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Apple Says Mac Studio and Mac Mini Will Be in Short Supply for Months
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Ironically, there's some interesting MacBook Air M4 13.6" models going at Argos in the UK - £799 for a 16/256 spec which compares to 599 list for the same spec mini.
I've seen some off the shelf deals with slight discounts for the minis but the Airs do look a deal, especially if you then compare with a Neo for £599 with 8/256.
If 256Gb is too little storage then the 512Gb variants go for 999 which is again £200 more than a Mac mini which I guess at least has a fan.
At that stage, you could get an M5 (10 Core CPU, 8 Core GPU) MBA 16/512 for £1099 direct from Apple thanks to Apple recently doubling the storage. I'm not sure if Apple do refurbs of M5 models yet.
Remember the A18 Pro and M4 will have similar single core performance but the M4 pulls ahead with multi core and GPU and that's before you get to the Thunderbolt ports.
All this says to me is had Apple launched an M5 mini and doubled the RAM on it we'd be all saying how much of an even better deal that those are - now the next best deals are M5 MacBook Airs.
As above, 16/512 for 1099 vs 799 for an M4 mini
300 quid more for screen, keyboard, trackpad, but no fan - (binned 8 Core GPU) M5 vs M4 (full 10 Core GPU) performance differences.
And for an extra upsell, M5 MacBook Pro 14" has a much better slightly bigger screen, 3 TB ports vs 2 and an SD card slot, for your extra 259 quid on top of the Air. Or, if you like, M5 vs M4 1359 vs 799 (559 quid).
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tenthousandthings
Contributor
Hopefully it’s just the M4 and N3E and they were able to adjust so we won’t see a repeat of this constraint next year toward the end of the M5 cycle on N3P. But this sounds to me like they’re expecting that, and it might not be fixed until M6 — TSMC is doing a big build-out for N2 and Apple is key to that, so they should be able to get whatever they need.
Black_Mage
macrumors 6502
I just checked the online refurb store. They're still out of Studios and Minis. Amazing. Is this the year of Mac?
More concerned about the price increases that are incoming because of the skyrocketing component prices
So once again the AI Ponzi scheme is messing everything up.
I heard this yesterday:
"Why did Apple choose to adopt WMCM packaging for the iPhone 18? It was precisely to enable the use of more DRAM for on-device AI. However, according to recent industry checks, even Apple appears to have walked back full-scale WMCM adoption for the iPhone 18 and decided to use it only in the higher-end lineup. Even in the high-end models that do use WMCM, there appears to be no RAM upgrade versus the previous generation."
"Why did Apple choose to adopt WMCM packaging for the iPhone 18? It was precisely to enable the use of more DRAM for on-device AI. However, according to recent industry checks, even Apple appears to have walked back full-scale WMCM adoption for the iPhone 18 and decided to use it only in the higher-end lineup. Even in the high-end models that do use WMCM, there appears to be no RAM upgrade versus the previous generation."
The only people who believe AI is a Ponzi scheme are the ones who are going to be replaced by AI in the coming years.
I was waiting to upgrade to an M5 Max Mac Studio - but may pull the trigger on an M4 model just to keep the costs down...because by the time that comes out there likely will be price increases...or a MacBook Pro...have to really think about this.
The 64gb versions are still for sale....I wanted 128, but that is enough of an upgrade for me to last for a few years...until this shortage hopefully works itself out.
The 64gb versions are still for sale....I wanted 128, but that is enough of an upgrade for me to last for a few years...until this shortage hopefully works itself out.
enricoclaudio
macrumors 6502a
I’m gonna wait until WWDC. If the M5 Mac Studio is not released, then I might get a M4 Max instead.
Better for customers who only have modest needs to run them locally on power-efficient local computers rather than power- and resource-hungry data centers.
HouseLannister
macrumors 68040
The majority of analysts and pretty much everyone else is congratulating Apple on their AI strategy of slow-walking the implementation until they had all their "ducks in a row" with on board AI and signing up an external AI partner for off-device queries. The "Apple is late on AI" crowd have gone VERY quiet.
At no point (that I'm aware of) did Tim Cook state it would be several months till they're released. Just that they would be in short supply. Which is already happening obviously.
During today's earnings call for the second fiscal quarter of 2026, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the Mac mini and Mac Studio could be hard to get for months to come.
"We think, looking forward, that the Mac mini and Mac Studio may take several months to reach supply demand balance," Cook said.
Apple underestimated demand for the Mac mini and the Mac Studio. "Both of these are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted, and so we saw higher than expected demand," Cook said.
Shipping delays for the Mac mini and the Mac Studio have been increasing over the last few months, and the waits for some models stretch into months. Apple stopped selling the Mac Studio with 512GB RAM entirely, and it stopped accepting orders for some models with higher amounts of RAM. As of last week, the base Mac mini was listed as "Currently Unavailable" from Apple's online store because it is out of stock.
Article Link: Apple Says Mac Studio and Mac Mini Will Be in Short Supply for Months
i'm going to (try) and stay optimistic despite dreading that the release of new desktop Macs could be a while off. Here in Australia, I can get the base Mac Studio in 12 to 14 days. Which is what I'll get if new Macs aren't released at WWDC.
anthony13
macrumors 65816
I think I remember both of us posting non stop in the 2020 last intel iMac thread if I’m not mistaken, and here we are again in the same predicament! lol. I have a m1 ultra studio I was hoping to upgrade but am now considering an m5 max Mac book pro instead. I have two Studio Displays and possibly a third in my future and am a little worried about a laptop driving all 3. But my thinking is by the time we finally get an m5 ultra studio it may even be a little too rich for my blood.
tenthousandthings
Contributor
WMCM isn’t optional — it replaces InFO-PoP packaging. If they use TSMC N2 (2nm), they must use WMCM.
In other words, this is the same rumor that has been around for a while — only the A20 Pro will use N2. I don’t know who or what you are quoting, but they’re just recycling an old rumor.
The only issue is ther although Apple silicone are unmatched for running local llm models, apple can't fully capitalise on it.
Had there been more supply apple could have sold 2-3x the number of max mini and max studios.
However they didn't anticipate demand and therefore missing an opportunity to place HUGE ram orders with micron and Samsung 12-18 months ago.
Openai did this: https://globalcio.com/news/16062/
I figured out about a year ago that I can run AI models on my Mac Mini M2 Pro with 16MB for a lot less money than buying a PC with an Nvidia card. The Mac's memory model with shared RAM is what makes it cheap.
Macs with even more RAM are much better than what I have.
I think people are buying these and running them on a closet shelf with the keyboards and monitors removed.
Macs with even more RAM are much better than what I have.
I think people are buying these and running them on a closet shelf with the keyboards and monitors removed.
There is simply no pc equivalent for local ai inference performance, foot print, plug-and-play and power consumption.
Waiting is risky. Two things might happen is M5 is announced: Looooong lead time + price hike
Performance difference between M4 and M5 is small. Even if you buy an M4 Max, demand on used market is so high that you would be able to resell it at retail price should you want to upgrade to an M5. Even M2 Ultra with super high bandwith and reselling for strong money.
Demand for Mac Mini and Studio is going to grow. Anthropic, OpenAI and other applications have stopped subsidising ai inference. They are changing from fixed price all you can eat, to API pricing. This means that for many people including myself it’s cheaper to buy a 48-128GB Mac Mini than pay OpenAi and anthropic $500-2000 per month in inference costs for coding.
For my business, I will likely buy 5-10 Mac Minis this year.