Posted by etothet 5 hours ago
(for comparison, M4 pro has 273 GB/s and M1 pro has 200GB/s and M1 max has 400GB/s)
M5 Pro (20-core GPU): 307 GB/s memory bandwidth (supports 24 GB, 48 GB, 64 GB).
M5 Max (32-core GPU): 460 GB/s memory bandwidth. (36 GB)
M5 Max (40-core GPU): 614 GB/s memory bandwidth (supports 48 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB)
For an M5 max top bin with 128GB Ram:
- mac studio: $5,899.00 (with 2TB ssd bump to match the default macbook sku)
- macbook 16: $7,399.00
Portability gets a hit but I feel you can have a thin client and let the studio do the heavy lifting back at your home/studio(heh).
- The general consensus seems to be that the frontier models are kind of (understandably) "benchmaxxed" towards coding benchmarks and have suffered in some other areas like writing, art, etc. Lot of tweaked/specialized models on huggingface
- Getting around the censorship in commercial models
- While local models don't match frontier coding agents, you can run them for multiple 24/7 with a long running goal (The fans in Macs are presumably not built to run 24/7, but this can be mitigated to a considerable extent IME by simply pointing a desktop fan at it, and you can throttle things in software. On the discrete GPU side of things, you can usually get big power savings without much performance impact by throttling the GPU clock; things are usually bottlenecked on memory)
- Even small 27B/35B models are getting darn good, definitely more than powerful enough for classification etc... you don't need 128GB to run them
- Right now, providers like OpenAI are running at huge losses. At some point, they are going to need to turn a profit, at which point they may get significantly more expensive, and "hosting your own" may make more economic sense than it does today -- and be a valuable professional skill, even.
- Even more speculative: perhaps the future for many applications is training and running your own hyper-specialized models. Right now, training your own is nowhere near cost effective on self-hosted hardware vs. renting GPUs
Note: whether any of these use cases are "worth it" is up to the individual. I'm not trying to sell anybody on the idea. I don't personally do much local LLM stuff at the moment, but it's attractive and I've been close to pulling the trigger...
My raw data alone is terabytes, and it takes hundreds of GB sometimes to run very simple analyses. So there's no way I can have a local AI orchestrating the analyses locally.
But I realize some people have different kinds of data. So I'm interested to hear how exactly people use local models.
The point where it'd make sense for me is if someone makes a compact machine with 512 of unified memory in a couple of years and it costs less than a down payment for a house...
It's more "software & gear discussion" than "use cases", admittedly, I think because the people looking for software/gear discussion already have use cases in mind that they're trying to achieve.
It’s quite evident that the api models can and have been nerfed at the provider’s discretion, then there’s the abliteration aspect too(api models refusing what they consider “harmful”) which makes the case for local.
But then you have to compare to buying a GB200, sticking it in a closet and sharing it out in a workgroup and having a lower specced laptop. Decisions..
Rumor is that Apple is skipping the M6 Pro and Max chips this year in favor of releasing the M7 Pro and Max sometime next year.
The odds of > 128GB are very good, AMD have already bumped the Strix Halo to 192GB of RAM and both AMD and Nvidia should have successors to their offerings in 2028 that will compete with the M7 Pro and Max. Both AMD and Nvidia will be using TSMC N2 too so the competition will be ramping up.
I liked the old Gold they used in the mid 2010s too.
Black is 100% the least appealing.
Basically $400 premium for a screen upgrade. I'm sure the screen is brilliant but mini LED is very much not bad. It's a real bummer that we seem to be entering an era where each year with tech it leans more towards a new product offering that is more but for more money versus getting more for our dollar consistently.
OLED feels pretty established at this point... could they really not have pulled off just making that the default screen on pro's or is this just a price gouge for a premium feature.
Blender definitely benefits from more RAM. The M-series Macs are good for doing renders. If you're a hobbyist or independent creator, you're more likely to be rendering on your laptop than having a fancy render farm. (That's exactly how the movie Flow was done.)
Musicians know software instruments can eat into RAM, and streaming things like sample-based instruments off of disc is non viable for real time audio. Real world use can have very large numbers of tracks with many software instruments and VST chains. Ableton is a minimum of 8GB for the DAW, and things like Kontakt will multiply that fast.
And people usually have Chrome, chat apps and other things open while they work.
Apple has always positioned the Pro as having the best display in a laptop. Now that’s no longer true.
Are we really moving to 3 tier of laptop displays: Air, Pro, and Pro with ProLED XDR?
That seems unnecessarily confusing for consumers.
“Pro” used to mean you were getting Apple’s best hardware, designed for "professionals".
Now “Pro” doesn't mean that anymore.
It's really hard to maintain a perfectly positioned product lineup while managing underlying shifts in technologies. It's usually the availability and price of new components that cause this, along with needing to iron out issues before bringing a technology fully mainstream. Here the touchscreen is new, the hinge is new, and the screen tech is new to the platform. You can't always just drop something that on the mass market.
For Apple, product & hardware come first, marketing and positioning is secondary.
You have the MacBook Pro with three tiers of SoCs, each with binning options.
There was already an option for screen coatings and now an option for a new screen type.
That’s not to mention storage and RAM choices.
Its still the MacBook with HDR display and active cooling and more inputs. I’m not sure why options are an issue
Up until today, Apple's positioning was:
* Consumer = Air (light workloads, no pro use cases like video where you need best display)
* Professional = Pro (heavy workloads, need best display for color correctness)
After today, it's what exactly? Is it:
* Consumer = Air
* Business = Pro ???
* Professional = Pro with PROLED XDR
The base level has fewer ports / less beefy cpu / less features; right now the 14" M6, but previously dual core, two thunderbolt 13" intel MBPs without touchbar. These are popular with corporate fleets.
The 'real' MBPs have all the ports / beefy cpu / best features / optional bigger screens.
Apple likes its market segmentation but it's not precious about it in the face of big technology shifts. If there's hardware they love and want, they'll try to ship it and sort out the segmentation after.
I don’t think you’re making a compelling argument here. Arguably a processor is more relevant to a wider range of professionals than a screen is.
Or are you forgetting that you could choose display types on the old PowerBooks and MacBooks , or choose drive options for a premium etc?
There’s nobody confusing the Pro for the Air or the Neo.
Nobody is confusing the iPad base, air and pro. They’re all strongly segmented.
2. Even better speakers
3. Thinner and lighter while retaining the 100 Wh battery
4. No more notch
Seems like a solid all-around update to be. Other than cellular, I can't possibly imagine what more people could want.
1. The trackpad on it is so god awful that using any sort of multi finger gesture is a non-starter. In this case the touch screen works significantly better.
2. I wanted to draw in a whiteboarding tool. Drawing with my finger is not ideal so I tried a passive stylus. Drawing with a passive rubber-tipped stylus leaves a lot to be desired. I would much rather use an active stylus or a pen display for artists if I could.
Apple is known for the best trackpads. They have set the bar high and they have consistently met that bar for over a decade. I don't need a touch screen for gestures when their trackpad feels just as good. To my next point, there is no pen support on this screen.
Given this, I feel the touch screen is going to be seen just like the touch bar, a pretty feature that receives some good niche support, but ultimately does not align with how the majority of users use a laptop. I just hope there's an option to turn off the touch screen when they inevitably start shifting this display down to the base model.
probably the only reason -- and this is mitigated with a mouse.
Nowadays it feels like a gilded copy of existing tech that also failed to find PMF
Moreover they lost sight of excellent UX, each new OS update adds more bloatware and needless "features" while the calendar app weeps in the corner and slow performance and bugs plague the system
i hope there's a linux analog to pro display xdr at which point i can jump ship