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New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

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Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#251

Post by vidarh »

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 used to have a high-powered laptop, but just use a combination of ssh and NFS to my machine at home from a low powered laptop for travel these days. It works well.

Makes managing both backups and handling failure scenarios involving loss or unauthorised access to the laptop less of a hassle as well.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#252

Post by mythz »

Waited years for a decent Desktop lineup like this as I was hugely disappointed in the generation old M3 Ultra when it was released. Unfortunately it took Apple so long that the memory prices are now through the roof - USD $4000 for 164GB RAM upgrade is insane.

I may consider a M6 Mac Mini as a stop-gap whilst waiting out RAM Apocalypse to be over. Basically abandoning any ambitions of AI sovereignty and riding out subsidised LLM pricing for the next couple of years.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#253

Post by jmalicki »

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.

Why not a non-mac cheaper desktop/workstation and a Mac laptop for use?

E.g. what most major tech companies have - a laptop that is for VSCode via ssh/web browsing, and a beefy Linux dev box you ssh into for everything else?

It's way cheaper, and what I use at home too - a lot cheaper than a Mac studio for everything, especially with RAM and storage.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#254

Post by t_mahmood »

meric_ wrote: post #182
OneWhereWhy wrote: post #174

The thing that intrigues me the most is this: "Storage performance is up to twice as fast, with a next-generation SSD architecture built on PCIe Gen 6..." This is the first personal computer I've noticed that has PCIe Gen 6 storage. I've only seen enterprise PCIe Gen 6 SSDs up until now. Gen 5 SSDs in consumer devices already have high temperatures and thermal throttling, so I'm worried about how Apple's implementati…

Im curious, how often is SSD / storage speed performance really useful? I feel like for many people it's akin to gigabyte wifi in that its nice to have, but not really particularly necessary

When I was booting from a spinning disk, at that time it took over a minute to boot. I upgraded the system to SSD later, and that same system took less than 20s. That was 10 years ago.

Another example as a developer, one particular large project took an hour to build on a spinning disk, on a SSD it takes 2mins

So, yeah, it's really noticable improvement

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#255

Post by mikepurvis »

Kye wrote: post #199
meric_ wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im curious, how often is SSD / storage speed performance really useful? I feel like for many people it's akin to gigabyte wifi in that its nice to have, but not really particularly necessary

It's nice when using large sample libraries so you can stream them off the drive without as much caching in memory. Local LLM workflows probably also benefit from being able to run models too big for RAM off the drive.

I bet this is a lot of what is driving it on the DC side, and just in general bringing disk closer to RAM as far more conventional database type workloads.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#256

Post by seviu »

matt-p wrote: post #180
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.

Another option is a 'maxed out' mini e.g M5 Pro/64GB. Mini is super easy to travel with if you know there'll be a 'dock' at the far end e.g office home or whatever.

A part of my brain can’t process acquiring a Mac Mini M5 Pro knowing that they sell M6 despite being aware that it is just a weaker processor.

It will get worse with the MacBook ultra rocking a M5 too.

Apple’s marketing department is gonna kill me.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#257

Post by jmalicki »

flaunf221 wrote: post #223
PaulRobinson wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To me the idea of working on (non-docked) laptop always seemed like an idea that you would do only if there is no other possible way. Screen is small and is only one. Ergonomics is entirely messed up. Either your screen is too low, or your keyboard is too high. Keyboards are non-ergonomic and have to be made with compromises due to height limits. Touchpad instead of mouse/trackball is compromise for many - and also s…

You can dock your laptop at work, then dock it at home, take it with you to a meeting room at work to browse supplemental materials and/or project your screen n the meeting, and use it for the occasional trip (like using it on the train to work).

It's not like you have to be on a plane for the portability to be useful.

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#258

Post by atoav »

fwip wrote: post #247
alfanick wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be oddly precise. More like "up to 50", or depending on speaker, "up to 100". /s

It would also be incorrect. "Up to" doesn't mean any possible upper bound, it describes the top of a known range. I can't say a car I'm selling goes "up to" 900mph if it tops out at 120mph.

Well, depends. Maybe it can go up to 900mph¹?

¹ drivers are responsible to get the car into a low earth orbit themselves and need to be familiar with the orbital maneuvers needed to accelerate the car to 900mph

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#259

Post by jmalicki »

frollogaston wrote: post #198
ThouYS wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having replaced my MacBook with a Mac Mini, I would reconsider. The MacBook is just such a _complete_ package. Great speakers, great keyboard, fantastic screen, the fingerprint sensor thingy.. Takes a lot of gear to match that

I thought the question was low-end MacBook + mini vs high-end MacBook. The low-end one has all those nice things. I wouldn't sacrifice that. If it has to be MacBook + super old used mini as home server, so be it.

Except for LLM inference speed, macs suck as a server and are pretty expensive, why wouldn't you get a Linux box?

Re: New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

#260

Post by boromisp »

mettamage wrote: post #214
msdz wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I can somewhat speak to this, as I actually did this for a while c. 2021 and 2022. The issue (apart from my Mac mini still having the old, bigger form factor back then) is that this requires a full shutdown (obviously), and that is more friction than opening a closed laptop lid. It just takes a moment for every app and background service etc. to settle back in after, and depending on how your brain works, you migh…

What if you have some battery system working? Then technically, you could travel with it

At that point you lose too much convenience. Maybe if someone built a mini UPS with at least 10000Ah capacity, USB-C 4 pass-through and the right form factor to permanently attach it on top of the mini.
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