Later this fall, Apple will be updating the Mac Studio for the first time since early 2025. That may be just over a year ago, but it’s significant for one main reason: the highest end Mac Studio is still M3 based, as Apple never made an Ultra version of the M4 chipset. Here’s what to expect with the next generation Mac Studio, as well as in the future.

The M5-based Mac Studio refresh was initially set for mid 2026, but the ongoing memory shortage caused a bit of a timeline slip. Now, rumors suggest a debut as early as October.

With this refresh, Apple will be introducing the M5 Max and M5 Ultra Mac Studio, with the M5 Ultra potentially going as high as 768GB of RAM. It’s unclear if Apple will be able to ship this much memory because of supply constraints.

M5 Ultra will debut with up to 36 CPU cores and 80 GPU cores, and it’ll bring a considerable performance gain over the existing M3 Ultra model.

Mac Studio used to come in at $1999 and $3999 respectively for the M4 Max and M3 Ultra variants, but after the price hikes, they now come in at $2499 and $5299 – and it’s possible they’ll go even higher with the M5 models.

In 2028, Apple will be updating the Mac Studio yet again with M7 Max and M7 Ultra chips, and these ones should be more substantial.

For one, the M7 family of chips is rumored to take massive leaps in AI performance, potentially making the M7 Ultra an incredible beast when it comes to running on-device LLMs.

It’s also possible there’ll be design tweaks, though it’s unclear what those would be.

Beyond the performance gains of the M7 family, there’s two upgrades of note with the M7 Ultra Mac Studio: a new heatsink for better sustained performance, and the potential to support up to 1.5TB of RAM. Once again, that’s subject to supply availability – but Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple is developing the M7 Ultra to support 1.5TB of unified memory.

Fun fact: that’ll finally bring it back in line with the 2019 Mac Pro, which supported up to 1.5TB of RAM – the most in any Mac. Based on Apple’s current memory pricing, upgrading from 128GB of memory to 1.5TB of memory could cost around $35,000 – not accounting for required CPU upgrades.

My favorite Apple accessory recommendations:

• Anker MagSafe/Qi2 Ultra-Slim Battery Pack
• AirPods Pro 3 (2x ANC vs AirPods Pro 2!)
• Anker Nano 45W Fast Charger with Smart Display
• Anker Nano 13-in-1 MacBook Docking Station
• Logitech MX Master 4 Mouse for Mac
• Belkin Qi2 3-in-1 MagSafe Charging Stand

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