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Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

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Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#691

Post by doc_ick »

holoduke wrote: post #609
alluro2 wrote: post #524

I was blown away by M1 Pro, and used it for 4 years before it became a little sluggish, and replacing it with an Asus S16 running on Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (an excellent laptop). One of the main reasons was missing my old Linux setup. I've briefly tested M5 Pro in an Apple store and was surprised by how quick it felt and did anything. A tangible and significant difference, and I really feel it would be good getting it, or…

What cant you do what you can do with Linux? Nowadays my main apps are terminal apps mostly running Claude. Honestly don't really care whether it's macOS or Linux or maybe even windows. I do care about local speed. Occasionally try out local models.

I can’t download ms teams on Linux (the browser version sucks).

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#692

Post by porjo »

zer0zzz wrote: post #617
alluro2 wrote: post #524

I was blown away by M1 Pro, and used it for 4 years before it became a little sluggish, and replacing it with an Asus S16 running on Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (an excellent laptop). One of the main reasons was missing my old Linux setup. I've briefly tested M5 Pro in an Apple store and was surprised by how quick it felt and did anything. A tangible and significant difference, and I really feel it would be good getting it, or…

Why buy all that for Linux when there’s asahi for the m1?

Not OP. I'm a huge fan of Asahi and use it on my M2 MBP. There are some significant downsides in particular battery life is nowhere near what you'll get from MacOS due to inability to go into low power sleep state, and buggy DP alt mode for external monitors. I hope that will change but it's not there yet.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#693

Post by alluro2 »

websap wrote: post #591
alluro2 wrote: post #524

I was blown away by M1 Pro, and used it for 4 years before it became a little sluggish, and replacing it with an Asus S16 running on Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (an excellent laptop). One of the main reasons was missing my old Linux setup. I've briefly tested M5 Pro in an Apple store and was surprised by how quick it felt and did anything. A tangible and significant difference, and I really feel it would be good getting it, or…

Mac OS has been hands down one of the best OS that I’ve used in a long long time. What problems are you running into?

To be clear, I'm definitely not saying that MacOS is now bad - it's absolutely still a pretty good OS. But, personally, I do have a couple of gripes, and my feeling is that things are changing in the opposite direction from what I would like. Compared to Linux let's say a couple of years ago - yeah, better. Compared to Windows - there's no comparison.

But, still:

- it slows down after a while

- design direction is questionable and controversial - that it got more inconsistent is factual - also, so much wasted space and everything got bigger and a little dumber

- so little control over system behavior, functionality, looks

On modern Linux, you get a more polished (wow, unbelievable thing to say - I first dabbled with Linux in 1997), robust, and infinitely more functional and customizable experience. After a while, I started feeling at home - like it's "mine" - and how distinctively MacOS feels like being a guest there, and that it was never "my environment".

I definitely realize how vague and unquantifiable most of this sounds - and how little value those things have for a lot of people - but I've come to enjoy my setup, I spend ~12h / day in it, and I discovered that how it "feels" matters to me.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#694

Post by ColdStream »

blauditore wrote: post #517
VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the Zune actually was a better media player than the ipod in almost every way. That wasn't a false statement. The issue was the abysmal marketing and "me too" attitude Microsoft had (and still has).

Exactly. The same for Windows Phone. Both was amazing software on great hardware. They just never gained enough traction because MS was a bit late to the party and wasn't willing to push through (e.g. by compensating the late start and poor market position with heavy marketing investments and partnerships), so they eventually trashed those projects. It's such a shame that the shitty MS products survive the ages while…

At the time when they killed Windows Phone they had a $7 billion write off and that was huge. A decade or so later they would buy Activision for $69 billion without blinking. I would happy swap those in an instant.

It felt like once they dropped mobile, their whole direction become misguided. Also UWP made sense when there was also a mobile/tablet side to it, could even deploy those apps to the Xbox and it kind of worked. But then they kicked out that supporting support and suddenly they got working on trashing what good Windows still had.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#696

Post by LoganDark »

wmf wrote: post #380
LoganDark wrote: post #115

Is Apple just going to announce everything silently from now on? No more getting excited for the big events to see what's new -- it just appears on the blog one day? Also: "a staggering 1.2TB/s of unified memory bandwidth" -- yay, the GPU has reached the year 2020! (I'm a bit bitter that my M4 Max is near useless for local LLMs because of its low memory bandwidth.)

I assume they'll have events for the MacBook Ultra and M7.

I'm getting kind of tired of them announcing the base level chip and then waiting forever to release the more powerful versions. I'm also pretty upset that it's unlikely to change now that they've found it's good for business. Like releasing only the base level iPhones first.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#697

Post by ColdStream »

cogman10 wrote: post #231
dannyw wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DRAM market is cyclical. I don’t think anyone truly knows when, but it will happen. Fab capacity is being bought online; there’s just lead time. Noticeably greater intelligence is being achieved at the same number of parameters (see: Qwen3.8). I think the future will be bright, it might be a matter of time. And for tinkers, a used Epyc + DDR4 server can be great fun and epic value.

I'm expecting it to somewhat collapse. I don't know if it'll go back to pre bubble prices (here's to hoping), but I do expect a pretty sharp decline around 2030... probably not before then. Basically everyone that makes memory is building new fabs, meanwhile I'm not sure how much longer AI datacenter demand for ram will last. I think the decrease in AI ram demand and the new fabs will likely coincide leading to a col…

I'm going with 2029 just so that it can be exactly 100 years from the Great depression. ;)

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#698

Post by ColdStream »

dannyw wrote: post #88
recursivedoubts wrote: post #34

Even w/the pricing spike, inflation adjusted we are back to roughly the prices of a new Mac SE/30 for something that can beat a turing test w/o sweating. I yield the floor to no one when it comes to pessimism, but that's incredible.

The DRAM market is cyclical. I don’t think anyone truly knows when, but it will happen. Fab capacity is being bought online; there’s just lead time. Noticeably greater intelligence is being achieved at the same number of parameters (see: Qwen3.8). I think the future will be bright, it might be a matter of time. And for tinkers, a used Epyc + DDR4 server can be great fun and epic value.

Absolutely, I am in a hold pattern for the next few years. I suspect in another 3-4 years you will be able to build an absolutely stacked machine at a reasonable price. Probably won't go back to what was before but it will be decent.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#699

Post by alluro2 »

ycombinatrix wrote: post #558
alluro2 wrote: post #524

I was blown away by M1 Pro, and used it for 4 years before it became a little sluggish, and replacing it with an Asus S16 running on Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (an excellent laptop). One of the main reasons was missing my old Linux setup. I've briefly tested M5 Pro in an Apple store and was surprised by how quick it felt and did anything. A tangible and significant difference, and I really feel it would be good getting it, or…

How did it become sluggish?

Desktop is taking a bit to render after a reboot (which I need to do very rarely, admittedly), apps definitely got slower to open, a small delay in actions here and there - it started feeling a bit sluggish compared to before and it felt like it's deteriorating over time - but slightly.

I think it's very likely due to OS updates, like other people are commenting on. It probably doesn't happen to everyone, and maybe doing a clean reinstall helps (I tried all the standard stuff - rebuild caches etc).

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#700

Post by stasomatic »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #682
stasomatic wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sayin 0% is bad? What is better then? If you have the means, pay outright, no? It used to be a lot worse, paying $16K+ for a 128MB Quadra something based RIP in mid nineties . Do you mean that these things are overpriced from the get go?

I am merely pointing out additional revenue streams for Apple here. They make money off the hardware and again off the financing. Car manufacturers and have much lower margins and finance via their financial arms with much less predatory terms than your average credit card. The zero percent APR is very attractive, and easy to convince yourself to go with something above what you can afford. Times are good for Apple.

Good for them. Things cost what they do. I hear you that one can fall into the 0% interest trap, but that’s on us.

Not that I want it to happen, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple could get away with even higher prices today. Like 50% more retail on everything. They are holding the line, but I wonder for how long and why. They can pretty much charge what they want.

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