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Agree, Apple will have to pay and therefore so will Apple's customers. They have been suggesting this so far, but the economics are not yet stacking up. OpenAI just pulled back on it's memory order and has recently changed CFO due to accounting issues. They are struggling to complete funding rounds. A lot of the 'orders' placed so far may not get executed (orders in OpenAI case not actually being orders but rather letters of intent). Datacenters that were supposed to be complete by now are delayed to late 2027 (no datacenter to host the server, no point buying the ram for the server). But even if the AI companies are able and willing to pay (and they have datacentre space), so will a lot of Apples customers. Especially those who are buying big memory Studios. These are literally the same pool of people. AI developers spending investor money. Maybe the big labs aren't buying Studios but the smaller startups trying to come up with unique/differentiated products will. This I disagree with. Apple is big enough that the makers will build whatever Apple wants. Micron can produce x amount of wafers per month. Apple commits to buy 20% of the wafers. Micron asks what patterns do you want on them? I was wrong earlier in the thread when I said the dies on the large mac's are not common. Having read more I believe its more that each package/chip has a taller stack of more standard dies (still not anything like the memory used in by Nvidia for their AI chips but likely the same as used in iPhones). So Apple sells 250 million iPhones a year. Both the iPhone and Mac Studio use LPDDR5. One 512GB Mac Studio is equivalent to 64 iPhones (8GB). If Apple is limited by how many wafers it can get, then availability of product is a purely business decision for them, where can they make the most profit. If they can make more profit selling a Mac Studio than selling 64 iPhones they will sell the Mac Studio. I suspect any limitations on Apples supply will be minimal if they are willing to pay because they are a long term customer. Lead times will always be long for Apple. The packaging of these dies onto ICs and then those ICs onto the CPU package adds many steps. So if Apple misjudges quantities it takes a lot of time to correct.

Self build/custom homes are a different planet to bog standard UK housing, no? It's a situation where the customer cares about the details (to varying degrees but still much more than developers).

My main argument is that Apple places bigger orders than the AI companies and is a well established long term customer. The memory manufacturers will make whatever their customers are willing to pay for. If Apple wants it and is willing to pay, it will get.

It's entirely possible there will be some impact on Apple this WWDC. Their pre-orders from last year all being consumed and them having to pay higher prices from now on. My argument was always that the shortages we've been witnessing so far have been baked in since before the RAM crisis started and therefore not directly caused by it (just people buying more high memory Apple products). Apple should be able to get supply they are big enough and have high enough margins (can can always raise the price of the Mac Studio*). Price is the big question. *The people buying high ram Mac Studios almost all want them for AI and therefore will pay over the odds for them if they can get them.

Seems to echo my earlier thoughts: https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/apple-mac-mini-supply-3e7a7509

My feeling here would be to run the incoming to where the EV charger/solar is and then run ducting from there into the house with one mains cable for the whole house (would need additional ducting for comms). Looks like you could run almost the whole route outside the footprint of the house to allow easy access later. But there might be an electrical/building control reason why you shouldn't do that?

If you think ahead and make it possible to remove the back boxes after installation (cables routed through the back rather than side holes, plasterboard cut out big enough, screws positioned with this in mind) then each socket gives access to the cableway. Might be a pain to remove and put back but less of a pain than making/patching holes. Corners are a big concern so likely need to plan for sockets on both walls fairly close to corners. Having well thought out routes between each room and a centralish location with conduit/accessible tray is another element to make this feasible.

It's basically an iPhone 16 in a laptop case. Apart from the limited USB ports it appears to be a significantly better buy than similar priced windows laptops.

Thought Apple tended to be quite efficient memory wise. The Macbook Neo with only 8GB is getting rave reviews and appears perfectly capable of average user usage (not specialised apps though).

It does look good, for me though I think the amount of work offset the attractiveness of the result. Sometimes it seems that way but I can't discount that Jenna seems have huge drive and ability to motivate and she does most of the filming/editing which is what's paying for a lot of this (I think). Don't take advice from me on this, but my impression is that the screeding is the easy bit compared to the laying. Jenna/Nick have applied self level over the whole floor before the herringbone, if you already have a sound concrete floor do you need anything more than self level?

If you are interested in DIYing herringbone you might be interested in watching Jenna Phipps and how she and her partner Nick (it's mostly Nick doing the floor) have done it. There's multiple videos but this one highlights the issue @markc mentioned though in their case they noticed the problem and corrected for it. These videos make very clear that to get a good result you need an eye for detail and lots and lots of patience.

One of the issues with the 5A sockets is you have to fit the plugs. Lots of people may be put off by doing that. Maybe in your house you are comfortable doing it but your partner isn't, this could cause issues as you age/are temporarily unavailable/unable. Who wants to call an electrician so you can put the new light you just purchased where you want it? Once the 5A plug is fitted the light is restricted to just the 5A outlets, this elminates the possibility of temporarily moving a light to another spot for whatever reason (party, another light failed and you want to move one while you get a replacement, you are working in a normally darker area and need the extra light temporarily). On the plus side, 5A plugs may limit kids ability to mess around with these things if you are in that situation.

Right, but I didn't draw where the ceiling was

You are just guessing. Remember all the M5 Ultras with 256GB for the next year were likely ordered last year. The lead time for this stuff is huge. It's not made on demand like Dell putting DIMMS in your custom PC order.