What kind of world are we living in when a Mac Studio in Canada can cost about as much as a new car? Austen Allred posted a maxed-out Mac Studio with M5 Ultra on Thursday that listed for US$29,799, with a 36-core CPU, 80-core GPU, 512GB of unified memory and 16TB of storage, and simply wrote “Holy hell.”
Elon Musk replied a few hours later with a line that cut straight through the sticker shock.
Makes a Tesla seem quite affordable!
He was replying on X to Allred’s post. In Canada, the equivalent Mac Studio with M5 Ultra sits at $44,249 in Apple’s bag, or roughly $45,000 before tax.
Add $5,309.98 in estimated tax and an $0.85 recycling fee and the total climbs to $49,559.83. Affirm financing lands at $2,000.80 a month for 24 months at 7.99 per cent APR, with a financed total of $48,019.31 including interest. Delivery runs from January 19 to February 2, and in-store pickup at Apple Richmond Centre is listed for February 2.
For comparison, a Tesla Model 3 Premium RWD starts at $39,490 in Canada, while the Model 3 AWD is $49,990. A Model Y RWD is $44,990, which is only about $740 more than this Mac Studio. Once tax is added, the Mac’s $49,559.83 total sits just $430 below a Model 3 AWD’s sticker price.
None of this arrives in a vacuum. We covered reporting from The Wall Street Journal this week on how AI data centres have handed memory suppliers the pricing power Apple used to hold, and those chip costs are flowing into Macs.
Canadians have already felt that pressure. Apple raised prices across MacBooks, iPads and more in June, then hiked the Mac mini again in August when the M6 and M5 Pro models arrived. A maxed-out Mac mini can now clear $10,000 here too.
Would you ever spend car money on a desktop, or has Apple finally priced itself into another category?
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