I honestly doubt that. Not if it's gonna be that small as the leaks predict, i dont think it could support the thermal load.
Remember its gonna have to have an external power supply.
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M4 Mac Studio and Mac Pro Launching in Mid to Late 2025
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Remember its gonna have to have an external power supply.
That was my original thought too. If they've shrunk it then it can't getting any top end processor.
Then again the Max is in in the MacBook Pro and Apple's enjoys shrinking and being clever with thermals.
Wouldnt it be nice to be getting at least one surprise from Apple this fall since at least one cat is out of the bag already.
I’d almost be surprised if the Mini redesign even gets a Pro chip. No way Max is happening.
2 possibilities for Mac Pro - either they are bringing forward their stacked die plans from ~M7 and will offer the M4 in a quad, which I do think is possible given Apple themselves needs these for their servers, or it’ll be M5 Ultra as someone mentioned. In that case I think it will be an small upgrade over M4 with primarily ML improvements and maybe some encode/decode support and updated Wifi / possibly TB5 etc.
If the staggered release is true I’d more heavily favor the M4 scenario, unless they are going to announce M5 at WWDC 2025 and do the “Mac Pro is coming this fall”and Studio coming next month “thing which is possible.
The selling point for mainstream M5 will be the MBP redesign, and it’ll work for some people even if there isn’t a lot of performance difference for general workloads.
Interesting times, difficult to know what to buy… might try to skate by with the M4 MBP and re-sell it when the Studio or Pro is out. I can’t sustain my workload on Intel machines much longer.
2 possibilities for Mac Pro - either they are bringing forward their stacked die plans from ~M7 and will offer the M4 in a quad, which I do think is possible given Apple themselves needs these for their servers, or it’ll be M5 Ultra as someone mentioned. In that case I think it will be an small upgrade over M4 with primarily ML improvements and maybe some encode/decode support and updated Wifi / possibly TB5 etc.
If the staggered release is true I’d more heavily favor the M4 scenario, unless they are going to announce M5 at WWDC 2025 and do the “Mac Pro is coming this fall”and Studio coming next month “thing which is possible.
The selling point for mainstream M5 will be the MBP redesign, and it’ll work for some people even if there isn’t a lot of performance difference for general workloads.
Interesting times, difficult to know what to buy… might try to skate by with the M4 MBP and re-sell it when the Studio or Pro is out. I can’t sustain my workload on Intel machines much longer.
The MBP has a lot of width to spread the heatpipes, heatsinks and dual fans. A mini would definitely be one fan. The Mac Studio has dual fans too as far as I recall and a much thicker heatsink.
I mean, these are just spec bumps. What’s there really to prioritize? Back in the day unless it got a redesign of how it physically looked or some new physical hardware feature, a spec bump would quietly appear on the Apple Store. It’s really inexcusable that the studio and pro our left languagish this way, or that the lineup is always Swiss cheese with old chips in the line like in the iMacs and minis. They’re making the Mac lineup worse than the iPad.
Maybe not exactly, but it's quite conceivable that an M4 Max/Ultra Studio is released in June 2025 and a new M5 MacBook Pro in Sep/Oct/Nov 2025.
I would actually prefer Apple to delay the next Mac Studio to Sep-Nov 2025 and make it M5 than release an M4 in June. The 9 month lag with the previous SoC seems unnecessary. If they can't release both Max & Ultra at the same time, then just split these into 2 releases. Far more people are likely to buy a Studio Max if it were available than the Ultra version, which probably appeals more to professionals with a much longer refresh cycle.
That’s a pipe dream
They’ll never release the studio first. the m5 will come out and go in all the low on machines and then everyone will have to wait till the end of cycle to get the high end machines which then regret buying as the m6 comes out
I don't think we should confuse Ultra/Pro and Max with a base CPU upgrade. I just thought of a way to compare it to the animal kingdom.
- If the M4 is a Terrier
- The M4 Pro could be a Cattle Dog
- The M4 Max could be a Greyhound
This release schedule initially made no sense to me. Given that they'll have the M4 Max chip in the fall, why not release the M4 Max Studio alongside the M4 Max MBP, and then release the Ultra products—the M4 Ultra Studio & MP — when that chip becomes available?
The development work required to uprade the Max chip in the Studio chassis from M2 to M4 could have been done in parallel with the development work to upgrade the chip in the MBP.
Then I figured it out: Some professionals who've been waiting to upgrade their current Studio Ultras might buy an M4 Max Studio in the fall rather than waiting another 7 or 8 months for the M4 Ultra Studio, and Apple doesn't want to lose those Ultra Studio sales, since that's probably a very high-profit machine for them.
The development work required to uprade the Max chip in the Studio chassis from M2 to M4 could have been done in parallel with the development work to upgrade the chip in the MBP.
Then I figured it out: Some professionals who've been waiting to upgrade their current Studio Ultras might buy an M4 Max Studio in the fall rather than waiting another 7 or 8 months for the M4 Ultra Studio, and Apple doesn't want to lose those Ultra Studio sales, since that's probably a very high-profit machine for them.
Much more complex than that. Post #18 discussed just some of the issues with manufacturing the chip. Once you have the chip then:
1. Logic board likely needs to be redesigned to support the new chip. Pin changes (?), memory bus, etc.
2. Other possible improvements requiring even more logic board changes such as WiFi 7, Thunderbolt 4, Bluetooth 5.4, etc.
There has been some discussions as to why combining 2 max chips does not result in a 2x performance gain. Apple might be considering not combining 2 chips but just creates a single monster SOC.
Which is probably why they would not bring the Max to the Mini.
They maybe ought to rename the Max and Ultra to something other than M series. Then it wouldn’t seem like they were lagging so much as on their own separate staggered release schedule.
At this point, SoC will fail for desktop series no matter what Apple is doing so they would probably need to change the technology which they can produce CPU, GPU, NPU, and other parts separately and then combine them all together instead of making them all at once. Apple do testing the new technology but until then, I dont think that they can make Ultra and Extreme chips less expensive and difficult.
Maybe Apple’s mistake is in branding? Would we think differently if they branded these chips Ultra series [x], Max series [x], etc? Then we’d compare the Ultra 3 to Ultra 2, “knowing” Ultra is better than Max, Pro, basic. Now we’re comparing M2 Ultra against an M4 in an iPad. When the ultra still sits at the top and outperforms the others, are we distracted by the M# brand?
Good Point! The Max is already getting close to to the reticle limit for single dies, which is why the ultra has to join two together. TSMC is working on interposers that could combine 6 planes for a total of over 5100mm2.
I could see the GPU, CPU, and ANE cores being separated to allow for larger core counts per die.
Other companies don’t have thriving desktop divisions. Most workstation companies are dead. What remains for high-margin desktops is mostly gamers.
A Mac mini with the Max exists; it’s called the Studio.