While it felt inevitable, it was still big news when Apple in March announced that the Mac Pro was discontinued after a nearly 20-year run.
Apple has discontinued more than just the Mac Pro this year, though, with three other Mac configurations also going away in recent months.
The list below refers to Mac models that were discontinued without a next-generation replacement.
Mac Studio with 512GB of RAM
Apple no longer allows customers to configure the Mac Studio with 512GB of RAM, with the maximum amount of unified memory now limited to 256GB.
Apple has not publicly commented on removing the 512GB of RAM option, but it was almost certainly because of the ongoing memory chip shortage, which has resulted in the price of RAM chips skyrocketing. It is possible that Apple could allow the Mac Studio to be configured with 512GB of RAM again one day, once supply catches up to demand.
On an earnings call this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that both the Mac Studio and the Mac mini might remain supply constrained for "several months."
Mac mini with 256GB of Storage
Apple this week stopped offering a 256GB storage option for the Mac mini worldwide. As a result, the desktop computer now has a higher starting price.
In the U.S., for example, the Mac mini now starts at $799 with the M4 chip, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage, whereas it previously started at $599 with the M4 chip, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage.
While the 512GB configuration always started at $799, customers who want a new Mac mini from Apple for $599 no longer have such an option.
Mac mini models with the M4 Pro chip already had a minimum of 512GB of storage, so there are no pricing changes for those configurations.
The base Mac mini with 256GB of storage had already been unavailable to order since last week, but it has now been removed from Apple's configurator entirely. Perhaps it will return at some point in the future, once memory chip supply stabilizes.
14-inch MacBook Pro with 512GB of Storage
The latest 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips start with at least 1TB of storage, and Apple also decided to bump the minimum storage for the lower-end 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M5 chip to 1TB.
This means the 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M5 chip and 512GB of storage was discontinued.
Keep in mind that the 14-inch MacBook Pro now starts at $1,699, whereas a configuration with 512GB of storage previously started at $1,599.
