Apple M5 chip • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple M5 chip

#441

Post by michelb » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 4:40 PM UTC

speedgoose wrote: post #245

kokada wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tahoe however makes my M1 Air feel sluggish doing the exact same tasks ive been last couple of years. I have a work provided M2 Pro with 32GB of RAM. After the Tahoe upgrade it feels like one of the sluggish PCs at the house. It is the only one that I can see the mouse teleporting sometimes when I move it fast. This is after disabling transparency in Accessibility settings mind you, it was even worse before.

Do you have a few electron powered apps that didn’t get updated yet? Electron used to override a private function that makes the Mac OS sluggish on Tahoe, and apparently no one uses Electron apps while doing testing at Apple.

The OS and stock apps are much slower in Tahoe even. And the UI updates/interactions are also slower. I’m lucky I only upgraded my least used machine, and that’s a well stocked M2.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#442

Post by Rohansi » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 4:40 PM UTC

sapiogram wrote: post #43

mihau wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why? M3 Ultra already had 800 GB/s (6400 gbps) memory bandwidth

And that was already impressive. High-end gaming computers with dual-channel DDR5 only reach ~100GB/s of CPU memory bandwidth.

And you can find high-end (PC) laptops using LPDDR5x running at 8533 MT/s or higher which gives you more bandwidth than DDR5.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#443

Post by rcarmo » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 4:40 PM UTC

I'll take one inside an iPad mini, thank you very much.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#444

Post by larodi » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 4:40 PM UTC

linguae wrote: post #58

toddmorey wrote: post #6

The modern Apple feels like their hardware teams way outperforming the software teams.

This is not the first time this has happened in Apple’s history. The transition from the 68k architecture to the PowerPC brought major performance improvements, but Apple’s software didn’t take full advantage of it. If I remember correctly, even after the PowerPC switch, core elements of the classic Mac OS still ran in emulation as late as Mac OS 9. Additionally, the classic Mac OS lacked protected memory and preempt…

Curiously every big player/vendor doing something remotely relevant to GPU/NPU/APU etc. sees massive growth. Apple's M-processors are much better in terms price/value ratio for current ML pipelines. But Apple do not have server line, which then seems to be super massive problem for their products, even though their products actually compete with NVidia in the consumer market, which is very substantial position, software or not.

AMD was also lagging with drivers, but now we see OpenAI swearing they gonna buy loads of their products, which so many people were not favor of liek just 5-7 years ago.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#445

Post by bangaladore » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 4:41 PM UTC

random3 wrote: post #408

paxys wrote: post #392

M5 is 4-6x more powerful than M4, which was 5x more powerful than M3, which was 4x more powerful than M2, which was 4x more powerful than M1, which itself was 6x faster than an equivalent Intel processor. Great! Looking at my Macbook though, I can say with utmost certainty that it isn't 4000x faster than the Intel one I had 5 years ago. So, where is the disconnect here? Why is actual user experience not able to keep…

The disconnect is that you're reading sideways. First line on their website: > M5 delivers over 4x the peak GPU compute performance for AI compared to M4 It's the GPU not the CPU (which you compare with your old Intel) and it's an AI workload, not your regular workload (which again is what you compare)

And they are comparing peak compute. Which means essentially nothing.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#446

Post by bob1029 » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 4:41 PM UTC

mirekrusin wrote: post #230

yalogin wrote: post #200

It feels like apple is “ a square peg in a round hole” when it comes to AI - atleast for now. They are not the hardware provider like nvidia, they don’t do the software and services like OpenAI or even Microsoft/oracle. So they are struggling to find a foothold here. I am sure they are working on a lot of things but the only way to showcase them is through their phone which ironically enough feels like not the best p…

Being late in AI race or not entering it from training side is not necessarily bad, others have burned tons of money, if Apple enters with their hardware first (only?) it may disrupt status quo from consumer side. It's not impossible that they'll produce hardware everybody will want to run local models that will be on par with closed ones. If this happens it may change real money flow (as opposed to investor based on…

> Being late

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-mover_advantage#Second-m...

Re: Apple M5 chip

#447

Post by mattray0295 » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 4:42 PM UTC

They push these new generations out so quick, and with crazy performance boosts. Impressive

Re: Apple M5 chip

#448

Post by port3000 » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 4:43 PM UTC

reacharavindh wrote: post #240

One that’s be a nice quality of life improvement in MacBook(Air/Pro) is built-in 5G connectivity. I’d spring for that convenience not needing to connect to a hotspot draining precious battery on my phone. I thought we were closer given Apple started making their own modems, but it is still a miss.

They want you to buy the Apple phone and pair it, so they sell more

Re: Apple M5 chip

#449

Post by wlesieutre » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 4:44 PM UTC

cj wrote: post #434

paxys wrote: post #392

M5 is 4-6x more powerful than M4, which was 5x more powerful than M3, which was 4x more powerful than M2, which was 4x more powerful than M1, which itself was 6x faster than an equivalent Intel processor. Great! Looking at my Macbook though, I can say with utmost certainty that it isn't 4000x faster than the Intel one I had 5 years ago. So, where is the disconnect here? Why is actual user experience not able to keep…

I’m not sure I see the disconnect. At our company we used to buy everyone MacBook Pros by default. After the M-series chip, the MBPs are just too powerful and no longer necessary for the average white collar worker (they seem like “actual” pro machines, now) to the point where we now order MacBook Airs for new employees. I feel like until recently, you really needed a MBP to get a decent UX (even just using chrome).…

What's crazy about that to me is the Macbook Air doesn't even have a fan. The power efficiency of the ARM chips is really something.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#450

Post by badc0ffee » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 4:45 PM UTC

exabrial wrote: post #197

Apple's software division has lost their way. They've done nothing but add flashy features and move buttons around, deprecating things and breaking backwards compatibility (yeah, 32bit has been awhile now, but alas), meanwhile retreating on stability. Snow Leopard still remains the company's crown achievement. 0 bloatware, 0 "mobile features on desktop" (wtf is this even a thing?), tuned for absolute speed and stabil…

I've heard about rounded corners and low information density windows in Tahoe, but what "mobile features on desktop" are in Sequoia and earlier? The App Store? Launchpad? iCloud? Notifications? You don't need to use those.