I wish Apple would let me max out the RAM on a lower performance chip. That’s more valuable to me than more compute.
M4 MacBook Pro
401–410 of 1001 posts
Re: M4 MacBook Pro
#402This is the first compelling Mac to me. I've used Macs for a few clients and muscle memory is very deeply ingrained for linux desktops. But with local LLMs finally on the verge of usability along with sufficient memory... I might need to make the jump! Wish I could spin up a Linux OS on the hardware though. Not a bright spot for me.
I miss Linux, it respected me in ways that MacOS doesn't. But maintaining a sane dev environment on linux when my co-workers on MacOS are committing bash scripts that call brew... I am glad that I gave up that fight. And yeah, the hardware sure is nice.
IIRC brew supports linux, but it isn't a package manager I pay attention to outside of some very basic needs. Way too much supply chain security domain to cover for it!
Re: M4 MacBook Pro
#403Upgraded to a M1 Pro 14 in December 2021, and I still rock it everyday for dev purpose. Apple does great laptop. The only downsides is that I see a kind of "burnt?" transparent spot on my screen. When connecting to an HDMI cable, the sound does not ouput properly to the TV screen, and makes the video I plat laggy. Wondering if I go to the Apple Store, would fix it?
If you're still under AppleCare+, definitely give it a try before it expires.
Personal anecdote: don't get your hopes up. I've had my issues rejected as 'no fault found', but it's definitely worth spending a bit of time on.
Re: M4 MacBook Pro
#404I’m really excited about the nano-texture display option. It’s essentially a matte coating, but the execution on iPad displays is excellent. While it doesn’t match the e-ink experience of devices like the Kindle or ReMarkable, it’s about 20-30% easier on the eyes. The texture feels also great (even though it’s less relevant for a laptop), and the glare reduction is a welcome feature. I prefer working on the MacBook s…
Does it make much difference for looking at code?
Yes, the main goal is to be easier on the eyes IMO.
It's easier to read on it.
Re: M4 MacBook Pro
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 am on Intel TGL currently and can't wait for Strix Halo next year. That is truly something else, it's nothing we have seen in notebooks before iGPU wise.
I've had a couple of Tiger Lake laptops, a Thinkpad and I believe my Surface Laptop 4. Based on my experience with current AMD mobile chipsets, I can only imagine the Strix Halo will be quite a massive uplift for you even if the generational improvements aren't impressive.
Re: M4 MacBook Pro
#406This is the first compelling Mac to me. I've used Macs for a few clients and muscle memory is very deeply ingrained for linux desktops. But with local LLMs finally on the verge of usability along with sufficient memory... I might need to make the jump! Wish I could spin up a Linux OS on the hardware though. Not a bright spot for me.
You can spin up a Unix OS. =) It’s even older than Linux.
BSD is fun (not counting MacOS in the set there), but no, my Unix experiences have been universally legacy hardware oversubscribed and undermaintained. Not my favorite place to spend any time.
Re: M4 MacBook Pro
#407Earlier 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?
In general for local LLMs, the more memory the better. You will be able to fit larger models in RAM. The faster CPU will give you more tokens/second, but if you are just chatting with a human in the loop, most recent M series macs will be able to generate tokens faster than you can read them.
That also very much depends on model size. For 70B+ models, while the tok/s are still fast enough for realtime chat, it's not going to be generating faster than you can read it, even on Ultra with its insane memory bandwidth.
Re: M4 MacBook Pro
#408What’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…
I have exactly the same experience, usually after 3 years I'm desperate for new Mac but right now I genuinely think I'd prefer not to change. I have absolutely no issues with my M1 Pro, battery and performance is still great.
Re: M4 MacBook Pro
#409My wallet is trembling. On a side note, anyone know what database software was shown during the announcement?
What's the timestamp? At 3:43 there's Luna Modeler.
https://www.datensen.com/data-modeling/luna-modeler-for-rela...
Re: M4 MacBook Pro
#410I have a 16" M1 Pro with 16 gigs of ram, and it regularly struggles under the "load" of Firebase emulator. You can tell not because the system temp rises, but because suddenly Spotify audio begins to pop, constantly and irregularly. It took me a year to figure out that the system audio popping wasn't hardware and indeed wasn't software, except in the sense that memory (or CPU?) pressure seems to be the culprit.
This happens whenever I load up one of our PyTorch models on my M1 MBP 16gb too. I also hate the part where if the model (or any other set of programs) uses too much RAM the whole system will sometimes straight up hang and then crash due to kernel watchdog timeout instead of just killing the offender.