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Apple Cuts More Mac Studio and Mac Mini RAM Options as Memory Shortage Worsens
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They won't for the same reasons oil companies are not racing to drill more wells. Both take 10+ years before you see a result, and the bubble will be over by then. And both the semiconductor and oil companies are happy as can be with the current situation. Their product does not cost more to make, but now sells at double the price. They are not racing to invest billions to make that stop.
The good news is that (1) very few people need anything more than the new Neo and (2) anyone who wants cut their fuel bill to less than half can buy a late model Prius or even an EV. We don't have to pay the current prices.
Still waiting for the internet and smart phone bubbles to burst…
Yupp. I think they are simply not making many more m4 mac minis.
June isn't far away. Hopefully M5 will be announced at WWDC.
I hope you are correct. If not, we are in for serious issues with these products.
KnowsHowItWorks
macrumors member
Very interesting situation. Long wait too for those ordering one of these Macs. iMac with M4 and 32 GB RAM is available. Wonder when both these Macs get M5 update.
I'm starting to think the way this goes is Apple announces the M5 mini & Studio refresh at WWDC with a similar cutting off of the bottom rungs of the ladder that they did with the MacBook Pro. They'll give people waiting on an M4 a window to cancel and get priority for an M5 before opening up general orders. Those looking for a base model will have to pay up the difference to whatever the new minimum spec is, or opt to have their original M4 order fulfilled when possible.
It sucks because the base Mini and Studio I think have been really solid values this generation. Especially back at the beginning of they year when you could get them discounted by 15-20%. I have no doubt we'll get a Neofied version of the Mac mini that will come in at $499 for 8GB or 12GB of RAM at some point to satiate the people that need/want little Macs for all kinds of tasks. But I think it is going to be a long time before we see a $1,799 Mac Studio, let alone even $1,999, again.
Hrm... I just impulse reserved a base M4 Max Studio : 14/32 36GB/512GB my local MicroCenter has open box for $1700... don't know if I will go through with it, but it is a tempting holdover until we find out whats really happening with the M5...
It sucks because the base Mini and Studio I think have been really solid values this generation. Especially back at the beginning of they year when you could get them discounted by 15-20%. I have no doubt we'll get a Neofied version of the Mac mini that will come in at $499 for 8GB or 12GB of RAM at some point to satiate the people that need/want little Macs for all kinds of tasks. But I think it is going to be a long time before we see a $1,799 Mac Studio, let alone even $1,999, again.
Hrm... I just impulse reserved a base M4 Max Studio : 14/32 36GB/512GB my local MicroCenter has open box for $1700... don't know if I will go through with it, but it is a tempting holdover until we find out whats really happening with the M5...
Why? They’re just burning down the M3 and M4 stock before releasing the M5. Apple have done this before every launch ever and especially with Tim “supply chain” Cook in charge.
In two months the full M5 lineup will be available just as it is on laptops. This has nothing to do with memory availability, they’re just no longer making outdated chips.
rezwits
macrumors 6502a
Let's just play a small numbers game. I think they (Apple) were going to have/can have 50,000 Mac Mini M5 Pros w/64GB of RAM and like 5,000 Mac Studio M5 Ultras w/512GB of RAM. But they we're like if we release these at WWDC they'll be gone instantly and we'll be out of stock and people will be pissed, and the demand (that they foresee) is like they need 500,000 Mac Mini M5 Pros w/64GB and 50,000, 512 Studios! i.e. 10x minimum... and they're like look we can "Release the Hounds, in September/October" Let's get the stock proper and we'll (Apple) use these damn Mac Studios M3/M5 even with 512GB of RAM! Private/Local LLM usage is NO JOKE for Apple and seriously underestimated and seriously NOT verified! So it's a little bit of R&D here too...
That's what I am guessing...
That's what I am guessing...
Must be amazing for Apple (or any company) to have so many people just waiting to part with their cash for a product they kind of have, but don't.
There was never any chance of m5 mini or studio until the fall
Now possibly not till Q2 2027
Certainly nothing being announced in June
argue if you like, but mark this post
It’s not that deep (as my child’s gen says)
There is nothing to sell. They have no physical inventory. Factories in Asia are tooling down due to geo- political “things and stuff” (don’t want to break the site rules here)
That’s a richly imaginative theory but nothing to do with reality
If they had inventory to sell they would sell it
Shareholders don’t like less revenue quarter over quarter
I'd guess they are stuck between a rock and a hard place with the M4's.
They could keep the production line running on the M4 and use up that precious ram in the process, or focus on using any RAM stockpiles they may have for the new M5's in a few months.
The way things are looking I'd guess they are just going to let their existing M4 stocks run completely dry so they will have RAM available for the upcoming M5 Mini and Studio configurations which are probably gearing up for production.
They could keep the production line running on the M4 and use up that precious ram in the process, or focus on using any RAM stockpiles they may have for the new M5's in a few months.
The way things are looking I'd guess they are just going to let their existing M4 stocks run completely dry so they will have RAM available for the upcoming M5 Mini and Studio configurations which are probably gearing up for production.
Yeah but I meant having many people all waiting means Apple can maybe tweak prices slightly even more to their advantage.
They've not removed SKUs/configuration options from a released product in over 25 years. Only time I can think of Apple doing something like this was back when the PowerMac G4 launched. Motorola couldn't meet their promised yields for the 500Mhz chips. Apple responded by "downgrading" by 50Mhz across the board. If you originally ordered 500Mhz, you got 450Mhz. 450Mhz -> 400Mhz. etc.
Apple also doesn't typically announce that a product is going to be constrained for months.
The RAM they've got they need to reserve and prioritize MacBooks because that is the better selling product. Almost every single Apple product right now relies on LPDDR5X memory. Which is great becuase it always costs les to buy it in bulk. Bad news: All the fabs have shifted focus and production to HMB memory for AI applications. Very little DDR memory for consumer devices is being made at all right now, period. Getting someone like Micron to produce DDR right now means demand and cost outbidding the eye watering prices tech companies will pay to keep them pumping out HMB. It'll happen. It'll be sporadic and unpredictable. Pricing will be high and all over the place.
If Apple is pulling back on their slower selling products and actively talking about it, there is a good chance they don't know where their next order of ram is coming from, how long it will take or what it is going to cost.
In the mean time they have Back to School and the Holiday Season they need a stable supply of laptops for, new models or not. And iPhone Launch in the Fall. All of those need LPDDR5X.
This is an underrated statement. Better yet, get on figuring out some sort of ambient distributed computing. There are 8 Apple Silicon devices in our house that are A16 or newer with a collective 200GB or RAM. A lot of it unused most of the time.
The internet bubble did burst:
Dot-com bubble - Wikipedia
Smartphones have certainly boomed over the last couple of decades, and may have peaked, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a bubble. The smartphone industry didn’t see the pattern of crazy, FOMO-fuelled investment in underpants-gnome schemes as the early dot com boom or the current AI mania.
If the AI bubble bursts it doesn’t mean that “AI” will go away - it’s a useful technology with many applications and it’s already improved things like natural language interfaces and image recognition. The problem is the current crazy investment in data centres that will be obsolete before they are built, confirmation-bias-driven attempts to pretend LLMs can do things that they can’t, and forcing them on customers who don’t want them.
A silver lining to all those data centers is it will at least locally bring some attention to infrastructure that's need attention in the US for decades. If you're building a data center that will consume 9 gigawatts in an area that currently consumes averages around only 4, someone is going to at least be looking at the electrical grid in a critical way. And making sure data and communication infrastructure can support it. Even if the companies running the data cdnters and AI went poof, the improvements will still be there. At least there is a little bright side.The internet bubble did burst:
Dot-com bubble - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Smartphones have certainly boomed over the last couple of decades, and may have peaked, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a bubble. The smartphone industry didn’t see the pattern of crazy, FOMO-fuelled investment in underpants-gnome schemes as the early dot com boom or the current AI mania.
If the AI bubble bursts it doesn’t mean that “AI” will go away - it’s a useful technology with many applications and it’s already improved things like natural language interfaces and image recognition. The problem is the current crazy investment in data centres that will be obsolete before they are built, confirmation-bias-driven attempts to pretend LLMs can do things that they can’t, and forcing them on customers who don’t want them.
Even if he did, that's why he's leaving in a hurry (contrary to earlier reports) and let his successor takes the blame... GENIUS right...?