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MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

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Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#151

Post by davidmurdoch »

pdpi wrote: post #112
davidmurdoch wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is "us" in this case? Majority of devs that took the stack overflow survey use Windows: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology/#1-computer-...

I think it's reasonable to say that the people responding to surveys on Stack Overflow aren't the same people who work on pushing the state of the art in local LLM deployment. (which doesn't prove that that crowd is Apple-centric, of course)

Perhaps. Though Windows has been the majority share even when stack overflow was at it's peak, and before.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#152

Post by otterley »

I checked the fine print on the product website: by “up to 4x faster LLM prompt processing,” they’re specifically referring to time to first token. So it’s not about token generation rate (tokens per second).

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#153

Post by rafram »

butILoveLife wrote: post #45
Tangokat wrote: post #5

"Scaling up performance from M5 and offering the same breakthrough GPU architecture with a Neural Accelerator in each core, M5 Pro and M5 Max deliver up to 4x faster LLM prompt processing than M4 Pro and M4 Max, and up to 8x AI image generation than M1 Pro and M1 Max." Are they doubling down on local LLMs then? I still think Apple has a huge opportunity in privacy first LLMs but so far I'm not seeing much execution.…

I think its just marketing, and the marketing is working. Look how many people bought Minis and ended up just paying for API calls anyway. (Saw it IRL 2x, see it on reddit openclaw daily) I don't mind it, I open Apple stock. But I'm def not buying into their rebranding of integrated GPU under the guise of Unified Memory.

Why not? The integrated GPUs are quite powerful, and having access to 32+ GB of GPU memory is amazing. There's a reason people buy Macs for local LLM work. Nothing else on the market really beats it right now.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#154

Post by pbmonster »

kwanbix wrote: post #73

I wonder if it is good to just get one and run Linux on a VM. Would that work better than an x64? Anybody knows?

Why would you want to do that? Do you like the hardware that much, and also that much more than just an M2 (soon M3) running Asahi?

Linux in a VM would work with the usual caveats. Periphery like the built-in webcam most likely won't work. Getting codecs and DRM to run will be pain and you'll be back to use macOS for that quickly (but that's just standard pain of ARM Linux).

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#156

Post by threatofrain »

butILoveLife wrote: post #45
Tangokat wrote: post #5

"Scaling up performance from M5 and offering the same breakthrough GPU architecture with a Neural Accelerator in each core, M5 Pro and M5 Max deliver up to 4x faster LLM prompt processing than M4 Pro and M4 Max, and up to 8x AI image generation than M1 Pro and M1 Max." Are they doubling down on local LLMs then? I still think Apple has a huge opportunity in privacy first LLMs but so far I'm not seeing much execution.…

I think its just marketing, and the marketing is working. Look how many people bought Minis and ended up just paying for API calls anyway. (Saw it IRL 2x, see it on reddit openclaw daily) I don't mind it, I open Apple stock. But I'm def not buying into their rebranding of integrated GPU under the guise of Unified Memory.

The biggest problem with personal ML workflows on Mac right now is the software.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#157

Post by re-thc »

jsheard wrote: post #68
butILoveLife wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its just marketing, and the marketing is working. Look how many people bought Minis and ended up just paying for API calls anyway. (Saw it IRL 2x, see it on reddit openclaw daily) I don't mind it, I open Apple stock. But I'm def not buying into their rebranding of integrated GPU under the guise of Unified Memory.

> Look how many people bought Minis and ended up just paying for API calls anyway. (Saw it IRL 2x, see it on reddit openclaw daily) Aren't the OpenClaw enjoyers buying Mac Minis because it's the cheapest thing which runs macOS, the only platform which can programmatically interface with iMessage and other Apple ecosystem stuff? It has nothing to do with the hardware really. Still, buying a brand new Mac Mini for that…

> Aren't the OpenClaw enjoyers buying Mac Minis because it's the cheapest thing which runs macOS

That's likely only part of the reason. Mac Mini is now "cheap" because everyone exploded in price. RAM and SSD etc have all gone up massively. Not the mention Mac mini is easy out of the box experience.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#158

Post by Munachi1869 »

Lalabadie wrote: post #98
Tangokat wrote: post #5

"Scaling up performance from M5 and offering the same breakthrough GPU architecture with a Neural Accelerator in each core, M5 Pro and M5 Max deliver up to 4x faster LLM prompt processing than M4 Pro and M4 Max, and up to 8x AI image generation than M1 Pro and M1 Max." Are they doubling down on local LLMs then? I still think Apple has a huge opportunity in privacy first LLMs but so far I'm not seeing much execution.…

There already are a bunch of task-specific models running on their devices, it makes sense to maintain and build capacity in that area. I assume they have a moderate bet on on-device SLMs in addition to other ML models, but not much planned for LLMs, which at that scale, might be good as generalists but very poor at guaranteeing success for each specific minute tasks you want done. In short: 8gb to store tens of very…

Probably possible for pure coding models. I see on-device models becoming viable and usable in like 2-3 years on device

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#159

Post by lm28469 »

brtkwr wrote: post #38

Why doesn't this excite me anymore?

Because it's the same shit every year for the past 5 years with the M line. 2010 to 2015 was a major improvement, 2015 to 2020 was a major improvement, now they pretty much solved the computer/laptop problem for 99% of people. I'm on a 16gb m1 air, I see absolutely no reason to update.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#160

Post by lakrici88284 »

Tangokat wrote: post #5

"Scaling up performance from M5 and offering the same breakthrough GPU architecture with a Neural Accelerator in each core, M5 Pro and M5 Max deliver up to 4x faster LLM prompt processing than M4 Pro and M4 Max, and up to 8x AI image generation than M1 Pro and M1 Max." Are they doubling down on local LLMs then? I still think Apple has a huge opportunity in privacy first LLMs but so far I'm not seeing much execution.…

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