Review: Apple's hyper-pricey M5 Ultra Mac Studio made me into a vibe coder

Key Points:

• Apple has officially discontinued the Mac Pro, focusing instead on the Mac Studio with Apple Silicon chips that integrate CPU, GPU, and memory, making traditional tower upgradeability obsolete.
• The new Mac Studio models feature the M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips, with the Ultra being a significant two-generation leap offering up to 80 GPU cores, 512GB RAM (planned), and over 1.2TB/s memory bandwidth, optimized for AI and local language model workloads.
• Despite hardware improvements, Apple has increased Mac Studio prices substantially—up to $1,500 more for base M5 Ultra models and potentially $20,000+ for fully equipped versions—largely due to an AI-driven memory shortage.
• The M5 Ultra delivers impressive performance gains in CPU and GPU tasks compared to previous generations, though power limitations in the existing Mac Studio design may prevent fully linear scaling of performance.
• Apple Silicon Macs have become popular among AI developers for their large unified memory, high memory bandwidth, and power efficiency, making them well-suited for local AI model deployment and "vibe coding," despite the high cost and niche market.