Apple has officially phased out the Mac Pro tower and is focusing on the Mac Studio as its top-tier desktop computer. The new M5 Ultra Mac Studio has emerged as a particularly attractive option for artificial intelligence developers and engineers who want to run large language models locally, a use case Apple was unprepared for initially. The demand has been so high that many high-end Mac systems have been difficult to purchase for months, prompting Apple to develop this higher-capacity system.

The M5 Ultra represents a significant jump, skipping the M4 generation entirely, and features up to 12 super CPU cores, 24 performance cores, and 80 graphics processing unit cores with 1.2TB/s of memory bandwidth—essentially doubling the M5 Max specifications. The system supports up to eight external displays and includes enhanced cooling with more conductive copper in the heatsink. The M5 Ultra is constructed from two M5 Max chips connected via silicon interconnect, representing a meaningful architectural change from previous Ultra generations and offering substantially more processing power for machine learning workloads.