What’s amazing is that in the past I’ve felt the need to upgrade within a few years.
New video format or more demanding music software is released that slows the machine down, or battery life craters.
Well, I haven’t had even a tinge of feeling that I need to upgrade after getting my M1 Pro MBP. I can’t remember it ever skipping a beat running a serious Ableton project, or editing in Resolve.
Can stuff be faster? Technically of course. But this is the first machine that even after several years I’ve not caught myself once wishing that it was faster or had more RAM. Not once.
Perhaps it’s my age, or perhaps it’s just the architecture of these new Mac chips are just so damn good.
Laptops in general are just better than they used to be, with modern CPUs and NVMe disks. I feel exactly the same seeing new mobile AMD chips too, I'm pretty sure I'll be happy with my Ryzen 7040-based laptop for at least a few years.
Apple's M1 came at a really interesting point. Intel was still dominating the laptop game for Windows laptops, but generational improvements felt pretty lame. A whole lot of money for mediocre performance gains, high heat output and not very impressive battery. The laptop ecosystem changed rapidly as not only the Apple M1 arrived, but also AMD started to gain real prominence in the laptop market after hitting pretty big in the desktop and data center CPU market. (Addendum: and FWIW, Intel has also gotten a fair bit better at mobile too in the meantime. Their recent mobile chipsets have shown good efficiency improvements.)
If Qualcomm's Windows on ARM efforts live past the ARM lawsuit, I imagine a couple generations from now they could also have a fairly compelling product. In my eyes, there has never been a better time to buy a laptop.
(Obligatory: I do have an M2 laptop in my possession from work. The hardware is very nice, it beats the battery life on my AMD laptop even if the AMD laptop chews through some compute a bit faster. That said, I love the AMD laptop because it runs Linux really well. I've tried Asahi on an M1 Mac Mini, it is very cool but not something I'd consider daily driving soon.)
> Laptops in general are just better than they used to be, with modern CPUs and NVMe disks. I feel exactly the same seeing new mobile AMD chips too, I'm pretty sure I'll be happy with my Ryzen 7040-based laptop for at least a few years.
You say that, but I get extremely frustrated at how slow my Surface Pro 10 is (with an Ultra 7 165U).
It could be Windows of course, but this is a much more modern machine than my Macbook Air (M1) and feels like it's almost 10 years old at times in comparison. - despite being 3-4 years newer.
It's true that Linux may be a bit better in some cases, if you have a system that has good Linux support, but I think in most cases it should never make a very substantial difference. On some of the newer Intel laptops, there are still missing power management features anyways, so it's hard to compare.
That said, Intel still has yet to catch up to AMD on efficiency unfortunately, they've improved generationally but if you look at power efficiency benchmarks of Intel CPUs vs AMD you can see AMD comfortably owns the entire top of the chart. Also, as a many-time Microsoft Surface owner, I can also confirm that these devices are rarely good showcases for the chipsets inside of them: they tend to be constrained by both power and thermal limits. There are a lot of good laptops on the market, I wouldn't compare a MacBook, even a MacBook Air, a laptop, with a Surface Pro, a 2-in-1 device. Heck, even my Intel Surface Laptop 4, a device I kinda like, isn't the ideal showcase for its already mediocre 11th gen Intel processor...
The Mac laptop market is pretty easy: you buy the laptops they make, and you get what you get. On one hand, that means no need to worry about looking at reviews or comparisons, except to pick a model. They all perform reasonably well, the touchpad will always be good, the keyboard is alright. On the other hand, you really do get what you get: no touchscreens, no repairability, no booting Windows, etc.
If we're mostly concerned about CPU grunt, it's really hard to question the Ryzen 7040, which like the M1, is also not the newest generation chip, though it is newer than the M1 by a couple of years. Still, comparing an M1 MacBook Pro with a Framework 16 on Geekbench:
Both of these CPUs perform well enough that most users will not need to be concerned at all about the compute power. Newer CPUs are doing better but it'd be hard to notice day-to-day.
As for other laptop features... That'll obviously be vendor-dependent. The biggest advantage of the PC market is all of the choices you get to make, and the biggest disadvantage of the PC market is all of the choices you have to make. (Edit: Though if anyone wants a comparison point, just for sake of argument, I think generally the strongest options have been from ASUS. Right now, the Zephyrus G16 has been reviewing pretty good, with people mostly just complaining that it is too expensive. Certainly can't argue with that. Personally, I run Framework, but I don't really run the latest-and-greatest mobile chipsets most of the time, and I don't think Framework is ideal for people who want that.)
Ultimately it'll be subjective, but the fans don't really spin up on my Framework 16 unless I push things. Running a game or compiling on all cores for a while will do the trick. The exact battery life, thermals and noise will be heavily dependent on the laptop; the TDP of modern laptop CPUs is probably mostly pretty comparable so a lot of it will come down to thermal design. Same for battery life and noise, depends a lot on things other than the CPU.
I've owned an M1 MBP base model since 2021 and I just got an M3 Max for work. I was curious to see if it "felt" different and was contemplating an upgrade to M4. You know what? It doesn't really feel different. I think my browser opens about 1 second faster from a cold start. But other than that, no perceptible difference day to day.
My work machine was upgraded from an M1 with 16GB of RAM to an M3 Max with 36GB and the difference in Xcode compile times is beyond belief: I went from something like 1-2 minutes to 15-20 seconds.
Obviously if opening a browser is the most taxing thing your machine is doing the difference will be minimal. But video or music editing, application-compiling and other intensive tasks, then the upgrade is PHENOMENAL.
> I wonder what it will take to make Mac/iOS feel faster
I know, disabling shadows and customisable animation times ;) On a jailbroken phone I once could disable all animation delays, it felt like a new machine (must add that the animations are very important and generally great ux design, but most are just a tad too slow)
I went from 12 to 15 pro max, the difference is significant. I can listen to Spotify while shooting from the camera. On my old iPhone 12, this is not possible.
16 pro has a specialized camera button which is a game changer for street / travel photography. I upgraded from 13 pro and use that. But no other noticeable improvements. Maybe Apple intelligence summarizing wordy emails.
I think the only upgrade now is from a non-Pro to Pro, since a 120Hz screen is noticeably better than a 60Hz screen (and a borderline scam that a 1000 Euro phone does not have 120Hz).
Can confirm. I have an M2 Air from work and an M1 Pro for personal, and tbh, both absolutely fly. I haven't had a serious reason to upgrade. The only reason I do kind of want to swap out my M1 Pro is because the 13" screen is a wee small, but I also use the thing docked more often than not so it's very hard to justify spending the money.
> I haven’t had even a tinge of feeling that I need to upgrade after getting my M1 Pro MBP.
I upgraded my M1 MBP to a MacBook Air M3 15" and it was a major upgrade. It is the same weight but 40% faster and so much nicer to work on while on the sofa or traveling. The screen is also brighter.
I think very few people actually do need the heavy MBPs, especially not the web/full-stack devs who populate Hacker News.
EDIT: The screens are not different in terms of brightness.
Interestingly my eyes hate the MBP display, would get tired and watery soon after I use the MBP. Tried many times to confirm and also tried all settings. In end had to return it.
MB Air display is my only option. Not sure if the new nano coating display would be better though.
I find 60Hz on the non-Pro iPhone obnoxious since switching to 120Hz screens. On the other hand, I do not care much about 60Hz when it comes to computer screens. I think touch interfaces make low refresh rates much more noticeable.
I would normally never upgrade so soon after getting an M1 but running local LLMs is extremely cool and useful to the point where I'd want the extra RAM and CPU to run larger models more quickly.
It's so nice being able to advise a family member who is looking to upgrade their intel Mac to something new, and just tell them to buy whatever is out, not worry about release dates, not worry about things being out of date, and so on.
The latest of whatever you have will be so much better than the intel one, and the next advances will be so marginal, that it's not even worth looking at a buyer's guide.
100% agree on this. Ive had this thing for 3 years and I still appreciate how good it is. Of course the M4 tingles my desire for new cool toys, but I honestly don´t think I would notice much difference with my current use.
A lot of my work can be easily done with a Celeron - it's editing source, compiling very little, running tests on Python code, running small Docker containers and so on. Could it be faster? Of course! Do I need it to be faster? Not really.
I am due to update my Mac mini because my current one can't run Sonoma, but, apart from that, it's a lovely little box with more than enough power for me.
I think regretting Mac upgrades is a real thing, at least for me. I got a 32G Mac mini in January to run local LLMs. While it does so beautifully, there are now smaller LLMs that run fine on my very old 8G M1 MacBook Pro, and these newer smaller models do almost all of what I want for NLP tasks, data transformation, RAG, etc. I feel like I wasted my money.
But this ad is specifically for you! (Well, and those pesky consumers clinging on to that i7!):
> Up to 7x faster image processing in Affinity Photo when compared to the 13‑inch MacBook Pro with Core i7, and up to 1.8x faster when compared to the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1.
I've had Macs before, from work, but there is something about the M1 Pro that feels like a major step up.
Only recently I noticed some slowness. I think Google Photos changed something and they show photos in HDR and it causes unsmooth scrolling. I wonder if it's something fixable on Google's side though.
Same. I used to upgrade every 1.5 years or so. But with every Apple Silicon generation so far I have felt that there are really no good reasons to upgrade. I have a MacBook M3 Pro for work, but there are no convincing differences compared to the M1 Pro.
In fact, I bought a highly discounted Mac Studio with M1 Ultra because the M1 is still so good and it gives me 10Gbit ethernet, 20 cores and a lot of memory.
The only thing I am thinking about is going back to the MacBook Air again since I like the lighter form factor. But the display, 24 GiB max RAM and only 2 Thunderbolt ports would be a significant downgrade.
Yep, the same, M1 Pro from 2021. It's remarkable how snappy it still feels years later, and I still virtually never hear the fan. The M-series of chips is a really remarkable achievement in hardware.
I dont think this has anything to do with the hardware. I think we have entered an age where users in general are not upgrading. As such, software can't demand more and more performance. The M1 came out at a time where mostly all hardware innovation had staggered. Default RAM in a laptop has been 16G for over 5 years. 2 years ago, you couldn't even get more than 16 in most laptops. As such, software hardware requirements havent changed. So any modern CPU is going to feel overpowered. This isn't unique to M1's.
That’s because today’s hw is perfectly capable of running tomorrow’s software at reasonable speed. There aren’t huge drivers of new functionality that needs new software. Displays are fantastic, cellular speeds are amazing and can stream video, battery life is excellent, UIs are smooth with no jankiness, and cameras are good enough.
Why would people feel the need to upgrade?
And this applies already to phones. Laptops have been slowing for even longer.
Until everything starts running local inference. A real Siri that can operate your phone for you, and actually do things like process cross-app conditions ("Hey Siri, if I get an email from my wife today, notify me, then block out my calendar for the afternoon.") would use those increased compute and memory resources easily.
Apple has been shipping "neural" processors for a while now, and when software with local inference starts landing, Apple hardware will be a natural place for it. They'll get to say "Your data, on your device, working for you; no subscription or API key needed."
Yup, honestly the main reason I'd like to upgrade from my M1 MBA is the newer webcams are 1080p instead of 720p, and particularly much better in low light like in the evening.
If you're in the ecosystem get an iphone mount - image quality is unreal compared to anything short of some fancy DSLR setup - it is some setup but not much with magnets in iphone.
probably the next update wave is coming from the need of AI features for more local memory and compute. The software is just not there yet in usual tasks but it's just a question of time I guess. Of course there will be the pressure to do that in the cloud as usual, but local compute will always remain a market.
and probably it's good that at least one of the big players has a business model that supports driving that forward
I feel exactly the same. The one thing that would get me to pull the trigger on a newer one is if they start supporting SVE2 instructions, which would be super useful for a specific programming project I’ve been playing with.
> Perhaps it’s my age, or perhaps it’s just the architecture of these new Mac chips are just so damn good.
I feel the same of my laptop of 2011 so I guess it is partly age (not feeling the urge to always have the greatest) and partly it is non LLM and gaming related computing is not demanding enough to force us to upgrade.
I think the last decade had an explosion in the amount of resources browsers needed and used (partly workloads moving over, partly moving to more advanced web frameworks, partly electron apps proliferating).
The last few years Chrome seems to have stepped up energy and memory use, which impacts most casual use these days. Safari has also become more efficient, but it never felt bloated the way Chrome used to.
I’m using the M3 Air 13 in (splurged for 24 GB of RAM, I’m sure 16 is fine) to make iOS apps in Xcode and produce music in Ableton and it’s been more than performant for those tasks
Only downside is the screen. The brightness sort of has to be maxed out to be readable and viewing at a wrong angle makes even that imperfect
That said it’s about the same size / weight as an iPad Pro which feels much more portable than a pro device
Same feeling. The jump from all the previous laptops I owned to an M1 was an incredible jump. The thing is fast, has amazing battery life and stays cold.
Never felt the need to upgrade.
Tbf, the only thing I miss with my M2 MacBook is the ability to run x86_64 VM’s with decent performance locally.
I’ve tried a bunch of ways to do this - and frankly the translation overhead is absolute pants currently.
Not a showstopper though, for the 20-30% of complete pain in the ass cases where I can’t easily offload the job onto a VPS or a NUC or something, I just have a ThinkPad.
I am replacing a Dell laptop because the case is cracking, not because it's too slow (it isn't lightning fast, of course, but it sure is fast enough for casual use).
when the hardware wait time is the same as the duration of my impulsive decisions i no longer have a hardware speed problem, i have a software suggestion problem
I got an MBP M1 with 32gb of RAM. It'll probably be another 2-3 years or longer before I feel the pressure to upgrade if not longer. I've even started gaming (something I dropped nearly 20 years ago when I switched to mac) again due to Geforce Now, I just don't see the reason.
Frankly though, if the mac mini was a slightly lower price point I'd definitely create my own mac mini cluster for my AI home lab.
And M1 from 4 years ago instead of M3 from last year; while a 2x speed improvement in the benchmarks they listed is good, it also shows that the M series CPUs see incremental improvements, not exponential or revolutionary. I get the feeling - but a CPU expert can correct me / say more - that their base design is mostly unchanged since M1, but the manufacturing process has improved (leading to less power consumption/heat), the amount of cores has increased, and they added specialized hardware for AI-related workloads.
That said, they are in a very comfortable position right now, with neither Intel, AMD, or another competitor able to produce anything close to the bang-for-watt that Apple is managing. Little pressure from behind them to push for more performance.
I hate to say it but that's like a boomer saying they never felt the need to buy a computer, because they've never wished their pen and paper goes faster. Or a UNIX greybeard saying they don't need a Mac since they don't think its GUI would make their terminal go any faster. If you've hit a point in your life where you're no longer keeping up with the latest technological developments like AI, then of course you don't need to upgrade. A Macbook M1 can't run half the stuff posted on Hugging Face these days. Even my 128gb Mac Studio isn't nearly enough.
I think the difference is that AI is a very narrow niche/hobby at the moment. Of course if you're in that niche having more horsepower is critical. But your boomer/greybeard comparisons fall flat because they're generally about age or being set in your ways. I don't think "not being into AI image generation" is (currently) about being stuck in your ways.
To me it's more like 3d printing as a niche/hobby.
I get that you're probably joking, but - if I use Claude / ChatGPT o1 in my editor and browser, on an M1 Pro - what exactly am I missing by not running e.g. HF models locally? Am I still the greybeard without realising?
Same boat—I'm on a lowly M1 MacBook Air, and haven't felt any need to upgrade (SwiftUI development, video editing, you name it), which is wild for a nearly 4 year-old laptop.
Yeah, I feel like Apple has done the opposite of planned obsolescence with the M chips.
I have a Macbook Air M1 that I'd like to upgrade, but they're not making it easy. I promised myself a couple of years ago I'll never buy a new expensive computing device/phone unless it supports 120 hertz and Wi-Fi 7, a pretty reasonable request I think.
I got the iPhone 16 Pro, guess I can wait another year for a new Macbook (hopefully the Air will have a decent display by then, I'm not too keen to downgrade the portability just to get a good display).
So the intel era is not Apple products? Butterfly keyboard is not an Apple invention?
They have the highest product quality of any laptop manufacturer, period. But to say that all Apple products hold value well is simply not true. All quality products hold value well, and most of Apples products are quality.
I guarantee you that if Apple produced a trashy laptop it would have no resell value.
One complicating factor in the case of the Intel Macs is that an architectural transition happened after they came out. So they will be able to run less and less new software over the next couple of years, and they lack most AI-enabling hardware acceleration.
That said, they did suffer from some self inflicted hardware limitations, as you hint. One reason I like the MBP is the return of the SD card slot.
It's expected Intel-based Macs would lose value quickly considering how much better the M1 models were. This transition was bigger than when they moved from PowerPC to Intel.
Similar for me. MacBook Air M1 (8 cpu / 8 gpu; 16 GB RAM)...running in or out of clamshell with a 5k monitor, I rarely notice issues. Typically, if I'm working very inefficiently (obnoxious amount of tabs with Safari and Chrome; mostly web apps, Slack, Zoom, Postman, and vscode), I'll notice a minor lag during a video call while screen sharing...even then, it still keeps up.
(Old Pentium Pro, PII, multi chip desktop days) -- When I did a different type of work, I would be in love with these new chips. I just don't throw as much at my computer anymore outside of things being RAM heavy.
The M1 (with 16 GB ram) is really an amazing chip. I'm with you, outside of a repair/replacement? I'm happy to wait for 120hz refresh, faster wifi, and longer battery life.
> Yeah, I feel like Apple has done the opposite of planned obsolescence with the M chips.
They always have. If you want an objective measure of planned obsolescence, look at the resale value. Apple products hold their resale value better than pretty much every competitor because they stay useful for far longer.
> Yeah, I feel like Apple has done the opposite of planned obsolescence with the M chips.
Well, aside from the base specs being an anaemic 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD until now, with no aftermarket upgradability. External storage can be used as a crutch but there's no solution to not having enough RAM besides buying a whole new computer.
It seems they also update the base memory on MacBook Air:
> MacBook Air: The World’s Most Popular Laptop Now Starts at 16GB
> MacBook Air is the world’s most popular laptop, and with Apple Intelligence, it’s even better. Now, models with M2 and M3 double the starting memory to 16GB, while keeping the starting price at just $999 — a terrific value for the world’s best-selling laptop.
Wow, I didn't expect them to update the older models to start at 16GB and no price increase. I guess that is why Amazon was blowing the 8GB models out at crazy low prices over the past few days.
Costco was selling MB Air M2 8 GB for $699! Incredible deal.
I’ve been using the exact model for about a year and I rarely find limitations for my typical office type work. The only time I’ve managed to thermally throttle it has been with some super suboptimal Excel Macros.
They did? The tweet that announced stuff from the head of marketing did not mention 3 days.
That said, I believe you. Some press gets a hands-on on Wednesday (today) so unless they plan to pre-announce something (unlikely) or announce software only stuff, I think today is it.
"This is a huge week for the Mac, and this morning, we begin a series of three exciting new product announcements that will take place over the coming days," said Apple's hardware engineering chief John Ternus, in a video announcing the new iMac.
That's disappointing. I was expecting a new Apple TV because mine needs replacement and I don't really feel inclined to get one that's due for an upgrade very soon.
I've seen a lot of people complaining about 8GB but honestly my min spec M1 Air has continued to be great. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend a refurb M1 8GB Air for anyone price conscious.
The only older configs that Apple sells are the M2 and M3 Airs, which were bumped. Everything else is now on M4, or didn't have an 8gb base config (Mac Studio, Mac Pro)
Ohh, good catch. Sneaking that into the MBP announcement. I skimmed the page and missed that. So a fourth announcement couched within the biggest of the three days.
It'll be interesting to see the reaction of tech commentators about this. So many people have been screaming at Apple to increase the base RAM and stop price gouging their customers on memory upgrades. If Apple Intelligence is the excuse the hardware team needed to get the bean counters on board, I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth!
I think spec-wise the Air is good enough for almost everyone who isn't doing video production or running local LLMs, I just wish it had the much nicer screen that the Pro has. But I suppose they have to segregate the product lines somehow.
Well, the issue for me with memory on these new models is that for the Max, it ships with 36GB and NO expandable memory option. To get more memory that's gated behind a $300 CPU upgrade (plus the memory cost).
Apple deserves to be punished hard for not having done this back in 2018 when they should have. Would love to see regulators do to them what they did with USB-C here. Force them to bring back the audio jack on iphone as a response please regulators!
6 years of insulting their customers with DOA useless hardware. The reality is that zero people will "not run into issues" with 8 gb of ram and a gimped 256gb SSD for caching.
Apple is using LPDDR5 for M3. The bandwidth doesn't come from unified memory - it comes from using many channels. You could get the same bandwidth or more with normal DDR5 modules if you could use 8 or more channels, but in the PC space you don't usually see more than 2 or 4 channels (only common for servers).
Unrelated but unified memory is a strange buzzword being used by Apple. Their memory is no different than other computers. In fact, every computer without a discrete GPU uses a unified memory model these days!
On PC desktops I always recommend getting a mid-range tower server precisely for that reason. My oldest one is about 8 years old and only now it's showing signs of age (as in not being faster than the average laptop).
The new idea is having 512 bit wide memory instead of PC limitation of 128 bit wide. Normal CPU cores running normal codes are not particularly bandwidth limited. However APUs/iGPUs are severely bandwidth limited, thus the huge number of slow iGPUs that are fine for browsing but terrible for anything more intensive.
So apple manages decent GPU performance, a tiny package, and great battery life. It's much harder on the PC side because every laptop/desktop chip from Intel and AMD use a 128 bit memory bus. You have to take a huge step up in price, power, and size with something like a thread ripper, xeon, or epyc to get more than 128 bit wide memory, none of which are available in a laptop or mac mini size SFF.
Memory interface width of modern CPUs is 64-bit (DDR4) and 32+32 (DDR5).
No CPU uses 128b memory bus as it results in overfetch of data, i.e., 128B per access, or two cache lines.
AFAIK Apple uses 128B cache lines, so they can do much better design and customization of memory subsystem as they do not have to use DIMMs -- they simply solder DRAM to the motherboard, hence memory interface is whatever they want.
Eh… not quite. Maybe on an Instinct. Unified memory means the CPU and CPU means they can do zero copy to use the same memory buffer.
Many integrated graphics segregate the memory into CPU owned and GPU owned, so that even if data is on the same DIMM, a copy still needs to be performed for one side to use what the other side already has.
This means that the drivers, etc, all have to understand the unified memory model, etc. it’s not just hardware sharing DIMMs.
For comparison, a Threadripper Pro 5000 workstation with 8x DDR4 3200 has 204.8GB/s of memory bandwidth.
The Threadripper Pro 7000 with DDR5-5200 can achieve 325GB/s.
And no, manaskarekar, the M4 Max does 546 GB/s not GBps (which would be 8x less!).
Thanks for the numbers. Someone here on hackernews got me convinced that a Threadripper would be a better investment for inference than a MacBook Pro with a M3 Max.
"Unified memory" doesn't really imply anything about the memory being located on-package, just that it's a shared pool that the CPU, GPU, etc. all have fast access to.
Also, DRAM is never on-die. On-package, yes, for Apple's SoCs and various other products throughout the industry, but DRAM manufacturing happens in entirely different fabs than those used for logic chips.
> So for example if you have a server with 16 DDR5 DIMMs (sticks) it equates to 1,024 GB/s of total bandwidth.
Not quite as it depends on number of channels and not on the number of DIMMs. An extreme example: put all 16 DIMMs on single channel, you will get performance of a single channel.
It's not the memory being unified that makes it fast, it's the combination of the memory bus being extremely wide and the memory being extremely close to the processor. It's the same principle that discrete GPUs or server CPUs with onboard HBM memory use to make their non-unified memory go ultra fast.
No, unified memory usually means the CPU and GPU (and miscellaneous things like the NPU) all use the same physical pool of RAM and moving data between them is essentially zero-cost. That's in contrast to the usual PC setup where the CPU has its own pool of RAM, which is unified with the iGPU if it has one, but the discrete GPU has its own independent pool of VRAM and moving data between the two pools is a relatively slow operation.
An RTX4090 or H100 has memory extremely close to the processor but I don't think you would call it unified memory.
I don't quite understand one of the finer points of this, under caffeinated :) - if GPU memory is extremely close to the CPU memory, what sort of memory would not be extremely close to the CPU?
I think you misunderstood what I meant by "processor", the memory on a discrete GPU is very close to the GPUs processor die, but very far away from the CPU. The GPU may be able to read and write its own memory at 1TB/sec but the CPU trying to read or write that same memory will be limited by the PCIe bus, which is glacially slow by comparison, usually somewhere around 16-32GB/sec.
A huge part of optimizing code for discrete GPUs is making sure that all data is streamed into GPU memory before the GPU actually needs it, because pushing or pulling data over PCIe on-demand decimates performance.
I thought it meant that both the GPU and the CPU can access it. In most systems, GPU memory cannot be accessed by the CPU (without going through the GPU); and vice versa.
This is still half the speed of a consumer NVidia card, but the large amounts of memory is great, if you don't mind running things more slowly and with fewer libraries.
Fewer libraries? Any that a normal LLM user would care about? Pytorch, ollama, and others seem to have the normal use cases covered. Whenever I hear about a new LLM seems like the next post is some mac user reporting the token/sec. Often about 5 tokens/sec for 70B models which seems reasonable for a single user.
Was this example intended to describe any particular device? Because I'm not aware of anything that operates at 8800 MT/s, especially not with 64-bit channels.
Thanks, but just to put things into perspective, this calculation has counted 8 channels which is 4 DIMMs and that's mostly desktops (not dismissing desktops, just highlighting that it's a different beast).
The vast majority of any x86 laptop or desktops are 128 bits wide. Often 2x64 bit channels up till last year or so, now 4x32 bit DDR5 in the last year or so. There are some benefits to 4 channels over 2, but generally you are still limited by 128 bits unless you buy a Xeon, Epyc, or Threadripper (or Intel equiv) that are expensive, hot, and don't fit in SFFs or laptops.
So basically the PC world is crazy behind the 256, 512, and 1024 bit wide memory busses apple has offered since the M1 arrived.
Desktops are two channels of 64 bits, or with DDR5 now four (sub)channels of 32 bits; either way, mainstream desktop platforms have had a total bus width of 128 bits for decades. 8x64 bit channels is only available from server platforms. (Some high-end GPUs have used 512-bit bus widths, and Apple's Max level of processors, but those are with memory types where the individual channels are typically 16 bits.)
We run our LLM workloads on a M2 Ultra because of this. 2x the VRAM; one-time cost at $5350 was the same as, at the time, 1 month of 80GB VRAM GPU in GCP. Works well for us.
Can you elaborate, are those workflows in queue or can they serve multiple users in parallel ?
I think it’s super interesting to know real life workflows and performance of different LLMs and hardware, in case you can direct me to other resources.
Thanks !
About 10-20% of my companies gpu usage is inference dev. Yes horribly not efficient usage of resources. We could upgrade the 100ish devs who do this dev work to M4 mbp and free up gpu resources
High availability story for AI workloads will be a problem for another decade. From what I can see the current pressing problem is to get stuff working quickly and iterate quickly.
Having 128GB is really nice if you want to regularly run different full OSes as VMs simultaneously (and if those OSes might in turn have memory-intensive workloads running on them).
At least in the recent past, a hindrance was that MacOS limited how much of that unified memory could be assigned as VRAM. Those who wanted to exceed the limits had to tinker with kernel settings.
I wonder if that has changed or is about to change as Apple pivots their devices to better serve AI workflows as well.
This is definitely tempting me to upgrade my M1 macbook pro. I think I have 400GB/s of memory bandwidth. I am wondering what the specific number "over half a terabyte" means.
> All MacBook Pro models feature an HDMI port that supports up to 8K resolution, a SDXC card slot, a MagSafe 3 port for charging, and a headphone jack, along with support for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.
No Wifi 7. So you get access to the 6 GHz band, but not some of the other features (preamble punching, OFDMA):
The iPhone 16s do have Wifi 7. Curious to know why they skipped it (and I wonder if the chipsets perhaps do support it, but it's a firmware/software-not-yet-ready thing).
Laptops/desktops (with 16GB+ of memory) could make use of the faster speed/more bandwidth aspects of WiFi7 better than smartphones (with 8GB of memory).
Yeah, this threw me as well. When the iMac didn’t support WiFi 7, I got a bit worried. I have an M2, so not going to get this, but the spouse needs a new Air and I figure that everything would have WiFi 7 by then, and now I don’t think so.
I have the OG 13" MBP M1, and it's been great; I only have two real reasons I'm considering jumping to the 14" MBP M4 Pro finally:
- More RAM, primarily for local LLM usage through Ollama (a bit more overhead for bigger models would be nice)
- A bit niche, but I often run multiple external displays. DisplayLink works fine for this, but I also use live captions heavily and Apple's live captions don't work when any form of screen sharing/recording is enabled... which is how Displaylink works. :(
Not quite sold yet, but definitely thinking about it.
Yep. That's roughly 20% per generation improvement which ain't half-bad these days, but the really huge cliff was going from Intel to the M1 generation.
M1 series machines are going to be fine for years to come.
In early 2020, I had an aging 2011 Air that was still struggling after a battery replacement. Even though I "knew" the Apple Silicon chips would be better, I figured a 2020 Intel Air would last me a long time anyway, since my computing needs from that device are light, and who knows how many years the Apple Silicon transition will take take anyway?
Bought a reasonably well-specced Intel Air for $1700ish. The M1s came out a few months later. I briefly thought about the implication of taking a hit on my "investment", figured I might as well cry once rather than suffer endlessly. Sold my $1700 Intel Air for $1200ish on craigslist (if I recall correctly), picked up an M1 Air for about that same $1200 pricepoint, and I'm typing this on that machine now.
That money was lost as soon as I made the wrong decision, I'm glad I just recognized the loss up front rather than stewing about it.
Exact same boat here. A friend and I both bought the 2020 Intel MBA thinking that the M1 version was at least a year out. It dropped a few months later. I immediately resold my Intel MBA seeing the writing on the wall and bought a launch M1 (which I still use to this day). Ended up losing $200 on that mis-step, but no way the Intel version would still get me through the day.
That said...scummy move by Apple. They tend to be a little more thoughtful in their refresh schedule, so I was caught off guard.
When I saw the M1s come out, I thought that dev tooling would take a while to work for M1, which was correct. It probably took a year for most everything to be compiled for arm64. However I had too little faith in Rosetta and just the speed upgrade M1 really brought. So what I mean to say is, I still have that deadweight MBA that I only use for web browsing :)
Oh yes, my wife bought a new Intel MBA in summer 2020... I told her at the time Apple planned its own chip, but it couldn't be much better than the Intel one and surely Apple will increase prices too... I was so wrong.
Can anyone comment on the viability of using an external SSD rather than upgrading storage? Specifically for data analysis (e.g. storing/analysing parquet files using Python/duckdb, or video editing using divinci resolve).
Also, any recommendations for suitable ssds, ideally not too expensive? Thank you!
With a TB4 case with an NVME you can get something like 2300MB/s read speeds. You can also use a USB4 case which will give you over 3000MB/s (this is what I'm doing for storing video footage for Resolve).
With a TB5 case you can go to like 6000MB/s. See this SSD by OWC:
I've used a Samsung T5 SSD as my CacheClip location in Resolve and it works decently well! Resolve doesn't always tolerate disconnects very well, but when it's plugged in things are very smooth.
i go with the acasis thunderbolt enclosure and then pop in an nvme of your choice, but generic USB drives are pretty viable too ... thunderbolt can be booted from, while USB can't
i tried another brand or 2 of enclosures and they were HUGE while the acasis was credit card sized (except thickness)
The USB-C ports should be quite enough for that. If you are using a desktop Mac, such as an iMac, Mini, or the Studio and Pro that will be released later this week, this is a no-brainer - everything works perfectly.
This is the first compelling Mac to me. I've used Macs for a few clients and muscle memory is very deeply ingrained for linux desktops. But with local LLMs finally on the verge of usability along with sufficient memory... I might need to make the jump!
Wish I could spin up a Linux OS on the hardware though. Not a bright spot for me.
I miss Linux, it respected me in ways that MacOS doesn't. But maintaining a sane dev environment on linux when my co-workers on MacOS are committing bash scripts that call brew... I am glad that I gave up that fight. And yeah, the hardware sure is nice.
It won't have all the niceties / hardware support of MacOS, but it seamlessly coexists with MacOS, can handle the GPU/CPU/RAM with no issues, and can provide you a good GNU/Linux environment.
IIRC one of the major factors holding back M3 support was the lack of a M3 mini for use in their CI environment. Now that there's an M4 mini hopefully there aren't any obstacles to them adding M4 support
How? What cloud providers offer it? MacStadium and AWS don't.
I guess you could have a physical MBP in your house and connect it to some bring-your-own-infrastructure CI setup, but most people wouldn't want to do that.
In general for local LLMs, the more memory the better. You will be able to fit larger models in RAM. The faster CPU will give you more tokens/second, but if you are just chatting with a human in the loop, most recent M series macs will be able to generate tokens faster than you can read them.
NextSTEP which macOS is ultimately based on is indeed older than Linux (first release was 1989). But why does that matter? The commenter presumably said "Linux" for a reason, i.e. they want to use Linux specifically, not any UNIX-like OS.
The base M4 Max only has an option for 36gb of ram!? They're doing some sus things with that pricing ladder again. No more 96gb option, and then to go beyond 48gb I'd have to spend another $1250 CAD on a processor upgrade first, and in the process lose the option to have the now baseline 512gb ssd
I'm pleased that the Pro's base memory starts at 16 GB, but surprised they top out at 32 GB:
> ...the new MacBook Pro starts with 16GB of faster unified memory with support for up to 32GB, along with 120GB/s of memory bandwidth...
I haven't been an Apple user since 2012 when I graduated from college and retired my first computer, a mid-2007 Core2 Duo Macbook Pro, which I'd upgraded with a 2.5" SSD and 6GB of RAM with DDR2 SODIMMs. I switched to Dell Precision and Lenovo P-series workstations with user-upgradeable storage and memory... but I've got 64GB of RAM in the old 2019 Thinkpad P53 I'm using right now. A unified memory space is neat, but is it worth sacrificing that much space? I typically have a VM or two running, and in the host OS and VMs, today's software is hungry for RAM and it's typically cheap and upgradeable outside of the Apple ecosystem.
It seems you need the M4 Max with the 40-core GPU to go over 36GB.
The M4 Pro with 14‑core CPU & 20‑core GPU can do 48GB.
If you're looking for ~>36-48GB memory, here's the options:
$2,800 = 48GB, Apple M4 Pro chip with 14‑core CPU, 20‑core GPU
$3,200 = 36GB, Apple M4 Max chip with 14‑core CPU, 32‑core GPU
$3,600 = 48GB, Apple M4 Max chip with 16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU
So the M4 Pro could get you a lot of memory, but less GPU cores. Not sure how much those GPU cores factor in to performance, I only really hear complaints about the memory limits... Something to consider if looking to buy in this range of memory.
Of course, a lot of people here probably consider it not a big deal to throw an extra 3 grand on hardware, but I'm a hobbyist in academia when it comes to AI, I don't big 6-figure salaries :-)
I haven't done measurements on this, but my Macbook Pro feels much faster at swapping than any Linux or Windows device I've used. I've never used an M.2 SSD so maybe that would be comparable, but swapping is pretty much seamless. There's also some kind of memory compression going on according to Activity Monitor, not sure if that's normal on other OSes.
Yes, other M.2 SSDs have comparable performance when swapping, and other operating systems compress memory, too — though I believe not as much as MacOS.
Although machines with Apple Silicon swap flawlessly, I worry about degrading the SSD, which is non-replaceable. So ultimately I pay for more RAM and not need swapping at all.
My one concern is that nano-texture apple displays are a little more sensitive to damage, and even being super careful with my MBPs I get the little marks from the keyboard when you carry the laptop with your hand squeezing the lid and bottom (a natural carry motion).
Love the nano-texture on the Studio Display, but my MacBooks have always suffered from finger oil rubbing the screen from the keys. Fingerprint oil on nano-texture sounds like a recipe for disaster.
For my current laptop, I finally broke down and bought a tempered glass screen protector. It adds a bit of glare, but wipes clean — and for the first time I have a one-year-old MacBook that still looks as good as new.
I put a thin screen cleaner/glasses cleaner cloth on the keyboard whenever I close the lid. That keeps the oils off the screen as well as prevents any pressure or rubbing from damaging the glass.
So far I’m only reading comments here about people wow’d by a lot of things it seemed that M3 pretty much also had. Not seeing anything new besides “little bit better specs”
The M4 is architecturally better than the M3, especially on GPU features IIRC, but you’re right it’s not a total blow out.
Not all products got the M3, so in some lines this week is the first update in quite a while. In others like MBP it’s just the yearly bump. A good performing one, but the yearly bump.
It does and it gets even worse when you realize those stats are only true under very specific circumstances, not typical computer usage. If you benchmarked based on typical computer usage, I think you'd only see gains of 5% or less.
Nice to see they increased the number of performance cores in the M4 Pro, compared to the M3 Pro. Though I am worried about the impact of this change on battery life on the MBPs.
Another positive development was bumping up baseline amounts of RAM. They kept selling machines with just 8 gigabytes of RAM for way longer than they should have. It might be fine for many workflows, but feels weird on “pro” machines at their price points.
I’m sure Apple has been coerced to up its game because of AI. Yet we can rejoice in seeing their laptop hardware, which already surpassed the competition, become even better.
I'm curious why they decided to go this route, but glad to see it. Perhaps ~4 efficiency cores is simply just enough for the average MBP user's standard compute?
In January, after researching, I bought an apple restored MBP with an M2 Max over an M3 Pro/Max machine because of the performance/efficiency core ratio. I do a lot of music production in DAWs, and many, even Apple's Logic Pro don't really make use of efficiency cores. I'm curious about what restraints have led to this.. but perhaps this also factors into Apple's choice to increase the ratio of performance/efficiency cores.
> Perhaps ~4 efficiency cores is simply just enough for the average MBP user's standard compute?
I believe that’s the case. Most times, the performance cores on my M3 Pro laptop remain idle.
What I don’t understand is why battery life isn’t more like that of the MacBook Airs when not using the full power of the SOC. Maybe that’s the downside of having a better display.
> Curious how you're measuring this. Can you see it in Activity Monitor?
I use an open source app called Stats [1]. It provides a really good overview of the system on the menu bar, and it comes with many customization options.
I'm just some dude, looking at a press release, wondering when Tim Apple is gonna be a cool dude and release the MBP in all of the colors that they make the iMac in.
APPARENTLY NOT TODAY.
C'mon mannnnn. The 90s/y2k are back in! People want the colorful consumer electronics! It doesn't have to be translucent plastic like it was back then but give us at least something that doesn't make me wonder if I live in the novel The Giver every time I walk into a meetup filled with MacBook Pros.
Question without judgement: why would I want to run LLM locally? Say I'm building a SaaS app and connecting to Anthropic using the `ai` package. Would I want to cut over to ollama+something for local dev?
Data privacy-- some stuff, like all my personal notes I use with a RAG system, just don't need to be sent to some cloud provider to be data mined and/or have AI trained on them
I don’t think it will “feel” much faster like the Intel -> M1 where overall system latency especially around swap & memory pressure got much much better.
If you do any amount of 100% CPU work that blocks your workflow, like waiting for a compiler or typechecker, I think M1 -> M4 is going to be worth it. A few of my peers at the office went M1->M3 and like the faster compile times.
Like, a 20 minute build on M1 becoming a 10 minute build on M4, or a 2 minute build on M1 becoming a 1 minute build on M4, is nothing to scoff at.
I guess it’s only worth it for people who would really benefit from the speed bump — those who push their machines to the limit and work under tight schedules.
I myself don’t need so much performance, so I tend to keep my devices for many, many years.
Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and:
Up to two external displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, or one external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 144Hz over HDMI
One external display supported at 8K resolution at 60Hz or one external display at 4K resolution at 240Hz over HDMI"
Once they get a MacBook Air with an M4, it will become a viable option for developers and other users that want/need 2 external monitors. Definitely looking forward to that happening.
No support for M3 or M4 powered machines currently.
> All Apple Silicon Macs are in scope, as well as future generations as development time permits. We currently have support for most machines of the M1 and M2 generations.[^1][^2]
btw, there is a recent interview with an Asani dev focusing on GPUs, worth a listen for those interested in linux on apple silicon. The reverse engineering effort required to pin down the GPU hardware was one of the main topics.
For many years I treated Windows or macOS as a hypervisor - if you love Linux but want the Mac hardware, instant sleep & wake, etc, putting a full screen VM in Parallels or similar is imo better than running Linux in terms of productivity, although it falls short on “freedom”.
I do the same thing, but there are two big caveats:
1. Nested virtualization doesn't work in most virtualization software, so if your workflow involves running stuff in VMs it is not going to work from within another VM. The exception is apparently now the beta version of UTM with the Apple Virtualization backend, but that's highly experimental.
2. Trackpad scrolling is emulated as discrete mouse wheel clicks, which is really annoying for anyone used to the smooth scrolling on macOS. So what I do is use macOS for most browsing and other non-technical stuff but do all my coding in the Linux VM.
Have anyone tried it recently, specifically the trackpad? I tried the Fedora variant a few months ago on my M1 Macbook and it was horrible to use the trackpad, it felt totally foreign and wrong.
I feel you, but Apple's trackpad prowess is not an easy thing to copy. It's one of those things I never expect anyone else to be able to replicate the level of deep integration between the hardware and software.
It's 2024, and I still see most Windows users carrying a mouse to use with their laptop.
I have a 16" M1 Pro with 16 gigs of ram, and it regularly struggles under the "load" of Firebase emulator.
You can tell not because the system temp rises, but because suddenly Spotify audio begins to pop, constantly and irregularly.
It took me a year to figure out that the system audio popping wasn't hardware and indeed wasn't software, except in the sense that memory (or CPU?) pressure seems to be the culprit.
Watch SlickDeals. I think it was this time last year where lots of refurbs/2 generation old machines were going for massive discounts. Granted they were M1 machines, but some had 64GB RAM and 4TB drives for like $2700. Microcenter and B&H are good ones to watch as well.
Most retailers have had the older models on closeout for a few weeks now. Best Buy, Amazon and Costco have had the M3 models for a few hundred off depending on models.
The M-series macbooks depreciate in value far slower than any of the Intel models. M1 base models can still sell for nearly $1k. It's difficult to find a really good deal.
For normal web dev, any M4 CPU is good as it is mostly dependent on single core speed. If you need to compile Unreal Engine (C++ with lots of threads), video processing or 3D rendering, more cores is important.
I think you need to pick the form factor that you need combined with the use case:
- Mobility and fast single core speeds: MacBook Air
- Mobility and multi-core: MacBook Pro with M4 Max
Does anyone know if there is a way to use Mac without the Apple bloatware?
I genuinely want to use it as primary machine but with this Intel MacBook Pro I have, I absolutely dislike FaceTime, IMessage, the need to use AppStore, Apple always asking me have a Apple user name password (which I don't and have zero intention), block Siri, and all telemetry stuff Apple has backed in, stop the machine calling home, etc.
This is to mirror tools available in Windows to disable and remove Microsoft bloatware and ad tracing built in.
IIRC Apple is a lot less heavy handed wrt service login requirements when compared to Microsoft’s most recent Windows endeavors. And depending on the developer you can get around having to use the App Store at all. Being you’re on an Intel Mac have you considered just using Linux ?
There used to be this whole contingent of people who were adamant that Apple's software was too opinionated, bloated, that you couldn't adapt its OS to your needs, and that Apple was far too ingrained in your relationship with your device. That Linux was true freedom, but at least that Windows respected its users
> Up to 4.6x faster build performance when compiling code in Xcode when compared to the 16‑inch MacBook Pro with Intel Core i9, and up to 2.2x faster when compared to the 16‑inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max.
OK, that's finally a reason to upgrade from my M1.
I have an M2 Max now, and it's incredible. But it still can't handle running xcode's Instruments. I'd upgrade if the M4s could run the leaks tool seamlessly, but I doubt any computer could.
It is interesting they only support 64gb and then jump to 128gb. It seems like a money play since it's $1,000 to upgrade for 128, and if you're running something that needs more than 64 (like LLMs?) you kind of have no choice.
I recently switched back to using homemade desktops for most of my work. I’ve been running Debian on them . Still have my Mac laptop for working on the go
Would it make sense to upgrade from M2 Pro 16 to M4 Pro 16? (both base models)
I mean it terms of numbers, more cores, more RAM but everything else is pretty much the same. I am looking forward to see some benchmarks!
4k for videoconferencing is nuts. The new camera should be an improvement over the old. Plus, being able to show your actual, physical desktop can be Andy too. Using your iPhone as the webcam will still probably give you the best quality especially if you are in a lower light situation.
I mean you can easily create your own fully meshed P2P group video chat in your browser just using a little bit of JS that would support everyone running 4k, but it will fail the moment you get more than 3-8 people as each persons video stream is eating 25mbps for every side of a peer connection (or 2x per edge in the graph.)
A huge part of group video chat is still "hacks" like downsampling non-speaking participants so the bandwidth doesn't kill the connection.
As we get fatter pipes and faster GPUs streaming will become better.
edit: I mean... I could see a future where realtime video feeds never get super high resolution and everything effectively becomes a relatively seemless AI recreation where only facial movement data is transmitted similar to how game engines work now.
I'm not sure we can leverage the neural cores for now, but they're already rather good for LLMs, depending on what metrics you value most.
A specced out Mac Studio (M2 being the latest model as of today) isn't cheap, but it can run 180B models, run them fast for the price, and use <300W of power doing it. It idles below 10W as well.
I really like these new devices, but I’ve found that the latest MacBook Air (M3) is sufficient for my needs as a manager and casual developer. My MacBook Pro M1 Max has essentially become a desktop due to its support for multiple monitors, but since the Mac Mini M4 Pro can also support up to three external displays, I’m considering selling the MacBook Pro and switching to the Mini. I’ve also noticed that the MacBook Pro’s battery, as a portable device, is less efficient in terms of performance/battery (for my usage) compared to the MacBook Air.
Regarding LLMs, the hottest topic here nowadays, I plan to either use the cloud or return to a bare-metal PC.
Looking at how long the 8gb lasted it's a pretty sure bet that now you won't need to upgrade for a good few years.
I mean, I have a MacBook air with 16gb of ram and it's honestly working pretty well to this day. I don't do "much" on it though but not many people do.
I'd say the one incentive a MacBook Pro has over the air is the better a screens and better speakers. Not sure if it's worth the money.
My hypothesis is Apple is mostly right about their base model offerings.
> I mean, I have a MacBook air with 16gb of ram and it's honestly working pretty well to this day. I don't do "much" on it though but not many people do.
If an HN user can get along with 16gb on their MacBook Air for the last X years, most users were able to get by with 8gb.
It's just a tactic to get a higher average price while being able to advertise a lower price. What makes it infuriating is memory is dirt cheap. That extra 8GB probably costs them $10 at most, but would add to utility and longevity of their hardware quite a bit.
They are supposed to be "green" but they encourage obsolescence.
They align need with more CPU and margin. Apple wants as few SKUs as possible and as much margin as possible.
8GB is fine for most use cases. Part of my gig is managing a huge global enterprise with six figures of devices. Metrics demonstrate that the lower quartile is ok with 8GB, even now. Those devices are being retired as part of the normal lifecycle with 16GB, which is better.
Laptops are 2-6 year devices. Higher end devices always get replaced sooner - you buy a high end device because the productivity is worth spending $. Low end tend to live longer.
People looking for low prices buy PC, they don't even consider Mac. Then they can have a computer with all the "higher numbers", which is more important than getting stuff done.
I bought a framework back in 2020 or so and really wish I just waited a little longer and spent a few hundred bucks more on the M1.
It's fine, but the issue is linux sleep/hibernate - battery drain. To use the laptop after a few days, I have to plug it in and wait for it to charge a little bit because the battery dies. I have to shut it down (not just close the screen) before flying or my backpack becomes a heater and the laptop dies. To use a macbook that's been closed for months I just open it and it works. I'll pay double for that experience. If I want a computer that needs to be plugged in to work I have a desktop for that already. The battery life is not good either.
Maybe it's better now if I take the time to research what to upgrade, but I don't have the time to tinker with hardware/linux config like I did a few years ago.
I don't mind spending a thousand bucks every 7 years to upgrade my laptop. I've had this macbook air since 2020 and besides the speakers don't being the best... I have no complaints.
I don't really see a world where this machine doesn't last me a few more years. If there's anything i'd service would be the battery, but eh. It lasts more than a few hours and I don't go out much.
I find it very odd that the new iMac has WiFi 7 but this does not... Also it is so aggravating they compare to 3 generations ago and not the previous generation in the marketing stats. It makes the entire post nearly useless.
It is very aggravating, but if they advertised a comparison to last year's model and showed you small performance gains you might not want to buy it.
A more charitable interpretation is that Apple only thinks that people with computers a few years old need to upgrade, and they aren't advertising to people with a <1 year old MacBook Pro.
Have they published this ahead of other pages or is it just me?
The linked Apple Store page says "MacBook Pro blasts forward with the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips" so it seems like the old version of the page still?
To be fair, the link in this story is to a press release. Arguably there are probably many things in it that can be considered "misleading" in certain contexts.
What's the deal with running Linux on these anyway? Could one conceivably set up an M4 mini as headless server? I presume Metal would be impossible to get working if MacOS uses proprietary drivers for it...
Disingenuous to mention the x86 based MacBooks as a basis for comparison in their benchmarks; they are trying to conflate current-gen Intel with what they shipped more than 4 years ago.
Are they going to claim that 16GB RAM is equivalent to 32GB on Intel laptops? (/sarc)
Lot's of people don't upgrade on the cadence that users on this forum do. Someone was mentioning yesterday that they are trying to sell their Intel Mac {edit: on this forum] and asking advice on getting the best price. Someone else replied that they still had a 2017 model. I spoke to someone at my job (I'm IT) who told me they'd just ordered a new iMac to replace one that is 11 years old. There's no smoke and mirrors in letting such users know what they're in for.
Yup, I'm a developer who still primarily works on a 2018 Intel Mac. Apple's messaging felt very targeted towards me. Looking forward to getting the M4 Max as soon as possible!
Ben Bejarin said that around 50% of the installed base is still using Macs with Intel chips. You’ll keep hearing that comparison until that number goes down.
The adjectives in the linked article are nausiating. Apple’s marketing team fail as decent humans writting such drivel.
Give us data, tell us whats new, and skip the nonsense buzz filling adjectives.
To quote Russell Brand, just say he sat down, not that he placed his luscious ass in silk covered trousers on a velvetly smooth chair, experiencing pleasure as the strained thigh muscles received respite after gruelling on their feet watching a lush sunset in a cool summers evening breeze.
They should just offer these on a subscription. Waiting for the company that does that. In the meantime, I can't help but think the price-ability bound nature of these as enforcing a caste system from a company that promised they'd "think different."
If you’re willing to buy from a retailer you can usually get two or three year financing terms. sell it at the end of the payment term for half (or more) of what you paid in total and get a new one on a similar plan if you want.
don’t think it’s wise though, i bought a base m1 pro mbp when it launched and don’t feel a need to upgrade at all yet. i’m holding off for a few more years to grab whenever the next major increase in local llm capability and battery life comes.
If you're willing to play, here are plenty of lenders who will finance this purchase.
If it affects your earning power to that extent, you should probably pony up and save in the long run, probably just a few years until you see returns.
Caste system usually can't be bypassed by paying a monthly subscription fee.
I will note that making it a subscription will tend to increase the overall costs, not decrease. In an environment with ready access to credit, I think offering on a subscription basis is worse for consumers?
What’s amazing is that in the past I’ve felt the need to upgrade within a few years.
New video format or more demanding music software is released that slows the machine down, or battery life craters.
Well, I haven’t had even a tinge of feeling that I need to upgrade after getting my M1 Pro MBP. I can’t remember it ever skipping a beat running a serious Ableton project, or editing in Resolve.
Can stuff be faster? Technically of course. But this is the first machine that even after several years I’ve not caught myself once wishing that it was faster or had more RAM. Not once.
Perhaps it’s my age, or perhaps it’s just the architecture of these new Mac chips are just so damn good.
Laptops in general are just better than they used to be, with modern CPUs and NVMe disks. I feel exactly the same seeing new mobile AMD chips too, I'm pretty sure I'll be happy with my Ryzen 7040-based laptop for at least a few years.
Apple's M1 came at a really interesting point. Intel was still dominating the laptop game for Windows laptops, but generational improvements felt pretty lame. A whole lot of money for mediocre performance gains, high heat output and not very impressive battery. The laptop ecosystem changed rapidly as not only the Apple M1 arrived, but also AMD started to gain real prominence in the laptop market after hitting pretty big in the desktop and data center CPU market. (Addendum: and FWIW, Intel has also gotten a fair bit better at mobile too in the meantime. Their recent mobile chipsets have shown good efficiency improvements.)
If Qualcomm's Windows on ARM efforts live past the ARM lawsuit, I imagine a couple generations from now they could also have a fairly compelling product. In my eyes, there has never been a better time to buy a laptop.
(Obligatory: I do have an M2 laptop in my possession from work. The hardware is very nice, it beats the battery life on my AMD laptop even if the AMD laptop chews through some compute a bit faster. That said, I love the AMD laptop because it runs Linux really well. I've tried Asahi on an M1 Mac Mini, it is very cool but not something I'd consider daily driving soon.)
> Laptops in general are just better than they used to be, with modern CPUs and NVMe disks. I feel exactly the same seeing new mobile AMD chips too, I'm pretty sure I'll be happy with my Ryzen 7040-based laptop for at least a few years.
You say that, but I get extremely frustrated at how slow my Surface Pro 10 is (with an Ultra 7 165U).
It could be Windows of course, but this is a much more modern machine than my Macbook Air (M1) and feels like it's almost 10 years old at times in comparison. - despite being 3-4 years newer.
It's true that Linux may be a bit better in some cases, if you have a system that has good Linux support, but I think in most cases it should never make a very substantial difference. On some of the newer Intel laptops, there are still missing power management features anyways, so it's hard to compare.
That said, Intel still has yet to catch up to AMD on efficiency unfortunately, they've improved generationally but if you look at power efficiency benchmarks of Intel CPUs vs AMD you can see AMD comfortably owns the entire top of the chart. Also, as a many-time Microsoft Surface owner, I can also confirm that these devices are rarely good showcases for the chipsets inside of them: they tend to be constrained by both power and thermal limits. There are a lot of good laptops on the market, I wouldn't compare a MacBook, even a MacBook Air, a laptop, with a Surface Pro, a 2-in-1 device. Heck, even my Intel Surface Laptop 4, a device I kinda like, isn't the ideal showcase for its already mediocre 11th gen Intel processor...
The Mac laptop market is pretty easy: you buy the laptops they make, and you get what you get. On one hand, that means no need to worry about looking at reviews or comparisons, except to pick a model. They all perform reasonably well, the touchpad will always be good, the keyboard is alright. On the other hand, you really do get what you get: no touchscreens, no repairability, no booting Windows, etc.
I’ll agree the AMD laptops from the past couple of years are really impressive. They are fast enough that I’ve done some bioinformatics work on one.
Battery life is decent.
At this point I’m not switching from laptop Linux. The machines can even game (thanks proton/steam)
the office Ryzen thinkpads we have are ok...but they're definitely no M1 MacBook Air or Pro...
If we're mostly concerned about CPU grunt, it's really hard to question the Ryzen 7040, which like the M1, is also not the newest generation chip, though it is newer than the M1 by a couple of years. Still, comparing an M1 MacBook Pro with a Framework 16 on Geekbench:
https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-pro-14-inch-2021-...
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/4260192
Both of these CPUs perform well enough that most users will not need to be concerned at all about the compute power. Newer CPUs are doing better but it'd be hard to notice day-to-day.
As for other laptop features... That'll obviously be vendor-dependent. The biggest advantage of the PC market is all of the choices you get to make, and the biggest disadvantage of the PC market is all of the choices you have to make. (Edit: Though if anyone wants a comparison point, just for sake of argument, I think generally the strongest options have been from ASUS. Right now, the Zephyrus G16 has been reviewing pretty good, with people mostly just complaining that it is too expensive. Certainly can't argue with that. Personally, I run Framework, but I don't really run the latest-and-greatest mobile chipsets most of the time, and I don't think Framework is ideal for people who want that.)
what about heat and noise?
those are another two reasons why I can't ignore Apple Silicon
Ultimately it'll be subjective, but the fans don't really spin up on my Framework 16 unless I push things. Running a game or compiling on all cores for a while will do the trick. The exact battery life, thermals and noise will be heavily dependent on the laptop; the TDP of modern laptop CPUs is probably mostly pretty comparable so a lot of it will come down to thermal design. Same for battery life and noise, depends a lot on things other than the CPU.
I've owned an M1 MBP base model since 2021 and I just got an M3 Max for work. I was curious to see if it "felt" different and was contemplating an upgrade to M4. You know what? It doesn't really feel different. I think my browser opens about 1 second faster from a cold start. But other than that, no perceptible difference day to day.
> It doesn't really feel different.
My work machine was upgraded from an M1 with 16GB of RAM to an M3 Max with 36GB and the difference in Xcode compile times is beyond belief: I went from something like 1-2 minutes to 15-20 seconds.
Obviously if opening a browser is the most taxing thing your machine is doing the difference will be minimal. But video or music editing, application-compiling and other intensive tasks, then the upgrade is PHENOMENAL.
This is how I feel about the last few iPhones as well
I upgraded from a 13 pro to a 15 pro expecting zippier performance and it feels almost identical if not weirdly a bit slower in rendering and typing
I wonder what it will take to make Mac/iOS feel faster
> I wonder what it will take to make Mac/iOS feel faster
I know, disabling shadows and customisable animation times ;) On a jailbroken phone I once could disable all animation delays, it felt like a new machine (must add that the animations are very important and generally great ux design, but most are just a tad too slow)
> I upgraded from a 13 pro to a 15 pro expecting zippier performance and it feels almost identical if not weirdly a bit slower in rendering and typing
I went from an iPhone 13 mini to an iPhone 16 and it's a significant speed boost.
I went from 12 to 15 pro max, the difference is significant. I can listen to Spotify while shooting from the camera. On my old iPhone 12, this is not possible.
16 pro has a specialized camera button which is a game changer for street / travel photography. I upgraded from 13 pro and use that. But no other noticeable improvements. Maybe Apple intelligence summarizing wordy emails.
I think the only upgrade now is from a non-Pro to Pro, since a 120Hz screen is noticeably better than a 60Hz screen (and a borderline scam that a 1000 Euro phone does not have 120Hz).
The new camera button is kinda nice though.
> The new camera button is kinda nice though.
I was initially indifferent about the camera button, but now that I'm used to it it's actually very useful.
I upgraded my iPhone 13 pro to the 16 pro and it was overall really nice - but it was the better use of hardware, the zoom camera, etc.
The CPU? Ah, never really felt a difference.
XR to 13, as I don't want the latest and didn't want to loose my jailbreak.
Infuriated by the 13.
The 3.5mm thunder bolt adapters disconnect more often than usual. All I need to do is tap the adapter and it disconnects.
And that Apple has now stopped selling them is even more infuriating, it's not a faulty adapter.
> The 3.5mm thunder bolt adapters
The what? is this the adapter for 3.5mm headphones? If so, you don't have to get Apple made dongles. Third parties make them also.
It’s probably because of the jailbreak.
How would that woller out his port?
Can confirm. I have an M2 Air from work and an M1 Pro for personal, and tbh, both absolutely fly. I haven't had a serious reason to upgrade. The only reason I do kind of want to swap out my M1 Pro is because the 13" screen is a wee small, but I also use the thing docked more often than not so it's very hard to justify spending the money.
> I haven’t had even a tinge of feeling that I need to upgrade after getting my M1 Pro MBP.
I upgraded my M1 MBP to a MacBook Air M3 15" and it was a major upgrade. It is the same weight but 40% faster and so much nicer to work on while on the sofa or traveling. The screen is also brighter.
I think very few people actually do need the heavy MBPs, especially not the web/full-stack devs who populate Hacker News.
EDIT: The screens are not different in terms of brightness.
Pretty sure Air displays don't support HDR, are they really brighter?
I am not sure. I notice a difference. Maybe it is just screen age related?
They supposedly have the same base brightness (500 nits), with Pro allowing up to 1000 in HDR mode (and up to 1600 peak).
Air doesn't support 120Hz refresh either.
There's an app that allows to unlock max brightness on Pros (Vivid)[0] even without HDR content (no affiliation).
HDR support is most noticeable when viewing iPhone photos and videos, since iPhones shoots in HDR by default.
[0] https://www.getvivid.app
On a tangent, if I have a M3 pro laptop how do I test HDR? Download a test movie from where, play it with what?
I may or may have not seen HDR content accidentally, but I’m not sure.
I just looked at it again side by side and I think they are actually the same. Not sure why I earlier thought they were different.
Looked at it but ruled out the Air due to lack of ports and limited RAM upgrades.
the Air doesn't have ProMotion right? that feature is non-negotiable on any display for me nowadays
Interestingly my eyes hate the MBP display, would get tired and watery soon after I use the MBP. Tried many times to confirm and also tried all settings. In end had to return it.
MB Air display is my only option. Not sure if the new nano coating display would be better though.
I have ProMotion on my MBP and iPhone but… it’s ok? Honestly, I use an older computer or iPhone temporarily and don’t notice a difference.
I’m looking forward to the day I notice the difference so I can appreciate what I have.
I find 60Hz on the non-Pro iPhone obnoxious since switching to 120Hz screens. On the other hand, I do not care much about 60Hz when it comes to computer screens. I think touch interfaces make low refresh rates much more noticeable.
I wonder. Do you do a lot of doom scrolling?
I can’t understand the people who notice the 120 hz adaptive refresh whatever and one guess is their use is a lot twitchier than mine.
I would normally never upgrade so soon after getting an M1 but running local LLMs is extremely cool and useful to the point where I'd want the extra RAM and CPU to run larger models more quickly.
It's so nice being able to advise a family member who is looking to upgrade their intel Mac to something new, and just tell them to buy whatever is out, not worry about release dates, not worry about things being out of date, and so on.
The latest of whatever you have will be so much better than the intel one, and the next advances will be so marginal, that it's not even worth looking at a buyer's guide.
M3 Air with 16gb (base config as of today) is potentially a decade’s worth of computer. Amazing value.
Base 16gb is absolutely wild. My base m2 air with 8gb is almost enough to handle anything I’d ever want it to without zero slowdown.
A 16gb model for about a thousand bucks?? I can’t believe how far macbooks have come in the last few years
100% agree on this. Ive had this thing for 3 years and I still appreciate how good it is. Of course the M4 tingles my desire for new cool toys, but I honestly don´t think I would notice much difference with my current use.
A lot of my work can be easily done with a Celeron - it's editing source, compiling very little, running tests on Python code, running small Docker containers and so on. Could it be faster? Of course! Do I need it to be faster? Not really.
I am due to update my Mac mini because my current one can't run Sonoma, but, apart from that, it's a lovely little box with more than enough power for me.
How's the performance of Gmail on the Celeron? That's always my sticking point for older computers. The fancy web applications really drag.
Not great. Works well with Thunderbird or Evolution though.
And yes. Web apps are not really great on low-spec machines.
Work just upgraded my M1 Pro to M3 Pro and I don't notice any difference except for now having two laptops.
I think regretting Mac upgrades is a real thing, at least for me. I got a 32G Mac mini in January to run local LLMs. While it does so beautifully, there are now smaller LLMs that run fine on my very old 8G M1 MacBook Pro, and these newer smaller models do almost all of what I want for NLP tasks, data transformation, RAG, etc. I feel like I wasted my money.
But this ad is specifically for you! (Well, and those pesky consumers clinging on to that i7!):
> Up to 7x faster image processing in Affinity Photo when compared to the 13‑inch MacBook Pro with Core i7, and up to 1.8x faster when compared to the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1.
I've had Macs before, from work, but there is something about the M1 Pro that feels like a major step up.
Only recently I noticed some slowness. I think Google Photos changed something and they show photos in HDR and it causes unsmooth scrolling. I wonder if it's something fixable on Google's side though.
Same. I used to upgrade every 1.5 years or so. But with every Apple Silicon generation so far I have felt that there are really no good reasons to upgrade. I have a MacBook M3 Pro for work, but there are no convincing differences compared to the M1 Pro.
In fact, I bought a highly discounted Mac Studio with M1 Ultra because the M1 is still so good and it gives me 10Gbit ethernet, 20 cores and a lot of memory.
The only thing I am thinking about is going back to the MacBook Air again since I like the lighter form factor. But the display, 24 GiB max RAM and only 2 Thunderbolt ports would be a significant downgrade.
I bought my M1 Pro MBP in 2021. Gave it 16G of RAM and a 1TB HD. I plan to keep it until circa 2031.
Yep, the same, M1 Pro from 2021. It's remarkable how snappy it still feels years later, and I still virtually never hear the fan. The M-series of chips is a really remarkable achievement in hardware.
I got 6+ years out of my last intel MacBook Pro and expect at least the same from my M1 Max. Both have MagSafe and hdmi output :)
I dont think this has anything to do with the hardware. I think we have entered an age where users in general are not upgrading. As such, software can't demand more and more performance. The M1 came out at a time where mostly all hardware innovation had staggered. Default RAM in a laptop has been 16G for over 5 years. 2 years ago, you couldn't even get more than 16 in most laptops. As such, software hardware requirements havent changed. So any modern CPU is going to feel overpowered. This isn't unique to M1's.
That’s because today’s hw is perfectly capable of running tomorrow’s software at reasonable speed. There aren’t huge drivers of new functionality that needs new software. Displays are fantastic, cellular speeds are amazing and can stream video, battery life is excellent, UIs are smooth with no jankiness, and cameras are good enough.
Why would people feel the need to upgrade?
And this applies already to phones. Laptops have been slowing for even longer.
Until everything starts running local inference. A real Siri that can operate your phone for you, and actually do things like process cross-app conditions ("Hey Siri, if I get an email from my wife today, notify me, then block out my calendar for the afternoon.") would use those increased compute and memory resources easily.
Apple has been shipping "neural" processors for a while now, and when software with local inference starts landing, Apple hardware will be a natural place for it. They'll get to say "Your data, on your device, working for you; no subscription or API key needed."
I standardized on 16gb for my laptops over 10 years ago. I keep a late 2013 MBP with 16 for testing projects on, separate from my main Linux box.
Getting an extra five years of longevity (after RAM became fixed) for an extra 10% was a no-brainer imho.
Agreed. Also rocking a M1 Pro MBP and can’t see myself replacing it until it dies
Yup, honestly the main reason I'd like to upgrade from my M1 MBA is the newer webcams are 1080p instead of 720p, and particularly much better in low light like in the evening.
Has nothing whatsoever to do with CPU/memory/etc.
If you're in the ecosystem get an iphone mount - image quality is unreal compared to anything short of some fancy DSLR setup - it is some setup but not much with magnets in iphone.
probably the next update wave is coming from the need of AI features for more local memory and compute. The software is just not there yet in usual tasks but it's just a question of time I guess. Of course there will be the pressure to do that in the cloud as usual, but local compute will always remain a market.
and probably it's good that at least one of the big players has a business model that supports driving that forward
Same. I have an M1 Max 64GB. It has great battery life and I never feel myself waiting on anything. Such an amazing computer all around.
I feel exactly the same. The one thing that would get me to pull the trigger on a newer one is if they start supporting SVE2 instructions, which would be super useful for a specific programming project I’ve been playing with.
> Perhaps it’s my age, or perhaps it’s just the architecture of these new Mac chips are just so damn good.
I feel the same of my laptop of 2011 so I guess it is partly age (not feeling the urge to always have the greatest) and partly it is non LLM and gaming related computing is not demanding enough to force us to upgrade.
I think the last decade had an explosion in the amount of resources browsers needed and used (partly workloads moving over, partly moving to more advanced web frameworks, partly electron apps proliferating).
The last few years Chrome seems to have stepped up energy and memory use, which impacts most casual use these days. Safari has also become more efficient, but it never felt bloated the way Chrome used to.
This is how it feels to own a desktop computer.
Ditto... will probably upgrade when the battery is dead !
My 2019 Intel MBP is getting long in the tooth. These M4 Pros look great to me.
The base model is perfect. Now to decide between the M3/M4 Air and the M4 Pro.
I’m using the M3 Air 13 in (splurged for 24 GB of RAM, I’m sure 16 is fine) to make iOS apps in Xcode and produce music in Ableton and it’s been more than performant for those tasks
Only downside is the screen. The brightness sort of has to be maxed out to be readable and viewing at a wrong angle makes even that imperfect
That said it’s about the same size / weight as an iPad Pro which feels much more portable than a pro device
Same feeling. The jump from all the previous laptops I owned to an M1 was an incredible jump. The thing is fast, has amazing battery life and stays cold. Never felt the need to upgrade.
I have the same feeling performance-wise with the laptop I bought in 2020 with a Ryzen 7 4800H.
But it's a heavy brick with a short battery life compared to the M1/2/3 Mac.
Out of curiosity and also because I'm wondering which specification to potentially buy in the future, how much RAM does your MBP have?
Tbf, the only thing I miss with my M2 MacBook is the ability to run x86_64 VM’s with decent performance locally.
I’ve tried a bunch of ways to do this - and frankly the translation overhead is absolute pants currently.
Not a showstopper though, for the 20-30% of complete pain in the ass cases where I can’t easily offload the job onto a VPS or a NUC or something, I just have a ThinkPad.
Same for me. The only reason to replace it, is that my M1 pro’s SSD or battery will go bad or if I accidentally drop the machine and something breaks.
I am replacing a Dell laptop because the case is cracking, not because it's too slow (it isn't lightning fast, of course, but it sure is fast enough for casual use).
I replaced my M1 Air battery last year and it's still going like a champ. $129 for another 3 years of life is a bargain.
The M1 series was too good. Blows Intel Macs out of the water. But I still have an M1 Max. It’s fantastic.
when the hardware wait time is the same as the duration of my impulsive decisions i no longer have a hardware speed problem, i have a software suggestion problem
I got an MBP M1 with 32gb of RAM. It'll probably be another 2-3 years or longer before I feel the pressure to upgrade if not longer. I've even started gaming (something I dropped nearly 20 years ago when I switched to mac) again due to Geforce Now, I just don't see the reason.
Frankly though, if the mac mini was a slightly lower price point I'd definitely create my own mac mini cluster for my AI home lab.
Guess that’s why most of their comparisons are with the older Intel Macs.
And M1 from 4 years ago instead of M3 from last year; while a 2x speed improvement in the benchmarks they listed is good, it also shows that the M series CPUs see incremental improvements, not exponential or revolutionary. I get the feeling - but a CPU expert can correct me / say more - that their base design is mostly unchanged since M1, but the manufacturing process has improved (leading to less power consumption/heat), the amount of cores has increased, and they added specialized hardware for AI-related workloads.
That said, they are in a very comfortable position right now, with neither Intel, AMD, or another competitor able to produce anything close to the bang-for-watt that Apple is managing. Little pressure from behind them to push for more performance.
I hate to say it but that's like a boomer saying they never felt the need to buy a computer, because they've never wished their pen and paper goes faster. Or a UNIX greybeard saying they don't need a Mac since they don't think its GUI would make their terminal go any faster. If you've hit a point in your life where you're no longer keeping up with the latest technological developments like AI, then of course you don't need to upgrade. A Macbook M1 can't run half the stuff posted on Hugging Face these days. Even my 128gb Mac Studio isn't nearly enough.
I think the difference is that AI is a very narrow niche/hobby at the moment. Of course if you're in that niche having more horsepower is critical. But your boomer/greybeard comparisons fall flat because they're generally about age or being set in your ways. I don't think "not being into AI image generation" is (currently) about being stuck in your ways.
To me it's more like 3d printing as a niche/hobby.
on ai being a niche/hobby at the moment... feels like something a unix greybeard would say about guis in the late 70s...
I get that you're probably joking, but - if I use Claude / ChatGPT o1 in my editor and browser, on an M1 Pro - what exactly am I missing by not running e.g. HF models locally? Am I still the greybeard without realising?
Or what a prokaryote would say about eukaryotes.
Seems like we've reached the "AI bro" phase...
> A Macbook M1 can't run half the stuff posted on Hugging Face these days.
Example?
LLaMA 3.1 405B
you could not say this better than this.
Same boat—I'm on a lowly M1 MacBook Air, and haven't felt any need to upgrade (SwiftUI development, video editing, you name it), which is wild for a nearly 4 year-old laptop.
Yeah, I feel like Apple has done the opposite of planned obsolescence with the M chips.
I have a Macbook Air M1 that I'd like to upgrade, but they're not making it easy. I promised myself a couple of years ago I'll never buy a new expensive computing device/phone unless it supports 120 hertz and Wi-Fi 7, a pretty reasonable request I think.
I got the iPhone 16 Pro, guess I can wait another year for a new Macbook (hopefully the Air will have a decent display by then, I'm not too keen to downgrade the portability just to get a good display).
Apple equipment always last a long time and retain value on the second-hand market.
Not true. Look at how little supercharged intel apples are going for in Facebook marketplace.
The quality stuff retains value, not brand.
Comparing against the intel era is a bit apples (excuse me) to oranges. Technical generation gaps aside, Apple products hold value well.
So the intel era is not Apple products? Butterfly keyboard is not an Apple invention?
They have the highest product quality of any laptop manufacturer, period. But to say that all Apple products hold value well is simply not true. All quality products hold value well, and most of Apples products are quality.
I guarantee you that if Apple produced a trashy laptop it would have no resell value.
Again, the quality holds the value not the brand.
One complicating factor in the case of the Intel Macs is that an architectural transition happened after they came out. So they will be able to run less and less new software over the next couple of years, and they lack most AI-enabling hardware acceleration.
That said, they did suffer from some self inflicted hardware limitations, as you hint. One reason I like the MBP is the return of the SD card slot.
It's expected Intel-based Macs would lose value quickly considering how much better the M1 models were. This transition was bigger than when they moved from PowerPC to Intel.
Similar for me. MacBook Air M1 (8 cpu / 8 gpu; 16 GB RAM)...running in or out of clamshell with a 5k monitor, I rarely notice issues. Typically, if I'm working very inefficiently (obnoxious amount of tabs with Safari and Chrome; mostly web apps, Slack, Zoom, Postman, and vscode), I'll notice a minor lag during a video call while screen sharing...even then, it still keeps up.
(Old Pentium Pro, PII, multi chip desktop days) -- When I did a different type of work, I would be in love with these new chips. I just don't throw as much at my computer anymore outside of things being RAM heavy.
The M1 (with 16 GB ram) is really an amazing chip. I'm with you, outside of a repair/replacement? I'm happy to wait for 120hz refresh, faster wifi, and longer battery life.
> Yeah, I feel like Apple has done the opposite of planned obsolescence with the M chips.
They always have. If you want an objective measure of planned obsolescence, look at the resale value. Apple products hold their resale value better than pretty much every competitor because they stay useful for far longer.
> Yeah, I feel like Apple has done the opposite of planned obsolescence with the M chips.
Well, aside from the base specs being an anaemic 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD until now, with no aftermarket upgradability. External storage can be used as a crutch but there's no solution to not having enough RAM besides buying a whole new computer.
It seems they also update the base memory on MacBook Air:
> MacBook Air: The World’s Most Popular Laptop Now Starts at 16GB
> MacBook Air is the world’s most popular laptop, and with Apple Intelligence, it’s even better. Now, models with M2 and M3 double the starting memory to 16GB, while keeping the starting price at just $999 — a terrific value for the world’s best-selling laptop.
Wow, I didn't expect them to update the older models to start at 16GB and no price increase. I guess that is why Amazon was blowing the 8GB models out at crazy low prices over the past few days.
Costco was selling MB Air M2 8 GB for $699! Incredible deal.
I’ve been using the exact model for about a year and I rarely find limitations for my typical office type work. The only time I’ve managed to thermally throttle it has been with some super suboptimal Excel Macros.
I'm waiting for the 16 GB M2 Air to be super cheap to pick one up to use with Asahi Linux!
I was seeing $699 MB Air M1 8 GB on Amazon India a week ago.
But no update to a M4 for the MacBook Air yet unfortunately. I would love to get an M4 MacBook Air with 32GB.
I believe the rumor is that the MacBook Air will get the update to M4 in early spring 2025, February/March timeline.
This is the machine I'm waiting for. Hopefully early 2025
There are still a couple days left this week.
They said there would be three announcements this week and this is the third
They did? The tweet that announced stuff from the head of marketing did not mention 3 days.
That said, I believe you. Some press gets a hands-on on Wednesday (today) so unless they plan to pre-announce something (unlikely) or announce software only stuff, I think today is it.
"This is a huge week for the Mac, and this morning, we begin a series of three exciting new product announcements that will take place over the coming days," said Apple's hardware engineering chief John Ternus, in a video announcing the new iMac.
Ah, thanks. I was referring to last weeks Tweet. I didn’t watch the iMac video.
That's disappointing. I was expecting a new Apple TV because mine needs replacement and I don't really feel inclined to get one that's due for an upgrade very soon.
Also, Studio and Pro are hanging there.
There really isn't a chance they'll update the same product twice in a week.
They haven't officially updated it. They just discontinued the smaller model.
I've seen a lot of people complaining about 8GB but honestly my min spec M1 Air has continued to be great. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend a refurb M1 8GB Air for anyone price conscious.
Every M-series device now comes with at least 16GB, except for the base iPad Pro, right?
Correct, every Mac computer starts at 16gb now. 256gb/512gb iPad Pro is 8gb, 1tb/2tb is 16gb.
At least all the M4 Macs. I’m not sure of every older M config has been updated, though at least some have been.
The only older configs that Apple sells are the M2 and M3 Airs, which were bumped. Everything else is now on M4, or didn't have an 8gb base config (Mac Studio, Mac Pro)
Ohh, good catch. Sneaking that into the MBP announcement. I skimmed the page and missed that. So a fourth announcement couched within the biggest of the three days.
If only they would bring back the 11" Air.
It'll be interesting to see the reaction of tech commentators about this. So many people have been screaming at Apple to increase the base RAM and stop price gouging their customers on memory upgrades. If Apple Intelligence is the excuse the hardware team needed to get the bean counters on board, I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth!
So we can scream about the lousy base storage, which is the same as my phone. Yikes.
But still just 256GB SSD Storage. £200 for the upgrade to 512GB (plus a couple more GPU cores that I don't need. Urgh.
It’s stationary. Just get a Thunderbolt NVMe drive and leave it plugged in
> while keeping the starting price at just $999 — a terrific value for the world’s best-selling laptop
Only in US it seems. India got a price increase by $120.
I guess that implies the MacBook Air won't be updated this week.
Makes me wonder what else will be updated this week (Studio or Mac Pro)?
Great news. The pro is kinda of heavy for my liking so the Air is the way to go
I think spec-wise the Air is good enough for almost everyone who isn't doing video production or running local LLMs, I just wish it had the much nicer screen that the Pro has. But I suppose they have to segregate the product lines somehow.
Well, the issue for me with memory on these new models is that for the Max, it ships with 36GB and NO expandable memory option. To get more memory that's gated behind a $300 CPU upgrade (plus the memory cost).
Apple deserves to be punished hard for not having done this back in 2018 when they should have. Would love to see regulators do to them what they did with USB-C here. Force them to bring back the audio jack on iphone as a response please regulators!
6 years of insulting their customers with DOA useless hardware. The reality is that zero people will "not run into issues" with 8 gb of ram and a gimped 256gb SSD for caching.
The M4 Max goes up to 128GB RAM, and "over half a terabyte per second of unified memory bandwidth" - LLM users rejoice.
The M3 Max was 400GBps, this is 540GBps. Truly an outstanding case for unified memory. DDR5 doesn't come anywhere near.
Apple is using LPDDR5 for M3. The bandwidth doesn't come from unified memory - it comes from using many channels. You could get the same bandwidth or more with normal DDR5 modules if you could use 8 or more channels, but in the PC space you don't usually see more than 2 or 4 channels (only common for servers).
Unrelated but unified memory is a strange buzzword being used by Apple. Their memory is no different than other computers. In fact, every computer without a discrete GPU uses a unified memory model these days!
> (only common for servers).
On PC desktops I always recommend getting a mid-range tower server precisely for that reason. My oldest one is about 8 years old and only now it's showing signs of age (as in not being faster than the average laptop).
I read all that marketing stuff and my brain just sees APU. I guess at some level, that’s just marketing stuff too, but it’s not a new idea.
The new idea is having 512 bit wide memory instead of PC limitation of 128 bit wide. Normal CPU cores running normal codes are not particularly bandwidth limited. However APUs/iGPUs are severely bandwidth limited, thus the huge number of slow iGPUs that are fine for browsing but terrible for anything more intensive.
So apple manages decent GPU performance, a tiny package, and great battery life. It's much harder on the PC side because every laptop/desktop chip from Intel and AMD use a 128 bit memory bus. You have to take a huge step up in price, power, and size with something like a thread ripper, xeon, or epyc to get more than 128 bit wide memory, none of which are available in a laptop or mac mini size SFF.
> instead of PC limitation of 128 bit wide
Memory interface width of modern CPUs is 64-bit (DDR4) and 32+32 (DDR5).
No CPU uses 128b memory bus as it results in overfetch of data, i.e., 128B per access, or two cache lines.
AFAIK Apple uses 128B cache lines, so they can do much better design and customization of memory subsystem as they do not have to use DIMMs -- they simply solder DRAM to the motherboard, hence memory interface is whatever they want.
Eh… not quite. Maybe on an Instinct. Unified memory means the CPU and CPU means they can do zero copy to use the same memory buffer.
Many integrated graphics segregate the memory into CPU owned and GPU owned, so that even if data is on the same DIMM, a copy still needs to be performed for one side to use what the other side already has.
This means that the drivers, etc, all have to understand the unified memory model, etc. it’s not just hardware sharing DIMMs.
For comparison, a Threadripper Pro 5000 workstation with 8x DDR4 3200 has 204.8GB/s of memory bandwidth. The Threadripper Pro 7000 with DDR5-5200 can achieve 325GB/s.
And no, manaskarekar, the M4 Max does 546 GB/s not GBps (which would be 8x less!).
> And no, manaskarekar, the M4 Max does 546 GB/s not GBps (which would be 8x less!).
GB/s and GBps mean the same thing, though GB/s is the more common way to express it. Gb/s and Gbps are the units that are 8x less: bits vs Bytes.
Thanks for the numbers. Someone here on hackernews got me convinced that a Threadripper would be a better investment for inference than a MacBook Pro with a M3 Max.
Yes, it's just easier to call it that without having to sprinkle asterisks at each mention of it :)
And yes, the impressive part is that this kind of bandwidth is hard to get on laptops. I suppose I should have been a bit more specific in my remark.
Isn't unified memory* a crucial part in avoiding signal integrity problems?
Servers do have many channels but they run relatively slower memory
* Specifically, it being on-die
"Unified memory" doesn't really imply anything about the memory being located on-package, just that it's a shared pool that the CPU, GPU, etc. all have fast access to.
Also, DRAM is never on-die. On-package, yes, for Apple's SoCs and various other products throughout the industry, but DRAM manufacturing happens in entirely different fabs than those used for logic chips.
I was curious so I looked it up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR5_SDRAM (info from the first section):
> DDR5 is capable of 8GT/s which translates to 64 GB/s (8 gigatransfers/second * 64-bit width / 8 bits/byte = 64 GB/s) of bandwidth per DIMM.
So for example if you have a server with 16 DDR5 DIMMs (sticks) it equates to 1,024 GB/s of total bandwidth.
DDR4 clocks in at 3.2GT/s and the fastest DDR3 at 2.1GT/s.
DDR5 is an impressive jump. HBM is totally bonkers at 128GB/s per DIMM (HBM is the memory used in the top end Nvidia datacenter cards).
Cheers.
> So for example if you have a server with 16 DDR5 DIMMs (sticks) it equates to 1,024 GB/s of total bandwidth.
Not quite as it depends on number of channels and not on the number of DIMMs. An extreme example: put all 16 DIMMs on single channel, you will get performance of a single channel.
Yes, and wouldn’t it be bonkers if the M4 Max supported HBM on desktops?
It's not the memory being unified that makes it fast, it's the combination of the memory bus being extremely wide and the memory being extremely close to the processor. It's the same principle that discrete GPUs or server CPUs with onboard HBM memory use to make their non-unified memory go ultra fast.
I thought “unified memory” was just a marketing term for the memory being extremely close to the processor?
No, unified memory usually means the CPU and GPU (and miscellaneous things like the NPU) all use the same physical pool of RAM and moving data between them is essentially zero-cost. That's in contrast to the usual PC setup where the CPU has its own pool of RAM, which is unified with the iGPU if it has one, but the discrete GPU has its own independent pool of VRAM and moving data between the two pools is a relatively slow operation.
An RTX4090 or H100 has memory extremely close to the processor but I don't think you would call it unified memory.
I don't quite understand one of the finer points of this, under caffeinated :) - if GPU memory is extremely close to the CPU memory, what sort of memory would not be extremely close to the CPU?
I think you misunderstood what I meant by "processor", the memory on a discrete GPU is very close to the GPUs processor die, but very far away from the CPU. The GPU may be able to read and write its own memory at 1TB/sec but the CPU trying to read or write that same memory will be limited by the PCIe bus, which is glacially slow by comparison, usually somewhere around 16-32GB/sec.
A huge part of optimizing code for discrete GPUs is making sure that all data is streamed into GPU memory before the GPU actually needs it, because pushing or pulling data over PCIe on-demand decimates performance.
I see, TL;DR == none; and processor switches from {CPU,GPU} to {GPU} in the 2nd paragraph. Thanks!
I thought it meant that both the GPU and the CPU can access it. In most systems, GPU memory cannot be accessed by the CPU (without going through the GPU); and vice versa.
It's not "DDR5" on its own, it's a few factors.
Bandwidth (GB/s) = (Data Rate (MT/s) * Channel Width (bits) * Number of Channels) / 8 / 1000
(8800 MT/s * 64 bits * 8 channels) / 8 / 1000 = 563.2 GB/s
This is still half the speed of a consumer NVidia card, but the large amounts of memory is great, if you don't mind running things more slowly and with fewer libraries.
Fewer libraries? Any that a normal LLM user would care about? Pytorch, ollama, and others seem to have the normal use cases covered. Whenever I hear about a new LLM seems like the next post is some mac user reporting the token/sec. Often about 5 tokens/sec for 70B models which seems reasonable for a single user.
> (8800 MT/s * 64 bits * 8 channels) / 8 / 1000 = 563.2 GB/s
Was this example intended to describe any particular device? Because I'm not aware of anything that operates at 8800 MT/s, especially not with 64-bit channels.
M4 max in the MBP (today) and in the Studio at some later date.
Thanks, but just to put things into perspective, this calculation has counted 8 channels which is 4 DIMMs and that's mostly desktops (not dismissing desktops, just highlighting that it's a different beast).
Most laptops will be 2 DIMMS (probably soldered).
I think you are confusing channels and dimms.
The vast majority of any x86 laptop or desktops are 128 bits wide. Often 2x64 bit channels up till last year or so, now 4x32 bit DDR5 in the last year or so. There are some benefits to 4 channels over 2, but generally you are still limited by 128 bits unless you buy a Xeon, Epyc, or Threadripper (or Intel equiv) that are expensive, hot, and don't fit in SFFs or laptops.
So basically the PC world is crazy behind the 256, 512, and 1024 bit wide memory busses apple has offered since the M1 arrived.
Desktops are two channels of 64 bits, or with DDR5 now four (sub)channels of 32 bits; either way, mainstream desktop platforms have had a total bus width of 128 bits for decades. 8x64 bit channels is only available from server platforms. (Some high-end GPUs have used 512-bit bus widths, and Apple's Max level of processors, but those are with memory types where the individual channels are typically 16 bits.)
Right, the nvidia card maxes out at 24GB.
This is a case for on-package memory, not for unified memory... Laptops have had unified memory forever
We run our LLM workloads on a M2 Ultra because of this. 2x the VRAM; one-time cost at $5350 was the same as, at the time, 1 month of 80GB VRAM GPU in GCP. Works well for us.
Can you elaborate, are those workflows in queue or can they serve multiple users in parallel ?
I think it’s super interesting to know real life workflows and performance of different LLMs and hardware, in case you can direct me to other resources. Thanks !
Our use case is atypical, based on what others seem to require. While we serve multiple requests in parallel, our workloads are not 'chat'.
If the 2x multiplier holds up, the Ultra update should bring it up to 1080GBps. Amazing.
There isn't even an M3 Ultra. Will there be an M4 Ultra?
That would make the most sense for the next Mac Studio version.
And the week isn't over...
About 10-20% of my companies gpu usage is inference dev. Yes horribly not efficient usage of resources. We could upgrade the 100ish devs who do this dev work to M4 mbp and free up gpu resources
Smart move by Apple
Right now, there are 0.90$ per hour H100 80gbs that you can rent.
You have another one with a network gateway to provide hot failover?
Right?
High availability story for AI workloads will be a problem for another decade. From what I can see the current pressing problem is to get stuff working quickly and iterate quickly.
I have M3 Max with 128GB of ram, it's really liberating.
I have 32gb and I've never felt like I needed more.
Having 128GB is really nice if you want to regularly run different full OSes as VMs simultaneously (and if those OSes might in turn have memory-intensive workloads running on them).
Somewhat niche case, I know.
Obviously you're not a golfer.
At least in the recent past, a hindrance was that MacOS limited how much of that unified memory could be assigned as VRAM. Those who wanted to exceed the limits had to tinker with kernel settings.
I wonder if that has changed or is about to change as Apple pivots their devices to better serve AI workflows as well.
Need more memory, 256GB will be nice. MistralLarge is 123B. Can't even give a quantized Llama405B a drive. LLM users rejoice. LLM power users, weep.
This is definitely tempting me to upgrade my M1 macbook pro. I think I have 400GB/s of memory bandwidth. I am wondering what the specific number "over half a terabyte" means.
540
Well it's more like pick your poison, cause all options have caveats:
- Apple: all the capacity and bandwidth, but no compute to utilize it
- AMD/Nvidia: all the compute and bandwidth, but no capacity to load anything
- DDR5: all the capacity, but no compute or bandwidth (cheap tho)
> All MacBook Pro models feature an HDMI port that supports up to 8K resolution, a SDXC card slot, a MagSafe 3 port for charging, and a headphone jack, along with support for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.
No Wifi 7. So you get access to the 6 GHz band, but not some of the other features (preamble punching, OFDMA):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_7
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_6E
The iPhone 16s do have Wifi 7. Curious to know why they skipped it (and I wonder if the chipsets perhaps do support it, but it's a firmware/software-not-yet-ready thing).
It looks like few people only are using Wifi 7 for now. Maybe they are going to include it in the next generation when more people will use it.
Yeah, I thought that was weird. None of the Apple announcements this week had WiFi7 support, just 6E.
https://www.tomsguide.com/face-off/wi-fi-6e-vs-wi-fi-7-whats...
Laptops/desktops (with 16GB+ of memory) could make use of the faster speed/more bandwidth aspects of WiFi7 better than smartphones (with 8GB of memory).
Yeah, this threw me as well. When the iMac didn’t support WiFi 7, I got a bit worried. I have an M2, so not going to get this, but the spouse needs a new Air and I figure that everything would have WiFi 7 by then, and now I don’t think so.
> "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 have the OG 13" MBP M1, and it's been great; I only have two real reasons I'm considering jumping to the 14" MBP M4 Pro finally:
- More RAM, primarily for local LLM usage through Ollama (a bit more overhead for bigger models would be nice)
- A bit niche, but I often run multiple external displays. DisplayLink works fine for this, but I also use live captions heavily and Apple's live captions don't work when any form of screen sharing/recording is enabled... which is how Displaylink works. :(
Not quite sold yet, but definitely thinking about it.
Yep. That's roughly 20% per generation improvement which ain't half-bad these days, but the really huge cliff was going from Intel to the M1 generation.
M1 series machines are going to be fine for years to come.
And my 2020 Intel Macbook Air was a bad purchase. Cruelly, the Intel and M1 Macbook Air released within 6 months of each other.
In early 2020, I had an aging 2011 Air that was still struggling after a battery replacement. Even though I "knew" the Apple Silicon chips would be better, I figured a 2020 Intel Air would last me a long time anyway, since my computing needs from that device are light, and who knows how many years the Apple Silicon transition will take take anyway?
Bought a reasonably well-specced Intel Air for $1700ish. The M1s came out a few months later. I briefly thought about the implication of taking a hit on my "investment", figured I might as well cry once rather than suffer endlessly. Sold my $1700 Intel Air for $1200ish on craigslist (if I recall correctly), picked up an M1 Air for about that same $1200 pricepoint, and I'm typing this on that machine now.
That money was lost as soon as I made the wrong decision, I'm glad I just recognized the loss up front rather than stewing about it.
Exact same boat here. A friend and I both bought the 2020 Intel MBA thinking that the M1 version was at least a year out. It dropped a few months later. I immediately resold my Intel MBA seeing the writing on the wall and bought a launch M1 (which I still use to this day). Ended up losing $200 on that mis-step, but no way the Intel version would still get me through the day.
That said...scummy move by Apple. They tend to be a little more thoughtful in their refresh schedule, so I was caught off guard.
When I saw the M1s come out, I thought that dev tooling would take a while to work for M1, which was correct. It probably took a year for most everything to be compiled for arm64. However I had too little faith in Rosetta and just the speed upgrade M1 really brought. So what I mean to say is, I still have that deadweight MBA that I only use for web browsing :)
Oh yes, my wife bought a new Intel MBA in summer 2020... I told her at the time Apple planned its own chip, but it couldn't be much better than the Intel one and surely Apple will increase prices too... I was so wrong.
Yeah I’m in the same boat. I had my old mid 2013 Air for 7 years before I pulled the trigger on that too. I’ll be grabbing myself an M4 Pro this time
Same. My MBP and M1 Air are amazing machines. But I’m now also excited that any future M chip replacement will be faster and just as nice.
The battery performance is incredible too.
I got a refurbed M1 iPad Pro 12.9” for $900 a couple years ago and have been quite pleased. I still have a couple of years life in it I estimate.
What's the consensus regarding best MacBooks for AI/ML?
I've heard it's easier to just use cloud options, but I sill like the idea of being able to run actual models and train them on my laptop.
I have a M1 MacBook now and I'm considering trading in to upgrade.
I've seen somewhat conflicting things regarding what you get for the money. For instance, some reports recommending a M2 Pro for the money IIRC.
Can anyone comment on the viability of using an external SSD rather than upgrading storage? Specifically for data analysis (e.g. storing/analysing parquet files using Python/duckdb, or video editing using divinci resolve).
Also, any recommendations for suitable ssds, ideally not too expensive? Thank you!
It's totally fine.
With a TB4 case with an NVME you can get something like 2300MB/s read speeds. You can also use a USB4 case which will give you over 3000MB/s (this is what I'm doing for storing video footage for Resolve).
With a TB5 case you can go to like 6000MB/s. See this SSD by OWC:
https://www.owc.com/solutions/envoy-ultra
> Also, any recommendations for suitable ssds, ideally not too expensive?
I own a media production company. We use Sabrent Thunderbolt external NVMe TLC SSDs and are very happy with their price, quality, and performance.
I suggest you avoid QLC SSDs.
I've used a Samsung T5 SSD as my CacheClip location in Resolve and it works decently well! Resolve doesn't always tolerate disconnects very well, but when it's plugged in things are very smooth.
i go with the acasis thunderbolt enclosure and then pop in an nvme of your choice, but generic USB drives are pretty viable too ... thunderbolt can be booted from, while USB can't
i tried another brand or 2 of enclosures and they were HUGE while the acasis was credit card sized (except thickness)
The USB-C ports should be quite enough for that. If you are using a desktop Mac, such as an iMac, Mini, or the Studio and Pro that will be released later this week, this is a no-brainer - everything works perfectly.
Run your current workload on internal storage and check how fast it is reading and writing.
For video editing - even 8K RAW - you don't need insanely fast storage. A 10GBit/s external SSD will not slow you down.
This is the first compelling Mac to me. I've used Macs for a few clients and muscle memory is very deeply ingrained for linux desktops. But with local LLMs finally on the verge of usability along with sufficient memory... I might need to make the jump!
Wish I could spin up a Linux OS on the hardware though. Not a bright spot for me.
I miss Linux, it respected me in ways that MacOS doesn't. But maintaining a sane dev environment on linux when my co-workers on MacOS are committing bash scripts that call brew... I am glad that I gave up that fight. And yeah, the hardware sure is nice.
You totally can after a little bit of time waiting for M4 bringup!
https://asahilinux.org
It won't have all the niceties / hardware support of MacOS, but it seamlessly coexists with MacOS, can handle the GPU/CPU/RAM with no issues, and can provide you a good GNU/Linux environment.
Asahi doesn't work on M3 yet after a year. It's gonna be a bit before M4 support is here.
IIRC one of the major factors holding back M3 support was the lack of a M3 mini for use in their CI environment. Now that there's an M4 mini hopefully there aren't any obstacles to them adding M4 support
Why would that matter? You can use a MacBook in CI too?
How? What cloud providers offer it? MacStadium and AWS don't.
I guess you could have a physical MBP in your house and connect it to some bring-your-own-infrastructure CI setup, but most people wouldn't want to do that.
"a little bit of time" is a bit disingenuous given that they haven't even started working on the M3.
(This isn't a dig on the Asahi project btw, I think it's great).
Check out Asahi linux
Off topic, but I’m very interested in local LLMs. Could you point me in the right direction, both hardware specs and models?
Get as much RAM as you can stomach paying for.
In general for local LLMs, the more memory the better. You will be able to fit larger models in RAM. The faster CPU will give you more tokens/second, but if you are just chatting with a human in the loop, most recent M series macs will be able to generate tokens faster than you can read them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SillyTavernAI/
Thanks to both of you!
You can spin up a Unix OS. =) It’s even older than Linux.
NextSTEP which macOS is ultimately based on is indeed older than Linux (first release was 1989). But why does that matter? The commenter presumably said "Linux" for a reason, i.e. they want to use Linux specifically, not any UNIX-like OS.
The base M4 Max only has an option for 36gb of ram!? They're doing some sus things with that pricing ladder again. No more 96gb option, and then to go beyond 48gb I'd have to spend another $1250 CAD on a processor upgrade first, and in the process lose the option to have the now baseline 512gb ssd
I'm pleased that the Pro's base memory starts at 16 GB, but surprised they top out at 32 GB:
> ...the new MacBook Pro starts with 16GB of faster unified memory with support for up to 32GB, along with 120GB/s of memory bandwidth...
I haven't been an Apple user since 2012 when I graduated from college and retired my first computer, a mid-2007 Core2 Duo Macbook Pro, which I'd upgraded with a 2.5" SSD and 6GB of RAM with DDR2 SODIMMs. I switched to Dell Precision and Lenovo P-series workstations with user-upgradeable storage and memory... but I've got 64GB of RAM in the old 2019 Thinkpad P53 I'm using right now. A unified memory space is neat, but is it worth sacrificing that much space? I typically have a VM or two running, and in the host OS and VMs, today's software is hungry for RAM and it's typically cheap and upgradeable outside of the Apple ecosystem.
> I'm pleased that the Pro's base memory starts at 16 GB, but surprised they top out at 32 GB:
That's an architectural limitation of the base M4 chip, if you go up to the M4 Pro version you can get up to 48GB, and the M4 Max goes up to 128GB.
The "base level" Max is limited at 36GB. You have to get the bigger Max to get more.
On the standard M4 processor. If you move the M4 Pro it tops out at 48gb or moving to the M4 Max goes up to 128gb.
The 96GB RAM option of the M3 Max disappeared.
Weird that the M4 Pro in the Mac mini can go up to 64GB. Maybe a size limitation on the MBP motherboard or SOC package?
Probably just Apple designing the pricing ladder.
The M4 tops off at 32 GB
The M4 Pro goes up to 48 GB
The M4 Max can have up to 128 GB
It seems you need the M4 Max with the 40-core GPU to go over 36GB.
The M4 Pro with 14‑core CPU & 20‑core GPU can do 48GB.
If you're looking for ~>36-48GB memory, here's the options:
$2,800 = 48GB, Apple M4 Pro chip with 14‑core CPU, 20‑core GPU
$3,200 = 36GB, Apple M4 Max chip with 14‑core CPU, 32‑core GPU
$3,600 = 48GB, Apple M4 Max chip with 16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU
So the M4 Pro could get you a lot of memory, but less GPU cores. Not sure how much those GPU cores factor in to performance, I only really hear complaints about the memory limits... Something to consider if looking to buy in this range of memory.
Of course, a lot of people here probably consider it not a big deal to throw an extra 3 grand on hardware, but I'm a hobbyist in academia when it comes to AI, I don't big 6-figure salaries :-)
It doesn't look this cut and dry.
M4 Max 14 core has a single option of 36GB.
M4 Max 16 core lets you go up to 128GB.
So you can actually get more ram with the Pro than the base level Max.
I haven't done measurements on this, but my Macbook Pro feels much faster at swapping than any Linux or Windows device I've used. I've never used an M.2 SSD so maybe that would be comparable, but swapping is pretty much seamless. There's also some kind of memory compression going on according to Activity Monitor, not sure if that's normal on other OSes.
Yes, other M.2 SSDs have comparable performance when swapping, and other operating systems compress memory, too — though I believe not as much as MacOS.
Although machines with Apple Silicon swap flawlessly, I worry about degrading the SSD, which is non-replaceable. So ultimately I pay for more RAM and not need swapping at all.
The max memory is dependent on which tier M4 chip you get. The M4 max chip will let you configure up to 128gb of ram
It looks like the 14 core M4 Max only allows 36GB of ram. The M4 Pro allows for up to 48GB. It's a bit confusing.
Nano-texture option for the display is nice. IIRC it's the first time since the 2012 15" MBP that a matte option has been offered?
I hope that the response times have improved, because it has been quite poor for a 120 Hz panel.
> IIRC it's the first time since the 2012 15" MBP that a matte option has been offered?
The so-called "antiglare" option wasn't true matte. You'd really have to go back to 2008.
My one concern is that nano-texture apple displays are a little more sensitive to damage, and even being super careful with my MBPs I get the little marks from the keyboard when you carry the laptop with your hand squeezing the lid and bottom (a natural carry motion).
Love the nano-texture on the Studio Display, but my MacBooks have always suffered from finger oil rubbing the screen from the keys. Fingerprint oil on nano-texture sounds like a recipe for disaster.
For my current laptop, I finally broke down and bought a tempered glass screen protector. It adds a bit of glare, but wipes clean — and for the first time I have a one-year-old MacBook that still looks as good as new.
The iPad has nano texture and I find it does a much better job with oily fingerprints.
I put a thin screen cleaner/glasses cleaner cloth on the keyboard whenever I close the lid. That keeps the oils off the screen as well as prevents any pressure or rubbing from damaging the glass.
It's also on the iPad Pro. Only downside is you really do need the right cloth to be able to clean it.
I believe the laptop ships with the cloth. That said, it is annoying to have to remember to always keep that one cloth with your laptop.
They brought back the matte screen! Omg. The question is, will they have that for the air.
(I tend to feel if you want something specialized, you gotta pay for the expensive model)
Yes. It's finally back.
If I remember correctly, the claim was that M3 is 1.6x faster than M1. M4 is now 1.8x faster than M1.
It sounds more exciting than M4 is 12.5% faster than M3.
Most people buying a new MacBook don’t have the previous version, they’re going much further back. That’s why you see both intel and m1 comparisons.
So far I’m only reading comments here about people wow’d by a lot of things it seemed that M3 pretty much also had. Not seeing anything new besides “little bit better specs”
Yes, upgrading from a m3 max to a m4 max would be a waste.
The M4 is architecturally better than the M3, especially on GPU features IIRC, but you’re right it’s not a total blow out.
Not all products got the M3, so in some lines this week is the first update in quite a while. In others like MBP it’s just the yearly bump. A good performing one, but the yearly bump.
It does and it gets even worse when you realize those stats are only true under very specific circumstances, not typical computer usage. If you benchmarked based on typical computer usage, I think you'd only see gains of 5% or less.
Maybe they are highlighting stats which will help people upgrade. Few will upgrade from M3 to M4. Many from M1 to M4. That's my guess.
Nice to see they increased the number of performance cores in the M4 Pro, compared to the M3 Pro. Though I am worried about the impact of this change on battery life on the MBPs.
Another positive development was bumping up baseline amounts of RAM. They kept selling machines with just 8 gigabytes of RAM for way longer than they should have. It might be fine for many workflows, but feels weird on “pro” machines at their price points.
I’m sure Apple has been coerced to up its game because of AI. Yet we can rejoice in seeing their laptop hardware, which already surpassed the competition, become even better.
I'm curious why they decided to go this route, but glad to see it. Perhaps ~4 efficiency cores is simply just enough for the average MBP user's standard compute?
In January, after researching, I bought an apple restored MBP with an M2 Max over an M3 Pro/Max machine because of the performance/efficiency core ratio. I do a lot of music production in DAWs, and many, even Apple's Logic Pro don't really make use of efficiency cores. I'm curious about what restraints have led to this.. but perhaps this also factors into Apple's choice to increase the ratio of performance/efficiency cores.
> Perhaps ~4 efficiency cores is simply just enough for the average MBP user's standard compute?
I believe that’s the case. Most times, the performance cores on my M3 Pro laptop remain idle.
What I don’t understand is why battery life isn’t more like that of the MacBook Airs when not using the full power of the SOC. Maybe that’s the downside of having a better display.
> Most times, the performance cores on my M3 Pro laptop remain idle.
Curious how you're measuring this. Can you see it in Activity Monitor?
> Maybe that’s the downside of having a better display.
Yes I think so. Display is a huge fraction of power consumption in typical light (browsing/word processing/email) desktop workloads.
> Curious how you're measuring this. Can you see it in Activity Monitor?
I use an open source app called Stats [1]. It provides a really good overview of the system on the menu bar, and it comes with many customization options.
[1]: https://github.com/exelban/stats
They're really burying the lede here - magic trackpad and magic keyboard finally have USB-C :)
I'm just some dude, looking at a press release, wondering when Tim Apple is gonna be a cool dude and release the MBP in all of the colors that they make the iMac in.
APPARENTLY NOT TODAY.
C'mon mannnnn. The 90s/y2k are back in! People want the colorful consumer electronics! It doesn't have to be translucent plastic like it was back then but give us at least something that doesn't make me wonder if I live in the novel The Giver every time I walk into a meetup filled with MacBook Pros.
I'm sure the specs are great.
Question without judgement: why would I want to run LLM locally? Say I'm building a SaaS app and connecting to Anthropic using the `ai` package. Would I want to cut over to ollama+something for local dev?
Data privacy-- some stuff, like all my personal notes I use with a RAG system, just don't need to be sent to some cloud provider to be data mined and/or have AI trained on them
These chips are incredible. Even my M1 MBP from 2020 still feels so ridiculously fast for everyday basic use and coding.
Is an upgrade really worth it?
I don’t think it will “feel” much faster like the Intel -> M1 where overall system latency especially around swap & memory pressure got much much better.
If you do any amount of 100% CPU work that blocks your workflow, like waiting for a compiler or typechecker, I think M1 -> M4 is going to be worth it. A few of my peers at the office went M1->M3 and like the faster compile times.
Like, a 20 minute build on M1 becoming a 10 minute build on M4, or a 2 minute build on M1 becoming a 1 minute build on M4, is nothing to scoff at.
I guess it’s only worth it for people who would really benefit from the speed bump — those who push their machines to the limit and work under tight schedules.
I myself don’t need so much performance, so I tend to keep my devices for many, many years.
Trying to find how many external displays the base model supports. Because corps almost always buy the base model #firstworldproblems
The base model doesn't support thunderbolt 5.
And the base model still doesn't support more than 2 external displays without the DisplaySync (not DisplayPort!) hardware+software.
Two displays with the lid open.
"The display engine of the M4 family is enhanced to support two external displays in addition to a built-in display."
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/10/apple-introduces-m4-p...
https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/
"M4 and M4 Pro
Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and:
Up to two external displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, or one external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 144Hz over HDMI
One external display supported at 8K resolution at 60Hz or one external display at 4K resolution at 240Hz over HDMI"
Once they get a MacBook Air with an M4, it will become a viable option for developers and other users that want/need 2 external monitors. Definitely looking forward to that happening.
How viable is Asani Linux these days? MacBook hardware looks amazing.
No support for M3 or M4 powered machines currently.
> All Apple Silicon Macs are in scope, as well as future generations as development time permits. We currently have support for most machines of the M1 and M2 generations.[^1][^2]
[^1]: https://asahilinux.org/about/
[^2]: https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support
btw, there is a recent interview with an Asani dev focusing on GPUs, worth a listen for those interested in linux on apple silicon. The reverse engineering effort required to pin down the GPU hardware was one of the main topics.
https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2024/10/15/linux-apple-...
For many years I treated Windows or macOS as a hypervisor - if you love Linux but want the Mac hardware, instant sleep & wake, etc, putting a full screen VM in Parallels or similar is imo better than running Linux in terms of productivity, although it falls short on “freedom”.
I do the same thing, but there are two big caveats:
1. Nested virtualization doesn't work in most virtualization software, so if your workflow involves running stuff in VMs it is not going to work from within another VM. The exception is apparently now the beta version of UTM with the Apple Virtualization backend, but that's highly experimental.
2. Trackpad scrolling is emulated as discrete mouse wheel clicks, which is really annoying for anyone used to the smooth scrolling on macOS. So what I do is use macOS for most browsing and other non-technical stuff but do all my coding in the Linux VM.
Have anyone tried it recently, specifically the trackpad? I tried the Fedora variant a few months ago on my M1 Macbook and it was horrible to use the trackpad, it felt totally foreign and wrong.
I feel you, but Apple's trackpad prowess is not an easy thing to copy. It's one of those things I never expect anyone else to be able to replicate the level of deep integration between the hardware and software.
It's 2024, and I still see most Windows users carrying a mouse to use with their laptop.
I have a 16" M1 Pro with 16 gigs of ram, and it regularly struggles under the "load" of Firebase emulator.
You can tell not because the system temp rises, but because suddenly Spotify audio begins to pop, constantly and irregularly.
It took me a year to figure out that the system audio popping wasn't hardware and indeed wasn't software, except in the sense that memory (or CPU?) pressure seems to be the culprit.
I have a 14" M1 Max with 32gb of ram for work, and it does that popping noise every once it a while too! I've always wondered what was causing it.
Im relatively surprised modern Macs have same buffer underrun issue I had on intel laptops with pulseaudio 7+ years back.
> "Up to 7x faster image processing in Affinity Photo"
Great to see Affinity becoming so popular that it gets acknowledged by Apple.
Does anyone know of any good deals on the older models of apple laptops? Now is usually a great time to purchase (a still very capable) older model.
Watch SlickDeals. I think it was this time last year where lots of refurbs/2 generation old machines were going for massive discounts. Granted they were M1 machines, but some had 64GB RAM and 4TB drives for like $2700. Microcenter and B&H are good ones to watch as well.
Most retailers have had the older models on closeout for a few weeks now. Best Buy, Amazon and Costco have had the M3 models for a few hundred off depending on models.
The M-series macbooks depreciate in value far slower than any of the Intel models. M1 base models can still sell for nearly $1k. It's difficult to find a really good deal.
The refurbished store is always a good place to have a look through.
Can someone please help me out with this? I'm torn between Mac mini and and MacBook Pro, specifically the CPU spec difference.
MBP: Apple M4 Max chip with 16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU and 16‑core Neural Engine
Mac mini: Apple M4 Pro chip with 14‑core CPU, 20‑core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
What kind of workload would make me regret not having bought MBP over Mac mini given the above. Thanks!
For normal web dev, any M4 CPU is good as it is mostly dependent on single core speed. If you need to compile Unreal Engine (C++ with lots of threads), video processing or 3D rendering, more cores is important.
I think you need to pick the form factor that you need combined with the use case:
- Mobility and fast single core speeds: MacBook Air
- Mobility and multi-core: MacBook Pro with M4 Max
- Desktop with lots of cores: Mac Studio
- Desktop for single core: Mac mini
I really enjoy my MacBook Air M3 24GB for desktop + mobile use for webdev: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41988340
Since the only real difference is number of GPUs, it'd be:
- photo/video editing
- games, or
- AI (training / inference)
that would benefit from the extra GPUs.
Does anyone know if there is a way to use Mac without the Apple bloatware?
I genuinely want to use it as primary machine but with this Intel MacBook Pro I have, I absolutely dislike FaceTime, IMessage, the need to use AppStore, Apple always asking me have a Apple user name password (which I don't and have zero intention), block Siri, and all telemetry stuff Apple has backed in, stop the machine calling home, etc.
This is to mirror tools available in Windows to disable and remove Microsoft bloatware and ad tracing built in.
IIRC Apple is a lot less heavy handed wrt service login requirements when compared to Microsoft’s most recent Windows endeavors. And depending on the developer you can get around having to use the App Store at all. Being you’re on an Intel Mac have you considered just using Linux ?
You don't need to use AppStore, unless of course you want to use apple software.
Pretty much all the software I use is from brew.
this ^^
Do you mean you want to use Apple Silicon without macOS?
If that's your question, yes - various options exist like https://asahilinux.org
You need to embrace Apple's vision, or use something else. Clearly your goals and Apple's are misaligned, so you will only feel pain when using a Mac.
Get a PC.
You can totally use it without ever signing in to Apple account. You cannot delete Siri etc, but you can disable parts of it and not use the rest.
There used to be this whole contingent of people who were adamant that Apple's software was too opinionated, bloated, that you couldn't adapt its OS to your needs, and that Apple was far too ingrained in your relationship with your device. That Linux was true freedom, but at least that Windows respected its users
Then Windows 11 came out.
My wallet is trembling.
On a side note, anyone know what database software was shown during the announcement?
> MacBook Pro with M4 Max enables:
> Up to 4.6x faster build performance when compiling code in Xcode when compared to the 16‑inch MacBook Pro with Intel Core i9, and up to 2.2x faster when compared to the 16‑inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max.
OK, that's finally a reason to upgrade from my M1.
Still, no matter how much you are willing to spend, you cannot buy a MacBook Pro with an LTE modem, like the ones in the iPhone, iPad, and Watch.
I have an M2 Max now, and it's incredible. But it still can't handle running xcode's Instruments. I'd upgrade if the M4s could run the leaks tool seamlessly, but I doubt any computer could.
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.
It is interesting they only support 64gb and then jump to 128gb. It seems like a money play since it's $1,000 to upgrade for 128, and if you're running something that needs more than 64 (like LLMs?) you kind of have no choice.
I have an m3 ultra. I don’t think I need to upgrade. I also find it amusing they’re comparing the m4 to the m1 and i7 processors.
There is no M3 Ultra.
Announcement video as well
https://youtu.be/G0cmfY7qdmY?si=vbgIr8zn9EzB2Xam
As a proud user of an ARM3 in 1992, I'm pleased to be able to see and say that ARM won in the end.
Does anyone have benchmarks for the M4 Pro or M4 Max CPUs yet? Would love to see Geekbench scores for those.
I recently switched back to using homemade desktops for most of my work. I’ve been running Debian on them . Still have my Mac laptop for working on the go
No wifi 7? Are others shipping it?
Strange because their latest iPhones do have Wifi 7
Yup, Wi-Fi 7 devices have been shipping for over a year. My Odin 2 portable game console has Wi-Fi 7.
No WiFi 7!
:/
Would it make sense to upgrade from M2 Pro 16 to M4 Pro 16? (both base models) I mean it terms of numbers, more cores, more RAM but everything else is pretty much the same. I am looking forward to see some benchmarks!
No.
Completely depends on what your workflow is.
New 12MP Center Stage Camera. Will it support 4k?
4k for videoconferencing is nuts. The new camera should be an improvement over the old. Plus, being able to show your actual, physical desktop can be Andy too. Using your iPhone as the webcam will still probably give you the best quality especially if you are in a lower light situation.
Tech specs confirm only 1080p recording.
The 12MP will be used for better framing, there is still almost no use case for 4k quality video conferencing
It is truly sad how bad Zoom / Google Meet / Teams are when it comes to video quality.
I look at my local source vs the recording, and I am baffled.
After a decade of online meeting software, we still stream 480p quality it seems.
FaceTime has great quality. Unfortunately, as you age you start to hate the quality.
I mean you can easily create your own fully meshed P2P group video chat in your browser just using a little bit of JS that would support everyone running 4k, but it will fail the moment you get more than 3-8 people as each persons video stream is eating 25mbps for every side of a peer connection (or 2x per edge in the graph.)
A huge part of group video chat is still "hacks" like downsampling non-speaking participants so the bandwidth doesn't kill the connection.
As we get fatter pipes and faster GPUs streaming will become better.
edit: I mean... I could see a future where realtime video feeds never get super high resolution and everything effectively becomes a relatively seemless AI recreation where only facial movement data is transmitted similar to how game engines work now.
I don't think so. They would have made that a huge deal.
Wonder how good are those for LLMs (compared to M3 Pro/Max)... They talk about the Neural Engine a lot in the press release.
I'm not sure we can leverage the neural cores for now, but they're already rather good for LLMs, depending on what metrics you value most.
A specced out Mac Studio (M2 being the latest model as of today) isn't cheap, but it can run 180B models, run them fast for the price, and use <300W of power doing it. It idles below 10W as well.
I really like these new devices, but I’ve found that the latest MacBook Air (M3) is sufficient for my needs as a manager and casual developer. My MacBook Pro M1 Max has essentially become a desktop due to its support for multiple monitors, but since the Mac Mini M4 Pro can also support up to three external displays, I’m considering selling the MacBook Pro and switching to the Mini. I’ve also noticed that the MacBook Pro’s battery, as a portable device, is less efficient in terms of performance/battery (for my usage) compared to the MacBook Air.
Regarding LLMs, the hottest topic here nowadays, I plan to either use the cloud or return to a bare-metal PC.
Finally they're doing starting memory at 16gb.
Looking at how long the 8gb lasted it's a pretty sure bet that now you won't need to upgrade for a good few years.
I mean, I have a MacBook air with 16gb of ram and it's honestly working pretty well to this day. I don't do "much" on it though but not many people do.
I'd say the one incentive a MacBook Pro has over the air is the better a screens and better speakers. Not sure if it's worth the money.
My hypothesis is Apple is mostly right about their base model offerings.
> I mean, I have a MacBook air with 16gb of ram and it's honestly working pretty well to this day. I don't do "much" on it though but not many people do.
If an HN user can get along with 16gb on their MacBook Air for the last X years, most users were able to get by with 8gb.
It's just a tactic to get a higher average price while being able to advertise a lower price. What makes it infuriating is memory is dirt cheap. That extra 8GB probably costs them $10 at most, but would add to utility and longevity of their hardware quite a bit.
They are supposed to be "green" but they encourage obsolescence.
They align need with more CPU and margin. Apple wants as few SKUs as possible and as much margin as possible.
8GB is fine for most use cases. Part of my gig is managing a huge global enterprise with six figures of devices. Metrics demonstrate that the lower quartile is ok with 8GB, even now. Those devices are being retired as part of the normal lifecycle with 16GB, which is better.
Laptops are 2-6 year devices. Higher end devices always get replaced sooner - you buy a high end device because the productivity is worth spending $. Low end tend to live longer.
People looking for low prices buy PC, they don't even consider Mac. Then they can have a computer with all the "higher numbers", which is more important than getting stuff done.
> pretty sure bet that now you won't need to upgrade for a good few years.
Or you could get a framework and you could actually upgrade parts that are worth upgrading - instead of upgrade as in buying a new one
I bought a framework back in 2020 or so and really wish I just waited a little longer and spent a few hundred bucks more on the M1.
It's fine, but the issue is linux sleep/hibernate - battery drain. To use the laptop after a few days, I have to plug it in and wait for it to charge a little bit because the battery dies. I have to shut it down (not just close the screen) before flying or my backpack becomes a heater and the laptop dies. To use a macbook that's been closed for months I just open it and it works. I'll pay double for that experience. If I want a computer that needs to be plugged in to work I have a desktop for that already. The battery life is not good either.
Maybe it's better now if I take the time to research what to upgrade, but I don't have the time to tinker with hardware/linux config like I did a few years ago.
I don't mind spending a thousand bucks every 7 years to upgrade my laptop. I've had this macbook air since 2020 and besides the speakers don't being the best... I have no complaints.
I don't really see a world where this machine doesn't last me a few more years. If there's anything i'd service would be the battery, but eh. It lasts more than a few hours and I don't go out much.
I find it very odd that the new iMac has WiFi 7 but this does not... Also it is so aggravating they compare to 3 generations ago and not the previous generation in the marketing stats. It makes the entire post nearly useless.
It is very aggravating, but if they advertised a comparison to last year's model and showed you small performance gains you might not want to buy it.
A more charitable interpretation is that Apple only thinks that people with computers a few years old need to upgrade, and they aren't advertising to people with a <1 year old MacBook Pro.
The iMac doesn’t have WiFi 7.
Have they published this ahead of other pages or is it just me?
The linked Apple Store page says "MacBook Pro blasts forward with the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips" so it seems like the old version of the page still?
yes, it's not anywhere but the press release at this time
Looks like it's updated now.
yep, just updated a second ago
I noticed the same, but it looks like the pre-order link now gives me M4 chips instead of M3.
> Now available in space black and silver finishes.
No space grey?!
I don't think they had Space Grey on the M3 models either. That was initially my preference, but I went with the Black and quite like it.
> while protecting their privacy
This is misleading:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
"macOS sends hashes of every opened executable to some server of theirs"
> This is misleading: ...
To be fair, the link in this story is to a press release. Arguably there are probably many things in it that can be considered "misleading" in certain contexts.
What's the deal with running Linux on these anyway? Could one conceivably set up an M4 mini as headless server? I presume Metal would be impossible to get working if MacOS uses proprietary drivers for it...
Metal doesn't exist under Linux but OpenGL and Vulkan work.
Disingenuous to mention the x86 based MacBooks as a basis for comparison in their benchmarks; they are trying to conflate current-gen Intel with what they shipped more than 4 years ago.
Are they going to claim that 16GB RAM is equivalent to 32GB on Intel laptops? (/sarc)
Lot's of people don't upgrade on the cadence that users on this forum do. Someone was mentioning yesterday that they are trying to sell their Intel Mac {edit: on this forum] and asking advice on getting the best price. Someone else replied that they still had a 2017 model. I spoke to someone at my job (I'm IT) who told me they'd just ordered a new iMac to replace one that is 11 years old. There's no smoke and mirrors in letting such users know what they're in for.
Yup, I'm a developer who still primarily works on a 2018 Intel Mac. Apple's messaging felt very targeted towards me. Looking forward to getting the M4 Max as soon as possible!
I have a 2013 Macbook Air as a casual browsing machine that's still going strong (by some definition of it) after a battery replacement.
Right, it's obviously that, not a marketing trick to make numbers look much bigger while comparing to old CPUs and laptops :)
Ben Bejarin said that around 50% of the installed base is still using Macs with Intel chips. You’ll keep hearing that comparison until that number goes down.
They are going to milk these horrendous crazy hot x86 thermally throttled macs performance comparisons for a decade.
It could see it as disingenuous, or a targeted message to those users still on those older x86 machines.
Exactly how I read it. I have an intel model, and the press release felt like a targeted ad.
Xykxi
The adjectives in the linked article are nausiating. Apple’s marketing team fail as decent humans writting such drivel.
Give us data, tell us whats new, and skip the nonsense buzz filling adjectives.
To quote Russell Brand, just say he sat down, not that he placed his luscious ass in silk covered trousers on a velvetly smooth chair, experiencing pleasure as the strained thigh muscles received respite after gruelling on their feet watching a lush sunset in a cool summers evening breeze.
While we're bashing Apple marketing: `:prefers-color-scheme` is a11y. Take your fucking fashion statements elsewhere.
I'm not sure Russel Brand is the best ambassador for plain English.
I don't think you understand what a press release is.
Most people buying macs don't care about specs, they care about _what they can do_.
Am I allowed to work on my laptop if I don't have a PRO cpu?
Only if you work on your hobbies.
The keyboard touch button (top right) is objectively hideous and looks cheap. My current TouchBar may be useless but at least looks nice.
Lolz the M4 max doesn’t get anything more than 128GB ram in the MacBook? Weird
Cuz of this: was expecting 256GB https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41971726#41972721
They should just offer these on a subscription. Waiting for the company that does that. In the meantime, I can't help but think the price-ability bound nature of these as enforcing a caste system from a company that promised they'd "think different."
If you’re willing to buy from a retailer you can usually get two or three year financing terms. sell it at the end of the payment term for half (or more) of what you paid in total and get a new one on a similar plan if you want.
don’t think it’s wise though, i bought a base m1 pro mbp when it launched and don’t feel a need to upgrade at all yet. i’m holding off for a few more years to grab whenever the next major increase in local llm capability and battery life comes.
They have a business lease program - it's super easy to sign up for, and it's not like you have to have an LLC or something.
If you're willing to play, here are plenty of lenders who will finance this purchase.
If it affects your earning power to that extent, you should probably pony up and save in the long run, probably just a few years until you see returns.
Caste system usually can't be bypassed by paying a monthly subscription fee.
I will note that making it a subscription will tend to increase the overall costs, not decrease. In an environment with ready access to credit, I think offering on a subscription basis is worse for consumers?
I'm not sure about the caste system enforcement idea you have, but plenty of places (including Apple) lease MacBook Pros to businesses.
Huh? My m1 is still kicking strong with little to no reason to upgrade.
If it matters that much to you just sell the old one and buy the new. That's your subscription.