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Apple’s Fourth-Gen Mac Studio Adds M5 Max and M5 Ultra, Keeps 2022 Design

Apple has updated the Mac Studio for a fourth generation with M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips while retaining the same aluminum chassis. The M5 Ultra is due in late October, and earlier models show how the compact desktop became Apple’s most powerful Mac amid rising memory costs.

AI News Feed · 2026-10-04 10:13

The first Mac Studio arrived in March 2022 with M1 Max and M1 Ultra options. The M1 Ultra used Apple's UltraFusion interconnect to join two M1 Max dies, creating a processor with 114 billion transistors. The M1 Max had a 10-core CPU, 32GB of memory and a 512GB SSD for $1,999. The M1 Ultra started at $3,999 with 20 cores and 64GB, configurable to 128GB. Its rear ports included four Thunderbolt ports, 10Gb Ethernet, HDMI, two USB-A ports, two USB-C ports and an SD slot. Apple has not changed that design or layout since.

At WWDC in June 2023, Apple announced a second-generation Mac Studio with no external changes. The M2 Max launched with a 12-core CPU, up to a 38-core GPU and 96GB of memory. The M2 Ultra doubled those figures to 24 CPU cores, a 76-core GPU and 192GB at 800GB/s memory bandwidth, with more than 134 billion transistors. Apple also announced an Apple silicon Mac Pro with the same M2 Ultra chip, the same 192GB memory capacity and a $6,999 starting price.

Apple left the Studio without an update for nearly two years after the M2. In March 2025, it released a third generation that mixed chips from two Apple silicon generations: an M4 Max as the newer chip and an M3 Ultra as the larger one. The M3 Ultra offered a 32-core CPU, an 80-core GPU, up to 512GB of unified memory and 16TB of storage, and both models added Thunderbolt 5 at 120Gb/s.

Twelve months later, Apple discontinued the Mac Pro and told reporters there were no plans for another. Then an AI-driven memory shortage pushed prices higher. Apple raised the M4 Max Mac Studio from $1,999 to $2,499 and the M3 Ultra from $3,999 to $5,299. Engadget described that as the steepest price increase of any Mac in history, and Apple told The Wall Street Journal it had never seen a component price rise this much, this quickly.

The fourth-generation Mac Studio arrived in August 2026, an unusual month for a Mac announcement. According to The Information, enterprise customers demanding more capable machines for running local AI models forced Apple's hand. For the first time since 2023, both the Max and Ultra use the same generation of Apple silicon. The M5 Max has an 18-core CPU, a 32- or 40-core GPU with a Neural Accelerator in every core, and up to 128GB of memory from $2,499. The M5 Ultra runs to 36 CPU cores, an 80-core GPU and up to 512GB of memory from $5,499, though that configuration is due for release in late October.

Against the M3 Ultra, Apple pitches the M5 Ultra as offering up to 4.3 times the AI performance, 1.8 times the graphics and 1.3 times the CPU performance, along with storage up to twice as fast and Wi-Fi 7 through Apple's N1 networking chip. The cores have also changed shape: the usual performance-efficiency split gives way to so-called super cores running alongside performance cores. Across four generations, the Mac Studio has become an Apple chip roadmap that killed the Mac Pro and took pole position as Apple's most powerful computer.