Why doesn't this excite me anymore?
Because a Macbook M1 is fast enough to do anything and most people aren't running local LLMs
MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max
311–320 of 1001 posts
Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s with the attitude? My machine is aging like a fine wine, I’m acknowledging how resilient their custom silicon is despite the world demanding more and more compute.
It was a joke, should have put a smiley face. But every thread on a new Apple product here on HN have the same "why should I upgrade" comment, forgetting that there are people who might have very old devices they want to upgrade, or they might want to switch from Windows/Android to Apple. Even if a new device is a small upgrade from last year's model, it can be a giant upgrade for other people.
Are you one of the folks thinking of upgrading? If so, from what generation? What makes you excited? Isn't this a more interesting way to have the conversation?
Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
They’re literally not changing
It did change. They bumped $200 on the entire line. So even the 16GB version is more expensive. I'd love to have customers like Apple. Bumps $200: "it didn't change!!!" And no power adapter included.
The base storage increased as well, and the upgrade prices for RAM are the same, which is where the real issue was.
Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jeff Geerling had a video of using 4 Mac Studios each with 512GB RAM connected by Thunderbolt. Each machine is around $10K so this isn't cheap but the performance is impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4_RsUxRjKU
If 40k is the barrier to entry for impressive, that doesn't really sell the usecase of local LLMs very well. For the same price in API calls, you could fund AI driven development across a small team for quite a long while. Whether that remains the case once those models are no longer subsidized, TBD. But as of today the comparison isn't even close.
It’s what a small business might have paid for an onprem web server a couple of decades ago before clouds caught on. I figure if a legal or medical practice saw value in LLMs it wouldn’t be a big deal to shove 50k into a closet
Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've tried to use a local LLM on an M4 Pro machine and it's quite painful. Not surprised that people into LLMs would pay for tokens instead of trying to force their poor MacBooks to do it.
What are the other specs and how's your setup look? You need a minimum of 24GB of RAM for it to run 16GB or less models.
Tokens per second is abysmal no matter how much ram you have
Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max
#316"The new MacBook Pro gets up to 24 hours of battery life, giving Intel-based upgraders up to 13 additional hours"
I have a Intel-based 2019 Macbook Pro still and I have NEVER in its lifetime gotten even half of what they are claiming here. These days if I run it from battery I might get 90 mins.
That said I had a maxed out Macbook Pro M4 Max on order but just cancelled it right now and will get this new M5 Max one for basically the same price. Once I saw that they didn't up the price of memory (I don't know how it doesn't affect them) I canceled my order.
Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max
#317I love the following section of their copy: > Even More Value for Upgraders > The new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max mark a major leap for pro users. There’s never been a better time for customers to upgrade from a previous generation of MacBook Pro with Apple silicon or an Intel-based Mac. I read as "Whoops we made the M1 Macbook Pro too good, please upgrade!" I think I will get another 2-5 years…
I've been on a Macbook M1 Pro since 2022 (bought refurbished on Amazon for cheap) and it's still such a powerhouse. It doesn't struggle at all with anything that I throw at it. Kind of amazing.
Nothing has broken and I consistently get 4-6 hours of heavy work time while on battery. An amazing machine for the price I paid.
Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max
#318"The new MacBook Pro gets up to 24 hours of battery life, giving Intel-based upgraders up to 13 additional hours" I have a Intel-based 2019 Macbook Pro still and I have NEVER in its lifetime gotten even half of what they are claiming here. These days if I run it from battery I might get 90 mins. That said I had a maxed out Macbook Pro M4 Max on order but just cancelled it right now and will get this new M5 Max one fo…
I had intel MacBook Pro. It is a NIGHT and DAY difference. I wish I didn’t get the 16gb of memory though. It is ok, but running 5-10 cursor ai agents at the same time does start to choke the memory.
Battery is absolutely amazing! And the best part - it stays cold!! No more irritated from heat fingers when using touchpad.
Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max
#319For those who don't already know, you can get a lot of PC gaming performance out of these machines using Sikarugir. You can install all of Steam via winetricks and go from there, or launch DRM-free games directly.
Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
We had a workshop 6 months ago and while I've always been sceptical of OpenAI,etc's silly AGI/ASI claims, the investments have shown the way to a lot of new technology and has opened up a genie that won't be put back into the bottle. Now extrapolating in line with how Sun servers around year 2000 cost a fortune and can be emulated by a 5$ VPS today, Apple is seeing that they can maybe grab the local LLM workloads if…
I feel like the push by devs towards Metal compatibility has been 10x than AMD. I assume that's because the majority of us run MacBooks.
Which majority?
I certainly only use Macs when being project assigned, then there are plenty of developers out there whose job has nothing to do with what Apple offers.
Also while Metal is a very cool API, I rather play with Vulkan, CUDA and DirectX, as do the large majority of game developers.