- Apple is reportedly skipping some M6 variants and accelerating M7 production, with M7 Ultra desktop Macs expected in 2028, potentially at very high prices.
- The shift in chip design and release timing is driven by AI, now a core focus over traditional factors like processing speed, graphics, battery life, and thinness.
- M6 Pro, Max, or Ultra products may not appear, as M7 finalization started just six months after M6, leading to a compressed timeline with M6 and early M7 products arriving closely in late 2024 and early 2025.
- M7 Pro and Max are slated for late 2027, with M7 Ultra in 2028, designed to support up to 1.5 terabytes of memory, doubling the M5 Ultra's planned capacity, but availability depends on memory-chip industry conditions.
- Pricing concerns are highlighted, with previous Mac Studio price hikes and the cost of 1.5TB RAM in 2019 reaching $25,000 for RAM alone, suggesting potential real-estate-level prices for maxed-out M7 Ultra systems.