Mac Studio 512GB RAM Option Disappears Amid Global DRAM Shortage (macrumors.com) 50
Apple has removed the 512GB RAM configuration for the Mac Studio, leaving 256GB as the new maximum. The remaining 256GB upgrade has also increased in price and now faces longer shipping delays as demand grows "due to consumers seeking machines suitable for running local AI agents," reports MacRumors. From the report: The Mac Studio starts with 36GB RAM, but there were upgrades ranging from 48GB to 512GB, with the higher tier upgrades limited to the M3 Ultra chip. Now there are options ranging from 48GB to 256GB, with wait times into May for the 256GB upgrade. Apple has also raised the price for the 256GB RAM upgrade option. It used to cost $1,600 to go from 96GB to 256GB on the high-end M3 Ultra machine, but now it costs $2,000. 512GB was $4,000 when it was available.
We hate selling computers (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody wants to sell to consumers anymore. Memory manufactures want orders that go out beyond 5 quarters and pay near retail price for wholesale memory.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:We hate selling computers (Score:5, Informative)
No, but these devices do get used a LOT commercially.. A 512gb mac is a fantastic device for certain tasks, including as mentioned local AI.
Friend of mine uses a 256gig mac as an AI agent for processing forms in his law practice. No, its not doing lawyers stuff,, rather he's using an AI model and a python script (that I wrote for him), to sort documents and characterize the contents then store indexes to them in a vector database so he can come in later and find them. Since his job regularly involves discovery requests involving hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, this is a huge timesaver.
So by "consumer" read "not datacenter"
Re: (Score:3)
These kinds of things are why all these internet “a.i. is useless and no one asked for this.” comments are so ignorant. You often see how actual professionals whose time is worth a considerable sum get the investment of power and hardware out of it with things like this.
What is the motivation? (Score:2)
Those against AI must be Russian or Chinese trolls trying to slow down western progress is the only thing that makes sense.
Re: (Score:1)
A lot of harm is possible due to them (Score:2)
Serious? What is the fun in that?
Okay, harm is vague, but I have heard maybe three or four specific horror scenarios of AI harm.
It is a foregone conclusion that AI is useful for accomplishing tasks and will continue to improve and become more useful. That is said to eliminate the stupid AI harm resulting from the AI bubble collapse, allowing everyone to buy cheap RAM again.
#1 The Evil Super AI
This is where the AI becomes so smart,and then it is either directed to or decides to do great harm like maybe bio w
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Those against AI must be Russian or Chinese trolls trying to slow down western progress is the only thing that makes sense.
Absolutely. There's zero reason a human being would have anything against a technology that's being touted as the end of all human labor in a society that sees zero value in anyone who doesn't work other than being foreign assets.
Perspective. You're missing it.
You realize you are supporting not disagreeing... (Score:2)
Grandfather:
“a.i. is useless and no one asked for this.” comments are so ignorant.
You:
a technology that's being touted as the end of all human labor in a society
If the fear is that the AI will end all human labor, then it must be very useful at accomplishing the labor humans are currently being paid to perform.
Since people are willing to pay for the labor, well then they are asking for this; something that can make the labor cheaper.
So you support the grandfather post and offer no other explanation for the very strong opposition to AI asserting it is just useless "slop".
Therefore those asserting the statement the grandfather says is ignorant must
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, or just typical internet losers who can't form an independent opinion like everyone else in politics.
Never assume any rational strategy behind any opinion one hears sufficiently often. Usually the only reason behind it then is that it's heard sufficiently often.
Re: (Score:2)
Those against AI must be Russian or Chinese trolls trying to slow down western progress is the only thing that makes sense.
I enjoy the irony of an AI sockpuppet account that is trained to go out and convince people that AI isn't really a thing.
Are you saying Russian AI is the devil? (Score:2)
The greatest trick the [Russian AI] ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist
Charles Baudelaire
Re: (Score:2)
There has always been an undercurrent of "WHY DOES PROFESSIONAL HARDWARE COST SO DAMN MUCH!?"
Of course, the answer is always "because it saves professionals enough time that the RoI is measured in weeks."
If you are looking at pro tools, but not a pro user of those tools, you are looking to spend a lot of money. If you are a pro user of those tools, you're looking to reduce your day to day overhead through a one-time capital purchase.
Re: (Score:2)
For a lot of the tasks people want to use them for, its worse than useless.
The task I'm using it for is as an opinionated search engine, and I think everyone agrees LLMs are pretty good at that, when not hallucinating, that is.
Re: (Score:2)
Was saddened M5 Max didn't give us 256GB as an option, they'd have gotten another sale from me.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm doing just fine with a 128g Mac Studio M1 Ultra. Editing 4k video weekly for Airwindows. Not sure 'certain tasks' is anything BUT local AI.
Re: (Score:2)
is same generation silicon built at the same foundries? yes.
Re: We hate selling computers (Score:2)
At the end of this manufactured so-called crisis, Apple may very well be the last personal computer manufacturer as we know them today.
Eventually the AI companies will run out of funding and the memory and storage demand will plummet. But as for when that will happen, who knows?
Re: eh (Score:1)
Noctua makes fans for lots of companies, they will probably be fine. Asus can't die soon enough though
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody wants to sell to consumers anymore. Memory manufactures want orders that go out beyond 5 quarters and pay near retail price for wholesale memory.
Memory manufacturers have that, that is the problem. The entire DRAM supply globally is currently spoken for.
Re: (Score:2)
I was under the assumption that Apple had long-term contracts for RAM and other components that effectively made them immune to supply chain issues like the current RAM shortage? If this is correct, this seems like a transparent ploy on Apple's part to raise prices.
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody actually knows. If RAM prices triple for most computer makers, then I bet memory cost for Apple won't stay constant for long. Now Apple selling RAM is quite profitable for them, so they can eat some of the extra cost. But for a machine with 512GB RAM their cost will grow enough to hurt if they eat the cost, and someone w
Re: (Score:2)
It depends on when those contracts were signed, and what the term is on them.
Example, if they signed a RAM supply contract 5 years ago, and it lasts 5 years, they're currently fucked.
Re: (Score:3)
The entire DRAM supply globally is currently spoken for.
It's going to be an interesting time for DRAM prices when the AI bubble bursts, the bankrupt AI companies can't honor the terms specified in their DRAM contracts, and the world's entire locked-up supply of DRAM suddenly becomes available on the open market again.
Re: (Score:3)
- Sell to the public and state "We made X profit this quarter"
Or
- Sell to the server market that will pay more to secure the RAM and state "We made X++ profit this quarter"
And when it's your job to make as much for their investors, which will you choose: to keep your job or be let go for someone else?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Home computer users are here tomorrow."
They aren't going away. These companies can focus on the whales today secure in the knowledge that when the whales do die, they can just go back to relying on home computer users tomorrow. Home users can't go anywhere else, competitors aren't just going to pop up overnight and take away their business. And because of this, investors LOVE it.
Re: (Score:2)
You spent too much time dicking around with your font, and not enough time considering a play that someone could make, and make out quite good, knowing the history of "demand bubbles" in electronics from the past:
1. demand rises because of some fad or another that requires monstrous amounts of RAM, and right now
2. buyers, needing to shortage-proof their businesses, are willing to sign delivery contracts, giving you a margin over current wholesale prices in order to guarantee their supply before others
3.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why are you angry with Apple, when it's the AI billionaires that are sucking up all the supply like a black hole in order to make ever-bigger industrial energy-to-heat facilities without the byproduct of useful work?
are we really this stupid???
For various values of "we" the answer is quite apparent from your post.
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody wants to sell to consumers anymore.
I'd venture a guess that most DRAM is sold to system manufacturers for installation in new PCs and laptops. We here on /. may have the tech skills to pop a machine open and add some more. But we are not representative of the market demographic.
this bubble sucks on both ends (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
When the bubble bursts, China can buy up the servers and use them to do nuclear simulations. It's an ill wind etc
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, if the blade chassis and shit that big boy datacenter operators use get cheap enough from oversupply, I'm not opposed to a little electrical work to support it.
What kind of secondary market nerd are you?
M5 Ultra with 1TB of RAM Incoming (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like similar segmenting to what nVidia does with their graphics cards now. In the RTX 50 series they have cards in the $100-1000 range, and then the flagship 5090 which jumps up to $3-5k. Notice the gap. For memory allotment , they have a bunch of cards with 8, 12, and 16 GB, then nothing until you go full 5090 and get 32 GB.
Apple could be getting rid of their 512 GB model just to push those who would have bought it upmarket to the 1 TB model, which will cost similar to a Gulfstream jet. (But image A
Re: (Score:2)
What exactly would one be running on these - PARALLELS? I am considering a workstation w/ 128GB RAM, and there, I'd have a Type 1 hypervisor, and then on top of that, VMs of different OSs - FreeBSD, Windows 7, macOS, OS/2..... What applications are there outside hypervisors that would need 512GB or 1TB of RAM?
Nobody needs ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
How many kBs are required to store the string "- sent from my Mac Studio with 256GB of RAM starting from $10,599.00" so it can be appended to every email?
Re: (Score:2)
About the same as the 128GB MacBook Pro I'm typing this on. But admittedly, that was mostly its 8TB SSD, IIRC.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
And nobody needs to read this exact same comment )*#@^% 640K times. Move on.
Re: (Score:2)
And nobody needs to read this exact same comment
Welcome to Slashdot. If it wasn't for dupes, you'd have nothing to read.