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MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

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Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#751

Post by deeth_starr_v »

mr_o47 wrote: post #714
manofmanysmiles wrote: post #114

I love the following section of their copy: > Even More Value for Upgraders > The new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max mark a major leap for pro users. There’s never been a better time for customers to upgrade from a previous generation of MacBook Pro with Apple silicon or an Intel-based Mac. I read as "Whoops we made the M1 Macbook Pro too good, please upgrade!" I think I will get another 2-5 years…

Would it be worth upgrading from my M4 Pro 48GB to M5 Pro 64GB

It’s hard to tell at this point. You’ll get two more cores and more memory but they moved to chiplets which could hit performance on this first try. Best to wait for actual benchmarks

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#752

Post by xbryanx »

_jab wrote: post #40
testfrequency wrote: post #15

I have a fairly maxed out M2 Ultra (24 cores, 192GB RAM), and still cannot get this machine to choke on anything. I have not once felt the need to upgrade in years, and that’s with doing pretty demanding 3D and LLM work.

I've found current-generation Macs so capable that I've switched to using a Macbook Air. Would strongly recommend - it's still a powerful machine and it's significantly lighter and cheaper.

Would love to do that if it could support two additional displays with the lid open.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#753

Post by fnordpiglet »

jbellis wrote: post #298

I chased down what the "4x faster at AI tasks" was measuring: > Testing conducted by Apple in January 2026 using preproduction 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air systems with Apple M5, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 32GB of unified memory, and 4TB SSD, and production 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air systems with Apple M4, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 32GB of unified memory, and 2TB SSD. Time to first token measured with an 8K-to…

I think the key stats are this (for m5 max)

M5 128GB RAM with 614GB/s memory transfer

This is a huge step over M4 32GB 153GB/s memory transfer

For local LLM this make it a replacement for a DGX Spark, which offers a third of the transfer speed and is not something you toss in your backpack as your laptop. It’s practically useful for a lot of local use cases and that I think is the 4x factor (memory xfer) - but the 128Gb unified headroom tremendously improves the models you can run and training you can do.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#754

Post by garbageman »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #631
dotancohen wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For many workflows involving real time human interaction, such as voice assistant, this is the most important metric. Very few tasks are as sensitive to quality, once a certain response quality threshold has been achieved, as is the software planning and writing tasks that most HN readers are likely familiar.

The way that voice assistants work even in the age of LLMs are: Voice —> Speech to Text -> LLM to determine intent -> JSON -> API call -> response -> LLM -> text to speech. TTFT is irrelevant, you have to process everything through the pipeline before you can generate a response. A fast model is more important than a good model Source: I do this kind of stuff for call centers. Yes I know modern LLMs don’t go through…

I'm curious, what does the 'determine intent' mean in this case?

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#756

Post by zadikian »

xp84 wrote: post #715
zadikian wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could resell, but maybe another way to phrase this, tying the screen to the obsolete computer greatly reduces the useful lifespan of the screen. But at that time, DisplayPort didn't do enough bandwidth to have that kind of display externally anyway.

At that time… not that they even allow the 4K present day iMacs to target display. So that wasn’t the reason.

Oh, that's irritating

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#757

Post by riffraff »

manofmanysmiles wrote: post #114

I love the following section of their copy: > Even More Value for Upgraders > The new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max mark a major leap for pro users. There’s never been a better time for customers to upgrade from a previous generation of MacBook Pro with Apple silicon or an Intel-based Mac. I read as "Whoops we made the M1 Macbook Pro too good, please upgrade!" I think I will get another 2-5 years…

Yeah reading these announcements I realized my M1 Pro is supposed to be obsolete but I still see no reason to upgrade.

Also, my wife's still using the older touch bar MBP, and we'll, it works fine for her too.

I'm not sure who needs the newer pros.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#758

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

rootusrootus wrote: post #683
varenc wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have said, keep the battery in the 80%-30% range. Use the `batt` CLI tool to hard limit your max charge to 80%. Sadly, if you're already down to I type this from an M3 Max 2023 MBP that still has 98% battery health. But admittedly it's only gone through 102 charge cycles in ~2 years. (use `pmset -g rawbatt` to get cycle count or `system_profiler SPPowerDataType | grep -A3 'Health'` to get health and cycles)

> I type this from an M3 Max 2023 MBP that still has 98% battery health. That's amazing. I have an early 2023 M2 Max MBP that mostly charges in desktop mode, which limits to 80%. I just looked in battery health and it says 82%. Damn! :( For giggles, earlier today I asked Apple how much they'd give me for this machine if I traded it in on a brand new $5K M5 Max equivalent. $825. Ouch. I think I will keep it for a few…

Your battery is defective if it's at 82% after 63 charge cycles. My M1 Pro has 87% capacity after ~5 years and 412 cycles of giving zero fucks and regularly draining the battery all the way down to almost 0% and charging back up to 100% every time. I plug in to charge at like 2% super often. Babying the battery doesn't make any sense IMO.

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#759

Post by patates »

whynotmaybe wrote: post #433
jbellis wrote: post #298

I chased down what the "4x faster at AI tasks" was measuring: > Testing conducted by Apple in January 2026 using preproduction 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air systems with Apple M5, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 32GB of unified memory, and 4TB SSD, and production 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air systems with Apple M4, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 32GB of unified memory, and 2TB SSD. Time to first token measured with an 8K-to…

Quite interesting that it's now a selling point just like fps in Crysis was a long time ago.

Now that you mentioned it, these macs could theoretically also run crysis if it supported arm and such! They should add that to the marketing material :)

Re: MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

#760

Post by stouset »

swyx wrote: post #367
bob1029 wrote: post #244

I feel like Apple pulled an Instant Pot with the M1 MacBook Pro. I still haven't had a single situation where I felt like spending more money would improve my experience. The battery is wearing out a bit, but it started out life with so much runtime that losing a few hours doesn't seem to matter.

> The battery is wearing out a bit, but it started out life with so much runtime that losing a few hours doesn't seem to matter. this is my exact opposite experience. my M3 Max from 2 years ago now has <2hrs battery life at best. wondering if any experts here can help me figure out what is going on? what should i be expecting?

People here are suggesting limiting your battery charge as a proactive measure to prevent degradation but an M3 is far too new for you to be getting so poor battery life from use, even if you spent all day every day charging and discharging it.

The only plausible answers are either: something you’re running is eating CPU/GPU cycles like crazy (browser tabs gone amok, background processes) or you have a defective battery. Use Activity Monitor to look for energy usage and that will give you a pretty good idea.

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