As an M1 owner seriously tempted by the hardware, seriously put off by Tahoe…
M5 MacBook Pro
351–360 of 579 posts
Re: M5 MacBook Pro
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
T-mobile is so scammy, though. Have you been keeping up with all the lawsuits against them in the US?
All carriers are scammy in their own way
MVNOs FTW. They know they're competing for price-conscious consumers so have to offer more value. The big 3 know most of their customers are going to go with one of the big boys, all of whom are expensive and not great.
Re: M5 MacBook Pro
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why carry around two cellular modems? Are you ever out and about with your computer but not your phone? I've been happy to hotspot my computers and tablets to my phone, which I always have with me. The only possible issue I can think of is battery life, but if I'm carrying around my laptop I can throw a charge cable in the bag to keep my phone juiced.
For tablets, at least with T-Mobile, for $25 you get unlimited data. You only get a limited amount of tethering data.
True, but don't you have to treat the device as a separate line? If the laptop had cellular I'd have another bill to pay.
Re: M5 MacBook Pro
#354To any Linux users, I recently bought a fully loaded M4 MacBook pro to replace my aging Lenovo and strongly regret it. I thought I would use it for playing with LLMs, but local dev on a Mac is not fun and I still don't have it fully set up. I'll probably replace it with a framework at some point in the near future. Edit: okay, that garnered more attention than I expected, I guess I owe a qualification. 1. Everything…
> I thought I would use it for playing with LLMs, but local dev on a Mac is not fun and I still don't have it fully set up. Sounds more like a you problem, probably due to unfamiliarity. There are endless options for local dev on a Mac, and a huge share of devs using one.
> Sounds more like a you problem
The biggest problem with Linux is poor interfaces[0] but the biggest problem with Apple is handcuffs. And honestly, I do not find Apple interfaces intuitive. Linux interfaces and structure, I get, even if the barrier to entry is a big higher, there's lots of documentation. Apple less so. But also with Apple there's just things that are needlessly complex, buried under multiple different locations, and inconsistent.
But I said the biggest problem is handcuffs. So let me give a very dumb example. How do you merge identical contacts? Here's the official answer[1]
Either:
1) Card > Look for Duplicates
2) Select the duplicate cards, then Card > Merge Selected Cards.
So yeah, maybe a lot of this is due to unfamiliarity, but it's not like they are making it easy. With Apple, it is "Do things the Apple way, or not at all". But with Linux it is "sure whatever you say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯". If my Android phone is not displaying/silencing calls people go "weird, have you tried adjusting X settings?" But if my iPhone is not displaying/silencing calls an Apple person goes "well my watch tells me when someone is calling" and they do not understand how infuriating such an answer is. Yet, it is the norm.
I really do want to love Apple. They make beautiful machines. But it is really hard to love something that is constantly punching you in the face. Linux will laugh when you fall on your face, but it doesn't actively try to take a swing or put up roadblocks. There's a big difference.
[0] But there's been a big push the last few years to fix this and things have come a long way. It definitely helps that Microsoft and Apple are deteriorating, so thanks for lowering the bar :)
[1] https://support.apple.com/guide/contacts/merge-contact-cards...
[2] Except it actually doesn't
Re: M5 MacBook Pro
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
The battery is good enough that I often travel with just my phone charger. I can plug the laptop in at night when the slow charge rate isn't a hindrance and be fine with the all day battery life
I was really surprised to find that the MacBook didn't mind charging from the 20W phone brick
it will even charge with the old USB-A brick.
Takes like 10 hours and isn't officially supported I think, but it does work.
Re: M5 MacBook Pro
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I thought I would use it for playing with LLMs, but local dev on a Mac is not fun and I still don't have it fully set up. Sounds more like a you problem, probably due to unfamiliarity. There are endless options for local dev on a Mac, and a huge share of devs using one.
I've used Macs for 20 years starting on the day 32-bit Intel Macs were released, and agree with the GP. Linux and Plasma spoiled me, going back to macOS and its windowing system feels like a step backward, especially for development, where using multiple windows is a must. Task switching is.. not good? I don't get window previews I can switch through when I hover over the dock, but I do on Linux. Yes, I know about Ya…
> Task switching is.. not good? I don't get window previews I can switch through when I hover over the dock, but I do on Linux.
That just sounds like being accustomed to one way of switching tasks, honestly. If I want previews, I use Expose (three-finger swipe up/down or ctrl-up/down). But mostly I just use cmd-tab and haven't really needed to see previews there. Because macOS switches between applications, not windows, often there isn't single window to preview, and I'm not sure showing all the windows would work well either. For Expose it works well because the it can use the entire screen to show previews.
Re: M5 MacBook Pro
#357What really bugs me, is the huge performance gains are against the M1 and an (5-7yo chip) Intel Mac, that from my own memory had throttling and overheating issues. While not as impressive, I'd really appreciate if they simply showed the generational gains, or actual charts against several previous generations. I'm still pretty happy with my 16gb M1 Air, but it would be nice to know some closer to real world differenc…
> I'm still pretty happy with my 16gb M1 Air, but it would be nice to know some closer to real world differences. I’m confused — they made a comparison that is directly relevant to your situation and you don’t like it? Most people with an M4 won’t be looking to upgrade to an M5. But for people on an M1 (like you) or even an older Intel chip, this is good information!
I think they're trying to decide whether it's worth jumping all the way to an M5 or whether they'd rather just get an M4 or M3 at discount.
Re: M5 MacBook Pro
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't agree with OP's sentiment that macOS is a bad dev environment, but surely I prefer Linux+KDE as an overall dev environment. I find that all the tools I need are there but that I'm fighting the UI/UX enough to make it a hassle relative to KDE.
> I don't agree with OP's sentiment that macOS is a bad dev environment, but surely I prefer Linux+KDE as an overall dev environment. I find that all the tools I need are there but that I'm fighting the UI/UX enough to make it a hassle relative to KDE. This sounds like you think macOS is a good dev environment, but that you personally don't like the UI/UX (always safer to make UI/UX judgements subjective ["I don't li…
I literally started off my comment saying that it's not bad. That means it's neutral-good, by definition.
I can easily develop on both, I prefer developing on Linux. Thus, it is "more good" (IMO), if you prefer.
Re: M5 MacBook Pro
#359To any Linux users, I recently bought a fully loaded M4 MacBook pro to replace my aging Lenovo and strongly regret it. I thought I would use it for playing with LLMs, but local dev on a Mac is not fun and I still don't have it fully set up. I'll probably replace it with a framework at some point in the near future. Edit: okay, that garnered more attention than I expected, I guess I owe a qualification. 1. Everything…
I can relate. I've spent almost 30 years working primarily on Linux. I moved Windows to be under VM when I needed it around for occasionally using MS Office, first under vmware and later under kvm. Now I don't even use it as a VM, since work has Office 365. My work got me a similar M4 MacBook Pro early this year, and I find the friction high enough that I rarely use it. It is, at best, an annoying SSH over VPN client…
Speaking of the P14s, I have an Intel version from 2 years back and battery life is poor. And I hunger for the mac's screen for occasional photography. The other thing I found difficult is that there's no equivalent of the X1 Carbon with an AMD chip. It's Intel only. The P14s is so much heavier.
Re: M5 MacBook Pro
#360Just give me cellular in a MacBook Air already Apple if you want me to insta-buy! Bonus points for OLED. Air’s don’t have to be just cheap. I want a thin and light premium laptop for walking around and a second Mac (of any type) for my desk.
I'm guessing carriers/networks can't handle a fleet of MacBooks-with-cellular yet. The data workload would be sustained and intense with macOS not having the type of system-level cellular framework/data control as iPad and iOS (I have used the low data mode on macOS, it helps but only handles a small part of the problem). I have bought cracked-screen iPhones since Personal Hotspot allowed wired connections back in th…
That doesn’t make much sense to me, there are literally billions of phones that people are using all the time.
Apple has over 2.3 billion active devices of which a small percentage are Macs (an estimated 24 million were sold in 2024 and around twice that in iPads).
The most difficult to scale part of a cell network is number of devices connected, not bandwidth used anyway and cellular Macs aren’t going to add significantly more load to a network. And that assumes that Apple even cares what a carrier thinks.
I’m in Australia, not the USA, and for all people like to complain about internet here, we have excellent mobile coverage and it’s relatively affordable, but it’s all priced by usage.
I have 4 devices on my plan with shared 210GB of 4G usage between them for around AUD$200 (USD$130) a month on Australia’s best network (Telstra). I work remotely from cafes a lot (probably around 20-30 hours a week) as a developer and get nowhere close to that usage. I update all my apps, download all my podcasts, listen to lossless music and stream video whenever I want during breaks (although I’m not a huge out-of-home video consumer). I do literally nothing to limit my bandwidth usage and am lucky to use 30-40GB a month across all my devices.