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M4 MacBook Pro

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Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#131

Post by renewiltord »

carlgreene wrote: post #94

What’s amazing is that in the past I’ve felt the need to upgrade within a few years. New video format or more demanding music software is released that slows the machine down, or battery life craters. Well, I haven’t had even a tinge of feeling that I need to upgrade after getting my M1 Pro MBP. I can’t remember it ever skipping a beat running a serious Ableton project, or editing in Resolve. Can stuff be faster? Tec…

The M1 series was too good. Blows Intel Macs out of the water. But I still have an M1 Max. It’s fantastic.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#132

Post by bloopernova »

Trying to find how many external displays the base model supports. Because corps almost always buy the base model #firstworldproblems

The base model doesn't support thunderbolt 5.

And the base model still doesn't support more than 2 external displays without the DisplaySync (not DisplayPort!) hardware+software.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#133

Post by kristofferR »

carlgreene wrote: post #94

What’s amazing is that in the past I’ve felt the need to upgrade within a few years. New video format or more demanding music software is released that slows the machine down, or battery life craters. Well, I haven’t had even a tinge of feeling that I need to upgrade after getting my M1 Pro MBP. I can’t remember it ever skipping a beat running a serious Ableton project, or editing in Resolve. Can stuff be faster? Tec…

Yeah, I feel like Apple has done the opposite of planned obsolescence with the M chips.

I have a Macbook Air M1 that I'd like to upgrade, but they're not making it easy. I promised myself a couple of years ago I'll never buy a new expensive computing device/phone unless it supports 120 hertz and Wi-Fi 7, a pretty reasonable request I think.

I got the iPhone 16 Pro, guess I can wait another year for a new Macbook (hopefully the Air will have a decent display by then, I'm not too keen to downgrade the portability just to get a good display).

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#134

Post by bronco21016 »

electriclove wrote: post #100
opjjf wrote: post #5

It seems they also update the base memory on MacBook Air: > MacBook Air: The World’s Most Popular Laptop Now Starts at 16GB > MacBook Air is the world’s most popular laptop, and with Apple Intelligence, it’s even better. Now, models with M2 and M3 double the starting memory to 16GB, while keeping the starting price at just $999 — a terrific value for the world’s best-selling laptop.

Wow, I didn't expect them to update the older models to start at 16GB and no price increase. I guess that is why Amazon was blowing the 8GB models out at crazy low prices over the past few days.

Costco was selling MB Air M2 8 GB for $699! Incredible deal.

I’ve been using the exact model for about a year and I rarely find limitations for my typical office type work. The only time I’ve managed to thermally throttle it has been with some super suboptimal Excel Macros.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#135

Post by garciasn »

alfonsodev wrote: post #60
garciasn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We run our LLM workloads on a M2 Ultra because of this. 2x the VRAM; one-time cost at $5350 was the same as, at the time, 1 month of 80GB VRAM GPU in GCP. Works well for us.

Can you elaborate, are those workflows in queue or can they serve multiple users in parallel ? I think it’s super interesting to know real life workflows and performance of different LLMs and hardware, in case you can direct me to other resources. Thanks !

Our use case is atypical, based on what others seem to require. While we serve multiple requests in parallel, our workloads are not 'chat'.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#136

Post by twilo »

opjjf wrote: post #5

It seems they also update the base memory on MacBook Air: > MacBook Air: The World’s Most Popular Laptop Now Starts at 16GB > MacBook Air is the world’s most popular laptop, and with Apple Intelligence, it’s even better. Now, models with M2 and M3 double the starting memory to 16GB, while keeping the starting price at just $999 — a terrific value for the world’s best-selling laptop.

Great news. The pro is kinda of heavy for my liking so the Air is the way to go

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#137

Post by maxvisser »

carlgreene wrote: post #94

What’s amazing is that in the past I’ve felt the need to upgrade within a few years. New video format or more demanding music software is released that slows the machine down, or battery life craters. Well, I haven’t had even a tinge of feeling that I need to upgrade after getting my M1 Pro MBP. I can’t remember it ever skipping a beat running a serious Ableton project, or editing in Resolve. Can stuff be faster? Tec…

Same for me. The only reason to replace it, is that my M1 pro’s SSD or battery will go bad or if I accidentally drop the machine and something breaks.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#138

Post by ativzzz »

axelthegerman wrote: post #37
jerojero wrote: post #14

Finally they're doing starting memory at 16gb. Looking at how long the 8gb lasted it's a pretty sure bet that now you won't need to upgrade for a good few years. I mean, I have a MacBook air with 16gb of ram and it's honestly working pretty well to this day. I don't do "much" on it though but not many people do. I'd say the one incentive a MacBook Pro has over the air is the better a screens and better speakers. Not…

> pretty sure bet that now you won't need to upgrade for a good few years. Or you could get a framework and you could actually upgrade parts that are worth upgrading - instead of upgrade as in buying a new one

I bought a framework back in 2020 or so and really wish I just waited a little longer and spent a few hundred bucks more on the M1.

It's fine, but the issue is linux sleep/hibernate - battery drain. To use the laptop after a few days, I have to plug it in and wait for it to charge a little bit because the battery dies. I have to shut it down (not just close the screen) before flying or my backpack becomes a heater and the laptop dies. To use a macbook that's been closed for months I just open it and it works. I'll pay double for that experience. If I want a computer that needs to be plugged in to work I have a desktop for that already. The battery life is not good either.

Maybe it's better now if I take the time to research what to upgrade, but I don't have the time to tinker with hardware/linux config like I did a few years ago.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#139

Post by rbanffy »

carlgreene wrote: post #94

What’s amazing is that in the past I’ve felt the need to upgrade within a few years. New video format or more demanding music software is released that slows the machine down, or battery life craters. Well, I haven’t had even a tinge of feeling that I need to upgrade after getting my M1 Pro MBP. I can’t remember it ever skipping a beat running a serious Ableton project, or editing in Resolve. Can stuff be faster? Tec…

A lot of my work can be easily done with a Celeron - it's editing source, compiling very little, running tests on Python code, running small Docker containers and so on. Could it be faster? Of course! Do I need it to be faster? Not really.

I am due to update my Mac mini because my current one can't run Sonoma, but, apart from that, it's a lovely little box with more than enough power for me.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#140

Post by ldoughty »

redundantly wrote: post #75
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #55

I'm pleased that the Pro's base memory starts at 16 GB, but surprised they top out at 32 GB: > ...the new MacBook Pro starts with 16GB of faster unified memory with support for up to 32GB, along with 120GB/s of memory bandwidth... I haven't been an Apple user since 2012 when I graduated from college and retired my first computer, a mid-2007 Core2 Duo Macbook Pro, which I'd upgraded with a 2.5" SSD and 6GB of RAM with…

The M4 tops off at 32 GB The M4 Pro goes up to 48 GB The M4 Max can have up to 128 GB

It seems you need the M4 Max with the 40-core GPU to go over 36GB.

The M4 Pro with 14‑core CPU & 20‑core GPU can do 48GB.

If you're looking for ~>36-48GB memory, here's the options:

$2,800 = 48GB, Apple M4 Pro chip with 14‑core CPU, 20‑core GPU

$3,200 = 36GB, Apple M4 Max chip with 14‑core CPU, 32‑core GPU

$3,600 = 48GB, Apple M4 Max chip with 16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU

So the M4 Pro could get you a lot of memory, but less GPU cores. Not sure how much those GPU cores factor in to performance, I only really hear complaints about the memory limits... Something to consider if looking to buy in this range of memory.

Of course, a lot of people here probably consider it not a big deal to throw an extra 3 grand on hardware, but I'm a hobbyist in academia when it comes to AI, I don't big 6-figure salaries :-)

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