don't scale the way we want but the technology available today is amazing...

The onboard CPU of a typical NVMe drive is on the order of an iPhone 5 and new desktops rival the supercomputers used to probe the universe not that long ago.

 

[Zdigital2015]

The fact that so many of you are letting Apple’s decision to come out with an M3 Ultra (oh, the horror, eww, it’s so OLLLLLLD) live rent in your heads is hilarious. You sound like a bunch of teenage influencers whining about the trivialities of the day.

90% of you commenting here are never going to need or even be able to justify the M3 Ultra but you act as though you’ve been personally harmed by this. This is indeed a 🍿🍿🍿 moment.😂

 

[MrRoberto]

Am I the only one who thinks the M3 Ultra is priced almost as if it were an M4 Ultra?

The M3 Ultra is based on 2023 tech offered at 2025 prices, and these RAM and SSD storage prices are out of this world. Even with 10% discounts in the Apple refurbished store, these are still way too high prices for what they are offering.

 

[pksv]

Its a rumor site remember? some rumors are true, some are false, some will get updated. Isn't that what you just said? Or does that only apply to Saint Gurman? lol

But this is not a rumor at least partially based on reality, but your just a wild guess based on nothing.
Absolutely zero chance that the M5 Max will have 192GB of RAM or more. If you think so, someone lied to you or you read some nonsense.

 

[0049190]

Apple could stop all this confusing chip numbering by going back to one annual Mac update with all Macs updated at the same time.

 

[Ethosik]

Am I the only one who thinks the M3 Ultra is priced almost as if it were an M4 Ultra?

The M3 Ultra is based on 2023 tech offered at 2025 prices, and these RAM and SSD storage prices are out of this world. Even with 10% discounts in the Apple refurbished store, these are still way too high prices for what they are offering.

That’s typical Apple and they are pushing me back to Windows as a lesser of two evils. They charge $1,000 for a monitor stand for goodness sake.

 

[Marswarrior462]

$14,099.00 is the top end in the USA, not sure where you’re at geographically.

I’m in Canada. It tops out at $20,649 here

 

[dredlew]

Spitballing here, beyond the standard Apple Tax™, I'm guessing that the Mac Studio (and therefore the M3 Ultra/M4 Max) are probably fairly low volume sellers, so gotta pay for the R&D some how.

Whatever the reason, this is ridiculous.

R&D has to be recouped with the machine price, not consumables. It’s a straight up ripoff. They have always done this, the difference is now, there is no way to use third-party alternatives since everything is soldered on.

 

[bzgnyc2]

They should have put the M4 Max version out now, with a M4 Ultra option coming later this year or something. The M3 Ultra makes no sense.

Just to understand, you would have preferred to only have the options for an M4 Max and an M2 Ultra (max'd at 192GB of RAM) rather than an option for an M4 Max or an M3 Ultra (going up to 512GB of RAM)?

 

[turbineseaplane]

The business MBA's have completely won at Apple over engineering.

Tim "Sculley" Cook -- in action

 

[Ethosik]

But this is not a rumor at least partially based on reality, but your just a wild guess based on nothing.
Absolutely zero chance that the M5 Max will have 192GB of RAM or more. If you think so, someone lied to you or you read some nonsense.

Not everything is about max ram. There are people that need the performance of a powerful chip but don’t need 192GB of RAM.

 

[rp2011]

They must be saving the M4 Ultra to protect it from this harsh world we live in. Anyhoo, thank you Apple, and I will be placing my order for the Max today.

 

[Admiral]

M3 Ultra is disappointing, but it's still an improvement over M2 — and the increase in both base RAM and maximum RAM means Apple is going to sell many, many of these to the AI crowd. I just think this top-end Mac Studio will be on a very short refresh cycle, and individual buyers will skip this to await M5 Ultra in 6-9 months.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

Am I the only one who thinks the M3 Ultra is priced almost as if it were an M4 Ultra?

The M3 Ultra is based on 2023 tech offered at 2025 prices, and these RAM and SSD storage prices are out of this world. Even with 10% discounts in the Apple refurbished store, these are still way too high prices for what they are offering.

Just because the most basic version of M3 came out in 2023 does absolutely not mean that the M3 ultra is 2023 tech.
To start with it has thunderbolt 5.
As far as I can tell, thunderbolt 5 was not a shipping protocol in 2023.
So already your thought process that “ it has the number three in it so it must be from 2023” is wrong.

 

[saulinpa]

They show going from 36G to 48G as a $200 upgrade. Unfortunately this requires a CPU upgrade which makes 12G cost $500 instead. Not fair!

 

[dredlew]

or perhaps the m4 version faced technical hurdles and we won't see a m4 ultra. Maybe the next ultra be in the m5 family.

That was the word on the M3 Ultra before. Now, here it is, a year too late when the rest of the product lines has moved on. It’s an absolute mess.

 

[designaholic]

I literally have an M2 Ultra and M3 Max and the M3 Max is definitely better than it. Especially in my Blender work.

Likely as the M3 chips introduced hardware ray tracing.

 

[Wedlock]

It is still quite baffling to me that Apple still uses the WIFI 6E spec while there is WIFI7 on the iPhones already !?
Other than that i am buying a Mac Studio with M4 Max chip since i am still on a M1 Max (which still is a speedy chip btw).

 

[xiJulian_]

I can’t think of any reason why not an M4 Ultra..

 

[CalMin]

I’m not in the market for these computers, but “saving” a chip for a Mac Pro, which is likely one of Apple’s lowest volume products, doesn’t make much sense to me.

It would be a neat marketing based differentiator for Mac Pro to get M4 Ultra though and could justify even higher pricing.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

Apple could stop all this confusing chip numbering by going back to one annual Mac update with all Macs updated at the same time.

Going back? That was never a thing. Never, Apple has never updated all of their Macintosh computers at the same time.
They have always been on completely different upgrade paths, and the desktops have always been the computers to get updated the least.
For example, the first generation MacPro was announced in August 2006. The second generation was announced in January 2008.
Other than a specification bump in April 2007, that computer wasn’t touched for a year and a half.
Meanwhile, the MacBook Pro and iMac weren’t just updated in that space of time, but we’re updated… twice.

 

[caribbeanblue]

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