Apple has a significant chip roadmap ahead for its professional Mac lineup, with an M5 Ultra Mac Studio still on track for before the end of 2026, an OLED touchscreen MacBook targeting late 2026 to early 2027, and M7 Pro and M7 Max chips aimed squarely at AI workloads slated for the first half of 2027. Those upgrades arrive against a backdrop of recent price increases, including a $1,300 jump on the Mac Studio 2025 M4 Max model and a new $1,999 starting price for the MacBook Pro M5 Pro. See the full list of Apple’s price hikes by country for the complete picture.
A new Mac Studio is still coming this year
Apple is planning to release a new Mac Studio before the end of 2026, according to Bloomberg’s Power On newsletter by Mark Gurman. That model is expected to carry an M5 Ultra chip, completing the M5 family for the high-end desktop line, and it is the last M5 configuration on Apple’s roadmap before the company moves to a different chip strategy for 2027.
Apple has confirmed internally that it will skip the M6 Pro and M6 Max entirely, jumping instead to M7 Pro and M7 Max chips with a stronger focus on AI workloads. Those chips will feature upgraded neural accelerators, graphics enhancements, and increased memory bandwidth, and are targeted for the first half of 2027. A base M6 chip is still expected in some lower-end Macs later this year, so the M6 generation will exist at the entry level only. The planned successor to the current high-end MacBook Pro, which will use M7 Pro and M7 Max, is aimed at late 2027.
One near-term product affected by this chip strategy is the forthcoming OLED touchscreen MacBook, which Gurman reports will launch somewhere between late 2026 and early 2027. Rather than waiting for M6 silicon, Apple is equipping it with the existing M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, a decision that likely reflects both the chip timeline and the pressure to get a high-profile product to market without waiting another year for next-generation silicon.
For anyone considering a Mac Studio or MacBook Pro purchase, the decision is difficult right now. The incoming models will carry more capable silicon than the current lineup, but it will arrive at pricing that reflects this new cost reality, and Micron’s forecast offers little reason to expect relief before 2028 at the earliest. For MacBook Pro specifically, the OLED touchscreen might be worth the wait.
