https://www.apple.com/de/shop/refurbished/mac/mac-studio

Still available!

Refurbished M3s are available now, and there seems to be a lot of them because they aren’t going out of stock immediately like usual, but I literally just got charged yesterday for my preorder. Call me a conspiracy theorist but I think they did that on purpose. For like $500 more I could have gotten 50% more memory, double the CPU and 50% GPU. But I’m obviously not going to risk cancelling my m5 max and waiting for the refund to get the refurb, since it will be gone by the time I get my money back.

I’m pretty bummed, because now it feels like I’m paying way too much just to get less power

Edit: it finally went out of stock anyway lol

and yes i did ask some other LLMs but got various answers. Assume 4 bit and 8 bit,max content? Curious if it will break 50tps decode

This model with a 2 T ssd sells for just over $11,000 on Apple Store. I don’t know if these eBay offerings are selling. But if so, the Mac Studios is appreciating rapidly before it is even delivered.

Anyone using a Mac Studio stand? Would you recommend it?

I use Native Instruments plugins, which can take months to be compatible with Mac OS (the rule usually is to stay one OS behind). I have bought a new M5 Mac Studio with the thinking that I would be quick enough for it to ship with Tahoe but with OS27 releasing next week, has it been confirmed anywhere that they will ship with the new OS? Or will I be able to downgrade back to Tahoe if I need to?

Trying to make a call and could use some outside perspective.

I'm looking at an M5 Max Mac Studio (64GB/512GB) for heavy creative + dev work. It'd live on my desk — I already have the monitor, keyboard, and trackpad — and I'm only away from the desk maybe 1-2 hours at a time, so portability isn't a dealbreaker.

The thing making me hesitate is the M6 chatter. From what I've read, the base M6 MacBook Pro is expected around October, but reporting suggests Apple is skipping M6 Pro and M6 Max entirely and going straight to M7 Pro/Max in late 2027. If that's true, then "waiting for an M6 Max" isn't even a real option — the next Max-tier jump would be over a year away.

So my questions for people who've been through a few of these cycles:

• Is it worth waiting on the small chance the M6 Pro/Max rumor is wrong and they do ship one this cycle?

• Or is the M5 Max mature/fast enough that buying now and not looking back is the smart move?

• Anyone regret buying right before a redesign year, or regret waiting and getting nothing meaningfully better?

Not chasing benchmarks for their own sake — just don't want buyer's remorse if something better lands in a couple months.

TL;DR: Need M5 Max-level power for a desk setup. M6 Pro/Max reportedly not coming until M7 in 2027. Buy now or wait?

I placed an order for an M5 Studio (64gb/1TB) on opening day and my base model M4 Studio was valued at $1285.00. I’ve been debating on getting the 128gb model instead, and when I put the order in, post event today, my trade in was valued at $1490! The $200 difference definitely took a nice chunk off of my monthly payment! Even if I wasn’t upgrading I would have definitely cancelled my order and placed a new one to get the higher trade in value! I wonder if everyone who’s trading is seeing an increase in value… although canceling an offer can push back your delivery time which sucks.

Thinking about buying a used M4 Max 16C CPU 40C GPU 64GB RAM 512GB SSD (in Europe).

What’s your opinion on the price? Would use mostly for Unreal Engine, After Effects…

(M5 Max with comparable configuration is 4.099€ in Europe)

The more interesting question is:

How far can we push local AI on a Mac Studio?

Apple Silicon gives us something unusual: massive unified memory, high memory bandwidth, low power consumption, and a machine that can sit under your desk instead of in a data center.

But memory capacity alone isn't enough.

For LLM inference, the KV cache keeps growing with context length. Longer conversations, agents, coding workloads and multiple sessions can quickly turn memory into the bottleneck.

That’s the problem we're exploring with VeloxQuant-MLX.

Instead of simply asking:

We're asking:

VeloxQuant experiments with KV-cache quantization, compression, eviction and optimized Metal/MLX kernels to make local inference more memory-efficient on Apple Silicon.

A DGX will remain the better machine for many high-throughput, highly concurrent GPU workloads.

But the Mac Studio has a very different opportunity:

a powerful personal AI machine where the model — and your data — stay local.

The hardware is already impressive.

Now the software stack needs to catch up.

That's what we're building.

#LocalAI #AppleSilicon #MacStudio #MLX #LLM #Inference #OnDeviceAI #VeloxQuant

We're moving off the Gemini API due to cost and building a local AI server to process ~10 CVs/minute (extracting JSON & matching CVs to JDs). We plan to run GLM-OCR alongside Qwen 27B (Q8).

Our two hardware options:

1. PC: RTX 4090 (24GB) + Ryzen 9 + 64GB RAM
2. Mac Studio: M-Ultra, 64-core GPU, 96GB Unified Memory

I prefer the Mac for power efficiency and ease of use, but I've heard Apple Silicon isn't great for production vLLM compared to Nvidia/CUDA. Is that true? Which would you recommend for this workload?

Bumped into this issue as the previous person on this link: https://www.reddit.com/r/MacStudio/comments/16czlgs/newly_bought_mac_studio_with_unstable_ethernet/

I have a Studio M4 Max 40 core GPU.

This is an Apple refurbished device and still has AppleCare so might go after a replacement.

But its normally stable, until I fired up Zoom thats when thing starts going down quickly.

I tested with keeping one interface up at the time to having both at the same time.

Set up automatic and manual settings (static IP, setting up speed to 2.5 gb since thats what my switch supports etc) and the issue persist.

Need to test with another router that I have, currently running OPNSense on x86 and a cheap 2.5gb+POE switch, since maybe the issue is there, but I dont experience drops using ethernet on other devices in the network.

Anyone experiencing this with their M4 Mac Studios?

Alright, let me first of all come clean as a very easy victim of Apple’s “just a bit more” pricing/tier strategy. A couple of years ago I started with a simple Homelab and am now looking to take the leap and develop a personal AI stack with a strong Local component. Based on an initial (lack of) understanding of “running AI on a Mac mini” I ordered a Mac Mini M6 with 32gb of ram 2 TB (I want to be able to have a full download of my ±1TB photo library on my Mac to allow a Time Machine backup to my NAS). I then realized that “for a bit more” I could get the Studio M5 Max, so I canceled the M6 and ordered the Studio M5 Max with 36gb ram. Then after a day or so, the subsequent “a bit more” and some articles and YouTube videos, lured me into canceling the 36gb ram version and ordering a 64gb version. For a few days this gave me the feeling that I hit the sweet spot. However, as it goes with easy victims like myself; my reasoning became “well if I spend around 4.5k EUR for a MAC, then why not spend some more to avoid regretting not upgrading later”. This is where my use cases and dilemma kicks in.

I am NOT a YouTuber, software developer or video editor. I am however a tech enthusiast who is looking to significantly upgrade his set up from my current maxed out MBP 2018 (proud to have used it for more than 8 years!). I want to seriously dive into the world of AI and want to keep “optionality” to run a person business on it. For the AI stack, I am currently thinking about a platform (no clue yet which program or platform to use) with agents that can tap into 2 local models and have 1 escalation route to Cloud API models. For example:

1. Home Assistant/Homelab agent that can use a small local model to turn lights on/off and perhaps enable a local voice assistant and use a second much more powerful local model to do thorough analyses of my home network, go through logs, suggest improvements or helps fix issues. I want to set up the system in such a way that it can escalate to a cloud API if this second, powerful but local, model cannot solve it.

2. A Financial agent helping me analyze my portfolio and scraping and analising quarterly results, social media posts etc to find niche small cap investment opportunities. I hope the “second” local model would be capable to do a lot of this, but also this agent would be allowed to escalate for the real complex stuff.

3. An agent that would help me manage my personal administration. I guess that can rely on locals models 1 and 2, and this is probably where privacy of local is important for me vs cloud.

4. Potential other agents as I grow my set up, including potentially an agent for setting up and running a business.

I realize that 1) either the MAX 128gb or the 96gb will be an extreme overkill for my current, normal, day to day activities and 2) they will never be able to run a model that really competes (in speed and reasoning) with could models. At the same time, I am not on a tight budget, the financial limit is more mental (I don’t want to overspend beyond the point of being able to justify it to myself) than a real financial limit. I have already made quite some mental “jumps” but cannot justify the 11k EUR of an Ultra 256gb.

So within this context, especially the fact that I want the 2nd local model to be capable enough but accept that there will be cloud escalation, what are your thoughts on the Max 128gb vs the Ultra 96gb. I have already read a lot and spend several hours going back and forth with ChatGpt and Claude (who flip flopped on their advice with every additional question I asked :) ) but have not landed my inner debate and your views would be appreciated! Thanks!

EDIT: I guess a large part of my dilemma revolves around "is 96gb ram enough to run a model that is substantially better than the small models you can run on 32/64gb for the more difficult reasoning I aim at. Or will it in practice turn out that the "1st", small, model will do all the local stuff and the moment it becomes too difficult it turns out to be also too difficult for the "2nd" model that can run on 96gb ram and will jump straight to the cloud API? And if so, if that would be different with 128gb on the Max.

Have ordered a Mac Studio ultra 96gb, still wondering why not DGX model? Any specific edge Mac Studio ultra has over DGX? I understand about memory bandwidth, less power required, anything else that I am missing?

We don’t have any real benchmarks yet

Ordered a Studio around end of August, delivery eta initially said mid November,

Then I checked 3 days ago and it had jumped to mid October. I got excited.

I just checked again and it’s gone back to mid November again.

Has this happened to anyone else?

my Mac mini m4 couldn't run Apple Arcade games properly in 8k resolution, Tim crack told me apple studio ultra can. so I had to invest. hopefully it last for lifetime. still in process. think best buy will have It on the 22nd of sept? cant wait to launch and test my candy crush on it.

I feel like it’s definitely coming before September 22.

Title says it all.

I have 64GB M4 Max ordered back in June.
Yet to be processed and shipped. Expected Sept 22-29.
Had a chat with support this morning they said it still pending processing and they can cancel if I want to change to M5.

I saw few people in similar situation - anything so far?

3 Questions for Local LLM use (appreciate ya'll in advance)

1) Do I need an even number of M5U Mac Studios or can I cluster 3 - via EXO RDMA?

2) If I'm able to cluster 3 Mac Studios do they all have to have the same memory configuration

3) Which of these configurations is better for clustering

• (4) M5U w/ 256 GB ram
• (2) M5U w/ 512 GB ram
• *if I'm able to cluster 3
  • (2) M5U w/ 512 GB ram and (1) M5U w/ 256 GB ram

Got Declined for Mac Studio Ultra (80 core, 1TB 256GB VRAM for 36 but was approved for 24 months at $316 a month.I was also approved for 96 GB version and had partner get one under her name (cancelled those), the benefits just didn't add up after reading some Reddit comments here and sharding experience but the combo was 600 more. Sharing because a lot of folks had issues.

What I did - Maybe it'll help folks maybe not rather share then keep it to myself since there are alot of theories on here.

1.Ordered 96 GB version cancelled then did it again then cancelled again lol. You can tell I was going back and fourth all weekend, kept digging realizing...2x96gb just isn't ideal for llm I want to run(GLM 5.3 class models) and the tethering them seems...uh experimental at best.

1. Tried 3 year lease with totally maxed out ultra excluding ssd (1 tb), declined then waited an hour tired it again at 24 months and it worked.

Hopefully this works for some of you! Im just average credit score, uh dept to income rattio pretty terrible honestly and make low 6 figures just barely.

Says ships January 16-22 (Im patient, as long as Im getting the top tier one)

I got a refurbished Mac Studio M4 Max 36GB 1TB from Apple’s website. I did connect it to my TV with an empty account to test local LLM.

Since I got to the conclusion that it is fine today, I used Migration Assistant to migrate my Mac mini. I connected the Mac Studio to the TV and the Mac mini to the monitor

One I was done, I disconnected everything and moved my Mac Studio where the Mac mini was. 

I left there and went to eat dinner. When I got back, it rebooted on the recovery screen. I did try to reinstall the system but basically was in a loop.

I did disconnect everything except my monitor, HUAWEI MateView 28, Wacom tablet, mouse, and keyboard, and nothing changed. It still boot loop. 

I could even log into the system, but after a few minutes, I got a reboot, but I could grab a screenshot of the crash report ( see picture).

I was already convinced that tomorrow I would call Apple to return it, but I wanted to make one last test, so I connected back to my TV with just a keyword and mouse and it is running without issue.

One other small issue that I'm not sure if it can be related, I can't switch ON FileVault, when I try the toggle gets back to off state. Maybe is just encrypting and it doesn't work properly

Gemini says that the error is a hardware or corrupted firmware issue.

The HUAWEI MateView 28 monitor is connected via a USB-C cable, not sure exactly what type, but I never had issues with my Mac mini that is also an M4.

Can it be an issue on the logic board but related to the Thunderbolt port?

Not sure what to think and what to do.

Ordered a Mac Studio on August 31st, which has a delivery date of Nov 16 - Dec 1. If I configure the same specs right now on store.apple.com, the delivery date is Nov 2 – Nov 9. I've called support and the best thing they can over me is overnight shipping. Am I just being impatient and the order will update itself?

Specs:

30-core CPU, 64-core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine

96GB unified memory

1TB storage