Apple's Mac Studio Is Getting Two More Chip Upgrades — Including One Six Years From Now

There’s a quiet tension in Apple’s desktop lineup — and it has nothing to do with the Mac Pro’s uncertain future. According to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, Apple is quietly planning two more Mac Studio iterations: one arriving this year with an M5 Ultra chip, and another targeting a 2028 release with an M7 Ultra.

The 2028 timeline raises an obvious question: what happens to the chips in between? Gurman reports that Apple is reworking its M-series roadmap in a significant way. The company plans to release only a standard M6 chip, skipping the M6 Pro and M6 Max variants entirely. Instead, Apple is shifting engineering resources toward the M7 family, which is being designed with heavier AI compute as a priority.

The current Mac Studio, released in March 2025, runs on M4 Max and M3 Ultra processors. It ships with Thunderbolt 5 ports, up to 512GB of unified memory, and as much as 16TB of SSD storage. That’s already a high bar — and Apple’s internal testing suggests the next generation needs to go further still on thermal performance.

Gurman says Apple has been reworking the Mac Studio’s internal layout to fit a better heatsink, specifically because the machine will need to handle more demanding on-device AI workloads. That tracks with what the M7 series hints at: a chip line engineered less for raw core counts and more for neural engine throughput.

Don’t expect a design overhaul, though. Gurman notes that the M5 Ultra model will retain the same external chassis, and Apple has never been in a rush to redesign its desktops. The previous Mac Pro kept its basic shell for six years before being discontinued. The Mac mini went 15 years between meaningful exterior updates. The Mac Studio, it seems, will follow the same playbook — internal evolution wrapped in a familiar box.