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Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

arstechnica.com

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Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#71

Post by mort96 »

dwedge wrote: post #38
esskay wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

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.

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#72

Post by irusensei »

storus wrote: post #7
znpy wrote: post #2

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.

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.

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.

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#73

Post by HPsquared »

ahurmazda wrote: post #59
Alifatisk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video is 1 and half hour long. It's a whole documentary. Very detailed and well thought out, but too long for me at the moment. I'll see if its possible to get a summary somehow.

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

That sounds pretty ironic, given the topic.

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#74

Post by Terretta »

reactordev wrote: post #42
bombcar wrote: post #27

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).

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 rev…

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/

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#75

Post by ajross »

thfuran wrote: post #54
Faaak wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#76

Post by jonhohle »

rattray wrote: post #39
storus wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Curious, what do you use it for?

Probably an Electron app or two.

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#77

Post by classified »

quietsegfault wrote: post #30
bombcar wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do not appreciate you calling me out personally!

Which one are you, Mac or Mini?

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#78

Post by [deleted] »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #49
ajross wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#79

Post by storus »

rattray wrote: post #39
storus wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Curious, what do you use it for?

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.

Re: Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage

#80

Post by zitterbewegung »

thfuran wrote: post #54
Faaak wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.
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