MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 2:54 AM UTC

iAMkenough wrote: post #502

game_the0ry wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are they doubling down on local LLMs then? Honestly, I think that's the move for apple. They do not seem to have any interest in creating a frontier lab/model -- why would they give the capex and how far behind they are. But open source models (Kimi, Deepseek, Qwen) are getting better and better, and apple makes excellent hardware for local LLMs. How appealing would it be to have your own LLM that knows all your se…

RE Frontier models/hardware: I'm interested to see what happens with their "private cloud compute" marketing concept now that they're moving from running Siri AI experiences on Apple servers to Google servers instead.

Post by Tostino » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 2:58 AM UTC

nullbyte808 wrote: post #589

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…

Like saying my PC boots up 2x faster so it must be 2x more powerful. lol

Post by walterbell » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 3:04 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #408

jsheard wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile, Macs had no such price change Yeah because Mac upgrade prices were already sky high, long before the component shortage. 32GB of DDR5-6000 for a PC rocketed from $100 to $500, while the cost of adding 16GB to a Mac was and still is $400.

I'm kind of curious how Apple's supply contracts actually work, because it's currently more attractive to buy a Mac with a lot of RAM than it usually is, relative to a PC. So if it's "we negotiated a price and you give us as much RAM as we sell machines" the company supplying the RAM is getting soaked because they're having to supply even more RAM to Apple for a below-market price. But if the contract was for a speci…

  Apple has accepted a 100% price increase for Samsung's LPDDR5X memory, with DRAM supply commitments secured only through the first half of 2026. Tim Cook acknowledged during the Q1 FY2026 earnings call that storage price increases would significantly impact Q2 gross margins.. Apple is evaluating ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) as new supply sources, attempting to rebuild pricing leverage through supply chain diversification.

Post by Nevermark » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 3:13 AM UTC

hamdingers wrote: post #598

nine_k wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be a polite way to call this out, the "Steve Jobs's reality distortion field".

Now that every CEO has their own reality distortion field I wonder if it's even worth calling out any more.

Post by operatingthetan » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 3:14 AM UTC

kllrnohj wrote: post #392

stanmancan wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cheap for what you get. If you just need "a small box to make API calls and do minimal local processing" you an also just buy a RPI for a fraction of the price of the GMKtec G10. All 3 serve a different purpose; just because you can buy a slower machine for less doesn't mean the price:performance of the M1 Mac Mini changes.

> you an also just buy a RPI for a fraction of the price of the GMKtec G10. Sadly not really. The Pi 5 8gb canakit starter set, which feels like a more true price since it's including power supply, MicroSD card, and case, is now $210. The pi5 8gb by itself is $135. A 16gb pi5 kit, to match just the RAM capacity to say nothing of the difference in storage {size, speed, quality} and networking, is then also an eye wate…