New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra • Hacker News Board

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#121

Post by mannanj » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

Am I the only one that now finds press releases like this similar to "AI Slop"

I know there's tons of marketing language, buzz words and attempts at convincing me of some agenda that isn't super clear without lots of effort in "validating" the slop. I guess its not bad "slop" though if a human put in effort in editing it (imo >50% human curating = not really bad ai slop)

Though I still would prefer I could just get the prompt. What human thoughts, direction and "prompt" went into writing this article? in the same way as we ask for the prompt for AI generated outputs, I would prefer it for human generated output too. For writing at the least. I could have saved time, got the purity of the argument, and got more clear information. I wonder if we can get a future where humans just express their intent with each other and stop trying to hide our agenda; I want a world we can trust each other greater and interpret and act on our goals without the noise of trying to impress or market to each other & the additional words that go into that.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#122

Post by simgt » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

PaulRobinson wrote: post #81

joshstrange wrote: post #7

Due to pricing insanity (not that Apple prices weren’t insane before the ram/ssd shortages) I’m not in the market but I do wonder if my next computer should be a Mac Studio instead of a MBP that lives its life docked. Might be better to just run a Studio and Neo for the very few times I actually need remote capabilities.

I've been thinking about this a fair bit recently. We make a lot of price/performance compromises for having an attached screen and keyboard on our computer. That was what got me started. Then I remembered the days of having to go to a special corner of the house to use a computer, vs now when I have a computer with me all the time. In my bag, on the sofa, on the train. Hell, I'm writing this on the work MBP while wa…

I've done that, but I chose a Framework Desktop instead. The latest Fedora is closer to Snow Leopard than anything Apple has to offer. Downside is that I still have my MBP because of the lock-in and occasionally pick it up to do computer stuff in weird places.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#123

Post by jve » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #67

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not exactly "future proof" Computers are never "future proof".

> Computers are never "future proof". Upgradeable components however could go a loooong stretch towards that goal. It can't be that hard to follow a common form factor for at least the housing across two or three generations to allow a reuse of everything but the main PCB.

Think it would have same memory bandwidth if the RAM was upgradeable?

Would be nice if someone knowledgeable about electrical engineering and manufacturing processes could lay out some valid reasons for manufacturers to integrate RAM onto the motherboard.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49041256#49082206

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#124

Post by epolanski » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 2:26 PM UTC

jdcasale wrote: post #50

kamranjon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1tb would likely be ~$20k - given the current >$10k price tag of 256gb. Would you still be considering it at that price?

I'd consider a 1tb machine at 20k, but I'm not going to pick up a 256gb one at all. 1TB fits a frontier-ish model in memory without massive quantization, which is a very interesting capability for a non-rack piece of compute.

But why...?

At that point just rent proper GPUs in the cloud, you'd have way more power and pay only what you use for.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#125

Post by dannyw » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 2:26 PM UTC

alberth wrote: post #30

It looks like speculation that Apple would raise the base chip’s maximum RAM from 32GB to 48GB was wrong. Apple also launched the base M6 today with a 32GB RAM limit, suggesting 512GB may remain the maximum for Ultra chips for some time. Since these Ultra chips combine 16 base chips: 32GB × 16 = 512GB

They probably literally don't have enough NAND to go around. 768GB of memory (48GB x 16) is enough for nearly 100 iPhone 17s; that's $80k (corrected) of iPhones at MSRP, although likely much lower margins than these high-RAM boxes.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#126

Post by ricardobeat » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 2:26 PM UTC

blints wrote: post #62

dist-epoch wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10 grand for 256GB memory. A NVIDIA RTX 6000, 96 GB at 1.7 TB/s, is 13 grand. This 256 GB at 1.2 TB/s Mac is extremely competitive, it will be sold out everywhere.

The relevant comparison isn't one mac studio to one RTX 6000, it's a 24 channel DDR5 system, which also has ~1.2TB/s of memory bandwidth (or more when Xeon 6 compatible 8800mt/s memory becomes widely available), vastly higher prefill due to more CPU horsepower, orders of magnitude faster networking, can hook into GPU accelerators, can be upgraded etc. A baseline 384GB system from eg Puget is ~30K vs ~12K for the 256G…

So 3x more, plus the cost of a GPU (another 10k?). How is that value for money to get slightly better performance?

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#127

Post by bearjaws » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #7

Due to pricing insanity (not that Apple prices weren’t insane before the ram/ssd shortages) I’m not in the market but I do wonder if my next computer should be a Mac Studio instead of a MBP that lives its life docked. Might be better to just run a Studio and Neo for the very few times I actually need remote capabilities.

Recently took a Minisforum 7840hs PC out of rotation as a media PC and made it a full time coding workstation with Proxmox. I do a VM per project due to the nature of agentic editors.

I was using a VM setup on my MBP but it felt like a huge waste, having to leave a laptop on 24/7 when all it did was run Claude Code inside VMs.

I likely will stick with a Macbook Air 15" for next purchase, and beef up my "Claude Server" down the road.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#128

Post by mlsu » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #98

gizajob wrote: post #3

Bizarre there isn’t a 1TB RAM option hidden away for the excessively frivolous or VC funded.

It's more bizarre that Apple got caught with pants down. Focused on CPUs and ignored RAM. Seems like miscalculation. If they had their own fab for RAM, they could completely corner the market today.

They don’t have their own fab for CPUs either.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#129

Post by actionfromafar » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #98

gizajob wrote: post #3

Bizarre there isn’t a 1TB RAM option hidden away for the excessively frivolous or VC funded.

It's more bizarre that Apple got caught with pants down. Focused on CPUs and ignored RAM. Seems like miscalculation. If they had their own fab for RAM, they could completely corner the market today.

They would have had to start building that fab 5-10 years ago. It would have been incredible foresight to do so and it would have looked insane.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#130

Post by sanderjd » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #7

Due to pricing insanity (not that Apple prices weren’t insane before the ram/ssd shortages) I’m not in the market but I do wonder if my next computer should be a Mac Studio instead of a MBP that lives its life docked. Might be better to just run a Studio and Neo for the very few times I actually need remote capabilities.

Yep, this is my exact thought. The pendulum has swung back toward a desktop making more sense for me than a laptop. It all depends on whether there is anything useful to do with an amount of computation that can't be fit into a laptop package. For a long time there wasn't, now there is.