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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

#921

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

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…

> Charge habits with batteries make a huge difference.

> Hot take: people should get used to, and expect to, replace device batteries 1 or 2 times during the device lifetime.

I agree that people should get used to replacing device batteries, but if you accept that then you should just stop worrying about charge habits. An MBP that doesn't have a defective or extreme-heat-damaged battery should stay above 80% battery capacity for at least 600 charge cycles without any special care at all. That's many years of regular charging, and 80% capacity is still good for all day usage.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#922

Post by tristor »

vardump wrote: post #206
tristor wrote: post #198

I am very excited by this, but I am a bit dampened that the maximum memory available is 128GB. I was really hoping for 256GB, which would allow me to run frontier models locally. I think with 128GB it's still feasible to use this with something like Qwen3-Coder-Next and MiniMax-M2.5, but things like Kimi-K2.5 will require significant quantization to fit and model performance will really suffer. I'm really wanting to…

Tell me about it. I checked the page thinking whether I should go for 256 GB or 512 GB RAM model. 128 GB maximum. Sigh.

I spent the last day deep diving on what I can do with MLX with local models. I still feel limited, because you have to use quantized models, but I think it's enough to do /something/, so I went ahead and bit the bullet and pre-ordered just now. I am driven a little bit by concern about ongoing memory market pressures over the next 1-3 years, and thinking it's a bit now or never.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#923

Post by vardump »

tristor wrote: post #922
vardump wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me about it. I checked the page thinking whether I should go for 256 GB or 512 GB RAM model. 128 GB maximum. Sigh.

I spent the last day deep diving on what I can do with MLX with local models. I still feel limited, because you have to use quantized models, but I think it's enough to do /something/, so I went ahead and bit the bullet and pre-ordered just now. I am driven a little bit by concern about ongoing memory market pressures over the next 1-3 years, and thinking it's a bit now or never.

Sigh. Maybe you are right.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#924

Post by phil21 »

riffraff wrote: post #757
manofmanysmiles wrote: post #114

I 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…

Yeah reading these announcements I realized my M1 Pro is supposed to be obsolete but I still see no reason to upgrade. Also, my wife's still using the older touch bar MBP, and we'll, it works fine for her too. I'm not sure who needs the newer pros.

Mostly folks who bought base model with small amounts of RAM I imagine.

While it’s workable, anything less than 24GB to me feels rather constrained. I definitely am not efficient though - leaving way too many browser tabs open I never actually get back to, running a few chrome profiles for work/side hustle/personal, etc.

I don’t think I’ve ever been CPU constrained for many years now. The few times I need to something that maxes out CPU just isn’t worth the upgrade vs taking a break to grab a cup of coffee.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#925

Post by solarkraft »

otterley wrote: post #152

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).

It’s a big deal! Prompt processing was previously the Mac’s weak point. Sure, output generation matters for file recital in programming, but in general conversation I’d rather have it output a short answer anyway (after extensive processing by a smart model).

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#926

Post by solarkraft »

sudoapps wrote: post #562

Hot take - Local LLM computing will move to stationary, always on devices (Mac mini & studio). Developers and users will move to lighter, portable devices to interface with their long running agent workers (MacBook Airs & iPads).

I personally do this and I can imagine a world in which it is popular with privacy/sovereignty enthusiasts. I have doubts that this share of people will be significant enough for many companies to cater their products to this model - but if anyone will, it will be Apple - and it would yield them a few extra Mac Studio sales and likely make much more profit than selling the same service.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#927

Post by whywhywhywhy »

bombcar wrote: post #617
pvtmert wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, they are required to have an option to opt-out from adapter. They choose to charge for one! https://9to5mac.com/2025/10/16/no-the-eu-didnt-ban-apple-fro...

The option to opt out is effectively the same as charging to include one, unless you include the variation where you can opt out and pay the same price to not get one .

You know how we know its not that because its 3,599 without the power adapter and 3,678 with it which of those prices seems like the intentional cost of the machine

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#928

Post by Razengan »

I've been using the M2 Max with 32 GB and 38-core GPU almost since it came out, I think I can still get a couple more years pretty easily from it.

It's still shrugging off everything I throw at it, including Windows-only games. I've yet to have a moment where I wished it was faster. I was hoping for a newer display or body before I upgraded. The only "essential" features seem to be WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 6 if they make much a difference in everyday life.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#930

Post by lamontcg »

sally_glance wrote: post #819
lamontcg wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLM usage is not very likely to "dry up". What is more likely to happen though is that it doesn't take multiple $10B of datacenter and capital to build out models--and the performance against LLM benchmarks starts to max out to the point where throwing more capital at it doesn't make enough of a difference to matter. Once the costs shrink below $1B then Apple could start building their own models with the $139B in ca…

And they will most likely also be the last to benefit from hypothetical efficiency gains because they haven't been building up expertise (by burning billions) yet.

You can hire expertise off your competitors.

Being able to Greenfield something new is a tempting pitch to use to poach employees.

And first to market often doesn't win, or else WebVan would still be doing grocery deliveries. We tend to overstate the first-mover advantages because we more easily remember the cases where that turned into lasting dominance while forgetting all the companies that died to first-mover disadvantages.

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