Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#31

Post by givinguflac » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

nasaeclipse wrote: post #3

rvz wrote: post #2

> M5 Ultra features a massive amount of high-bandwidth unified memory, up to 512GB, and delivers a staggering 1.2TB/s of unified memory bandwidth that is 50 percent higher than M3 Ultra. Apple never needed to participate in the AI race to zero. Because they were already at the finish line years ago building their own chips that can run large >100B parameter AI models locally.

As someone who works in AI now, I have found it pretty amazing that Apple basically didn't do much with AI software, and focused more on the hardware side. I think this is what the future of AI is going to look like, local models run on your mac for your workflow. It's possible that they're working on their own LLM that's going to work very well on their chips, and possibly outperform anything out there when they do…

|It's possible that they're working on their own LLM

Yep, Siri AI; they’re doing it in public.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#32

Post by xattt » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

Tangential, but what would be the ideal Mac option for home movie editing, casual gaming and amateur CAD fiddling in Fusion?

I plan on maximizing my residual student benefits, and taking advantage of education pricing.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#33

Post by LeBit » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

bel8 wrote: post #21

LeBit wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.2TB/s is 2/3 the speed of an nVidia 5090. But you get a generic computer and much more RAM. And you lose a couple of organs.

The real downside for me is not having Linux support. It would take Apple one or two engineers to make Linux life much easier on macs. But Linux is outside their walled garden so it's ignored.

I’m done with macOS.

My Mac Mini is strictly a headless server for llama.cpp.

I use a Linux workstation.

If I were limited to use Mac hardware , I would install Linux in VMware Fusion and work from there.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#34

Post by recursivedoubts » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

Even w/the pricing spike, inflation adjusted we are back to roughly the prices of a new Mac SE/30 for something that can beat a turing test w/o sweating.

I yield the floor to no one when it comes to pessimism, but that's incredible.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#35

Post by Void_ » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

SXX wrote: post #14

96GB -> 256GB upgrade costs 4000 GBP in UK or $5460. $34 for GB. In US its $4000 upgade so $25 for 1GB. Also: > 512GB memory option for M5 Ultra coming late October

VAT?

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#36

Post by skinfaxi » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:24 PM UTC

SilverSlash wrote: post #25

The 512GB Ultra is amazing, sure. But who is it for exactly? VC funded big spender founders? In that case why would they need local AI? The ultra rich enthusiast? But there can't be too many of those. So who actually buys these?

A number of people in these comments, it would seem.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#37

Post by ericd » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:24 PM UTC

SilverSlash wrote: post #25

The 512GB Ultra is amazing, sure. But who is it for exactly? VC funded big spender founders? In that case why would they need local AI? The ultra rich enthusiast? But there can't be too many of those. So who actually buys these?

I think there's some mental inertia around what a computer is and what it's worth. This thing can build custom software for you, mostly autonomously. It can monitor things happening on the internet that are relevant to you, in a holistic and flexible way. We have one crawling the web for local events we'll like, and it judges them based on what it knows about us, and it tells us about the best matches every weekend, which has yielded some awesome outings we wouldn't have known about. It reads the literature on a subject in seconds and uses it as context to help in decision support. It's not the same value proposition as a computer 3 years ago, where most people are mentally anchored on what a computer should cost. Having it at home means that you can use it as a personal agent that always puts your interests first, regardless of what ad model the commercial providers decide to put in, and you can stash in it your medical data, what you buy, what you make, your worries, hopes, and dreams, without worrying about that being used as training data, or worse, something to exploit you commercially. I think it'll become considered totally reasonable to consider spending the cost of a small car on a computer, for many families.

Also, a lot of companies are looking at how to run capable models locally to cut some of their (massive) cloud AI bills. An easy answer is worth a lot to them.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#38

Post by paxys » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:24 PM UTC

More validated by the day that my $450 M4 Mac Mini (16GB) was the best deal in computing for a long, long time.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#39

Post by intrasight » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:25 PM UTC

recursivedoubts wrote: post #34

Even w/the pricing spike, inflation adjusted we are back to roughly the prices of a new Mac SE/30 for something that can beat a turing test w/o sweating. I yield the floor to no one when it comes to pessimism, but that's incredible.

Yes. I commented elsewhere that it's only twice as expensive as my first mac which has 128kb.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#40

Post by SXX » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:25 PM UTC

SilverSlash wrote: post #25

The 512GB Ultra is amazing, sure. But who is it for exactly? VC funded big spender founders? In that case why would they need local AI? The ultra rich enthusiast? But there can't be too many of those. So who actually buys these?

You can connect up to 4 of them via RDMA so 2TB total RAM.

Its cheaper than Nvidia AI hardware.