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M4 MacBook Pro

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Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#211

Post by acomjean »

jchw wrote: post #141
carlgreene wrote: post #94

What’s amazing is that in the past I’ve felt the need to upgrade within a few years. New video format or more demanding music software is released that slows the machine down, or battery life craters. Well, I haven’t had even a tinge of feeling that I need to upgrade after getting my M1 Pro MBP. I can’t remember it ever skipping a beat running a serious Ableton project, or editing in Resolve. Can stuff be faster? Tec…

Laptops in general are just better than they used to be, with modern CPUs and NVMe disks. I feel exactly the same seeing new mobile AMD chips too, I'm pretty sure I'll be happy with my Ryzen 7040-based laptop for at least a few years. Apple's M1 came at a really interesting point. Intel was still dominating the laptop game for Windows laptops, but generational improvements felt pretty lame. A whole lot of money for m…

I’ll agree the AMD laptops from the past couple of years are really impressive. They are fast enough that I’ve done some bioinformatics work on one.

Battery life is decent.

At this point I’m not switching from laptop Linux. The machines can even game (thanks proton/steam)

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#212

Post by klooney »

rbanffy wrote: post #139
carlgreene wrote: post #94

What’s amazing is that in the past I’ve felt the need to upgrade within a few years. New video format or more demanding music software is released that slows the machine down, or battery life craters. Well, I haven’t had even a tinge of feeling that I need to upgrade after getting my M1 Pro MBP. I can’t remember it ever skipping a beat running a serious Ableton project, or editing in Resolve. Can stuff be faster? Tec…

A lot of my work can be easily done with a Celeron - it's editing source, compiling very little, running tests on Python code, running small Docker containers and so on. Could it be faster? Of course! Do I need it to be faster? Not really. I am due to update my Mac mini because my current one can't run Sonoma, but, apart from that, it's a lovely little box with more than enough power for me.

How's the performance of Gmail on the Celeron? That's always my sticking point for older computers. The fancy web applications really drag.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#213

Post by bigtex »

doctoboggan wrote: post #73

Does anyone know of any good deals on the older models of apple laptops? Now is usually a great time to purchase (a still very capable) older model.

Watch SlickDeals. I think it was this time last year where lots of refurbs/2 generation old machines were going for massive discounts. Granted they were M1 machines, but some had 64GB RAM and 4TB drives for like $2700. Microcenter and B&H are good ones to watch as well.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#214

Post by BenFranklin100 »

thrownblown wrote: post #130
BenFranklin100 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic, but I’m very interested in local LLMs. Could you point me in the right direction, both hardware specs and models?

https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SillyTavernAI/

Thanks to both of you!

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#215

Post by segmondy »

BrentOzar wrote: post #9

The M4 Max goes up to 128GB RAM, and "over half a terabyte per second of unified memory bandwidth" - LLM users rejoice.

Need more memory, 256GB will be nice. MistralLarge is 123B. Can't even give a quantized Llama405B a drive. LLM users rejoice. LLM power users, weep.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#216

Post by mattfrommars »

Does anyone know if there is a way to use Mac without the Apple bloatware?

I genuinely want to use it as primary machine but with this Intel MacBook Pro I have, I absolutely dislike FaceTime, IMessage, the need to use AppStore, Apple always asking me have a Apple user name password (which I don't and have zero intention), block Siri, and all telemetry stuff Apple has backed in, stop the machine calling home, etc.

This is to mirror tools available in Windows to disable and remove Microsoft bloatware and ad tracing built in.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#217

Post by MaxDPS »

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #67
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #55

I'm pleased that the Pro's base memory starts at 16 GB, but surprised they top out at 32 GB: > ...the new MacBook Pro starts with 16GB of faster unified memory with support for up to 32GB, along with 120GB/s of memory bandwidth... I haven't been an Apple user since 2012 when I graduated from college and retired my first computer, a mid-2007 Core2 Duo Macbook Pro, which I'd upgraded with a 2.5" SSD and 6GB of RAM with…

The max memory is dependent on which tier M4 chip you get. The M4 max chip will let you configure up to 128gb of ram

It looks like the 14 core M4 Max only allows 36GB of ram. The M4 Pro allows for up to 48GB. It's a bit confusing.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#218

Post by Der_Einzige »

opjjf wrote: post #5

It seems they also update the base memory on MacBook Air: > MacBook Air: The World’s Most Popular Laptop Now Starts at 16GB > MacBook Air is the world’s most popular laptop, and with Apple Intelligence, it’s even better. Now, models with M2 and M3 double the starting memory to 16GB, while keeping the starting price at just $999 — a terrific value for the world’s best-selling laptop.

[flagged]

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#219

Post by alberth »

vishnugupta wrote: post #104

Can someone please help me out with this? I'm torn between Mac mini and and MacBook Pro, specifically the CPU spec difference. MBP: Apple M4 Max chip with 16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU and 16‑core Neural Engine Mac mini: Apple M4 Pro chip with 14‑core CPU, 20‑core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine What kind of workload would make me regret not having bought MBP over Mac mini given the above. Thanks!

Since the only real difference is number of GPUs, it'd be:

- photo/video editing

- games, or

- AI (training / inference)

that would benefit from the extra GPUs.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#220

Post by cantsingh »

rconti wrote: post #201
drewbitt wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And my 2020 Intel Macbook Air was a bad purchase. Cruelly, the Intel and M1 Macbook Air released within 6 months of each other.

In early 2020, I had an aging 2011 Air that was still struggling after a battery replacement. Even though I "knew" the Apple Silicon chips would be better, I figured a 2020 Intel Air would last me a long time anyway, since my computing needs from that device are light, and who knows how many years the Apple Silicon transition will take take anyway? Bought a reasonably well-specced Intel Air for $1700ish. The M1s came…

Exact same boat here. A friend and I both bought the 2020 Intel MBA thinking that the M1 version was at least a year out. It dropped a few months later. I immediately resold my Intel MBA seeing the writing on the wall and bought a launch M1 (which I still use to this day). Ended up losing $200 on that mis-step, but no way the Intel version would still get me through the day.

That said...scummy move by Apple. They tend to be a little more thoughtful in their refresh schedule, so I was caught off guard.

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