Mac Studio stock vanishes, teasing M5 launch

The sudden unavailability of base storage models across Apple's store is a classic tell for an impending hardware drop. Local AI developers rely heavily on the Mac Studio's unified memory architecture for running massive open-weights models that would otherwise require multi-GPU server setups. The expected M5 Ultra chip could double compute performance and introduce Thunderbolt 5 for significantly faster external storage access. A likely WWDC 2026 launch aligns perfectly with Apple's historical release cadence for pro desktop hardware.