Despite price increases across the Mac line, Apple is still planning to release a new Mac Studio as soon as this year, reports Bloomberg.
Apple plans to introduce a new M5 Ultra chip as the final option in the M5 family before it transitions to the M6, M7, M7 Pro, and M7 Max. The M5 Ultra will come in a new version of the Mac Studio, which hasn't been updated since March 2025.
The Mac Studio refresh was supposed to come earlier in 2026, but Apple reportedly postponed the launch because of memory chip supply issues and price increases. In April, Bloomberg said the Mac Studio would launch sometime around October 2026.
It's not clear if Apple will make an October launch. The current M3 Ultra Mac Studio already has delivery estimates ranging into October.
The M5 Ultra chip is expected to have around 36 CPU cores and 80 GPU cores, which is not too far off from the M3 Ultra. The M3 Ultra has up to a 32-core CPU and up to an 80-core GPU. Apple has tested support for up to 768GB of unified memory, but supply constraints could prevent it from launching with an option for that much memory.
Apple was selling the M3 Ultra Mac Studio with up to 512GB RAM, but the 512GB model was removed back in March. Apple has been temporarily cutting higher-tier Macs, and the current M3 Ultra Mac Studio can only be purchased with 96GB RAM.
Even if Apple does plan to release a Mac Studio with an M5 Ultra chip and 768GB RAM, it would be astronomically expensive. When Apple raised Mac prices today, the 96GB Mac Studio went from $3,999 to $5,299, an increase of $1,300. 8x more RAM during the memory crisis could see the Mac Studio priced at over $10,000.
