M5 MacBook Air Coming Spring 2026 With M5 Mac Studio and Mac Mini in Development

[CWallace]

wonder what’s going on with the next Ultra chip

With Apple going to TSMC's 3D fabric chiplet design for M5 Pro and M5 Max, that will open up some very interesting possibilities for the M5 Ultra and could finally allow Apple to design a ridiculously powerful SoC for the Mac Pro that does not have to carry the ridiculously high price of trying to tie four Max together.

 

[CalMin]

Curious choice for someone doing AI. I would think that you're pushing the hardware pretty hard and the Air tends to throttle really quickly when given an intensive task due to the lack of active cooling. My son's Air gets burning hot just playing Minecraft. If time is money a Mac with a cooling fan like the new 14" M5 Pro seems like a no brainer to me.

I would also choose the Pro for its superior display. In addition to better picture quality it has a higher screen resolution than your 15" Air meaning that more information can be displayed at once. I've tried getting stuff done on a 13" Air and it was a really frustrating experience. I'll gladly take an extra few grams of weight to get more elbow room on the screen.

I understand that the MacBook Air might not be the perfect machine for this task, but I really like its 15" display and overall form factor. To be honest, I don’t plan to do much of the work locally vs. the cloud, and since the project is LLM-based rather than related to images or videos, I’m not too concerned about max performance when running on device. If I run into issues with overheating, I’ll simply sell it, take the loss, and move on.

I also have a 14" M1 Pro that has been my primary work machine. While I appreciate the display quality, I find that for productivity work it doesn’t make a big difference. I prefer the 15" Air form factor and having the extra screen real estate. With my eyesight declining as I get older, the 15" display feels more comfortable when working with multiple windows open, and I want to be untethered from my external monitor as much as possible for this project.

Still happy with my choice - even though the M5 MBP will likely kick ass performance wise over my maxed out M4 Air.

 

[TimeSquareDesi]

What a juicy spec! I am doing the same when the m5 13" airs come out. Im getting max spec. currently working on an 15" m2 mba and this thing is glorious. i love the smaller size.

Yep. My 15" M4 Air (32GB / 2TB) just arrived last week. I got a refurb though.

Ironically - the reason I specced it up so much is for an AI project I'm involved in. The irony is that M5 will be a much better chip for this for on-device AI... Oh well - I can't wait until Spring and I don't want the 14" M5 Pro.

 

[CalMin]

What a juicy spec! I am doing the same when the m5 13" airs come out. Im getting max spec. currently working on an 15" m2 mba and this thing is glorious. i love the smaller size.

Yes - somewhat overkill, however, I will be doing some local LLM and need the RAM for this. As for storage, well, my 1TB M1Pro has a minimum of 850GB used locally and I still have to keep clearing stuff off or using external storage for things.

Ever since storage became non-upgradeable, it has been the primary reason I've needed a new machine. It's also nice to finally be able to edit my 4k multicam Podcast without an SSD hanging off the side!

I genuinely prefer the 15" Air display over my 14" Pro. ProMotion doesn't seem to make as much difference on a laptop to me vs. on a phone or iPad. And while the 14" display quality is definitely better than the 15" Air, for productivity work, and even light creative work, the tradeoff for more display area is worth it to me personally.

 

[iMac The Knife]

Yay for the M5 Mac mini!!!

 

[Merkie]

Why would Apple release new MacBook Pros early in 2026 and then release a massive redesign of them several months later in the same year?

I think the new redesigned MBP with touchscreen will live alongside the current MBPs at a higher price point for a while.

 

[Workerbee Redux]

Wonder whether we'll see an Ultra again. They skipped M4 Ultra.

 

[CWallace]

Wonder whether we'll see an Ultra again. They skipped M4 Ultra.

Probably. And it may very well be something different than two Max bonded via UltraFusion.

 

[beltzak]

MacStudio M5 Max wont be here until Ultra is ready, so again, the MSMax will be out 24 months after the first M5 was released.
spring 2027 at best

I don’t know why you claim such information but in contrast to that what happened with the M2 was that it was released in June 2022, M2 Pro and M2 Max came in January 2023 (6 months later) and M2 Ultra came in June 2023 (1 year later or 12 months since the M2 release).

Apple M2 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[b.la]

Some people here consider anything but the latest obsolete. Crazy.

Still rocking my 15” Intel MBP as daily work machine.

It's not a good look is it? I constantly get frustrated at the number chase. The Mx is coming out and its going to be this much better than the My... person buys new computer, continues to use it for the same thing their last computer did and could continue to do for the next 5 years with no noticeable difference. I used to be in a position where I made money by upgrading my phone so I got a new one every year but I don't anymore so I'm sticking with what I have until I need to upgrade.

 

[zeus423]

Seriously, what takes so long between some of the product updates? Is it one guy with an Etch-a-Sketch making changes?

 

[x86dude]

If you can buy it, it’s obsolete.

 

[Elohim369]

Is it only me who think Apple is slow and lazy? When having full control (expect manufacturing), I expected that Apple would update all Mx products at once when a new generation come. M5 Air, mini, iMac, MBP, iPad Pro should all have been released this week. I could understand the Mx Pro and Max products are shifted somewhat but not 1/2 year. It's a $3T company with, in comparison, a very small product range.

I think the main problem Apple has is remembering it also makes computers while it's busy selling 90 million phones a year...

Good problem to have but Apple doesn't have any reason to go all out on Laptop / Desktop design.

Also Apple has no competition in MacBooks. It's the only manufacturer. PCs are pretty horrible and only marginally competitive and those people using PCs for whatever reason will probably keep using them - and those that don't use Macs so Apple has no room to grow laptop sales very much.

Whereas, if they increase phone sales by 1% that's basically 1 million more phones...

 

[Elohim369]

Indeed.
Even though I am used to the notch on my company provided NotchMacBook Pro, and use a dark background to mask it as much as I can, I sometimes get confronted with it and always gasp in disbelief that leadership at Apple had agreed to this… and the fact that it’s a freaking fat laptop.

I sometimes look at my old 15” 2019 MacBook Pro and ask myself why have we gone backwards in design?

I've gotten used to the massive size of the 16" pro. I believe it makes it more durable especially in warmer weather. There's more breathing room for all components, less heat.

Been running this thing daily for 4 years straight, no break.

Never crashed.

Never had any hardware go wrong.

Still blazingly fast - I just got a maxed out M4 air, and my M1 Pro 16" is mostly faster thanks to having cooling fans and never throttling the CPU.

I've had Mac laptops for 20+ years and this is the most reliable and fastest yet.

Can't really complain.

PS: Also I am running iStat Menus and when the CPU gets hot, I set custom fan curves which keeps the entire chassis cool even under extended 100% load on all cores. This alone is remarkable. The fans cool down the M1 Pro to 70 degrees under max stress!

Also.. when I connect a 140W power brick the battery charges with nearly 90 watts which is crazy. It's using 140 watts total, 40 - 45 to run things, and 90 to charge. That's also remarkable.

 

[cocoua]

I don’t know why you claim such information but in contrast to that what happened with the M2 was that it was released in June 2022, M2 Pro and M2 Max came in January 2023 (6 months later) and M2 Ultra came in June 2023 (1 year later or 12 months since the M2 release).

Apple M2 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I was exagerating a bit, ;P
anyway, 12 months after first M5 and 6 months after MBPMax released is a lot fo the MSMax to be released, and dont forget they totally skipped MS M3Max

 

[Bregalad]

I was exagerating a bit, ;P
anyway, 12 months after first M5 and 6 months after MBPMax released is a lot fo the MSMax to be released, and dont forget they totally skipped MS M3Max

It's tough for us desktop users, but Apple is an iPhone and services company now. They also make a reasonably good selling line of notebook computers and tablets. Somewhere down the list near the iPhone accessories are the iMac and mini. Below them is the Studio and then way down at the bottom of the pile almost invisible next to the Vision Pro is the Mac Pro.

Second issue is complexity. An M chip takes a while to design and make. It also has a lot of failure points. The Pro, Max and Ultra chips are bigger and more complex than the base model so they take longer to get right and there's a higher likelihood that the finished product will be less than perfect. Across the Mac lineup you'll find options to upgrade the CPU/GPU from a chip with some disabled cores to one that came out perfectly. Apple needs a certain volume of perfect and near perfect chips to be available before they can introduce a new Mac using those chips.

Other manufacturers have been employing a similar strategy for years. Intel server chips often come out months or even a full year after the mobile and desktop versions.

I suppose Apple could have waited until the M5 Ultra was ready, but that probably would have meant continuing to sell their high volume products with M4s for another full year. I don't think customers or shareholders would've liked that very much.

 

[CWallace]

Second issue is complexity. An M chip takes a while to design and make. It also has a lot of failure points. The Pro, Max and Ultra chips are bigger and more complex than the base model so they take longer to get right and there's a higher likelihood that the finished product will be less than perfect. Across the Mac lineup you'll find options to upgrade the CPU/GPU from a chip with some disabled cores to one that came out perfectly. Apple needs a certain volume of perfect and near perfect chips to be available before they can introduce a new Mac using those chips.

One advantage of the new design process Apple is using for M5 Pro, M5 Max and (presumably) M5 Ultra is they will no longer be this massive "monolithic" SoCs which should significantly improve yields.