Buying a Mac Studio? It might not arrive before WWDC...

Apple Mac Studio
Apple Mac Studio (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

  • Apple announced its all-new Mac Studio this week.
  • It is already available for pre-order from Apple.
  • Shipping estimates indicate that delivery has already slipped to May, with some lead times as far away as three months.

A quick glance at the Mac Studio's shipping estimates and lead times indicates that some configurations of the device will not arrive for customers until June, with other cheaper options shipping in May.

The company announced the all-new Mac Studio earlier this week at its March 8 Peek Performance event, alongside the new Studio Display.

The new Mac Studio features Apple's M1 chip in either the Max or new Ultra configuration, offering customers up to 20 CPU cores, 64 GPU cores, 128GB of unified memory and as much as 8TB of SSD storage.

The Mac Studio is an expensive machine, starting at $1.999 for the Max version and $3,999 for the Ultra. It is also quite a niché product, aimed at studio professionals who need very high levels of processing power for high-intensity work in filmmaking, editing, music production, and design. Despite this, the Studio is already proving quite popular. Pre-orders opened on March 8 following the event, however, the Max version is shipping in early April, with the Ultra showing as late as May 3. And that's just the base models, if you're looking for a more customized machine with more GPU power, memory, or storage, then you'll be waiting an astonishing 10-12 weeks for your machine. That takes us all the way to June and the very real possibility that your Mac Studio might arrive after Apple's 2022 Worldwide Developer Conference, expected to take place that month as it has every year previously.

Apple's Mac Studio was announced alongside its new iPhone SE, iPad Air, and the exciting announcement that Major League Baseball is coming to Apple TV+.

Stephen Warwick
News Editor

Stephen Warwick has written about Apple for five years at iMore and previously elsewhere. He covers all of iMore's latest breaking news regarding all of Apple's products and services, both hardware and software. Stephen has interviewed industry experts in a range of fields including finance, litigation, security, and more. He also specializes in curating and reviewing audio hardware and has experience beyond journalism in sound engineering, production, and design. Before becoming a writer Stephen studied Ancient History at University and also worked at Apple for more than two years. Stephen is also a host on the iMore show, a weekly podcast recorded live that discusses the latest in breaking Apple news, as well as featuring fun trivia about all things Apple. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwarwick9