What's Next for the Mac Studio

[Neofox]

Do people really need that much? I remember people saying nobody needed 1.5TB of the Mac Pro 7,1 (with a theoretical 2.0TB maximum).

Yes, with LLM inference having this much shared memory is incredibly useful
That’s why the M3 Ultra 512GB are selling very well even for a $10k computer
The reason being to get something similar outside of Apple you would be spending tens of thousands more

 

[bigandtasty]

The accompanying software, is going to be Amazing! 😉

 

[1d1otic]

Mac Pro with upgradability and expandability is needed more than before.

 

[mannyvel]

The studio is a rocking LLM machine. 128gb of ram in a non-tower form factor is amazing. More storage!

 

[Charlie Bonesx]

Waiting for the M5 Max Mac Studio over the Mini because of the extra GPU power. Call me crazy but I do all my gaming on my Mac! Got more than enough games to play with macOS-native games, some iPad games running on macOS, and Windows games via CrossOver (besides the PS5).

Same same

In the market for a studio to get decent gpu power for gaming so waiting for m5 max

 

[Thunderbird]

I'm holding out for the Mac Studio M9 Ultra Pro Max Extreme.

I hear it's going to be a game changer.

 

[Pezimak]

Apple’s propensity to keep selling horrendously outdated Mac Pro models at hideous markups is wildly unethical. Admittedly, power users should know what they’re getting into, but there’s still a latent endorsement from Apple if it maintains stock of those models. And I don’t buy the excuse that Apple, as a four-trillion-dollar company, lacks the resources to keep developing the Mac Pro as a niche product. Heck, the Vision Pro is an even more niche product, and considerably more complex to develop and manufacture, and Apple keeps updating it.

This is what Apple does though. The only product you can rely on them updating yearly is the iPhone as it makes the most money from it. Everything else well your lucky if they get updated. As for the Mac Pro lol, Apple regularly likes to never update that. See the trash can Mac Pro, the 2019 was probably the best Mac Pro they've made, and was very short lived.

 

[Pezimak]

Be interesting to see if this rumour of customisable options for the Mac Studio CPU and GPU is true with the new SOC package. Wouldn't mind a binned CPU but top spec GPU and 64GB RAM.

 

[Pezimak]

Mac Pro with upgradability and expandability is needed more than before.

Not going to happen, Apple silicon has killed that off. Do not be surprised if they retire the Mac Pro range. You can't update CPU or GPU or RAM, and barely any PCI cards work with it either.

 

[poematik13]

Do people really need that much

Yes because its also the VRAM

 

[Reason077]

Holding out for the rumored Mac Studio Pro


View attachment 2604319

... except the pro version will come in black.

 

[waloshin]

The Studio M5 Max is pretty much what I'm waiting for, to trade in my Mini M5 Pro. Whenever it arrives.

There is no M5 mini…

 

[waloshin]

Speed. There’s nothing faster than a PCI interface for storage and networking. Also, the Mac Pro has more ports.

While the Studio is a great machine, I would prefer a Mac Pro (with the same specs) any day.

Not gonna ever happen…

 

[zombierunner]

Please no price increases.

 

[Big_D]

Mac Pro will remain irrelevant unless it features something more powerful than Ultra.

The Mac Pro is basically a Mac Studio for people who still need the ability to plug in PCIe cards or want to plug in drives directly into the PC, which an ever decreasing market. There are fast external storage housings and the number of PCIe cards with no alternative is decreasing.

Don't get me wrong, I love the look of the Pro, but it is slowly becoming an anachronism.

 

[Ifti]

As much as I would love to always have the latest and greatest, and although I'm fortunate enough to have the disposable income, for my limited uses (email, browsing, and basic Final Cut) even my current M4 Max Studio is overkill. I'm most likely going to skip the next few generations, but personally I do think that all machines should generally have the same/similar upgrade cycle. ie, they should all get the new chips when available, rather then start with MacBooks and gradually roll across over devices over the course of a year.......

 

[svish]

It will probably launch at WWDC. Will be a minor update with a new chip. Think the price will also remain the same.

 

[vantelimus]

Would be interesting to run local LLM models on the M5 Ultra

They run fine on the M3 Ultra. I'm able to run fairly large ones on my 512GB M3 Ultra. The limitations due to less GPU memory on NVIDIA video cards makes them no match for the M3. On small models, my Mac is faster and less prone to corruption than my 16GB 5080. That said, the 5080 will beat the Mac on some image generation models. I expect that will not be the case once I upgrade to an M5 Ultra. The bonus with the 5080 is that it is a nice room heater when heavily used.

 

[BillyJoeJimBob]

Will it be as noisy as the other Mac Studios when tasked by a DAW? Larger case, please. 🙄

 

[vantelimus]

It will probably launch at WWDC. Will be a minor update with a new chip. Think the price will also remain the same.

It is likely that rising memory prices will boost the price.

 

[nexusrule]

This is my frustration with Apple. They severely over-engineer a basic desktop computer. We don't need that. Just have a basic box like a Dell / basic PC and be done with it. The R&D will be a drop in the bucket to their other budgets and the pro market will like it.

So they should drop what distinguishes them and renounce to their competitive advantage to make a product that’s like the competition and therefore already exists? What sense does it make? As far as pro machines Apple always catered mostly to freelancers with the basic/mid tier pricing and to big movie/music studios with the high tier, they never cared a lot about the middle ground, and considered how they are positioned in the market is the most sensible approach. Today’s most freelancers don’t need more than a Mac Studio and big studios probably mostly use the cloud for high processing needs, so the Mac Pro has almost no place in Apple line up given today’s market. It is what it is.

 

[iDento]

What ‘update’ does the Mac Studio need to be renamed as Mac Pro so they can just discontinue the 🧀 Mac Pro?

 

[diggy33]

What ‘update’ does the Mac Studio need to be renamed as Mac Pro so they can just discontinue the 🧀 Mac Pro?

Wheels

 

[skippermonkey]

M5 Ultra all the way. Blender will fly on that thing. Finally a Mac to compete with a PC and decent (though not top-end) Nvidia card.

 

[tomtad]

I wish we could see a little bit more design with these Macs. They’re really are dull lumps of metal