Production question, then, for those who know about these things: how far ahead would Apple have locked in their prices for buying RAM for this line, for the units that are part of the initial release?

Yeah and also they still want to get at least some sales on the mac studios and mac pros with ultra chips, 256gb m5 max wouldve straight up killed both of those products.

We can have nice things but nobody is going to hurt themselves to give out things that are the very best possible, theres probably a lesson in this