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Door staff@engadget.com (Luke James) - 04 Oct 2026
The new fourth-gen Mac Studio unexpectedly dropped with a bang in August 2026. That's a pretty odd month for a Mac-related product announcement, but per The Information, enterprise customers demanding more capable machines for running local AI models forced Apple's hand.
Both the Max and Ultra share the same generation of Apple silicon for the first time since 2023, with the M5 Max carrying 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. Meanwhile, the M5 Ultra runs to 36 CPU cores, an 80-core GPU and up to 512GB of memory from $5,499, though that build isn't due to release until late October.
Against the M3 Ultra, Apple is pitching the M5 Ultra as a chip with up to 4.3 times the AI performance, 1.8 times the graphics, and 1.3 times the CPU, along with storage up to twice as fast and Wi-Fi 7 from Apple's N1 networking chip. The cores have changed shape, too, with the usual performance-efficiency split giving way to so-called "super" cores running alongside performance cores. Line up all the Mac Studio generations and you've ultimately got yourself an Apple chip roadmap that killed the Mac Pro, taking pole position as Apple's most powerful computer.
Both the Max and Ultra share the same generation of Apple silicon for the first time since 2023, with the M5 Max carrying 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. Meanwhile, the M5 Ultra runs to 36 CPU cores, an 80-core GPU and up to 512GB of memory from $5,499, though that build isn't due to release until late October.
Against the M3 Ultra, Apple is pitching the M5 Ultra as a chip with up to 4.3 times the AI performance, 1.8 times the graphics, and 1.3 times the CPU, along with storage up to twice as fast and Wi-Fi 7 from Apple's N1 networking chip. The cores have changed shape, too, with the usual performance-efficiency split giving way to so-called "super" cores running alongside performance cores. Line up all the Mac Studio generations and you've ultimately got yourself an Apple chip roadmap that killed the Mac Pro, taking pole position as Apple's most powerful computer.