Apple rumored to launch third-gen Mac Studio with M3 Ultra chip in mid-year

Mac Studio has been the portable powerhouse from Apple’s fleet of Mac computers and there’s a rumor that a third-gen Mac Studio is in work with a more powerful M3 Ultra chip.

A new rumor from Taiwanese research firm TrendForce (via Macrumors) predicts that the next version of Mac Studio is coming in mid-year.

So far, the iPhone maker has released two versions of the Mac Studio. The first Mac Studio was released on March 8, 2022, featuring an M1 Max and M1 Ultra chip. Both versions have different memory capacities.

In June last year, Apple introduced the second generation Mac Studio with 2nd-gen Apple silicon chipsets – M2 Max and M2 Ultra. These offer better performance than their predecessors.

Apple Mac Studio

The last launch happened during the annual WWDC 2023 developer event and WWDC 2024 may also host the third-gen Mac Studio.

More details about the M3 Ultra chip from Trendforce indicate that Apple is likely to choose the N3E node for this chipset. This may also be used for the A18 chip for the iPhone 16 lineup, scheduled for launch later this year.

The M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chipset are fabricated with TSMC’s N3B process technology, similar to A17 Pro. This new process technology is an enhanced version of the 3nm process from the Taiwanese chip producer with a slightly better performance.

For now, it’s hard to predict exact performance improvements but each generation of Apple silicon takes up the CPU capabilities two steps further than the past.

For now, Apple has not announced the launch date for Mac Studio 3 but the report could be taken as a way forward to the new Mac Studio product while waiting for more information.