Discussion

znpy: Apple recently introduced rdma support in mac os. They are probably trying to push those people buying the 512gb configuration towards buying more of the 256gb configuration and clustering them together.

PostOnce: A consumer computer company is not going to push people towards building a miniature HPC cluster. Closest we'll ever get to that is multiple GPUs for video games.**Nvidia is no longer a primarily consumer company, so all the other GPU stuff is no counterpoint

MaxikCZ: One could argue that if you are buying 512gb RAM machines you are not a typical consumer.

pera: I was just looking to buy a Raspberry Pi 5: the 8GB one is now 58% more expensive than last year; that's more than what I'm willing to pay.

storus: Weren't 512GB models selling like hot cakes to the complete surprise of Apple? Wait time was up to 3 months last time I checked. Glad I got mine last October.

ErneX: > Pricing for the 256GB configuration has also increased, from $1,600 to $2,000

mkl: I'm trying to work out if I should buy a 48GB M4 Pro Mac Mini now, or wait for M5 Pro ones later this year. For AI/ML purposes, mostly. As far as I can tell, the new M5 MacBooks didn't go up much or any for the same amount of RAM?

abnercoimbre: What will you do? eBay?

appreciatorBus: “Like hot cakes” is relative.> The 512GB Mac Studio was not a mass-market machine—adding that much RAM also required springing for the most expensive M3 Ultra model, which brought the system’s price to a whopping $9,499.Number of people willing the number of people willing to spend $10,000 on a computer is pretty tiny. Maybe they are common enough in HN circles, but I doubt any one at Apple is losing sleep over them.

discordance: Depends what kind of AI/ML purposes you are intending to work on

deelowe: I don't expect the ram situation to get any better soon if that's what you're asking.

mikkupikku: At this point is the performance advantage of Apple CPUs even worth it if you can't upgrade the ram itself? I'm thinking you might be better off building a PC and putting the absolute bare minimum RAM in it, with plans to swap that out with good stuff in a year or two once the RAM market stops being insane.

mkl: It's the RAM bandwidth that's the advantage, 300GB/s for M5 Pro. RAM in slots is way slower, ~50GB/s.

jsheard: And an RTX 5090 has 32GB at 1800GB/sec. Apples tradeoff is higher max capacity with less bandwidth, so if you're not actually getting high capacity then it swings back in favor of just getting a big GPU.

pera: Maybe if I can find an unused one, still not sure tbh... Or I might go for an alternative SBC from AliExpress and compromise on CPU

htsh: are we sure the RAM market will stop being insane in a year or two or could this be the new norm?

mikkupikku: I don't know if it'll be a year or two, hard to say exactly when the AI bubble will pop, but I feel quite certain it's coming. The AI stuff is great but most of the money being thrown around to all these different companies is mostly going to be wasted. Investors don't know who the winners and losers will be, just like when people were investing in pets.com instead of amazon.com.

bombcar: They may be trying to sell through the existing CPU before a launch (soft or not) of the M5-based versions (though I've heard the rumor is there will be no M5 Ultra and we might be looking at an M6 Ultra later in the year).

bombcar: I wouldn't buy a local machine for AI/ML purposes unless you have an actual defined use case and programs to run (perhaps even being able to test them at an Apple Store).Otherwise you may end up like others using a high-spec Mac mini to just access online models.

giancarlostoro: I cant personally comment on them since I havent grabbed them yet but these are two Pi clones I was considering:Radxa Rock 5C and Orange Pi 5I would do research on them because they are a similar form factor and usually cheaper for more memory… the software will be different.

pjmlp: Old Android phones might also be an option, depending on the use case.

cobertos: Is that a typo in the article? It's $5999 on Apple's website for that configuration

ErneX: It’s what toggling the 256GB upgrade costs from the previous ram amount, not the computer total.

tekacs: I think this means cost above. As in the extra cost you pay.

onli: Why should it be the new norm? We have an abnormal situation now, of massive amounts of investor money being poured into unprofitable bets, that this time had the side effect of eating up hardware components. There are two possible outcomes:1. Yes, it's the new normal, then production capacity will be increased and prices fall.2. No, it's not the new normal, the bubble pops and component prices come crashing down when buyers default etc.Option 2 has been the normal outcome of these situations so far. But sure, questions remains how long all of this will take.

quietsegfault: I do not appreciate you calling me out personally!

jsheard: But for ML workloads the comparison isn't between CPU RAM and Apple unified RAM, it's between Apple unified RAM and discrete GPU VRAM, the latter of which can push up to 1.8TB/sec now. Apple Silicon is a trade-off in sacrificing bandwidth for higher capacity, so whether it makes sense depends on your workload.

dwedge: The raspberry pis have been bad value for money for at least 4 or 5 years now unless you're really sensitive to the power draw. Once you add in a case and fan (required if you don't want it to overheat and screw the SD card), the charger, SD card it generally comes in at roughly the same price as more capable intel 1L PC like the Lenovo M920Q (though of course, they aren't new)

pera: Yeah power consumption (and performance per watt) is the main reason I keep buying Raspberry Pi, I haven't find anything similar on that regard, specially for pi zeros

reactordev: This is most likely the case. They ended their production run and have inventory (or so they thought). Now with the rush for LLM power, they sold out of them and they no longer have that inventory. This was a surprise to their bottom line AND their supply chain logistics plan!I’m sure they wanted to order more but were priced out for the increase in ram costs. Apple probably decided it wasn’t worth it until they revamped the architecture (and put a larger order in this time around).I’m not a buyer but I suspect that’s what’s playing out right now behind closed door meetings.

neya: There were a couple alternatives for a few years. Wonder if they are a better value for money now. Beaglebone Black, Orange Pi, Jetson Orin Nano, etc.

hylaride: > A consumer computer companyApple isn't a just a consumer computer company. Both iPhones and Macs have very large business markets. In fact, I'd argue that the primary reason Apple hasn't locked down MacOS as much as iOS is that it'd absolutely kill the demand from software developers.

znpy: Apple isn’t really a consumer company. It does both consumer and enterprise stuff. Just look at all the fleet management stuff it does for ios and mac os.And besides that, high end macbook prod and studios are workstation-class computers, not consumer-level computers.

chiph: I think it's unlikely that Apple is paying the spot price for memory. They almost certainly negotiate delivery/price contracts in advance. Maybe the contract for the chips used in the 512GB model will expire soon?

ajross: Even if so, everyone lives in the same market. If Apple has a contract for those chips at an artificially low price, it's to their advantage to sell them to someone else at market value instead of putting it in a Mac where they'd have to increase price (and take the PR hit) significantly to make the same profit.

lenerdenator: Now how am I supposed to develop Electron apps and use Chrome?In all seriousness, though, as one of the uninitiated, what would be the value of hosting LLMs on a machine like this that has a lot of memory that you pay for up front versus some sort of VPC-based approach?

Culonavirus: It's not a shortage, it's a cartel.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVzeHTlWIDY

tonyedgecombe: [delayed]

Faaak: That doesn't take into account the profit generated by selling the mac in itself

thfuran: Or the fact that if they sell all their RAM without putting it in devices, they won’t be able to sell devices, and some portion of their customer base will leave their ecosystem, possibly forever.

muyuu: it's Apple and they don't like to adjust prices to the marketother companies would have just hiked the price of the 512GB model to reflect the lack of supply and to allow people who really need that model to pay for it dearlybut that comes with some PR damage that Apple would rather not deal with

cyanydeez: Just got a strix halo ROG Z13 this month with soldered UMA memory, 128GB LPDDR5X-8000. It cost ~$3k.Amazon is selling 128GB memory kits @ 5600MHZ for $3k.I think there might be a market failure guys.

tonyedgecombe: [delayed]

saurik: So, the question I wonder: is that it for this tier? Will we even see a 512GB variant of the next model?

tonyedgecombe: Not if their margin on the completed product is higher than the potential profit on the memory.My guess is they are doing this because they make more money selling two 256GB devices than they do on one 512GB device.

cyanydeez: This is like believing there's unlimited, instant-on capacity. The same type of "we can just tariff whatever we want, and magically, the market will figure it out".That makes sense for a few products, but not something that takes billions of dollars, multiple factories, etc to produce.

irusensei: It's also very hard to encounter x86 machines that can be powered from PoE.

Alifatisk: That video is 1 and a half hour long. It's a whole documentary. Interesting but too long. I'll see if its possible to get a summary somehow.

ahurmazda: aside: YT has a AI/summary option (unless creator opts out). Look for the sparkle button. Personally, it gets me 80% there most days.

Alifatisk: Couldn't find the summary button anywhere, but, when searching around I found out that you can apparently paste in Youtube links on Google AI studio and summarize it.

cubefox: No, it's a shortage due to high demand from AI data centers.

benbojangles: You can keep your 512gb mac studio i'm running qwen3.5:0.8b on an Orangepi zero 2w and learning just as much as they are.

benbojangles: i'm running qwen3.5:0.8b on my orangepi zero 2w, low token/s but it still runs. I think i paid around £14 for it over a year ago but now the same board is double price. I wouldn't buy a computer right now of any kind. It's a bubble.

itg: The AMD Strix Halo pc's are another option. I was also debating between a mac mini but decided to go the AMD route.

ajross: The story is literally about them cancelling a product variant...

Terretta: Regret on a $10k desktop rendered obsolete for purpose (the 512GB of RAM only has so many applications) months later is not a great look. It's good long-term brand value thinking to close the regrets window earlier.Definitely “Caution” stage: https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/mac-studio/

HPsquared: That sounds pretty ironic, given the topic.

irusensei: Any custom configuration takes a while for them to prepare. I remember my M3 max took 2 or 3 months to a arrive.Good thing is they only seem to charge when device ships so if an M5 comes along you should be able to cancel the m3 ultra and get the m5.

esskay: Unless you specifically need a pi (unlikely) then they really are awful value now. Hard to really go out of the way to support them now they've stuck two fingers up at the solo/indie/educational community and gone all enterprise.Second hand mini pc's are a good option. Half the price of a pi 5 + sd + power and you often get them with 16gb ram, a decent ssd, etc.If you need GPIO then many of the rockchip boards are still fairly affordable and easily had.

dwedge: Don't forget the case and fan. I think the RPi 3 was the last one you could comfortably run without a fan and not worry about it frying the SD card

mort96: Completely depends on what you're doing. If you're doing a lot of sustained compute, or doing graphics, then yeah you're gonna want some cooling. But it's a useful little machine for all kinds of tasks which don't cause sustained high power consumption.

rootusrootus: But they did raise the price of the 256GB model.

dangus: Of course, $10,000 workstations for a corporation working on AI products might just be a necessary tool.Just a guess, but I think it’s entirely possible that Apple sold through the full production run that they intended for this generation of the machine and they don’t want to order a new batch before the next generation of processors come out.I have to think that Apple is close to replacing the M3 Ultra with an M5 Ultra or something of the sort.

Imustaskforhelp: I haven't watched up the video but I went way too into the weeds of the ram crisis.I am not sure what the video suggests. This is my own understanding of the things after I got way too invested in why does OpenAI need all of this ram all of a sudden. (On a random tuesday)My understanding is TLDR: The stargate project had OpenAI,Oracle,Softbank etc.Softbank got the money from Japanese bank loan[0] at low interests rates and actually scrambled to find the 20 Billion $ (they commited combined with oracle to around 500 billion $)(Btw The datacenter thing is being done in a similar fashion by Oracle)Almost all of that money when given to OpenAI was used/(will be used?) to commit 20% of the Ram supply of the whole world at a more expensive package because these companies just package ram in different order to get "AI ram" and then Micron shuts down the consumer brand (Crucial)This has now caused Ram prices to spike 5 times the cost in a couple of months back. Also, the inflation is happening in hard drive and just Nand in general.The largest impacts I can see that is that even companies like google were scrambling to find Ram. I find this to be one of the larger reasons why they might need so much ram all of a sudden. I mean Google and Anthropic were needing Ram but not 20% of it and not committed in such a way and I am not sure if datacenters are even being built for ram to be stored[1]OpenAI datacenters in Argentina for example is operated by such a shady company that came like 1-2 years ago IIRC. So a 500 Billion $ Project is just picking any random companies ... Yea no, I have the belief that they don't trust it themselves especially when a company is scrambling for money.All of this does feel very cartel/monopoly-ish to me to push the competitors out of the market or the people running open source models out of the market and another benefit of it for OpenAI all was that we normal everyday people get impacted too and I am sure that when they made such a large decision, they must have internally thought about it but we all know the morality of OpenAI now after the DoD deal.But I don't think that google and other companies are that impacted by it all it seems as well. Only the average consumer and Hosting providers (Thus seeing OVH,Hetzner raise prices for example). The average AWS/GCP/Azure makes enough money that they might not even raise money for sometime and they'll be fine having another additional benefit that more people worried about increasing prices would go to Microsoft Azure/GCP/AWS even more so.Edit: Gamers are being pushed out of consoles and everything too and some are saying seeing the cloud connection and AWS coming out and saying that we want Gamers on cloud (paraphrasing) as meaning that its all done to move everything to cloud.I do believe that this might be only half the story as OpenAI does benefit from everything moving to the cloud (somewhat) but its done even more to prevent competition in the whole genre as well.I believe that they thought about it and treated it as a plus point but before all and everything, it helped them thought that it can help them maintain their flimsy lead in AI models as more and more catch up by having a more monopolistic lead by stifling competition by rising prices 5 times. Gamers and normal people were just the largest casuality in this crossfire.I was thinking in the past month when I found all this that damn, chatgpt morality sucks and they did all of it intentionally and then they had the defense of war deal and the whole controversy surrounding it so yeah...[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-06/softbank-...[1]: https://www.shacknews.com/article/148208/oracle-openai-texas...

zitterbewegung: The Mac Studio highest config was a great value for AI workloads though at least for inference and no one is reporting this….

tonyedgecombe: [delayed]

storus: A retailer told me they sold more 512GB RAM MacStudios than any other type. N=1 I know but still...

amelius: Why are you so sure?

zitterbewegung: Yea, wwdc is happening soon and the M5 ultra is in production . The new pricing will be respective on the highest config (768 gb is rumored) though.

storus: M5 Max has still only 128GB RAM at most; one would expect 192GB if there was any indication M5 Ultra would have 768GB RAM?

jmull: Interestingly, the "ultra" Mac Studio released a year ago was based on the older M3, not M4. Apparently, the work to "ultra-fy" a CPU is significant (which makes sense) so there can be a lag.Not that they have to follow pattern, but the a Mac Studio ultra released later this year might be based on M4. Or one based on M5 might be released a year or more from now.

marcuskaz: Inventory is tight too, if you look at delivery/shipping times for Mac Studio and Mac Mini, I'm seeing April/May

thfuran: And you think this is the first sign that they’ve decided they’re going to spend the next few years being a RAM reseller before starting to sell consumer products again?

knollimar: Don't you need two 512GB ones for unquanted latest chinese models?

zitterbewegung: It is a rumor at this time and we are going from M3 to M5 on the Ultra not the M4 to the M5

Sathwickp: Was bound to happen, it never found the market fit

rz2k: The maximum memory configuration for the M3 Max MBP was also128GB.

WillAdams: I've had an rPi4 running a copy of a forum and server (for reference) in one of the fancy aluminum cases which passively cools for a couple of years now, no issues.

phamilton: 15 years ago I was an intern at Micron and learned they passed on a contract with Apple because Apple insisted on discounts and there wasn't a compelling reason to reduce profit at Micron.So yeah, Apple probably does pay less. But the market has enough demand that suppliers do say no.

harias: You can use Gemini or NotebookLM to summarize it

gruez: You could ask the same about OP.

redman25: For consumers, there's little reason to run unquanted, especially for large models which take less of a hit from quantization. I'm running a 200b model at Q3 with very little degradation. A 1000b model would see even less change.

groundzeros2015: My understanding is “ultra-ify” means put two together. I think it’s about having inventory

cubefox: Inference to the best explanation.

zitterbewegung: Getting 512 GB of ram at the price point is cheaper than everything else. That’s why Apple stopped production to divert for the M5 ultra.

hx8: I'm sure the margin was great for the ones it sold.

mapt: It costs the same, we just mark it as an opportunity cost of unloading the memory on the spot market.If I buy contracts for 1 gold bar at $500, and the gold price runs to $1200, I can either continue to market my gold-containing product for the same profit margin, or I can unload all that gold for $1200/bar and make a profit of $700/bar. If my profit margin is high and it doesn't take many gold bars to make a thousand units, maybe discontinuation doesn't make any sense. But if my product is "solid gold statuary of Dear Leader", and the bars are most of my cost basis, I know what I'd do.

GeekyBear: The rumor from Gurman is that the M5 Ultra ships in the first half of this year.This may just be a sign that the M5 Ultra is shipping sooner rather than later.We do have leaked benchmarks showing that the M5 Max outperforms the M3 Ultra currently shipping in the Mac Studio, so buying an M3 Ultra Studio right now would be a terrible idea.

kmfrk: A lot of people also got into buying Macs for OpenClaw, so demand is probably up as well.

api: I’ve been in tech for a long time and have seen RAM shortages and price spikes before. This one’s fairly bad but they resolve in 1-3 years.

groundzeros2015: You’re thinking only finance. Their goal in buying the contract is to secure the good. The ability to maintain price will allow them to sell more units which is the number they want to show.

groundzeros2015: I hope so. If the government isn’t protecting them all we need to do is wait for new participants in the market.

groundzeros2015: Have you seen how much GPUs cost to rent? Note that this memory is shared between CPU and GPU.

groundzeros2015: The cure for high prices is high prices.

pixl97: Ya, how's that working out for GPU's?

ganoushoreilly: I suspect they'll still want to offer it given the push they've been making over the last year with RDMA. My guess is the 512gb or larger studio will largely be a byproduct of the systems they're designing for their own AI efforts in the datacenter. I don't think this is the end of it for the longer term.

aleph_minus_one: Slightly off-topic side remark:Every mathematician and computer scientist should feel deeply confused that the M... Ultra is more powerful than the M... Max.Why? Because if something is the maximum, there doesn't exist anything larger/better. :-)

guerrilla: I wonder if the war with Iran could actually fix the RAM shortage. If this continues it really could put a damper on datacenter rollout.

rattray: Curious, what do you use it for?

storus: Huge local thinking LLMs to solve math and for general assistant-style tasks. Models like Kimi-2.5-Q3, DeepSeek-XX-Q4/Q5, Qwen-3.5-Q8, MiniMax-m2.5-Q8 etc. that bring me to Claude4/GPT5 territory without any cloud. For coding I have another machine with 3x RTX Pro 6000 (mostly Qwen subvariants) and for image/video/audio generation I have 2x DGX Sparks from ASUS.

ganoushoreilly: We must be twins, i've got the same three working in a cluster.I was really excited to see where the GB300 Desktops end up, with 768gb ram but now that data is leaking / popping up (dell appears to only be 496gb), we may be in the 60-100k range and that's well out of my comfort zone.If Apple came out with a 768gb Studio at 15k i'd bite in a heart beat.https://www.dell.com/en-us/lp/dell-pro-max-nvidia-ai-dev

zozbot234: This is actually relevant, because DRAM costs just as much now per Gb as it did 15 years ago (that's controlling for inflation; it's as much as it cost 20 years ago on a pure price basis).

copperx: [delayed]

zozbot234: It used to mean that, but the new M5 Pro and M5 Max have separate CPU and GPU chiplets with an interposer, similar to how the previous generation Ultras were based on connecting two Max full chips. So it's unclear whether there will be any Ultra for the M5.

zozbot234: Dedicated GPU VRAM is much scarcer than the unified RAM you get on Mac platforms. This is a big deal for SOTA LLMs that combine high memory footprint with a need for high memory bandwidth in order to get acceptable performance.

storus: Yeah, I didn't want to spend more than 50k for local inference stack. I can amortize it in my taxes so it's not a big deal but beyond it would start eating into my other allocations. I might still get M5 Ultra if it pops up and benchmarks look good, possibly selling M3 Ultra.

kube-system: Yes but the clock has been ticking, new products are being released, and at some point they will be renegotiating the next contract

kube-system: iMessage… and safari. Browsing the web from a headless vps has hurdles.

andai: You do actually need to run it on a Mac, if (and only if!) you require integration with Mac-only software. But the main factor is probably just "all the cool kids are doing it" ;)

GeekyBear: They should use something simple, like AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395?

Imustaskforhelp: > safari. Browsing the web from a headless vps has hurdlesHooking things up to puppeteer maybe?You can use pupeteer to then use the chromium control remote (debug?) option iirc which uses websockets underneath the hoodThen you can connect this from your pc or theoretically any Control server. Surprised to not hear much work on that front now that you mention it.

mv4: I tried finding a 128 - 256GB Mac Studio online and most options would not be shipped for at least "8-10 weeks".

api: It’ll take longer for two reasons.One is that it’s a more complicated part with tougher fab requirements.Two is that it’s not a commodity. AMD can’t make nVidia GPUs. They have to design their own. Everyone has patents and trade secrets and copyrights. Patents expire and knowledge diffuses but that adds another time lag.RAM is a commodity. Totally interchangeable standard part. Also simpler to fab, thus quicker and easier to scale up.

kube-system: The CDP debugger is easily detectable client side and many websites will flag your traffic as undesirable

don_neufeld: Yup, and it looks like it will be a tough negotiation:https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/26/apple-agrees-100-price-...

j45: More likely that the M5 Max Studio is coming out. the M5 Max Macbook Pros just came out.Also the 512 GB ssd version has a slower SSD than anything 1 TB and up. The new SSDs on the M5 I believe are much faster and what's coming likely will receive that.There's no doubt there's a ram shortage, and price increases, and the biggest companies in the world lock in their pricing well in advance, and the remaining leftovers are where the consumers experience shortages.

root_axis: I am not convinced there are that many people actually buying macs for OpenClaw.

__patchbit__: There is a $6 thousand value add service to configure your Mac Mini with AI and have that accessible over iMessage.

fartfeatures: The M4 Max lacks the UltraFusion interconnect, making an M4 Ultra impossible. We might however see an M5 Ultra due to the new Fusion Architecture in the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips (just announced for the latest MacBook Pro), which uses a high-bandwidth die-to-die interconnect to bond two dies into a single unified SoC—similar in concept to UltraFusion but evolved for better scaling, efficiency, and features like per-GPU-core Neural Accelerators.Reports and leaks strongly indicate Apple is preparing an M5 Ultra (likely fusing or scaling from the M5 Max using this advanced interconnect tech) for a Mac Studio refresh later in 2026, based on Bloomberg/Mark Gurman and other sources. This would bring back the top-tier "Ultra" option after skipping it entirely for M4.

foobiekr: It's really probably more about wafer and chip allocation.

reenorap: I've been in tech for ~40 years now and I've never seen anything like this. The downstream repercussions on consumer products that have no access to cheap memory is devastating and is an extinction level event for most low-cost providers of cell phones, tvs, etc.

layer8: Two years remaining at least this time, according to current fab planning.

avidphantasm: And here I was hoping they would put an M5 Ultra in a MacBook Pro. Maybe they will add it as an option to the 16” at a later date.

muyuu: Yep, but it they had to double or triple it on short notice, they'd have just removed it from the store instead.

Aurornis: > Amazon is selling 128GB memory kits @ 5600MHZ for $3k.128GB memory kits are not $3K. Closer to half of that. Amazon is not a good source of RAM pricing.

827a: IMO its more nuanced. They're likely in production ramp-up of the M5 Ultra Mac Studio, for release in the next ~3 months; they have pre-purchased bins of memory from the supply-constrained major memory supplies; and they need as much as they can get because they want to push an M5 Ultra config to 768gb to continue the "you can run local models" story that the M5 Max Macbook Pro started telling last week.Going beyond 512gb and into 768gb memory is something of a threshold that will allow Apple to claim local capability for significantly more models. Qwen3-235B, Minimax M2.5, and GLM 4.7 could kind of run with no quantization on 512gb, but they'll comfortably run at 768gb. DeepSeek-V3.2 and GLM 5 may also work at some level of quantization.

freedomben: Where would you recommend sourcing RAM?

bombcar: I wonder if the MacBook Pro can handle the thermal envelope of actually running an Ultra flat out.

freedomben: I'm eyeing that seriously too. Are you running linux on it by chance? Would love to hear from someone running linux on a non-Apple AI capable machine

criddell: Is Apple telling the "you can run local models" story, or is it third parties?

wahnfrieden: Yes Apple promotes local model capabilities in their marketing

robotresearcher: One factor is that you may not be in a position to push your working data to a third party service, for security or legal reasons.

827a: Yes:> A powerful Neural Accelerator is built into each GPU core of the M5 family of chips, which dramatically speeds up AI tasks like image generation from diffusion models, large language model (LLM) prompt processing, and on-device transformer model training. [1][1] https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/

pstuart: Perhaps not? Think of all the Chrome tabs you could keep open at one time!

hu3: Yes and the result of this $10k endeavour is a much slower a dumber model than any SoTA $20/mo API. On top of the maintenance burden to keep software/models updated.

pram: This is never happening, the Ultra needs a giant copper heatsink.

Aurornis: Newegg has 128GB kits from quality vendors at $1500: https://www.newegg.com/crucial-pro-128gb-ddr5-5600-cas-laten...

boznz: [delayed]

citizenpaul: The second I saw llms run on gpus i started trying to predict the last year that nvidia produces a consumer GPU product.

Thorrez: >Apple buys and uses so much RAM across all its product lines that it’s in a better negotiating position than the likes of Framework or Raspberry Pi, but CEO Tim Cook acknowledged in the company’s last earnings call that memory pricing could begin to eat into Apple’s profit margins later this year.

AnthonyMouse: There's also the fact that they were charging $200 to add 8GB of RAM before the prices went up, when that much RAM was something like $70 at retail.The problem then is that when the supply gets more expensive and you were already charging the maximally-extractive price to customers, they can't eat much more of a price increase, so instead most of it has to come out of margins.

pwarner: I think part of what's happening lately is that chip folks are start to realize they can make margin too. Maybe it's possible thanks to consolidation but for sure folks see the crazy margins nvida, apple etc have, and I suspect they're like - we want that too!

calf: Not really, Max is to violet as Ultra is to ultraviolet, as in something exceeding an established category (visible light)

TMWNN: >I've been in tech for ~40 years now and I've never seen anything like this.Then how do you not remember the DRAM shortage of the late 1980s?

JumpCrisscross: > M4 Max lacks the UltraFusion interconnectAny idea why? Wasn't that on the M1?

rafaelmn: I was configuring my M5 MBP preorder and 48=>64 was 250 EUR so not sure if they cut prices or your numbers are outdated ?

bombcar: US prices are often low enough that it's almost worth the flight just to grab one.14' MBP M5 Pro 64GB - $2999 or 3449 €

bombcar: I suspect that the cost/benefit isn't there. Those who need the "biggest Ultra" will be happy with the previous generation or so, and so they'll refresh that on a 2 or 3 year cycle.

nickthegreek: i just walked into a microcenter yesterday where not only did they have a huge stock of mac mini, they are all advertised 15% off and runs openclaw.

bombcar: https://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.aspx?fq=ca... it's even mentioned on each one online

brcmthrowaway: Why can't RAM be done inhouse? It's probably simpler than a CPU.. right?

wmf: Maybe etching the deep trench capacitors is really tricky.

caseyf7: There will absolutely be an M5 Ultra. Gurman has confirmed it.

dwedge: Another annoyance is that you need to buy a hat for PoE, it seems like an oversight

reenorap: At worse back in 1988 it impacted only PCs.This shortage in 2026 is more consequential across the board and impacts consumer electronics as a whole and the fact it's going to last years means that many low cost manufacturers are going to close up shop because they won't be profitable.

teaearlgraycold: iMessage is the only explanation I can find. Minis aren’t powerful enough for agentic models unless you’re getting a rather expensive version (I could see the MX Pro w/ 64GB working). At which point they don’t have the price appeal of the base model anymore.

snczl: The story here is about what lesson was learned by the DRAM cartel after they got busted and hit with large fines. One might hope the lesson learned would be, "we should not fix prices", but what got them in trouble was colluding secretly. What if we just did it via earnings reports, press releases, and other public statements?While there is some market variance like the 2022 to 2023 glut, DRAM prices haven't fallen in real terms in over 15 years. This was all done by controlling supply, and it was all done in public. It starts with one of the big three putting out a statement like, "Samsung is considering reducing DRAM wafer output due to softness in the mobile PC segment." The actual reason varies and often makes little sense.This is followed by similar public statements from the other large vendors expressing a willingness to reduce supply. Once everyone commits in this way, the companies follow up with announcements of actual supply reductions. You can watch this happen any time prices start to dip.My bet is if the DOJ investigates, they will not find the same sort of embarrassing smoking gun emails between representatives of Micron, Hynix, and Samsung. The collusion was all done in public. The companies will claim it is just good business management, a strategy known as "conscious parallelism." They even used this exact defense to get a 2022 antitrust lawsuit dismissed.That said, their goal seemed to be just keeping prices fixed. They wanted to avoid boom and bust cycles, keep profits high, and keep prices stagnant. A massive price hike invites investigations and creates problems. If DRAM prices just never fall, they can enjoy healthy profits with little risk.But what happens when your intentionally constrained supply hits a sudden large spike in demand? Prices skyrocket, everyone gets mad, and demands investigations. My guess is instead of being thrilled with the price spike, the executives at the large DRAM manufacturers are very worried someone put something incriminating in a document somewhere that can be subpoenaed ("how we're going to fix prices in public and get away with it").

zozbot234: Publicly announcing reductions in DRAM wafer output is not per se nefarious. You need to do it from time to time anyway, if only as part of retooling towards newer technologies that will be required when making DRAM dies for newer standards.

rewgs: My theory is that they're going to release a new Mac Pro that's about half the size of the current one. Enough space for some PCIe slots, but otherwise smaller given the enormous amount of wasted space in that thing since moving from Intel to Apple Silicon. Guessing the rack-mount model, should they continue selling it, will be 3 or 4u instead of 5u.I know everyone thinks they're going to just kill it, but I don't see it. Apple's move under Tim Cook has been to exhaust supplies (see: filling the Intel Mac Pro chassis with air and not updating the CPU), letting people predict its death (see: 2013 -> 2019 Mac Pro silence), and then redesigning it into something people want while utilizing it as an opportunity to segment specs across their SKUs.The Studio will remain the high-powered creator machine, whereas the Mac Pro will be retooled into an AI beast.

thefounder: Why people buy the Studio with the high ram config is actually the unified memory. This is unique to Apple. I'm not sure what Mac Pro would do with PCIe cards . It would be useless for AI because what you want is unified memory that can be used by the GPU/AI not just ram.

halJordan: That means little and less

thefounder: why just 768gb and not a ~1TB ?

halJordan: You have to ask why Apple is going to nickel and dime you?

Imustaskforhelp: I didn't know that, Sorry about that, but is there no way to make CDP debugger less detectable. Seems doable to me but maybe there's a catch if its not already done by somebody maybe?

cute_boi: there is so many way to make it undetectable, but it is cat and mouse game.

tencentshill: This is 512GB RAM, not SSD. Kind of insane that has to be differentiated now.

rewgs: PCIe cards would indeed be useless for AI unless Apple supports third-party GPUs, but there are certainly some pro creators that would still prefer to have them. I myself work in large-template film/game scoring and while we all love our Mac Studios, they're usually housed in a Sonnet chassis so that we can continue to use PCIe cards. Had Apple kept them in parity with the Studio w/r/t CPU and RAM, the rack-mount version of the Pro would've been a no-brainer.

asdff: Actually that is relatively cheaper than Apple has ever sold ram. They would always charge $200 for each ram upgrade and it might have been only 4gb or less back then.The twist now though is they started soldering in the RAM with the retina macbook, so you can't run around apple's extortionate pricing like you could in the past and just buy components off the market.Such a stupid cartoon evil villain move too, just to force us into getting RAM from them. I have never been memory bandwidth bound (Apple's excuse for soldering in the RAM) in my life and yet I am forced to buy computers that optimize for this at the expense of things I actually care about like serviceability. And also consider the fact it incentivizes people to buy more RAM than they need today in effort to future proof their device, in a time of RAM shortages. And who knows maybe by the time that RAM amount is relevant the CPU can no longer keep up so the hoarding might not even be for anything either.

AnthonyMouse: > I have never been memory bandwidth bound (Apple's excuse for soldering in the RAM)This isn't even a plausible excuse. For the entry level machines, the soldered RAM only has the same memory bandwidth as ordinary laptops. For the high end machines it likewise doesn't have any more than other high end machines (Threadripper/Epyc/Xeon) which just do the same thing as Apple -- use more memory channels -- without soldering the RAM.

827a: Its not entirely unique to Apple: the Ryzen AI Max platform (in the e.g. Framework Desktop) is a unified memory platform. The PlayStation 5 also has a unified memory architecture (which given the chiplet was made by AMD, not too surprising) (people sleep on PlayStation hardware engineering; they're far better at skating to where the puck is headed than most hardware tech companies. remember Cell?)

shadowpho: I thought x64 was better for perf per watt just because perf is so much better