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M4 MacBook Pro

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Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#561

Post by wtallis »

sliken wrote: post #331
commandersaki wrote: post #74

Hm, the M3 MacBook Pro had a 96GB of ram model (which is what I have). I wonder why it's not an option with the M4.

M2 pro has 256 bit wide memory, mostly benefiting the GPU perf. M3 pro has 192 bit wide memory, GPU improvements mostly offset the decrease in memory bandwidth. This leads to memory options like 96GB. M4 pro has 256 bit wide memory, thus the factor of 2 memory options.

The 96GB option was with the M2 Max and M3 Max chips, not the M2 Pro or M3 Pro.

DRAM chips don't just come in power of two sizes anymore. You can even buy 24GB DDR5 DIMMs.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#562

Post by dmz73 »

lukev wrote: post #535

I really respect Apple's privacy focused engineering. They didn't roll out _any_ AI features until they were capable of running them locally, and before doing any cloud-based AI they designed and rolled out Private Cloud Compute. You can argue about whether it's actually bulletproof or not but the fact is, nobody else is even trying, and have lost sight of all privacy-focused features in their rush to ship anything a…

Mac OS calls home every time you execute an application. Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store, they would probably already be there if it wasn't for the pesky EU. If you send your computer/phone to Apple for repair you may get back different physical hardware. Those things very much highlight that "your" Apple hardware is not yours and that privacy on Apple hardware does not actually exist, sure they may not share that data with other parties but they definitely do not respect your privacy or act like you own the hardware you purchased. Apple marketing seems to have reached the level indoctrination where everyone just keeps parroting what Apple says as an absolute truth.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#563

Post by kristianp » 

   > MacBook Pro with M4 Pro is up to 3x faster than M1 Pro (13)
   > (13) Testing conducted by Apple from August to October 2024 using preproduction 16-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M4 Pro, 14-core CPU, 20-core GPU, 48GB of RAM and 4TB SSD, and production 16-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 Pro, 10-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 32GB of RAM and 8TB SSD. Prerelease Redshift v2025.0.0 tested using a 29.2MB scene utilising hardware-accelerated ray tracing on systems with M4 Pro. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.
So they're comparing software that uses raytracing present in the M3 and M4, but not in the M1. This is really misleading. The true performance increase for most workloads is likely to be around 15% over the M3. We'll have to wait for benchmarks from other websites to get a true picture of the differences.

Edit: If you click on the "go deeper on M4 chips", you'll get some comparisons that are less inflated, for example, code compilation on pro:

    14-inch MacBook Pro with M4  4.5x
    14-inch MacBook Pro with M3  3.8x
    13-inch MacBook Pro with M1  2.7x
So here the M4 Pro is 67% faster than the M1 Pro, and 18% faster than the M3 Pro. It varies by workload of course.

No benchmarks yet, but this article gives some tables of comparative core counts, max RAM and RAM bandwidths: https://arstechnica.com/apple/2024/10/apples-m4-m4-pro-and-m...

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#564

Post by filoleg »

monocasa wrote: post #495
davidczech wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s usually filmed on weekends

You would just think that with a brand so intrinsically wrapped around the concept of technology working for and with the people that use it, you'd want to show the people who made it if you're going to show the apple campus at all. It kind of just comes off as one of those YouTube liminal space horror videos when it's that empty.

> You would just think that with a brand so intrinsically wrapped around the concept of technology working for and with the people that use it, you'd want to show the people who made it if you're going to show the apple campus at all.

I would think that a brand that is at least trying to put some emphasis on privacy in their products would also extend the same principle to their workforce. I don’t work for Apple, but I doubt that most of their employees would be thrilled about just being filmed at work for a public promo video.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#565

Post by leokennis »

dmz73 wrote: post #562
lukev wrote: post #535

I really respect Apple's privacy focused engineering. They didn't roll out _any_ AI features until they were capable of running them locally, and before doing any cloud-based AI they designed and rolled out Private Cloud Compute. You can argue about whether it's actually bulletproof or not but the fact is, nobody else is even trying, and have lost sight of all privacy-focused features in their rush to ship anything a…

Mac OS calls home every time you execute an application. Apple is well on its way to ensure you can only run things they allow via app store, they would probably already be there if it wasn't for the pesky EU. If you send your computer/phone to Apple for repair you may get back different physical hardware. Those things very much highlight that "your" Apple hardware is not yours and that privacy on Apple hardware does…

At the very least Apple are better than Microsoft, Windows and the vendors that sell Windows laptops when it comes to respecting user experience and privacy.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#566

Post by leokennis »

jcmontx wrote: post #20

> "up to 1.8x faster when compared to the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro" I insist my 2020 Macbook M1 was the best purchase I ever made

I still use my MacBook Air M1 and given my current workloads (a bit of web development, general home office use and occasional video editing and encoding) I doubt I’ll need to replace it in the coming 5 years. That’ll be an almost 10 year lifespan.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#567

Post by a2l3aQ »

zubiaur wrote: post #460
pw6hv wrote: post #456

Just replaced for the first time battery on my Macbook Pro 2015 Retina. Feel so good using such an old piece of hardware.

I love mine, it has a fresh battery OEM battery as well. Runs the latest OS with OpenCore Legacy. But it's starting to get a bit annoying. Usable, but it is starting to feel slowish, the fan kicks up frequently. I might still keep it another year or so, which is a testament to how good it is and how relative little progress has happened in almost 10 years.

If I still had my 2015 I would have applied some liquid metal TIM by now, I did a paste refresh and that worked very well to get the fan under control.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#568

Post by SkyMarshal »

losvedir wrote: post #514
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.

I'm curious about getting one of these to run LLM models locally, but I don't understand the cost benefit very well. Even 128GB can't run, like, a state of the art Claude 3.5 or GPT 4o model right? Conversely, even 16GB can (I think?) run a smaller, quantized Llama model. What's the sweet spot for running a capable model locally (and likely future local-scale models)?

Lots of discussion and testing of that over on https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/, worth following if you're not already.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#569

Post by pradn »

hypercube33 wrote: post #482
xyst wrote: post #481

> … advanced 12MP … camera wot, m8? Only Apple will call a 12 megapixel camera “advanced”. Same MPs as an old iPhone 6 rear camera. Aside from that, it’s pretty much the same as the prior generation. Same thickness in form factor. Slightly better SoC. Only worth it if you jump from M1 (or any Intel mbp) to M4. Would be godlike if Apple could make the chip swappable. Buy a Mac Studio M2 Ultra Max Plus. Then just upgra…

I feel like if they pushed Win32/Gaming on Apple Mx hardware it'd give at least a single reason for people to adopt or upgrade their devices to new models. I know for sure I'd be on board if everything that ran on my steam deck ran on a mac game wise, since that's holding me back from dropping the cash. I still think I'll get a mini though.

Valve is trying to obsolete Windows, so they can prevent Microsoft from interfering with Steam. Apple could team up with them, and help obsolete Windows for a very large percentage of game-hours.

There will always be a long tail of niche Windows games (retro + indie especially). But you can capture the Fortnite (evergreen) / Dragon Age (new AAA) audience.

Re: M4 MacBook Pro

#570

Post by JadeNB »

lukev wrote: post #559
jeffybefffy519 wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering you need an Apple ID to log into the hardware, id argue Apple gatekeeps that ownership pretty tightly.

This isn't true. edit: also, unless you are the digital equivalent of "off the grid", I would argue most people are going to need some sort of cloud-based identity anyway for messaging, file-sharing, etc. iCloud is far and away the most secure of the options available to most users, and the only one that uses full end-to-end encryption across all services.

> edit: also, unless you are the digital equivalent of "off the grid", I would argue most people are going to need some sort of cloud-based identity anyway for messaging, file-sharing, etc. iCloud is far and away the most secure of the options available to most users, and the only one that uses full end-to-end encryption across all services.

"You need some cloud-based identity, and this is the best one," even granting its premises, doesn't make being forced into this one a good thing. I'm an Apple user, but there are plenty of people I need to message and share files with who aren't in the Apple ecosystem.

EDIT: As indicated in the reply (written before I added this edit), it sounds like I was ignoring the first part of the post, which pointed out that you aren't forced to use it. I agree that that is a sensible, and even natural and inevitable, reading. I actually wasn't ignoring that part, but I figured the only reason to include this edit was to say "that isn't true, but if it were true, then it would be OK." (Otherwise, what's the point? There's no more complete refutation needed of a false point than that it is false.) My argument is that, if it were true, then that wouldn't be OK, even if you need a cloud-based identity, and even if iCloud is the best one.

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