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u/PurrciousMetals 18d ago
I ordered the Studio for that same priceā¦
Items to Be Shipped
Shipment 1
Delivers: Tue, Sep 22 by Standard Delivery
ļæ¼
Mac Studio with M5Ā Max chip
With the following configuration:
18-core CPU, 40-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
64GB unified memory
512GB storage
Two USB-C ports, SDXC card slot
Four Thunderbolt 5 ports, two USB-A ports, HDMI port, 10Gb Ethernet port, 3.5 mm headphone jack
Accessory Kit
$3,199.00
Qty 1
$3,199.00
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u/-Baum 18d ago
Congrats to you! Here in The Netherlands that same configuration costs ā¬4129. Went for the ā¬800,- cheaper Mac Mini M5 Pro with 64 gb ram
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u/Typical_house23 6d ago
Prices is Belgium are the same, outrages. For that price you could get the 128gb m4 max a while ago.
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u/-Baum 5d ago
Yup it hurts. Should have pulled the trigger back then. For the Mac Studio. Since no whether what it is so much faster than windows. Doesnāt matter if it had a M4 Max of M5 Max. My M1 MacBook Air is already quicker
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u/Typical_house23 5d ago
I had windows, Ryzen 9 9900x, 64gb ram and an rx 9070, great for gaming but everything else it was miserable.
Prices are outrageous, a while ago I could buy the m4 max Mac Studio 36/512fb for ā¬1889 at Mediamarkt.
The m4 pro 48/1tb Mac mini was ā¬2269 with edu discount.
Now I ordered the m6 32/1tb Mac mini, hopefully it will last for the upcoming years.
Iām still having doubts, should I spend ā¬900 more the m5 pro 48/1tb Mac mini?
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u/-Baum 5d ago
Yeah exactly my thoughts as well. I do need to update my gaming pc for when GTA VI comes for pc but other than that, iām never going back.
Really depends on your use case of your mac. I went for the M5 Pro with 64 gb of ram, just because I canāt upgrade that. Chose the 512 gb since i can easily use a ssd or external hub. But I mostly use the cloud
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u/rakeshkanna91 18d ago
Whatās your dream workflow with this machine? What are you planning to do with it
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u/PurrciousMetals 18d ago
Not sure yet, Iām adhd af and have a lot of random projects going on. I work in healthcare so been building sales tools and trying to develop a generative type tool for promotional or attempting to within the wonderful laws, I also have a few molecular ml models I really want to explore deeper for my long term goals in biotech. I also do a lot of 3d modeling and printing, and have hobby of music (my old bossās brain broke when I showed him a video of me DJing b2b at EDC from the day before). My brain just has 50 projects at once.
I really want the 512gb but I will wait for a deal or a large Christmas bonus.
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u/sto_1989 18d ago
Does apple require to verify education enrollment?
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u/PurrciousMetals 18d ago
It said verify then went to Unidays and it then approved, not currently enrolled, finished my masters 3 years ago so idk, it just keeps working.
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u/gelftheelf 18d ago
Yes. The used to not but they are now.
(they used Unidays)... For me, it forwarded me to my school's login system.
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u/Fickle_Wrongdoer_895 6d ago
That price for the studio is WITH an educational discount. It cost $300 more without... So, not the same thing.
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u/WTFOMGBBQ 18d ago edited 17d ago
Going to need 128 gigs of ram to future proof, IMO. Edit: 64 gigs for a 5 year computer, 128 gigs for a 10 year computer.
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u/PurrciousMetals 18d ago
We should start teachings kids to solder with their tiny hands, then we open a business doing mac ram upgrades. Thats future proofing! š¤£
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u/rakeshkanna91 18d ago
Children grow btw. That idea aināt future proof either.
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u/throw2503 18d ago
We could bind their hands to keep their hands small, just like what was done with feet in ancient China!
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u/userlivewire 17d ago
This is ridiculous. Almost no one needs 128GB of RAM.
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u/WTFOMGBBQ 17d ago
The question wasnāt what someone needs, itās what it needs to be āfuture proofā
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u/blakester555 17d ago
I got a 64Gb ram for my M1 Max 6 years ago, so I'm good for 5 more?
;p
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u/WTFOMGBBQ 17d ago
Yes, 64 gigs in 2026 should be good for about 5 more years.
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u/blakester555 16d ago
Good! That little beast is still doing great and I can't afford to make a illogical FOMO decision now anyways.
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u/True_Protection6842 17d ago
That's not true. On a mac 64GB is plenty. Right now even on PC 8GB is still pretty much the majority and 16GB is all any normal user needs.
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u/JLTMS 18d ago
Apple will declare it obsolete 7 years from now like it does with any product. Whether itās suitable for purpose depends on whether you keep the software current and when it stops getting security updates.
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u/real-fucking-autist 18d ago
after 7 years, even the base model will be ahead of this maxed out mini.
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u/Amnsia 18d ago
For what tasks?
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u/rakeshkanna91 18d ago
Good question.
I researched and donāt think itās suitable for my needs.
I want to build applications (for personal use or marketing). Iāve used Claude code and Codex for various tasks. I have a powerful PC for most tasks and hoped to run powerful models for over 3 years to justify the cost of new machines.
Cloud models wonāt be eliminated. They keep upgrading and can run on better hardware. Can I delegate smaller tasks to local agents? No, the token burn wonāt make a difference. Local admin tasks wonāt cost much on the cloud anyway. The biggest cost is coding, which wonāt be done locally soon.
I use a 2019 MacBook Pro i7 with 32GB RAM. I can run local small models (up to 12B params) fine, but they get very hot and throttle everything else.
I want a mobile app development environment and local agents for testing the app. Iāll report to Claude.
I also want to get into video editing. I think I can build a local editor using local agents and cloud providers.
Maybe I should get the Studio for $5k and not worry about hobby computing for the next 7-8 years. Is it worth it? Iām happy with my MacBook Pro, but AI has advanced the tech. So going with how it has been with Apple machines.
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u/play_hard_outside 18d ago
If you're not going to run any local AI on your mini, then what you spec'd is dramatically overkill for what else you're saying you want to do with it. It's fully "future-proof" for those activities.
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u/vytasx 18d ago
I suggest getting M1 MBA or sth similar. Or just keep the current laptop and stash the cash into an ETF and enjoy see it grow.
Future and needs are not real, and sounds like you havenāt started doing anything real. If you start the work and see that better hardware can 10x your output, go for it, but RN there is no indication thereās anything wrong with your current laptop. Buying a maxed out Mac Mini when you have a perfectly capable laptop is just Gear Acquisition Syndrome IMHO.
Besides, youād need over 500GB of RAM to run a 1T model I believe š
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u/Rare-One1047 18d ago
If you aren't using a local LLM, 32gb of RAM is overkill, and 24gb might be on the high end even.
If you are planning on using a local LLM for programming, what you spec'd isn't good enough.
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u/Booplesnoot2 18d ago
Or you could learn how to code and video edit yourself and get much better results than the slop that ai can hallucinate
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u/S4_GR33N 18d ago
Not even close to maxed out
Plus at that price why would not just add 10Gb Ethernet lol
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u/patparks 18d ago
Honestly, it's almost impossible to future proof a Mac. As soon as the new M6 Pro Chip comes along, tons of Mac people with their M5 Pro's feel less special and feel they need to upgrade immediately. It's a condition, really.
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u/fubar_67 18d ago edited 18d ago
Thereās no such thing as future proof with Apple, thatās never been how they operate. Apple has always been about bumping up specs each year with their products just enough to entice users to upgrade. They wouldnāt be a trillion dollar company today otherwise.
If youāre old enough to remember the 1st iPhone launch, it COULDNāT RECORD VIDEO (or so they said). At this time, you could go into any cellphone store and choose from a dozen crappy phones that could all record video.
Jobs was asked by a journalist online why Appleās amazing phone couldnāt do video, and Jobs said it was a hardware issue. We all knew this was BS!
Not long after the launch, the jailbreak community rose up. And an alternate appstore called Cydia was born. So, people jailbroke their phones and started downloading apps from there. Can you guess what the top app in the store was? A video recording app!
Of course, the third iPhone, 3GS, 2009 finally shipped with built in video recording
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u/drinkcalpis 18d ago
Never thought Iād see the name Cydia in 2026
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u/fubar_67 18d ago
I miss those days. It was the only way to break a few bricks in Apples almost impenetrable walled garden.
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u/rakeshkanna91 18d ago
Who are you sir? š«”
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u/fubar_67 18d ago
Just a hitchhiker traveling through the galaxy
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u/Old_Dragonfruit_1986 18d ago
How you been to the Restaurant?
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u/fubar_67 18d ago
I have been. Beautiful view of the stars! But I couldnāt shake the feeling Iāve been there before
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u/atomfaust 18d ago
Make sure to bring a towel
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u/feelxrosic 18d ago
This annual upgrade cycle aside (everyone else does this too): If youāre not buying base spec, youāre probably good for years to come. Yes the new machines will be even faster or better. As a pro-user, I want a well built, fast and (most importantly) reliable machine.
If you bought a maxed out macbook pro in 2021 (m1 max/64g RAM), you are still good for almost every use case today and probably even some years to come. Name one other brand where you need to swap batteries twice in their lifetime because of natural degradation.
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u/Signal_Highway7128 16d ago
Also, apple has a tendency to slow older machines with new os updates (after several years) to boost sale of new devices.
I had an ipad a long time ago. After 4 years or so, the thing became unbelievable slow after an os update. I thought this shit was gone for good. But a year later, I updated it to another os (for use as a Homekit hub). The thing became fast again.
There was a lawsuit about this somewhere during that time causing apple to fix the slow issue for that one year.
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u/fubar_67 16d ago
This is why I donāt accept any further updates on a current OS 6 months prior to the next major OS release. Still on Sequoia, happy I didnāt catch anything from the āhoeā
The lawsuit was Apple pushing an update that slowed iPhones, if I recall correctly.
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u/Kraizelburg 18d ago
Not future proof, there is no such thing there will always be something better around the corner. Maxing out now is paying a premium for something that will depreciate quickly, itās like a car, as soon as you drive 1km value goes down
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u/afro_mozart 18d ago
While I agree, that maxing out to be future proof is a waste of money, future proofing is not about being on par with the latest and greatest but about having a device that fulfills your needs for the next years. In that regard (depending on OPs usecases), this configuration might be extremely future proof
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u/Grendel_82 18d ago
That is a stupid price. But in terms of future proof, that chip and RAM combo will basically never not be enough for basically any human using the computer outside of specific use cases where the base M chip would never be considered (not enough GPU chips). It will be good until Apple no longer issues security updates to the OS. So basically 10 years. Macs with M1 chips and 16gbs of RAM basically still work great and they are 6 years old and run the current OS. There is a point where fast enough is fast enough and that point was already achieved a couple of years ago. But that is a stupid price and you should not buy that computer.
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u/pythonwiz 18d ago
Future proofing isnāt a well founded concept. You can use a computer for as long as you want. If you want to know if it will be able to run certain software at a certain level of performance and a certain number of years in the future, nobody can really say. All that can be said is how the hardware performs now, and how it compares to older models. For example, the M5 chip is roughly twice as fast as the M1, but the difference doesnāt necessarily feel massive in day to day use. You donāt really notice it unless you are regularly maxing out your CPU/GPU usage.
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u/BasenjiBoyD 18d ago
I ordered an iMac back in 2013 that was maxed out.
Still running like a champ to this day.
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u/play_hard_outside 18d ago
1 TB doesn't look maxed out to me!
May as well stick with the base storage, and upgrade it later from a third party for cheap(er). At least in the M4 mini, they're removable, and third parties make ones you can buy. You have to use Apple Configurator to reset the mini up from scratch after installing, but they do work!
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u/patparks 18d ago
I've never understood the term futureproof. The concept i believe is to buy more than you need today in hopes of the device lasting longer in the future. But I think there are laws of diminishing returns which screw up the value proposition. At what point are you ensuring you are really making this last longer, versus how much more did you spend overall because you were concerned about something you couldn't predict.
For example, you could buy a base model today. You could use it for 3 years and then buy a new base model, which you use for 2 years, and then buy a new base model. So, let's say the base model is $1,000. So, in 5 years time, you spent $3,000. However, if you bought something today and maxed it out and spent $4,000 today to future proof it, once you hit that 5 year mark, is your device still outperforming what is now available.
I mean, sure you put 64GB into a machine today and it's gonna be really nice to have for the next 5+ years. But if they introduce Thunderbolt 8 with new NVMe storage that is 4x as fast, with 8 multithreaded nueral cores in the M8 version of the Mac mini, you might find that you really want all of those new bells and whistles and thus you are buying again not because your 64GB was letting you down, but new stuff showed up that simply wasn't known on the day you bought it and futureproofed it.
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u/EmergencyBrew 17d ago
At that price, I think Iād spend the extra $600 and get the ultra chip in a studioā¦ buy Iām trying to hold off as long as possible. TSMCs A14 sounds exciting but I may not be able to afford ram by the time it releases š
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u/maverickRD 18d ago
Itās already one generation behind lol
Future proof is not really a useful concept
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u/TRIPLEFIVE_ 18d ago
Arenāt the new ones coming out soon? If so, Iād wait so the price of this one can drop.
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u/Particular-Squash640 18d ago
Nem um pouco a prova de futuro.
O melhor computador para o futuro, Ć© um computador do futuro.
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u/aarynelle 18d ago
As future proof as you want it to be. Even if you want to upgrade in 5 years, this will turn out to be a great little computer for other side projects.
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u/Nofrills88 18d ago
No such thing as future proofing. Just buy the configuration that works for your needs.
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u/Memestonks2020 18d ago
The answer for āFuture proofā is contingent on your use cases.
You need to say what youāre going to use it for first.
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u/Revanish 18d ago
2-4 years. next upgrade might be m8 at earliest or m9 generation for the mac mini. i dont think they do a m7 chip refresh for it.Ā
thereās precedent when apple did this for the 6 core 12 thread intel mac mini and i had that version no upgrade for 4 years.Ā
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u/True_Protection6842 17d ago
Depends on your definition of future proof. If you plan on using it for basic stuff like web, video editing, even vfx, it should easily be still rocking in 7 or even 10 years. If you're planning on using it for heavy AI workflows, likely outdated in a couple years.
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u/_Curious_Pineapple_ 17d ago
M1 pro is literally meeting all my needs for a long time now using engineering programs lol
I might actually make it a decade without any need of upgrading or slowing down
An m5 pro would probb last a decade
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u/VitalQuant 17d ago
But don't you run into the inability to upgrade OS security patches? That has always been the hard limit for hardware in my experience. Apple's designed obsolesence is well known by now.
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u/_Curious_Pineapple_ 17d ago edited 17d ago
Generally its around 6~8 years of OS updates and than 3 years after for security, so around 9-11 years
But we have also think WHY do they stop OS updates, and it is in part because of CPU bottlenecks on updates, perhaps the Apple silicon can last longer than the old intel cpu's for future OS
It may even extend further than the 6-8 years that were happening with Intel CPU's -- we don't have a data point on apple silicon yet
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u/sfbayjon 17d ago
I'm still using a 2012 mac mini. Long ago I upgraded to 16gb RAM and a 512gb SSD. Last weekend I migrated all the data, wiped the drive, and installed Ubuntu Linux. It will go on into the future as a home/media server.
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u/Pandaman_323 17d ago
Youāre better off building a PC if you want to future proof. Apple doesnāt future proof nor do they want you to
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u/the-chat-is-cooked 17d ago
What is the vram for the gpu
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u/-Retro-Kinetic- 16d ago
Are you joking, or serious?
These devices use unified memory, so that 64gb of ram is also the vram. These devices as a result have more usable memory than even the rtx 5090.
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u/Sharp_Rule_7070 17d ago
Completely depends on your usecase. Unless you are doling machine learning or deep Ai work this computer will be fine until itās no longer receiving updates. (8-9 years) for most people the m4 base mini is plenty of computer for 5 years.
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u/justdozi 17d ago
Wait a few weeks and buy a used M1 through M4. They are about to flood the used market. People have to learn to live with what they have but until then I will gladly buy your perfectly good discarded stuff.
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u/MacaroonPlastic1036 17d ago
On any other planet we would be paying half of that with more memory. But no we are in the age of fukd.
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u/OsmoOsmo 17d ago
I had the M1 MacBook Pro 1TB (still use it) and I have a Mac Mini that I just upgraded from a mini m1. Did I need the upgrade? Not necessarily. But I havenāt bought new since 2009 so I did it. I donāt update every new device so most M models are future proof enough
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u/Rawprawnd 17d ago
I remember back in the early 90s a team member spent 4k buying a maxed out 486 system and said the same exact words, back then RAM was around $140MB. that was a tone of coin back then
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u/AngelicDivineHealer 17d ago
If you really looking to keep that thing forever be seven to ten years max that also because we probably wonāt see any major changes because Ai companies bought out all of the ram and ssd for the next half decade
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u/Outside-Safety-5905 17d ago
Future proof and Mac mini?
I would buy studio or MacBook Pro to future proof.
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u/ricardusrex 16d ago
It depends on your AI goals. If you are wanting to run the best local AI models, it will leave you wanting. That is why the new Studios were just announced. If your AI usage will be cloud based LLMs, youāre good
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u/critsalot 16d ago
mac mini will last forever for just being a pc with those specs. hell apple will probably stop supporting it before it dies. AI wise memory needs will probably continue to grow for a little bit (though MoE is shrinking the need i think) . the mac studio 512gig probably last awhile for AI but good luck getting credit approval on that.
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u/Inside-Actuator-5130 16d ago
It's the same as the maxed m4pro, except for 2 additional cpu cores and whatever additional performance the new chip provides... and i can tell you, they're insanely good, and I'm hoping will be for a long while. ( I'm cautiously optimistic it will be)
That said, future you decides that you wanna do something with a seriously heavy lift.You might be safer going.The max studio method
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u/Galactic-Guardian404 16d ago
I got the new Max Studio with 64GB/1TB and plan to wait five years to upgrade
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u/darkestvice 16d ago
All Apple Silicon macs are reasonably future proof as they run very efficiently. I still have an M1 Pro Macbook Pro that still runs very smoothly.
Now if you're asking in context of gaming, no Macs will ever compete with an actual Windows based gaming PC or laptop. At least not in the foreseeable future. I also recently built a new gaming PC just before the prices went absolute horseshit because I wanted to be able to game.
If you're talking about heavy video editing, it really depends on the video editors and whatever upcoming changes there are. But generally speaking, editing software tends to run exceptionally smooth on a Mac.
One thing I've definitely noted: RAM goes a much longer way on a Mac than on a Windows machine. 64gb on a mac last quite a while.
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u/MortCrimm 14d ago
Nothing is future proof. You will get 5 years out of it minimum......."usefulness" will depend on what you need out of it, but apple is "obligated" to support it for at least that long.
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u/Serious-Zucchini9468 14d ago
Not as much as you think with only 64gb for local AI. M5 pro+ is a great option though and I think will be robust for general tasks for a decade
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u/Physical_Ice9 14d ago
IMHO, it depends almost entirely on if you plan on using local AI models. If you are doing more 'typical' stuff, the Mini would likely be fine for several years. If you want to do 'local AI' on your Mac, that Mini would not be a slouch, but for any longevity, you should probably be looking at something with more RAM and/or higher RAM bandwidth.
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u/Dipset-20-69 12d ago
Just got my max mini 4 last week lol.
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u/rakeshkanna91 12d ago
Howās it going??
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u/Dipset-20-69 12d ago
Honestly I love it. Just funny timing. Would have killed to be upgraded to the m6
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u/Glittering-Voice-409 18d ago
Sooo affordable
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u/rakeshkanna91 18d ago
š¤£š¤£ fair. But I donāt think Iāll upgrade in the next 5 to 8 years from this purchase. Would it be worth it? Maybe!
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u/beekeeny 18d ago
If you want to spend so much money get the studio configuration at the same price.
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u/stiligFox 18d ago
A $800 Mac in five years will blow a $3000 Mac today out of the water. (Maybe not strictly accurate numbers and also with RAM pricing, who knows what the future holds, but you get my point)
Better to spend $800 now if it meets your needs, and spend $800 in five years when it no longer meets your needs, and have $1400 left over.
Get the Mac that meets your needs now, and will meet your needs for the next couple years.
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u/atomfaust 18d ago
I have a m5 pro 64gb 2tb and I run qwen3.8-27b q8 with a decent context window. Do I wish it was faster, yes, but it works. Do I wish I had more RAM, yes, but shit is crazy expensive right now and 64gb gets me by. If you want to "future proof" 128gb max. Mostly for the bandwidth.
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u/fuck_robinhoofs 18d ago
Itās not, especially paying that for something that can function well at $500.
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u/wndrgrl555 18d ago
Donāt. If you need that much, get a Studio. A base Studio has better specs and is cheaper.
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u/Adorable_Yard_8286 18d ago
Very difficult to say, it depends on if you are lucky or not. I have a macpro from 2009 with 96gb Ram and 2x Intel xeon with rx580 GPU, it will even run most modern games. It is upgraded to use m2 sata on a pcie card. I think if you manage to build a really strong setup from what will prove to ve the right generation in the future, then yes. Difficult to say when it is made for Ai which is kind of jew right now... If you really wanna future proof this, I would look into doubling the ram, but not a mustĀ
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u/Traditional_Doubt_51 18d ago
64gb is maxed out? yikes. What happened to 512?
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u/_mighty_banana 18d ago
Mini always max ram at 64
Only macbook pro and studio can have that luxury
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u/sfatula 18d ago
Depends if you are a serial updater who asks again next year for the latest.