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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

#421

Post by Analemma_ »

0_____0 wrote: post #418
swyx wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The battery is wearing out a bit, but it started out life with so much runtime that losing a few hours doesn't seem to matter. this is my exact opposite experience. my M3 Max from 2 years ago now has <2hrs battery life at best. wondering if any experts here can help me figure out what is going on? what should i be expecting?

Charge habits with batteries make a huge difference. If your use pattern is that once per day, you take the device from 100% to 10%, you put a lot more wear on the battery than if it kind of hovers in the 30%-80% range for example, or if it just hangs out nearish top-of-charge all day when you're at your desk. Hot take: people should get used to, and expect to, replace device batteries 1 or 2 times during the device…

BatFi is a macOS application which will prevent your battery from charging to over 80% by default. macOS does have a version of this built-in but it’s “intelligent charging” I don’t really trust, and I’d rather just have a hard 80% limit except when I override that.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#422

Post by reenorap »

wincy wrote: post #12

I typed “RAM” to search for it and boy they hammer home how lucky I am to be getting 1TB SSD standard, but no mention of RAM anywhere on this page. Anyway, the MacBook Pro starts with 16GB of RAM. It’s $400 to go from 16GB to 32GB. Interestingly, 36-128GB models are showing as “currently unavailable” on the store page, and you can’t even place an order for them right now? But for anyone curious, it’s quoting $5099 fo…

The price hasn't changed between the M4 and M5. I honestly don't know how they did it. But I had a standing order for a maxed-out M4 (128 GB RAM, 2 TB drive) and the price is the same as the M5 so I cancelled my M4 order and will pre-order the M5 MAX instead.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#423

Post by lastdong »

jbellis wrote: post #298

I chased down what the "4x faster at AI tasks" was measuring: > Testing conducted by Apple in January 2026 using preproduction 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air systems with Apple M5, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 32GB of unified memory, and 4TB SSD, and production 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air systems with Apple M4, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 32GB of unified memory, and 2TB SSD. Time to first token measured with an 8K-to…

14-billion parameter model with 4-bit quantization seems rather small

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#424

Post by spacedcowboy »

Greed wrote: post #259
lizknope wrote: post #195

Earlier 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 not. I've got a single one of those 512GB machines and it's pretty damn impressive for a local model.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#425

Post by teaearlgraycold »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #266
philistine wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so few used Mac Mini around, those are all gone and what is left is to buy new.

Worse than that, they hold their value, so buying a used M1 mini is still a few hundred bucks, and saving $200-300 by purchasing a 5 generation older mini seems like a bad deal in comparison.

Someone came to be excited they got a "deal" on the newest Intel Mac Mini for hosting OpenClaw. 8GB model for $300. I kind of regret bursting their bubble by telling them you can walk over to Costco (nearest one at time of discussion was walking distance) and pay $550 for one with an M4 and 16GB of RAM.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#427

Post by silverwind »

pier25 wrote: post #124
nsbk wrote: post #7

The hardware looks amazing! Too bad they will ship with Tahoe installed. I’m not upgrading until I see in which direction the next Mac OS release goes

Yeah this is a real issue with these new Macs. I would wait until macOS 27 to see the direction Apple takes.

Hopefully less `border-radius`.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#428

Post by Flux159 »

So is this a minimal upgrade before the M6 Macbook Pros w/ OLED & a redesign later this year?

It doesn't even look like they added cellular as an option with their own C1X chip (getting around the licensing / cost issues since it's their own chip now).

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#430

Post by Greed »

ttoinou wrote: post #275
Greed wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With M3 Max with 64GB of unified ram you can code with a local LLM, so the bar is much lower

But why? Spending several thousand dollars to run sub-par models when the break-even point could still be years away seems bizarre for any real usecase where your goal is productivity over novelty. Anyone who has used Codex or Opus can attest that the difference between those and a locally available model like Qwen or Codestral is night and day.

To be clear, I totally get the idea of running local LLMs for toy reasons. But in a business context the sell on a stack of Mac Pros seems misguided at best.

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