[HN Gopher] Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowled...
___________________________________________________________________
Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the
RAM shortage
Author : rbanffy
Score : 343 points
Date : 2026-03-08 10:54 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| znpy wrote:
| 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.
| PostOnce wrote:
| A consumer computer company is not going to push people towards
| building a miniature HPC cluster. Closest we'll ever get to
| that is multiple GPUs for video games.*
|
| *Nvidia is no longer a primarily consumer company, so all the
| other GPU stuff is no counterpoint
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| One could argue that if you are buying 512gb RAM machines you
| are not a typical consumer.
| znpy wrote:
| Apple isn't really a consumer company. It does both consumer
| and enterprise stuff. Just look at all the fleet management
| stuff it does for ios and mac os.
|
| And besides that, high end macbook prod and studios are
| workstation-class computers, not consumer-level computers.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| It's definitely a consumer company when you compare it to
| Microsoft.
| znpy wrote:
| The comparison is completely irrelevant.
| hylaride wrote:
| > A consumer computer company
|
| Apple isn't a just a consumer computer company. Both iPhones
| and Macs have very large business markets. In fact, I'd argue
| that the primary reason Apple hasn't locked down MacOS as
| much as iOS is that it'd absolutely kill the demand from
| software developers.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| The second I saw llms run on gpus i started trying to predict
| the last year that nvidia produces a consumer GPU product.
| carefree-bob wrote:
| I am doing the reverse, and trying to predict the last year
| that LLMs use NVIDIA GPUs. It's just an accident of history
| that video game cards are useful for LLMs, and there is
| absolutely nothing that NVIDIA is doing from a design
| standpoint that the big hyperscalers can't do on their own,
| cutting NVIDIA out, and doing a better job of it as they
| know their own unique needs. The only advantage NVIDIA has
| is supply chain relationships and it takes time to
| establish those, but once that's done, we'll see all the
| big companies rolling their own silicon and no longer
| relying on NVIDIA.
| storus wrote:
| 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.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| "Like hot cakes" is relative.
|
| > The 512GB Mac Studio was not a mass-market machine--adding
| that much RAM also required springing for the most expensive
| M3 Ultra model, which brought the system's price to a
| whopping $9,499.
|
| Number of people willing the number of people willing to
| spend $10,000 on a computer is pretty tiny. Maybe they are
| common enough in HN circles, but I doubt any one at Apple is
| losing sleep over them.
| dangus wrote:
| Of course, $10,000 workstations for a corporation working
| on AI products might just be a necessary tool.
|
| Just a guess, but I think it's entirely possible that Apple
| sold through the full production run that they intended for
| this generation of the machine and they don't want to order
| a new batch before the next generation of processors come
| out.
|
| I have to think that Apple is close to replacing the M3
| Ultra with an M5 Ultra or something of the sort.
| storus wrote:
| A retailer told me they sold more 512GB RAM MacStudios than
| any other type. N=1 I know but still...
| __patchbit__ wrote:
| There is a $6 thousand value add service to configure
| your Mac Mini with AI and have that accessible over
| iMessage.
| rattray wrote:
| Curious, what do you use it for?
| jonhohle wrote:
| Probably an Electron app or two.
| storus wrote:
| 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.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| We must be twins, i've got the same three working in a
| cluster.
|
| I was really excited to see where the GB300 Desktops end
| up, with 768gb ram but now that data is leaking / popping
| up (dell appears to only be 496gb), we may be in the
| 60-100k range and that's well out of my comfort zone.
|
| If Apple came out with a 768gb Studio at 15k i'd bite in
| a heart beat.
|
| https://www.dell.com/en-us/lp/dell-pro-max-nvidia-ai-dev
| storus wrote:
| Yeah, I didn't want to spend more than 50k for local
| inference stack. I can amortize it in my taxes so it's
| not a big deal but beyond it would start eating into my
| other allocations. I might still get M5 Ultra if it pops
| up and benchmarks look good, possibly selling M3 Ultra.
| irusensei wrote:
| 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.
| pera wrote:
| I was just looking to buy a Raspberry Pi 5: the 8GB one is now
| 58% more expensive than last year; that's more than what I'm
| willing to pay.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| What will you do? eBay?
| pera wrote:
| Maybe if I can find an unused one, still not sure tbh... Or I
| might go for an alternative SBC from AliExpress and
| compromise on CPU
| pjmlp wrote:
| Old Android phones might also be an option, depending on
| the use case.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I cant personally comment on them since I havent grabbed
| them yet but these are two Pi clones I was considering:
|
| Radxa Rock 5C and Orange Pi 5
|
| I would do research on them because they are a similar form
| factor and usually cheaper for more memory... the software
| will be different.
| benbojangles wrote:
| i'm running qwen3.5:0.8b on my orangepi zero 2w, low
| token/s but it still runs. I think i paid around PS14 for
| it over a year ago but now the same board is double
| price. I wouldn't buy a computer right now of any kind.
| It's a bubble.
| gzread wrote:
| Raspberry Pi hasn't been a cheap SBC for a long time. It's now
| in the same market segment as a NUC, but without the case and
| with worse price to performance.
| esskay wrote:
| 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 still
| fairly affordable and easily had.
| mort96 wrote:
| The Pi isn't great value, but honestly, I'm finding it hard
| to find a better trade-off between price, performance and
| software support right now than the compute modules for
| embedded projects where you can afford to spin a custom PCB.
| Especially for low-ish volume or prototype stuff.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| I also love the compute modules for their size. Stick one
| on a nano base board and they're half the size of a Pi 5.
| TBH the standard Pis are a bit frustrating with all of the
| IO. I do not believe the average purchaser is using one as
| a PC replacement and wants 4 USB ports and 2 HDMI ports.
| I've never seen one in use like that. They are mostly
| servers or driving a single display without any user input.
| dwedge wrote:
| 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
| mort96 wrote:
| 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.
| dwedge wrote:
| Two fried on me. One was just running a printserver
| without a case. It was in summer so ambient temperature
| was around 32C but still, you telling me you use rpi 5
| without even a cooling case?
| WillAdams wrote:
| I've had an rPi4 running a copy of a forum and server (for
| reference) in one of the fancy aluminum cases which
| passively cools for a couple of years now, no issues.
| esskay wrote:
| The big chunky aluminum ones do seem pretty good on the
| pi 4. I had one in the flirc case for a long time and it
| never seemed to have issues. Obviously adds to the cost
| though. Also not sure if the Pi 5 works as well in them
| given its higher thermals, and the Pi 4 didn't exactly
| run cool so imagine the 5 might throttle occasionally
| without active cooling.
| dwedge wrote:
| Yeah I should have been more specific, a fan isn't the
| only option but you need either a fan or a cooling case.
| Running them naked is too risky now
| dwedge wrote:
| The raspberry pis have been bad value for money for at least 4
| or 5 years now unless you're really sensitive to the power
| draw. Once you add in a case and fan (required if you don't
| want it to overheat and screw the SD card), the charger, SD
| card it generally comes in at roughly the same price as more
| capable intel 1L PC like the Lenovo M920Q (though of course,
| they aren't new)
| pera wrote:
| Yeah power consumption (and performance per watt) is the main
| reason I keep buying Raspberry Pi, I haven't find anything
| similar on that regard, specially for pi zeros
| irusensei wrote:
| It's also very hard to encounter x86 machines that can be
| powered from PoE.
| zrobotics wrote:
| I'm on mobile so can't easily pull up an example part
| number, but digital signage controllers can often be PoE
| powered. They're insanely overpriced new from the actual
| suppliers, but for hobby projects they can normally be
| sourced relatively easily on ebay. The trick is that many
| of the ebay sellers don't bother listing the specs, so
| you need to first search digital sign cintroller/computer
| on ebay then look up the spec sheet from the model
| number.
| dwedge wrote:
| Another annoyance is that you need to buy a hat for PoE,
| it seems like an oversight
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| I really like the ecosystem around them. All of the nice
| compact hats, the software, the 3D print files. Very
| googleable which also means easy to get help from an LLM.
| neya wrote:
| There were a couple alternatives for a few years. Wonder if
| they are a better value for money now. Beaglebone Black, Orange
| Pi, Jetson Orin Nano, etc.
| irusensei wrote:
| Geez you just agro the x86 guys.
|
| Have fun reading 40 answers about how discarded Lenovos from
| 2017 are cheaper and stay idle at 5W. It springs to 3x the
| power usage of a pi if they do anything with it but who cares
| about performance per Watt?
| ErneX wrote:
| > Pricing for the 256GB configuration has also increased, from
| $1,600 to $2,000
| cobertos wrote:
| Is that a typo in the article? It's $5999 on Apple's website
| for that configuration
| tekacs wrote:
| I think this means cost above. As in the extra cost you pay.
| ErneX wrote:
| It's what toggling the 256GB upgrade costs from the previous
| ram amount, not the computer total.
| mkl wrote:
| I'm trying to work out if I should buy a 48GB M4 Pro Mac Mini
| now, or wait for M5 Pro ones later this year. For AI/ML purposes,
| mostly. As far as I can tell, the new M5 MacBooks didn't go up
| much or any for the same amount of RAM?
| deelowe wrote:
| I don't expect the ram situation to get any better soon if
| that's what you're asking.
| discordance wrote:
| Depends what kind of AI/ML purposes you are intending to work
| on
| mikkupikku wrote:
| At this point is the performance advantage of Apple CPUs even
| worth it if you can't upgrade the ram itself? I'm thinking you
| might be better off building a PC and putting the absolute bare
| minimum RAM in it, with plans to swap that out with good stuff
| in a year or two once the RAM market stops being insane.
| htsh wrote:
| are we sure the RAM market will stop being insane in a year
| or two or could this be the new norm?
| onli wrote:
| Why should it be the new norm? We have an abnormal
| situation now, of massive amounts of investor money being
| poured into unprofitable bets, that this time had the side
| effect of eating up hardware components. There are two
| possible outcomes:
|
| 1. Yes, it's the new normal, then production capacity will
| be increased and prices fall.
|
| 2. No, it's not the new normal, the bubble pops and
| component prices come crashing down when buyers default
| etc.
|
| Option 2 has been the normal outcome of these situations so
| far. But sure, questions remains how long all of this will
| take.
| lukan wrote:
| Option 3: the global wars increase and continue to be the
| new normal with shipping routes disturbed until the
| climax, china annexes Taiwan.
|
| In that case prices will continue to rise (among other
| things).
| mikkupikku wrote:
| I don't know if it'll be a year or two, hard to say exactly
| when the AI bubble will pop, but I feel quite certain it's
| coming. The AI stuff is great but most of the money being
| thrown around to all these different companies is mostly
| going to be wasted. Investors don't know who the winners
| and losers will be, just like when people were investing in
| pets.com instead of amazon.com.
| gzread wrote:
| Every ten years the RAM cartel raises prices (it's not
| really about AI, see Gamer's Nexus) and every ten years it
| is forced to lower them again.
| mkl wrote:
| It's the RAM bandwidth that's the advantage, 300GB/s for M5
| Pro. RAM in slots is way slower, ~50GB/s.
| jsheard wrote:
| But for ML workloads the comparison isn't between slotted
| CPU RAM and Apple's unified RAM, it's between Apple's
| unified RAM and dedicated GPU VRAM, which can more than
| double even the M3 Ultras bandwidth at up to 1.8TB/sec.
| Apple Silicon makes a unique set of trade-offs that shine
| in certain areas but they are still trade-offs nonetheless,
| so it really depends on what exactly you're doing with the
| hardware.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Dedicated GPU VRAM is much scarcer than the unified RAM
| you get on Mac platforms. This is a big deal for SOTA
| LLMs that combine high memory footprint with a need for
| high memory bandwidth in order to get acceptable
| performance.
| bombcar wrote:
| 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.
| quietsegfault wrote:
| I do not appreciate you calling me out personally!
| classified wrote:
| Which one are you, Mac or Mini?
| itg wrote:
| The AMD Strix Halo pc's are another option. I was also debating
| between a mac mini but decided to go the AMD route.
| freedomben wrote:
| I'm eyeing that seriously too. Are you running linux on it by
| chance? Would love to hear from someone running linux on a
| non-Apple AI capable machine
| bombcar wrote:
| 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).
| reactordev wrote:
| 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 revamped the architecture (and put a larger order
| in this time around).
|
| I'm not a buyer but I suspect that's what's playing out right
| now behind closed door meetings.
| Terretta wrote:
| 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/
| pstuart wrote:
| Perhaps not? Think of all the Chrome tabs you could keep
| open at one time!
| bombcar wrote:
| 512 GB of RAM? Could probably have five tabs _and_ two
| electron apps at the same time!
| jmull wrote:
| Interestingly, the "ultra" Mac Studio released a year ago was
| based on the older M3, not M4. Apparently, the work to "ultra-
| fy" a CPU is significant (which makes sense) so there can be a
| lag.
|
| Not that they have to follow pattern, but the a Mac Studio
| ultra released later this year might be based on M4. Or one
| based on M5 might be released a year or more from now.
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| My understanding is "ultra-ify" means put two together. I
| think it's about having inventory
|
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/03/apple-
| unveils-m1-ultr...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It used to mean that, but the new M5 Pro and M5 Max have
| separate CPU and GPU chiplets with an interposer, similar
| to how the previous generation Ultras were based on
| connecting two Max full dies. So it's unclear whether there
| will be any Ultra for the M5.
| avidphantasm wrote:
| And here I was hoping they would put an M5 Ultra in a
| MacBook Pro. Maybe they will add it as an option to the
| 16" at a later date.
| bombcar wrote:
| I wonder if the MacBook Pro can handle the thermal
| envelope of actually running an Ultra flat out.
| wtallis wrote:
| There are gaming laptops that come with power bricks
| rated for higher output than a Mac Studio's power supply.
| M3 Ultra levels of power dissipation _are_ possible to
| handle in a laptop, but it wouldn 't look much like a
| MacBook Pro. That kind of gaming laptop typically has
| four fans (compared to two on a MacBook Pro), and large
| vents on the sides, bottom, and back of the machine
| allowing them to move a lot more air through the system.
| pram wrote:
| This is never happening, the Ultra needs a giant copper
| heatsink.
| kube-system wrote:
| The existing ultras are two max dies connected together
| with TSMC's CoWoS-S interposer. But as I understand the
| interposer can have yield issues, so yes -- you put two
| together, but it's not quite as easy as snapping together
| legos.
| foobiekr wrote:
| It's really probably more about wafer and chip allocation.
| fartfeatures wrote:
| The M4 Max lacks the UltraFusion interconnect, making an M4
| Ultra impossible. We might however see an M5 Ultra due to the
| new Fusion Architecture in the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips (just
| announced for the latest MacBook Pro), which uses a high-
| bandwidth die-to-die interconnect to bond two dies into a
| single unified SoC--similar in concept to UltraFusion but
| evolved for better scaling, efficiency, and features like
| per-GPU-core Neural Accelerators.
|
| Reports and leaks strongly indicate Apple is preparing an M5
| Ultra (likely fusing or scaling from the M5 Max using this
| advanced interconnect tech) for a Mac Studio refresh later in
| 2026, based on Bloomberg/Mark Gurman and other sources. This
| would bring back the top-tier "Ultra" option after skipping
| it entirely for M4.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _M4 Max lacks the UltraFusion interconnect_
|
| Any idea why? Wasn't that on the M1?
| bombcar wrote:
| I suspect that the cost/benefit isn't there. Those who
| need the "biggest Ultra" will be happy with the previous
| generation or so, and so they'll refresh that on a 2 or 3
| year cycle.
| caseyf7 wrote:
| There will absolutely be an M5 Ultra. Gurman has confirmed it.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Just got a strix halo ROG Z13 this month with soldered UMA
| memory, 128GB LPDDR5X-8000. It cost ~$3k.
|
| Amazon is selling 128GB memory kits @ 5600MHZ for $3k.
|
| I think there might be a market failure guys.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| It's only a failure if manufacturers don't respond by
| increasing capacity.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| This is like believing there's unlimited, instant-on
| capacity. The same type of "we can just tariff whatever we
| want, and magically, the market will figure it out".
|
| That makes sense for a few products, but not something that
| takes billions of dollars, multiple factories, etc to
| produce.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| That is true. Apart from all the other times demand for
| memory has exceeded supply.
|
| You can't compare it to tariffs because the cheaper
| alternative to investment is to bribe your politicians.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Amazon is selling 128GB memory kits @ 5600MHZ for $3k.
|
| 128GB memory kits are not $3K. Closer to half of that. Amazon
| is not a good source of RAM pricing.
| freedomben wrote:
| Where would you recommend sourcing RAM?
| Aurornis wrote:
| Newegg has 128GB kits from quality vendors at $1500:
| https://www.newegg.com/crucial-pro-128gb-ddr5-5600-cas-
| laten...
| chiph wrote:
| I think it's unlikely that Apple is paying the spot price for
| memory. They almost certainly negotiate delivery/price contracts
| in advance. Maybe the contract for the chips used in the 512GB
| model will expire soon?
| ajross wrote:
| 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.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| 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.
| don_neufeld wrote:
| Or they believe the long term value of two customers is
| bigger than one.
|
| It can be about more than the single sale.
| Faaak wrote:
| That doesn't take into account the profit generated by
| selling the mac in itself
| thfuran wrote:
| 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.
| ajross wrote:
| The story is _literally_ about them cancelling a product
| variant...
| thfuran wrote:
| And you think this is the first sign that they've decided
| they're going to spend the next few years being a RAM
| reseller before starting to sell consumer products again?
| ajross wrote:
| No, but "shipping less RAM" is clearly on that spectrum.
| The point wasn't about literal product strategy, it's
| that there's a limit to what actions are financially
| feasible and it's set by "what else could you do with
| that junk?"
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| 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.
| storus wrote:
| M5 Max has still only 128GB RAM at most; one would expect
| 192GB if there was any indication M5 Ultra would have
| 768GB RAM?
| rz2k wrote:
| The maximum memory configuration for the M3 Max MBP was
| also128GB.
| storus wrote:
| That's my whole point. M3 Max 128GB -> M3 Ultra 512GB. M5
| Max 128GB -> M5 Ultra 512GB. But if M5 Max 192GB -> M5
| Ultra 768GB, i.e. Ultra having 4x the memory of Max.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| It is a rumor at this time and we are going from M3 to M5
| on the Ultra not the M4 to the M5
| muyuu wrote:
| it's Apple and they don't like to adjust prices to the market
|
| other companies would have just hiked the price of the 512GB
| model to reflect the lack of supply and to allow people who
| really need that model to pay for it dearly
|
| but that comes with some PR damage that Apple would rather
| not deal with
| rootusrootus wrote:
| But they did raise the price of the 256GB model.
| muyuu wrote:
| Yep, but it they had to double or triple it on short
| notice, they'd have just removed it from the store
| instead, and I imagine that the RAM is going into 256GB
| systems for more $$$ but still nothing really that
| alarming for the consumer.
| Thorrez wrote:
| >Apple buys and uses so much RAM across all its product lines
| that it's in a better negotiating position than the likes of
| Framework or Raspberry Pi, but CEO Tim Cook acknowledged in the
| company's last earnings call that memory pricing could begin to
| eat into Apple's profit margins later this year.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I would think the price gouging on memory tiers is why its in
| a better negotiating position. Having 200% markup means minor
| market conditions wont prevent them from payment.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| There's also the fact that they were charging $200 to add 8GB
| of RAM _before_ the prices went up, when that much RAM was
| something like $70 _at retail_.
|
| The problem then is that when the supply gets more expensive
| and you were already charging the maximally-extractive price
| to customers, they can't eat much more of a price increase,
| so instead most of it has to come out of margins.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| I was configuring my M5 MBP preorder and 48=>64 was 250 EUR
| so not sure if they cut prices or your numbers are outdated
| ?
| Detrytus wrote:
| Prices in the US are usually much lower than in Europe. I
| just checked and 48->64 ram bump is still $200
|
| I just did a 14" MBP with M5 Max, 128GB RAM, 4TB SSD,
| nano-texture display. Price difference is $5849 vs 7004
| EUR ($8136).
| rafaelmn wrote:
| I'd say half of that difference is that we have VAT
| included in price.
|
| But my point is that's a 16GB jump for 200$ not 8GB
| bombcar wrote:
| US prices are often low enough that it's almost worth the
| flight just to grab one.
|
| 14' MBP M5 Pro 64GB - $2999 or 3449 EUR
| rafaelmn wrote:
| That's not US prices, it's just price without VAT vs with
| VAT included. US also has sales tax it's just not
| included in list prices.
| asdff wrote:
| Actually that is relatively cheaper than Apple has ever
| sold ram. They would always charge $200 for each ram
| upgrade and it might have been only 4gb or less back then.
|
| The twist now though is they started soldering in the RAM
| with the retina macbook, so you can't run around apple's
| extortionate pricing like you could in the past and just
| buy components off the market.
|
| Such a stupid cartoon evil villain move too, just to force
| us into getting RAM from them. I have never been memory
| bandwidth bound (Apple's excuse for soldering in the RAM)
| in my life and yet I am forced to buy computers that
| optimize for this at the expense of things I actually care
| about like serviceability. And also consider the fact it
| incentivizes people to buy more RAM than they need today in
| effort to future proof their device, in a time of RAM
| shortages. And who knows maybe by the time that RAM amount
| is relevant the CPU can no longer keep up so the hoarding
| might not even be for anything either.
| pwarner wrote:
| I think part of what's happening lately is that chip folks
| are start to realize they can make margin too. Maybe it's
| possible thanks to consolidation but for sure folks see the
| crazy margins nvida, apple etc have, and I suspect they're
| like - we want that too!
| phamilton wrote:
| 15 years ago I was an intern at Micron and learned they passed
| on a contract with Apple because Apple insisted on discounts
| and there wasn't a compelling reason to reduce profit at
| Micron.
|
| So yeah, Apple probably does pay less. But the market has
| enough demand that suppliers do say no.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| This is actually relevant, because DRAM costs just as much
| now per Gb as it did 15 years ago (that's controlling for
| inflation; it's as much as it cost 20 years ago on a pure
| price basis).
| mapt wrote:
| It costs the same, we just mark it as an opportunity cost of
| unloading the memory on the spot market.
|
| If I buy contracts for 1 gold bar at $500, and the gold price
| runs to $1200, I can either continue to market my gold-
| containing product for the same profit margin, or I can unload
| all that gold for $1200/bar and make a profit of $700/bar. If
| my profit margin is high and it doesn't take many gold bars to
| make a thousand units, maybe discontinuation doesn't make any
| sense. But if my product is "solid gold statuary of Dear
| Leader", and the bars are most of my cost basis, I know what
| I'd do.
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| You're thinking only finance. Their goal in buying the
| contract is to secure the good. The ability to maintain price
| will allow them to sell more units which is the number they
| want to show.
| bombcar wrote:
| More importantly it'll probably get some people to switch,
| and potentially they have a customer for life now.
| kube-system wrote:
| Yes but the clock has been ticking, new products are being
| released, and at some point they will be renegotiating the next
| contract
| don_neufeld wrote:
| Yup, and it looks like it will be a tough negotiation:
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/26/apple-
| agrees-100-price-...
| boznz wrote:
| Apple needs to seriously consider some sort of vertical
| integration on memory, it has proved it can do it with CPU's
| glenstein wrote:
| Amazing that it's gotten to that point but I think that's
| right. It's more intuitive that you would need vertical
| integration with your processing chips because of the degree
| of expert specialization necessary to produce them,
| especially in close coordination with a major product
| release.
|
| By comparison, ram seems much more a commodity, but the game
| has changed and it seems like there may be an important
| strategic interest in sourcing and supplying your own.
| Culonavirus wrote:
| It's not a shortage, it's a cartel.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVzeHTlWIDY
| Alifatisk wrote:
| 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.
| ahurmazda wrote:
| aside: YT has a AI/summary option (unless creator opts out).
| Look for the sparkle button. Personally, it gets me 80% there
| most days.
| Alifatisk wrote:
| Couldn't find the summary button anywhere, but, when
| searching around I found out that you can apparently paste
| in Youtube links on Google AI studio and summarize it.
| HPsquared wrote:
| That sounds pretty ironic, given the topic.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I haven't watched up the video but I went way too into the
| weeds of the ram crisis.
|
| I am not sure what the video suggests. This is my own
| understanding of the things after I got way too invested in
| why does OpenAI need all of this ram all of a sudden. (On a
| random tuesday)
|
| My understanding is TLDR: The stargate project had
| OpenAI,Oracle,Softbank etc.
|
| Softbank got the money from Japanese bank loan[0] at low
| interests rates and actually scrambled to find the 20 Billion
| $ (they commited combined with oracle to around 500 billion
| $)
|
| (Btw The datacenter thing is being done in a similar fashion
| by Oracle)
|
| Almost all of that money when given to OpenAI was used/(will
| be used?) to commit 20% of the Ram supply of the whole world
| at a more expensive package because these companies just
| package ram in different order to get "AI ram" and then
| Micron shuts down the consumer brand (Crucial)
|
| This has now caused Ram prices to spike 5 times the cost in a
| couple of months back. Also, the inflation is happening in
| hard drive and just Nand in general.
|
| The largest impacts I can see that is that even companies
| like google were scrambling to find Ram. I find this to be
| one of the larger reasons why they might need so much ram all
| of a sudden. I mean Google and Anthropic were needing Ram but
| not 20% of it and not committed in such a way and I am not
| sure if datacenters are even being built for ram to be
| stored[1]
|
| OpenAI datacenters in Argentina for example is operated by
| such a shady company that came like 1-2 years ago IIRC. So a
| 500 Billion $ Project is just picking any random companies
| ... Yea no, I have the belief that they don't trust it
| themselves especially when a company is scrambling for money.
|
| All of this does feel very cartel/monopoly-ish to me to push
| the competitors out of the market or the people running open
| source models out of the market and another benefit of it for
| OpenAI all was that we normal everyday people get impacted
| too and I am sure that when they made such a large decision,
| they must have internally thought about it but we all know
| the morality of OpenAI now after the DoD deal.
|
| But I don't think that google and other companies are that
| impacted by it all it seems as well. Only the average
| consumer and Hosting providers (Thus seeing OVH,Hetzner raise
| prices for example). The average AWS/GCP/Azure makes enough
| money that they might not even raise money for sometime and
| they'll be fine having another additional benefit that more
| people worried about increasing prices would go to Microsoft
| Azure/GCP/AWS even more so.
|
| Edit: Gamers are being pushed out of consoles and everything
| too and some are saying seeing the cloud connection and AWS
| coming out and saying that we want Gamers on cloud
| (paraphrasing) as meaning that its all done to move
| everything to cloud.
|
| I do believe that this might be only half the story as OpenAI
| does benefit from everything moving to the cloud (somewhat)
| but its done even more to prevent competition in the whole
| genre as well.
|
| I believe that they thought about it and treated it as a plus
| point but before all and everything, it helped them thought
| that it can help them maintain their flimsy lead in AI models
| as more and more catch up by having a more monopolistic lead
| by stifling competition by rising prices 5 times. Gamers and
| normal people were just the largest casuality in this
| crossfire.
|
| I was thinking in the past month when I found all this that
| damn, OpenAI's morality sucks and they did all of it on
| purpose
|
| And then they had the department of defence* deal and the
| whole controversy surrounding it so yeah, that too.
|
| OpenAI doesn't want your benefit. It wants its profit and
| when these are conflict, OpenAI doesn't care a cent about
| you, not anymore than the cent that you give it.
|
| [0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-06/softb
| ank-...
|
| [1]: https://www.shacknews.com/article/148208/oracle-openai-
| texas...
| Alifatisk wrote:
| Incredible digging. I remember reading comments about the
| reason the price hike was the Sam Altman secured a deal
| with the few ram producer in secrecy were they promised to
| reserve a large portion of their production to OpenAI for
| the next years (I don't remember how long). Supposedly Sam
| will just to put them in a warehouse to collect dust.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| > Incredible digging
|
| Thanks. I appreciate your kind words, I was thinking of
| writing some piece/blog about it but procastination is
| definitely something :) But I am just happy that I
| finally wrote a comment atleast explaining all/most of my
| understanding. That's more than fine for me.
|
| > Incredible digging. I remember reading comments about
| the reason the price hike was the Sam Altman secured a
| deal with the few ram producer in secrecy were they
| promised to reserve a large portion of their production
| to OpenAI for the next years (I don't remember how long).
| Supposedly Sam will just to put them in a warehouse to
| collect dust.
|
| I do believe that's gonna be the case as well. Most of
| the ram is probably not needed currently (thats what I
| feel like) so its gonna sit on dust, That, or
| oracle/microsoft will use it within their datacenters as
| old ram breaks apart to have some more monopoly given
| their close ties to OpenAI.
|
| Even if OpenAI internally sells them at half the market
| price to microsoft/oracle, they still technically turn a
| profit.
|
| I actually felt too conspiratorial thinking about it when
| I had first discovered it because I was under the
| previous assumption that OpenAI actually needed the ram
| myself too. But seeing recent events of OpenAI with
| Department of Defense, I definitely think that they did
| this on purpose.
| r_lee wrote:
| I would say, just post these kind of rants on a substance
| and X or something, don't LLM format it, just kind of lay
| it out and fix whatever typos and let loose
|
| it'd be interesting to just hear some thoughts and
| opinions from someone who has done some research on the
| topic in a light way vs a huge article/documentary
| gruez wrote:
| >Almost all of that money when given to OpenAI was
| used/(will be used?) to commit 20% of the Ram supply of the
| whole world at a more expensive package because these
| companies just package ram in different order to get "AI
| ram" and then Micron shuts down the consumer brand
| (Crucial)
|
| >[...]
|
| >All of this does feel very cartel/monopoly-ish to me to
| push the competitors out of the market or the people
| running open source models out of the market and another
| benefit of it for OpenAI
|
| Nothing you described is actually "cartel/monopoly-ish"
| beyond "big players have more money to splash around". It's
| fine to go look at that and go "grr, I hate big tech
| companies", but the claim of "It's not a shortage, it's a
| cartel." isn't substantiated. The latter implies some sort
| of malice beyond what could be explained by standard
| scarcity thinking, eg. "there isn't enough RAM to go
| around. We need RAM, so let's stock up".
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| My point suggests that there is enough Ram to go around
| in an ideal world even with LLM's but its rather that
| stocking up Ram could give you so much benefit over your
| enemies within this space and leverage that you have no
| reason not to.
|
| So it isn't there isn't enough ram to go around (period)
| but rather an ideology similar to this town ain't big
| enough for the two of us (OpenAI vs
| Anthropic/Google/Chinese-Open-Weights-Models)
|
| Atleast that's my understanding of the situation and I
| can be wrong about it too for what its worth.
| harias wrote:
| You can use Gemini or NotebookLM to summarize it
| sva_ wrote:
| I haven't watched the whole thing either, but basically
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal
|
| + showing the people responsible have only been promoted in
| those companies
|
| + pointing out 3 (Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix) companies at the
| heart of it now have 95% of market share
|
| + hypothesis they've doing it again (or rather, have
| continued doing it "business as usual")
| cubefox wrote:
| No, it's a shortage due to high demand from AI data centers.
| amelius wrote:
| Why are you so sure?
| gruez wrote:
| You could ask the same about OP.
| amelius wrote:
| At least that video contains a bunch of argumentation.
| cubefox wrote:
| Inference to the best explanation.
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| I hope so. If the government isn't protecting them all we need
| to do is wait for new participants in the market.
| snczl wrote:
| The story here is about what lesson was learned by the DRAM
| cartel after they got busted and hit with large fines. One
| might hope the lesson learned would be, "we should not fix
| prices", but what got them in trouble was colluding secretly.
| What if we just did it via earnings reports, press releases,
| and other public statements?
|
| While there is some market variance like the 2022 to 2023 glut,
| DRAM prices haven't fallen in real terms in over 15 years. This
| was all done by controlling supply, and it was all done in
| public. It starts with one of the big three putting out a
| statement like, "Samsung is considering reducing DRAM wafer
| output due to softness in the mobile PC segment." The actual
| reason varies and often makes little sense.
|
| This is followed by similar public statements from the other
| large vendors expressing a willingness to reduce supply. Once
| everyone commits in this way, the companies follow up with
| announcements of actual supply reductions. You can watch this
| happen any time prices start to dip.
|
| My bet is if the DOJ investigates, they will not find the same
| sort of embarrassing smoking gun emails between representatives
| of Micron, Hynix, and Samsung. The collusion was all done in
| public. The companies will claim it is just good business
| management, a strategy known as "conscious parallelism." They
| used this exact defense to get a 2022 antitrust lawsuit
| dismissed.
|
| That said, their goal seemed to be just keeping prices fixed.
| They wanted to avoid boom and bust cycles, keep profits high,
| and keep prices stagnant. A massive price hike invites
| investigations and creates problems. If DRAM prices just never
| fall, they can enjoy healthy profits with little risk.
|
| But what happens when your intentionally constrained supply
| hits a sudden large spike in demand? Prices skyrocket, everyone
| gets mad, and demands investigations. My guess is instead of
| being thrilled with the price spike, the executives at the
| large DRAM manufacturers are very worried someone put something
| incriminating in a document somewhere that can be subpoenaed
| ("how we're going to fix prices in public and get away with
| it").
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Publicly announcing reductions in DRAM wafer output is not
| per se nefarious. You need to do it from time to time anyway,
| if only as part of retooling towards newer technologies that
| will be required when making DRAM dies for newer standards.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Now how am I supposed to develop Electron apps and use Chrome?
|
| In all seriousness, though, as one of the uninitiated, what would
| be the value of hosting LLMs on a machine like this that has a
| lot of memory that you pay for up front versus some sort of VPC-
| based approach?
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| Have you seen how much GPUs cost to rent? Note that this memory
| is shared between CPU and GPU.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| One factor is that you may not be in a position to push your
| working data to a third party service, for security or legal
| reasons.
| saurik wrote:
| So, the question I wonder: is that it for this tier? Will we even
| see a 512GB variant of the next model?
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| I suspect they'll still want to offer it given the push they've
| been making over the last year with RDMA. My guess is the 512gb
| or larger studio will largely be a byproduct of the systems
| they're designing for their own AI efforts in the datacenter. I
| don't think this is the end of it for the longer term.
| benbojangles wrote:
| You can keep your 512gb mac studio i'm running qwen3.5:0.8b on an
| Orangepi zero 2w and learning just as much as they are.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| The Mac Studio highest config was a great value for AI workloads
| though at least for inference and no one is reporting this....
| knollimar wrote:
| Don't you need two 512GB ones for unquanted latest chinese
| models?
| redman25 wrote:
| For consumers, there's little reason to run unquanted,
| especially for large models which take less of a hit from
| quantization. I'm running a 200b model at Q3 with very little
| degradation. A 1000b model would see even less change.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Getting 512 GB of ram at the price point is cheaper than
| everything else. That's why Apple stopped production to
| divert for the M5 ultra.
| hu3 wrote:
| Yes and the result of this $10k endeavour is a much slower a
| dumber model than any SoTA $20/mo API. On top of the
| maintenance burden to keep software/models updated.
| marcuskaz wrote:
| Inventory is tight too, if you look at delivery/shipping times
| for Mac Studio and Mac Mini, I'm seeing April/May
| kmfrk wrote:
| A lot of people also got into buying Macs for OpenClaw, so
| demand is probably up as well.
| copperx wrote:
| What's the deal with the Mac Mini and Openclaw? a vps is a
| better alternative.
|
| is it because iMessage?
| andai wrote:
| You do actually need to run it on a Mac, if (and only if!)
| you require integration with Mac-only software. But the
| main factor is probably just "all the cool kids are doing
| it" ;)
| kube-system wrote:
| iMessage... and safari. Browsing the web from a headless
| vps has hurdles.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| > safari. Browsing the web from a headless vps has
| hurdles
|
| Hooking things up to puppeteer maybe?
|
| You can use pupeteer to then use the chromium control
| remote (debug?) option iirc which uses websockets
| underneath the hood
|
| Then you can connect this from your pc or theoretically
| any Control server. Surprised to not hear much work on
| that front now that you mention it.
| kube-system wrote:
| The CDP debugger is easily detectable client side and
| many websites will flag your traffic as undesirable
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I didn't know that, Sorry about that, but is there no way
| to make CDP debugger less detectable. Seems _doable_ to
| me but maybe there 's a catch if its not already done by
| somebody maybe?
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| iMessage is the only explanation I can find. Minis aren't
| powerful enough for agentic models unless you're getting a
| rather expensive version (I could see the MX Pro w/ 64GB
| working). At which point they don't have the price appeal
| of the base model anymore.
| andai wrote:
| Yeah on the discord you see a lot of people asking about how
| much RAM they need to run local models. There seems to be a
| lot of demand for it.
| root_axis wrote:
| I am not convinced there are that many people actually buying
| macs for OpenClaw.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| i just walked into a microcenter yesterday where not only did
| they have a huge stock of mac mini, they are all advertised 15%
| off and runs openclaw.
| bombcar wrote:
| https://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.aspx?fq=ca.
| .. it's even mentioned on each one online
| Sathwickp wrote:
| Was bound to happen, it never found the market fit
| hx8 wrote:
| I'm sure the margin was great for the ones it sold.
| api wrote:
| I've been in tech for a long time and have seen RAM shortages and
| price spikes before. This one's fairly bad but they resolve in
| 1-3 years.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Ya, how's that working out for GPU's?
| api wrote:
| It'll take longer for two reasons.
|
| One is that it's a more complicated part with tougher fab
| requirements.
|
| Two is that it's not a commodity. AMD can't make nVidia GPUs.
| They have to design their own. Everyone has patents and trade
| secrets and copyrights. Patents expire and knowledge diffuses
| but that adds another time lag.
|
| AMD and Intel are fully aware of the demand and are working
| on it.
|
| RAM is a commodity. Totally interchangeable standard part.
| Also simpler to fab, thus quicker and easier to scale up.
|
| Oh, and I'd like to add: everyone is afraid it's a bubble
| that will pop. Nobody wants a bunch of stranded capex. That
| has also happened before many times. So that puts brakes on
| it too.
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| The cure for high prices is high prices.
| layer8 wrote:
| Two years remaining at least this time, according to current
| fab planning.
| reenorap wrote:
| I've been in tech for ~40 years now and I've never seen
| anything like this. The downstream repercussions on consumer
| products that have no access to cheap memory is devastating and
| is an extinction level event for most low-cost providers of
| cell phones, tvs, etc.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >I've been in tech for ~40 years now and I've never seen
| anything like this.
|
| Then how do you not remember the DRAM shortage of the late
| 1980s?
| reenorap wrote:
| At worse back in 1988 it impacted only PCs.
|
| This shortage in 2026 is more consequential across the
| board and impacts consumer electronics as a whole and the
| fact it's going to last years means that many low cost
| manufacturers are going to close up shop because they won't
| be profitable.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| The rumor from Gurman is that the M5 Ultra Mac Studio ships in
| the first half of this year.
|
| This may just be a sign that the M5 Ultra Mac Studio is shipping
| sooner rather than later, as it's common for Apple to push out
| ship dates for soon to be replaced products.
|
| We do have leaked benchmarks showing that the M5 Max outperforms
| the M3 Ultra currently shipping in the Mac Studio, so buying an
| M3 Ultra Studio right now would be a terrible idea.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| Slightly off-topic side remark:
|
| Every mathematician and computer scientist should feel deeply
| confused that the M... Ultra is more powerful than the M...
| Max.
|
| Why? Because if something is the _maximum_ , there doesn't
| exist anything larger/better. :-)
| user_7832 wrote:
| This thing has been going on for a while unfortunately. If I
| told you "Here's an "air", a vanilla, and a "pro"", what
| would you expect? The vanilla is base, air is lighter, and
| pro is nicer, right?
|
| Well, for iPads, the base has (had? Haven't closely followed
| them for a while) an older CPU for some reason. And the Air
| is actually a "Pro-lite", rather than a weight optimized
| version.
|
| Don't get started on where the mini sits, or what happens if
| you want "nicer" features like 60hz+ displays in a small form
| factor... a feature that _budget_ android tablets have had
| for years.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| They should use something simple, like AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro
| 395?
| hu3 wrote:
| whataboutism doesn't make it any better, you know
| calf wrote:
| Not really, Max is to violet as Ultra is to ultraviolet, as
| in something exceeding an established category (visible
| light)
| guerrilla wrote:
| I wonder if the war with Iran could actually fix the RAM
| shortage. If this continues it really could put a damper on
| datacenter rollout.
| kube-system wrote:
| How much of the capital investment that's fueling the current
| expansion is already allocated?
| guerrilla wrote:
| No idea. Let's assume not all of it.
| mv4 wrote:
| I tried finding a 128 - 256GB Mac Studio online and most options
| would not be shipped for at least "8-10 weeks".
| j45 wrote:
| More likely that the M5 Max Studio is coming out. the M5 Max
| Macbook Pros just came out.
|
| Also the 512 GB ssd version has a slower SSD than anything 1 TB
| and up. The new SSDs on the M5 I believe are much faster and
| what's coming likely will receive that.
|
| There's no doubt there's a ram shortage, and price increases, and
| the biggest companies in the world lock in their pricing well in
| advance, and the remaining leftovers are where the consumers
| experience shortages.
| 827a wrote:
| IMO its more nuanced. They're likely in production ramp-up of the
| M5 Ultra Mac Studio, for release in the next ~3 months; they have
| pre-purchased bins of memory from the supply-constrained major
| memory supplies; and they need as much as they can get because
| they want to push an M5 Ultra config to 768gb to continue the
| "you can run local models" story that the M5 Max Macbook Pro
| started telling last week.
|
| Going beyond 512gb and into 768gb memory is something of a
| threshold that will allow Apple to claim local capability for
| significantly more models. Qwen3-235B, Minimax M2.5, and GLM 4.7
| could kind of run with no quantization on 512gb, but they'll
| comfortably run at 768gb. DeepSeek-V3.2 and GLM 5 may also work
| at some level of quantization.
| taf2 wrote:
| I hope you are right
| criddell wrote:
| Is Apple telling the "you can run local models" story, or is it
| third parties?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Yes Apple promotes local model capabilities in their
| marketing
| 827a wrote:
| Yes:
|
| > A powerful Neural Accelerator is built into each GPU core
| of the M5 family of chips, which dramatically speeds up AI
| tasks like image generation from diffusion models, large
| language model (LLM) prompt processing, and on-device
| transformer model training. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/
| bytesandbits wrote:
| Apple
| lolive wrote:
| What's the price of that beast? #meCryingTearsOfBlood
| 827a wrote:
| Apple will be the first company to pioneer a new "work for
| tokens" program; simply commit yourself to six months of
| servitude with The Company to pay off your new Mac Studio
| purchase.
| unfocused wrote:
| Less than $10,000, depending on what CPU and storage you
| select.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| Heh heh, I see you're new to Apple's incredible
| shamelessness in price-gouging memory.
|
| Just kidding, I'm sure you're aware. I just wouldn't be the
| least bit surprised to see them go well beyond that.
| bombcar wrote:
| Let's assume a Mac Studio M5 would start at $1999, and that a
| M5 Max upgrade 128 GB would be about the 1000 it is now. Then
| an M5 Ultra 768 would be something like $1999 + 1000 + $4000
| - cheaper than the current top of the line (which will never
| happen) so I'd presume about the same $10,000.
|
| Or they could finally make the Mac Pro respectable and have
| it two M5 Ultra Mac Studios stuck together (or give it NUMA
| RAM: on chip + expandable).
| rewgs wrote:
| My theory is that they're going to release a new Mac Pro that's
| about half the size of the current one. Enough space for some
| PCIe slots, but otherwise smaller given the enormous amount of
| wasted space in that thing since moving from Intel to Apple
| Silicon. Guessing the rack-mount model, should they continue
| selling it, will be 3 or 4u instead of 5u.
|
| I know everyone thinks they're going to just kill it, but I
| don't see it. Apple's move under Tim Cook has been to exhaust
| supplies (see: filling the Intel Mac Pro chassis with air and
| not updating the CPU), letting people predict its death (see:
| 2013 -> 2019 Mac Pro silence), and then redesigning it into
| something people want while utilizing it as an opportunity to
| segment specs across their SKUs.
|
| The Studio will remain the high-powered creator machine,
| whereas the Mac Pro will be retooled into an AI beast.
| thefounder wrote:
| Why people buy the Studio with the high ram config is
| actually the unified memory. This is unique to Apple. I'm not
| sure what Mac Pro would do with PCIe cards . It would be
| useless for AI because what you want is unified memory that
| can be used by the GPU/AI not just ram.
| thefounder wrote:
| why just 768gb and not a ~1TB ?
| lbreakjai wrote:
| Not related, but why is the word "quiet" or "quietly" suddenly
| everywhere?
| tom_ wrote:
| Also mentioned here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47291513 - see the article
| section: "Quietly" and Other Magic Adverbs. Presumably the LLM
| writing style rubbing off, assuming the LLM hasn't been used to
| create the content in the first place.
| functionmouse wrote:
| seems like people are using words like "the", "and", and the
| letter "e" a lot also. It must mean that everyone is a robot.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Why can't RAM be done inhouse? It's probably simpler than a CPU..
| right?
| juahan wrote:
| This is what I've been wondering as well.
| wmf wrote:
| Maybe etching the deep trench capacitors is really tricky.
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