Apple Cuts More Mac Studio and Mac Mini RAM Options as Memory Shortage Worsens (opens in new tab)

These don't have normal ram, right? The ram is part of the die of the processor? So... what's going on? They're keeping the chips for themselves? They're moving production to other lower memory configurations? But why? That's where demand is? Probably more demand at higher memory though?

I'd buy one or two but I can't stick them in a Colo because they don't have LOM or dual power supplies but I've been seriously thinking about buying one and just keeping it at home and having my Colo servers talking to it for local deepseek.

Not a high priority though considering how cheap deepseek is.

A lot of discussion surrounding the ram shortage seems to imply that it will recover, but AI companies slurping up ram for training hasn't gone down and probably won't ever. Is there any signs that the situation is improving or is this just the new normal?

Anecdata: Ordered my Mac mini M4 Pro (48GB) on April 1. Was told it wouldn't be available until June 4 but it just came in yesterday—a full month early. So I think there is an "underpromise; overdeliver" thing happening with current orders. Will be curious to see what happens with the Mini M5 release this year.

It seems like M3U 512GB RAM was a unicorn we won't ever see again :( Many skipped buying it with the hopes of a 768GB-1TB M5U but it looks increasingly unlikely.

The Mac Mini and Studio are due for an update in the coming months, a part of this is also probably that they’d rather save memory to build up their next gen model inventory rather than current gen ones?

The listings on eBay are also super tight. If you can find a Mini/Studio it's priced at a premium.

I bought a Mac Studio with 128gb RAM and M4 Max a year ago for local LLMs. 96gb memory doesn’t seem to be sufficient?

The base mac mini I got has been one of the best tech purchases I've ever made, and of course as soon as I wanted another [loaded] machine for more serious work this happens.

It's absolutely wild that Apple's desktop machines now cap out at less ram than their portables which can't sustain an intensive workload without throttling!

People may not remember, it is ~1980 all over again. There was a massive 'chip' shortage back then were the mini-computer company I was at and many others could not get chips they needed.

In fact, chips were kept under lock and key to prevent theft. But there was a massive theft there were 20,000 chips were stolen.

Apple should just start making their own RAM and not rely so much on the suppliers like Hynix etc