MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 2:20 PM UTC

kobalsky wrote: post #289

dawnerd wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 32gb m1 max was probably the best purchase I've made. Still plenty of headroom in performance left in this beast. Wonder what reason they'll use to end software support in the future. Bet it'll be some security hardware they make up for the sake of forcing upgrades.

my tinfoil hat theory is that they make small features depend on new hardware. for example, let's say the new os depends on m5's exclusive thumbnail generator accelerator, and let's say it improves speed by a 20%. now, your M1 notebook than on previous OSes uses standard gpu acceleration for thumbnails will not have this specialized hardware acceleration, it will have software fallback that will be 90% slower. you wo…

Post by sam- » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 2:26 PM UTC

shpx wrote: post #748

sam- wrote: post #685

I vibed out a comparison of MacBook Pros over the years. 2026 M5 Pro Geekbench scores are an estimate at this point because the data doesn't exist yet. https://sambehrens.github.io/macbook-pro-value/

You need to account for inflation.

Post by raw_anon_1111 » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 2:42 PM UTC

germinalphrase wrote: post #785

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An “intent” is something that a person wants to do - set a timer, get directions, etc. A “slot” is the variable part of an intent. For instance “I want directions to 555 MockingBird Lane”. Would trigger a Directions intent that required where you are coming from and where you are going. Of course in that case it would assume your location. Back in the pre LLM days and the way that Siri still works, someone had to man…

Can you recommend any good resources that discuss structure and performance improvement of these types of systems?

Post by germinalphrase » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 3:14 PM UTC

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #915

germinalphrase wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you recommend any good resources that discuss structure and performance improvement of these types of systems?

Unfortunately, I don’t know of any. Using LLMs for voice assistants is relatively new at scale that’s the difference between Alexa and Alexa+ and Gemini powered Google Assistant and what Apple has been trying to do with Siri for two years. It’s really just using LLMs for tool calling. It is just call centers were mostly built before the age of LLMs and companies are slow to update

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 4:19 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #822

kobalsky wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my tinfoil hat theory is that they make small features depend on new hardware. for example, let's say the new os depends on m5's exclusive thumbnail generator accelerator, and let's say it improves speed by a 20%. now, your M1 notebook than on previous OSes uses standard gpu acceleration for thumbnails will not have this specialized hardware acceleration, it will have software fallback that will be 90% slower. you wo…

> my tinfoil hat theory is that they make small features depend on new hardware. The general case is hardly a "tinfoil hat theory". They openly do that, and the major reason is to tie to new hardware adoption. That said, it doesn't usually work like you call it. It's not adding new features depending on HW optimization to slow older machines down (after all one could just not use those features in an older machine, o…