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r/MacStudio

Image 1 — Yay or Nay? Openbox for $1980 (Reg Price $2800) - M4 Max/1TB/36GB RAM
Image 2 — Yay or Nay? Openbox for $1980 (Reg Price $2800) - M4 Max/1TB/36GB RAM
▲ 19 r/MacStudio

Yay or Nay? Openbox for $1980 (Reg Price $2800) - M4 Max/1TB/36GB RAM

Should I pick up openbox at Micro Center for $1980 (Regular price now $2800). That's cheaper than the 512GB model was. It's a base config essentially w/ 1TB upgrade (36GB Ram, 14 Core CPU, 32 Core GPU).

What I really want is 64GB Ram model w/ 16 Core CPU, 40 Core GPU but price on that is $3800 and not available till OCT 21st. So is it worth it to wait three months and $2000 more?

My current config is a base model Mac Mini (16GB ram, 10 Core CPU, 10 Core GPU), but upgraded to 2TB.

u/TLBJ24 — 10 hours ago
▲ 76 r/MacStudio

Received my 256gb m3 ultra today!

Originally supposed to ship in September I got the email that my package had arrived at the apple store, just in time for the Claude Fable window!

Specs
256 GB Ram
m3 ultra 32 cpu 80 gpu
4 tb hard drive

$7300 plus tax (refurbished prices, employee discount but I don't work at apple)

Thought about flipping it but Im so excited to keep working on my projects I had to start using it!

Qwen 3.5 122B is running 40 tok/s very good. I record vids, 1 min of footage can be analyzed in 20 second locally, so I can basically continuously record and analyze every clip. So sick, ngl best day of my life shoutout the apple engineers for a sick product.

reddit.com
u/Throwaway4264975 — 1 day ago
▲ 7 r/MacStudio

Mac Studio fails to wake from sleep

Hi all does anyone have a solution to prevent this, or know what causes it? I have an M4 Max with 64 GB of RAM running Tahoe 26.5.1, and it’s connected to an LG Ultrafine monitor via Thunderbolt. I’ve been experiencing this issue for several updates now. It usually occurs after the Mac Studio has been powered on for about a full day. I typically encounter it in the morning after it has been sitting idle overnight.

reddit.com
u/ReposeNotSoGray — 1 day ago
▲ 140 r/MacStudio+2 crossposts

Run Claude Code against a local Gemma 4 or Qwen 3.6 - no API key, no cost, works on any Apple Silicon Mac

If you have an Apple Silicon Mac you can run Claude Code completely locally (and free) by pointing it at a local server. Here's how:

Setup (2 minutes) brew tap ddalcu/mlx-serve https://github.com/ddalcu/mlx-serve brew install --cask mlx-core # GUI menu bar app brew install mlx-serve # CLI server only mlx-serve run gemma-4-e4b-it # downloads + starts the server (not needed if you use GUI)

Then launch Claude Code with:

ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=http://localhost:11434 \
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=local \
ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_MODEL=mlx-serve \
claude

That's it. Claude Code streams, tool calls, thinking blocks, multi-turn - all work against the local model via the Anthropic Messages API.

What runs well locally

  • Gemma 4 E4B 4-bit (recommended starting point, ~105 tok/s decode on M4 Max)
  • Qwen 3.6 27B 4-bit with native MTP spec-decode (~36 tok/s, 1.43x faster on code tasks)
  • Qwen 3.5 4B/9B for faster iteration cycles

Full walkthrough + tips for which models work best for coding tasks: https://mlxserve.com/claude-code-local/

The server is mlx-serve - MIT, no Python required, single binary. brew install mlx-serve

GitHub: https://github.com/ddalcu/mlx-serve

u/FootballSuperb664 — 3 days ago
▲ 39 r/MacStudio

Beating myself up because I got paid right before the price hike and decided to hold off a bit longer. Now I can’t bring myself to pay $3500 for something that was $2300 9 days ago… what do I do?

The m4 studio went from $2000 to $2500, yet the upgraded version that comes with 64gb memory went from $2300 to $3500. To add insult to injury the UI hasn’t even been fixed yet so it still says “$300” to upgrade when it’s actually an additional $1000. I suppose I might as well get the m3 ultra at that point, but idk because that went up to $5300.

I’m extremely salty right now that I didn’t buy it right when I got paid (not a normal paycheck fyi, i get paid monthly and this was a particular good month. i’m saying this because it wouldn’t have been completely irresponsible to do so).

They aren’t going to raise it again in the next month are they? Also I hadn’t realized it’s going to take 13-14 weeks to ship, so I might be stuck waiting for it after the m5 studios release.

I need advice. I’m using an m1 mini right now with 16gb memory, and it mostly gets the job done (premiere, after effects, and some gaming), but definitely struggles to meet my needs sometimes. I really want to buy something that’s gonna last me a long time, especially in this current climate, since it doesn’t seem like prices will ever come back done.

I feel so stupid.

Not to mention I’m going to need a studio display eventually/soon, because I’m using a 4k TV as a monitor right now which obviously is not ideal.

reddit.com
u/nman649 — 3 days ago
▲ 36 r/MacStudio

Mac Studio arrived 6 weeks early

I ordered this back in March. Expected delivery up until last week was "Aug15-30." It suddenly arrived today (July 3). Maybe their backlog is starting to clear?

Currently using a Mac mini 24GB M4 as my always-on server - excited to check this out.

Specs

Mac Studio

Hardware:

  • Apple M3 Ultra with 32-core CPU, 80-core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine
  • 256GB unified memory
  • Accessory Kit
  • Six Thunderbolt 5 ports, two USB-A ports, HDMI port, SDXC card slot
  • 8TB SSD storage
  • 10 Gigabit Ethernet
reddit.com
u/jcarter593 — 3 days ago
▲ 105 r/MacStudio+1 crossposts

Running my Mac Studio fully headless as an LLM server

I've been running a Mac Studio (M1 Ultra) as a dedicated, always-on Ollama server for a while — fully headless, no monitor, managed over SSH. Along the way I collected a pile of tweaks that made a real difference in throughput and stability, and wrapped them into a single install script so I could rebuild the whole thing in one shot. Sharing in case it's useful to anyone else pointing their Studio at inference.

What it does:
- Headless setup — disables the GUI and unnecessary services so RAM and GPU go to models, not the desktop
- GPU memory optimization — lets Metal use more of your unified RAM for models (configurable %), so you can fit bigger models than the default cap allows
- Ollama tuned for serving — external access, parallel requests, longer keep-alive, flash attention, several models resident at once
- Auto-start and recovery on boot via launchd, with proper logging
- Optional Docker/Colima autostart if you run containers alongside

It's just config + scripts, one install command. Not selling anything — built it for my own box, it's been rock solid, figured I'd put it out there.

Repo: https://github.com/anurmatov/mac-studio-server

Feel free to use it, fork it, or lift whatever parts are handy — it's MIT. And if you're running Apple Silicon headless for inference, the GPU-RAM allocation trick is the one setting most people don't realize they can change.

u/_ggsa — 4 days ago
▲ 0 r/MacStudio

Looking for Advice on a fair offer

I was planning to get a studio but found and options and wanted to get opinion.

2023 MacBook Pro M2 Max
Memory: 96GB. 8TB Solid State Hard Drive.
What would be a fair offer on this ?
I was looking to buy this for 2500$
Is this a fair offer ?

reddit.com
u/JonnyEnglish007 — 3 days ago
▲ 6 r/MacStudio+3 crossposts

3 monitor VESA mount for Studio Display XDR

I have 2 27" monitors and I'd like to get a Studio Display XDR to go in the middle. I was looking at a triple VESA mount.

I found one by Vivo and one by HUANUO

Does anyone have experience with these or can recommend any others?

reddit.com
u/jchannon — 3 days ago
▲ 4 r/MacStudio

Mac Studio 512GB Ram 4TB SSD

I bought one a year ago and don’t use it much as I use my laptop for everything. What would you guys say is the safest way of selling this? I’d be kind of nervous shipping it. Should I do eBay local pickup? Or Facebook marketplace? Or eBay one day shipping?

Thank you for any input.

reddit.com
u/OriginalPause7130 — 4 days ago
▲ 2 r/MacStudio

Looking for a TB5 external SSD(dock?) recommendations

Highly prefer one that is powered from the USB port itself and with storage included.

Size would be 2TB+

Anyone using similar that they have had a good experience with?

reddit.com
u/Sir-Spork — 3 days ago
▲ 0 r/MacStudio

Samsung 49" Odyssey Monitor

I'm planning to buy this monitor. Preferredly G9 G91F. Does anyone has experience working on this monitor? How's the resolution, HDR picture? I just want multi- setup instead of 2 monitor. I was just worried about the picture quality overall.

Thanks.

Mac Studio M4 Max, 18/40, 64GB, 1TB

reddit.com
u/Pleasant_Impression8 — 4 days ago
▲ 40 r/MacStudio

F*ck These Scalpers

I've been trying to pick up an M3 Ultra 96gb for my business over the last three months on every storefront, within minutes they're sold out.

Hell, I'm even willing to set up my own bot to try and get one at a fair price and not $17,000 like folks on Facebook or Ebay have them at.

Anyone got any tips before I join the dark side?

reddit.com
u/Late-Brother7489 — 5 days ago
▲ 334 r/MacStudio+2 crossposts

Are we out of our minds???

Saw this listing for a Mac Studio while scrolling on marketplace. There is NO WAY somebody is willing to pay this kind of money for that machine. Right?? Right????

u/nabruvbro — 6 days ago
▲ 0 r/MacStudio

Best way to sell Mac Studio 256GB in person?

Hey everyone! I have an unopened M3 Ultra that I'm planning to sell, but considering eBay takes a good chunk of the sale and I run the risk of getting scammed, I'd rather sell it to someone who is in the Boston Area (where I live) at a lower price so we both win.

Is the best way to approach this sale through r/appleswap (I have no experience with that) or something like Facebook Marketplace? Any recommendations or things to watch out for?

reddit.com
u/NoLocal1979 — 5 days ago
▲ 120 r/MacStudio

Mac Studio M4 Max 128GB preorder 🎉 arrived.

Special ordered early April promised for early September. Available early July.

Guys/Gals. I was also going back and forth before special ordering. Took me a couple of weeks to make up my mind.

Glad I did. Hope your special order gets delivered soon.

Mac Studio 128GB / 2 TB

u/tk421tech — 5 days ago
▲ 2 r/MacStudio+3 crossposts

LocalAIMaxxing - I analyzed 2.3k local AI Apps to find the best in each category

Local AI for Mac Directory (https://bunnysoft.app/local-ai-mac-apps)

Hello friends! As a local LLM enthusiast, I've been very open to ways to increase my local AI usage. Previously, I've tried running local models via Ollama, llama.cpp, or vllm. I've even fine-tuned my own Gemma model

However, I've struggled to truly embrace local AI because I can't find durable use cases other than learning and tinkering. For my bread and butter - coding, I use Codex and Claude because I need to be as productive as possible. For everything else, my usage is so sporadic, I forget the proper llama.cpp launch commands when the time comes around.

With the release of Apple M5 and ultra compact local models more recently, I am becoming more confident about another possibility that we've been collectively sleeping on: the rise of local AI apps - products that package local models, workflows, and UI to serve a narrow purpose well. Apps remove the operational pain disproportionately felt during casual usage, and allow more of us to expand AI usage by covering diverse workflows with AI apps, instead of tokenmaxxing on narrow areas.

I made a directory site to survey the local AI apps landscape, and the results are surprisingly good: there are tons of options in LLM chat, transcription, OCR, Photo editing categories (50+ apps each), and some truly unique use cases such as wardrobe stylists and pet health assistants that I had no idea existed. There are 82 categories currently. Please check this out if you're interested! https://bunnysoft.app/local-ai-mac-apps

Limitations:
- Currently only covers the Mac App Store (since i need a reliable api to get data from)
- Data is collected on 6/24 so super new apps are not included. Planning on doing monthly updates
- If you see an app missing here, please let me know by submitting a nomination form

Methodology
- I scraped 20,435 apps from the app store api (513 search terms, plus crawling profiles of developers who build local AI Apps)
- Narrowed down to 2,259 apps that are actually local AI using deepseek v4 flash as classifier.
- Used a combination of scripts and LLM-as-a-judge for categorization and grading. The ranking rewards fully on-device apps. I've spot checked the big categories but for 2.3k apps there will be misses. If you find something incorrect, please call it out and I will fix it.
- see more here: https://bunnysoft.app/local-ai-mac-apps/how-we-rank

Here is the shameless plug: One of the apps on the site is built by me, you can't miss it if you visit the site 😂

Please let me know what you guys think about the future of local AI, apps, or the site 🙏

reddit.com
u/Top_Power5877 — 5 days ago
▲ 2 r/MacStudio+1 crossposts

Apple Studio Display XDR: Reproducible HDR video stutter on Mac Studio M4 Max, but not M1 mini

I’ve spent the last few days trying to isolate a reproducible HDR playback issue involving my Apple Studio Display and Mac Studio M4 Max. At first I thought it was an issue with an iPhone recording, but after a lot of testing I’m now convinced it’s something much more specific.

Symptoms
Random micro-stutters during playback of 4K HDR videos. It looks like a frame is held slightly too long, followed by a visible jump. With some HDR videos, I also see brief localized flashing on the XDR display (looks like the HDR/local dimming changes momentarily).

Test setup
Display
Apple Studio Display XDR (same monitor throughout)
Macs
Mac Studio M4 Max (stutters) - Tahoe 26.5.1
Mac mini M1 (plays smoothly) - Sequoia 15.3.2
Content tested
Multiple iPhone 4K60 HDR HEVC recordings
Multiple YouTube HDR videos

Results
Mac Studio M4 Max + Apple Studio Display XDR
❌ Random frame stutters on almost every HDR iPhone clip
❌ Same behavior with YouTube HDR
❌ Occasional localized HDR flashing
Mac mini M1 + Apple Studio Display XDR
✅ Same videos play smoothly
✅ No noticeable stuttering
Mac Studio M4 Max + different monitor
✅ YouTube HDR plays smoothly
✅ No obvious stutter

So the issue only appears with the combination of:
M4 Max
Apple Studio Display
HDR playback

What I investigated
Initially I suspected the iPhone recording itself.
I analyzed the original file using ffprobe and ffmpeg showinfo. I found:
Mostly constant 60 fps timestamps with only 21 tiny timestamp corrections (~1.67 ms over a 67-second clip).
I then:
Transcoded to H.264 using software (libx264)
Removed B-frames
Generated CFR versions
Verified there were no decoder frame drops in VLC
Performed frame-by-frame motion analysis using OpenCV phase correlation
The motion analysis did not reveal corresponding image-motion discontinuities that explain the visible frame holds.

Important to note that the original file also plays perfectly smoothly on both my iPhone and iPad.

Current conclusion
At this point I no longer think this is an issue with the iPhone recording itself. The evidence points much more strongly toward an issue somewhere in the HDR playback/rendering pipeline specific to the combination of the M4 Max and the Apple Studio Display. Whether that’s a macOS regression, a GPU/display engine issue, or something else in Apple’s HDR presentation path, I can’t say.
Has anyone else with an Apple Studio Display and an M4-series Mac noticed similar HDR playback stutter or flashing?

I also recorded a short demonstration documenting the stutter and flashing behavior if anyone is interested:

https://youtu.be/YPpk8Tdtxjo?is=DEye7zDsK7Ogyqwr

u/EindhovenFI — 4 days ago