Updated Mac Studio with M4 could launch with new MacBook Air

AppleInsider

Alongside the new iPad Air and the expected new MacBook Air, a new report says Apple may also release an upgraded Mac Studio.

The current Mac Studio

Tim Cook teased online that there was "something in the air," before the new iPad Air was launched, and before a newNew MacBook Air could perhaps follow suit. Now a new report says that this week may see yet a further release, with an updated Mac Studio potentially being announced alongside the MacBook Air.

According to Bloomberg, the next version of the Mac Studio is due to launch very shortly.

It's not an "Air" -- but the new Mac Studio, codenamed J575, appears to be imminent. It could be announced as early as this week along with the new MacBook Airs. There are signs these will come with an M4 Max but that its new Ultra chip will actually be an M3 Ultra.

-- Mark Gurman (@markgurman)

March 4, 2025

The Mac Studio was last updated in 2023, and has long been expected to see a significant new version. Both it and the Mac Pro, however, were expected to be updated in either the middle or the second half of 2025.

At the same time, predictions for the Mac Studio have been that it would get the M4 Max and M4 Ultra processors. That was in part because the M4 Max was already available in the Mac Pro.

This new report continues with the suggestion that the Mac Studio will get the M4 Max and M3 Ultra. That could mean the M4 Ultra going into a new edition of the Mac Pro, although there isn't as yet a claim that this will also launch imminently.

The current Mac Studio is powered by the M2 processor, available in the M2 Max and M2 Ultra versions. In theory, the Mac Pro has always been the top of the range, but for its higher price, the current Mac Pro has the same M2 Ultra.

Right from its launch, the more mid-range Mac Studio has consistently outperformed the Mac Pro. That's despite the Mac Studio, in some configurations, being $3,000 cheaper.

Rumor Score: Possible

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netrox

That would be awkward. 

I mean, I can see M3 Ultra being much faster on multicore performance than M4 Max but the problem is public perception of how they work. 

Also, we don't see evidence of interconnects so that would mean that they have to retool the M3 for Ultra or they may have just decided to have a monolithic die for M3 Ultra. 

atonaldenim

I think you meant to write “That was in part because the M4 Max was already available in the MacBook Pro.” There is no Mac Pro with M4 Max of course. 

As to the rumor, offering an M3 Ultra and M4 Max at the same time seems pretty weird, and also a bit insulting to their highest end, biggest spending customers not to offer a chip with the improvements of the M4 generation. The M4 Max would be closer to the performance of an M3 Ultra than it would an M4 Ultra, I think you’d see a lot of people choosing the M4 Max as the best value option.

The only strategic reason I could imagine would be to push high-end buyers to an M4 Ultra Mac Pro, but I don’t think Apple wants to push the Mac Pro. They don’t want to be on the hook for supporting whatever people might plug into those PCIe slots. It feels more like they are stuck supporting the Mac Pro for a segment of their pro customer base that demands the PCIe slots for specialized I/O, ultra fast data storage & networking. I think Apple would be happier if everyone bought Mac Studios and the Pro tower went away.

So if this does happen, it would have to be down to some kind of manufacturing limitations. Would they also offer an M3 Max Studio along with the M3 Ultra? Call that the base model, and then offer M4 Max as an upgrade option? While not offering an upgrade option on the Ultra.

It could be something like…
$2000 M3 Max
   $3000 M4 Max upgrade option
$4000 M3 Ultra

atonaldenim

Thinking about it more, they could use the “Tim Cook doctrine” to lower the entry price of the Mac Studio with the M3 Max.

Something like…
$1799 M3 Max
$2799 M4 Max
$3799 M3 Ultra

A price cut compared to last gen would at least soften the blow of no M4 Ultra, a little.

People said the M3 was a stopgap generation that would quickly be dropped due to the difficulties of the silicon node process or whatever. But they kust announced M3 iPad Airs which must be a pretty high volume product. So maybe M3 is not going away so fast after all. 

keithw

This makes no sense. If Apple was going to go with 2 different generations of Apple Silicon in the Studio,  why didn’t they release the M4 Max Studio at the same time as the M4 Max MacBook Pro? I think Gurman is wrong this time.

atonaldenim

Well, it happened! I'm glad that Apple didn't do the 3 price tier structure that I mused about, M4 Max for $2000 is a way better starting point. And I'm glad they made the M3 Ultra better than simply M3 Max x 2, with Thunderbolt 5, and 512GB max RAM (still not as much as the 1.5TB of RAM supported by the 2019 Xeon Mac Pro). M3 Ultra is kind of an M3.5 that holds its own against M4 Max. It's common with Intel chips too that the biggest baddest top of the line multi-core Xeon chips have slower single-core performance than the mid-tier chips. Pro buyers are probably somewhat used to it. But yes, the M3 / M4 naming is pretty confusing. The target audience for M3 Ultra probably just cares most about the fastest multi-core render times and won't be worried that the box says "3" rather than "4". The people who are the most confused by it, are probably the type of user who would be buying the M4 Max base model anyway.

edited March 5