by manofmanysmiles
24 subcomments
- I love the following section of their copy:
> Even More Value for Upgraders
> The new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max mark a major leap for pro users. There’s never been a better time for customers to upgrade from a previous generation of MacBook Pro with Apple silicon or an Intel-based Mac.
I read as "Whoops we made the M1 Macbook Pro too good, please upgrade!"
I think I will get another 2-5 years out my mine.
Apple: If you document the hardware enough for the Asahi team to deliver a polished Linux experiene, I'll buy one this year!
- I chased down what the "4x faster at AI tasks" was measuring:
> Testing conducted by Apple in January 2026 using preproduction 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air systems with Apple M5, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 32GB of unified memory, and 4TB SSD, and production 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air systems with Apple M4, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 32GB of unified memory, and 2TB SSD. Time to first token measured with an 8K-token prompt using a 14-billion parameter model with 4-bit quantization, and LM Studio 0.4.1 (Build 1). Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.
by Tangokat
29 subcomments
- "Scaling up performance from M5 and offering the same breakthrough GPU architecture with a Neural Accelerator in each core, M5 Pro and M5 Max deliver up to 4x faster LLM prompt processing than M4 Pro and M4 Max, and up to 8x AI image generation than M1 Pro and M1 Max."
Are they doubling down on local LLMs then?
I still think Apple has a huge opportunity in privacy first LLMs but so far I'm not seeing much execution. Wondering if that will change with the overhaul of Siri this spring.
- I typed “RAM” to search for it and boy they hammer home how lucky I am to be getting 1TB SSD standard, but no mention of RAM anywhere on this page. Anyway, the MacBook Pro starts with 16GB of RAM. It’s $400 to go from 16GB to 32GB.
Interestingly, 36-128GB models are showing as “currently unavailable” on the store page, and you can’t even place an order for them right now? But for anyone curious, it’s quoting $5099 for the 128GB RAM 14” MacBook Pro model.
- I feel like Apple pulled an Instant Pot with the M1 MacBook Pro. I still haven't had a single situation where I felt like spending more money would improve my experience. The battery is wearing out a bit, but it started out life with so much runtime that losing a few hours doesn't seem to matter.
- The hardware looks amazing! Too bad they will ship with Tahoe installed. I’m not upgrading until I see in which direction the next Mac OS release goes
- Apple, if you are reading this, I'm not investing into new hardware until you fix the mess that is Tahoe. My M1 MAX is doing fine atm.
by dirk94018
9 subcomments
- On M4 Max 128GB we're seeing ~100 tok/s generation on a 30B parameter model in our from scratch inference engine. Very curious what the "4x faster LLM prompt processing" translates to in practice. Smallish, local 30B-70B inference is genuinely usable territory for real dev workflows, not just demos. Will require staying plugged in though.
by aurareturn
7 subcomments
- Whoah, both the Pro and Max CPUs feature 18 cores. This hasn't happened since M1 Pro/Max. This is a surprise.
Also, the mix of cores have changed drastically.
- 6 "Super cores"
- 12 "Performance cores"
I'm guessing these are just renamed performance and efficiency cores from previous generations.
This is a massive change from the M4 Max:
- 12 performance cores
- 4 efficiency cores
This seems like a downgrade (in core config but may not be in actual MT) assuming super = performance and performance = efficiency cores.
- Honest question. Is it possible to install an earlier version of macOS on these machines?
Liquid glass looks so.. unprofessional to my eyes. And I hear it's also unstable.
by testfrequency
11 subcomments
- I have a fairly maxed out M2 Ultra (24 cores, 192GB RAM), and still cannot get this machine to choke on anything.
I have not once felt the need to upgrade in years, and that’s with doing pretty demanding 3D and LLM work.
by shivekkhurana
0 subcomment
- This blog post could have been a 4 hour in person event.
by hrmtst93837
4 subcomments
- > M5 Pro supports up to 64GB of unified memory with up to 307GB/s of memory bandwidth, while M5 Max supports up to 128GB of unified memory with up to 614GB/s of memory bandwidth.
This is the important statement. 614GB/s is quite decent, however a NVIDIA RTX 5090 already offers 1,792 GB/s (roughly 3x) of memory bandwidth, for comparison.
by GeekyBear
1 subcomments
- The most interesting change for the M5 Pro and Max is Apple moving to a bonded chiplet strategy from a single monolithic die.
> The tech giant says the chips are engineered around its new Fusion Architecture, an advanced design that merges two dies into a single, high-performance system on a chip (SoC), which includes a powerful CPU, scalable GPU, Media Engine, unified memory controller, Neural Engine, and Thunderbolt 5 capabilities.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/03/apple-unveils-m5-pro-and-m...
They also replaced the efficiency cores on the CPU chiplet with a new higher performance design.
> The CPU now features six “super cores,” which is Apple’s term for its highest-performance cores, alongside 12 all-new performance cores. Collectively, the CPU boosts performance by up to 30% for pro workloads.
- "The new MacBook Pro gets up to 24 hours of battery life, giving Intel-based upgraders up to 13 additional hours"
I have a Intel-based 2019 Macbook Pro still and I have NEVER in its lifetime gotten even half of what they are claiming here. These days if I run it from battery I might get 90 mins.
That said I had a maxed out Macbook Pro M4 Max on order but just cancelled it right now and will get this new M5 Max one for basically the same price. Once I saw that they didn't up the price of memory (I don't know how it doesn't affect them) I canceled my order.
by pixelesque
2 subcomments
- Interesting that they're showing VFX/CG software (Autodesk MAYA and Foundry Nuke) so prominently - obviously people using "Pro" machines are the target audience for this, but both of those apps (any many others in the industry) use Qt for the interface, rather than being totally platform-native.
by whywhywhywhy
5 subcomments
- $5000 laptop you have to pay to add a power adapter… gratuitous penny pinching from Tim Cook's Apple.
It's one of those things, yes if I'm spending that much on a laptop I can afford to spend $80 on the adapter too, but does it feel good as a customer to do that or are you souring the experience of buying from you just to earn a few more dollars.
by aetherspawn
1 subcomments
- 1.35x speed up in single core versus M3 Max. Insane. Everyone else has failed to bump single core performance in years. Where are these single core gains coming from?
- I checked the fine print on the product website: by “up to 4x faster LLM prompt processing,” they’re specifically referring to time to first token. So it’s not about token generation rate (tokens per second).
- I vibed out a comparison of MacBook Pros over the years. 2026 M5 Pro Geekbench scores are an estimate at this point because the data doesn't exist yet.
https://sambehrens.github.io/macbook-pro-value/
- $200 price bump across the board. The cheapest 16" is now $2699 and 14" Pro $2199. I think it's a fair price considering M2Pro 14" was $1999 (though it was discounted) only had 512GB and 16GB RAM.
by mathverse
2 subcomments
- Nano-texture is worth the upgrade if you are on a macbookpro whatever M<cpu> and dont have it.
For those of us with astigmatism it's really night and day experience.
- Why doesn't this excite me anymore?
- Was hoping to see Apple break the 128GB barrier in a laptop that they previously set, though 128GB is still pretty sweet for local LLM inference on consumer hardware. My 128GB M3 Max is still shredding tokens pretty well (with that annoying slow initial prompt processing), so no major complaints there. I guess the question is, given access to the same amount of RAM, does the M5 really do an order-of-magnitude better than 128GB on a M3 or M4?
- For those who don't already know, you can get a lot of PC gaming performance out of these machines using Sikarugir. You can install all of Steam via winetricks and go from there, or launch DRM-free games directly.
https://github.com/Sikarugir-App/Sikarugir
by FBISurveillance
1 subcomments
- Note: no power adapter included.
- I am much more interested seeing the M5 Pro and M5 Max in the Mac Mini & Mac Studio.
The temptation of running a local LLM on my gaming PC's GPU finally gave me the incentive I needed to set up Tailscale & Mosh, and there's no going back. My 15" M2 Macbook air is my ideal travel form-factor, and I'd much rather "upgrade" by adding a power-sipping homelab box I can remote into from anywhere.
by joeevans1000
0 subcomment
- Please help this noob of sorts. My experience of local models has been abysmal for AI chat compared to hosted models. What is Apple offering, in plain terms, to me?
- An ”unrivaled experience” with MacOS Tahoe…
- Still rocking my M1 with no problems
- Can someone comment on the new dual die thing they’re promoting for how they make the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips?
How is that different from the silicon interposer they were using before?
The big change is the two dies don’t have to fabbed next to each other in a single wafer, which is fantastic for costs and yields. But would this affect the interconnect speed somehow?
How would the two be wired together?
Could this mean the Ultra comes back in M6 since it would be easier to fab?
- Hot take - Local LLM computing will move to stationary, always on devices (Mac mini & studio). Developers and users will move to lighter, portable devices to interface with their long running agent workers (MacBook Airs & iPads).
- So is this a minimal upgrade before the M6 Macbook Pros w/ OLED & a redesign later this year?
It doesn't even look like they added cellular as an option with their own C1X chip (getting around the licensing / cost issues since it's their own chip now).
by brailsafe
1 subcomments
- I don't see it mentioned much, but the most exciting thing to me is that they're shipping their own WiFi chip in it, which leads me to be hopeful that they'll eventually get around to shipping a cell modem so I don't have to tether to my phone constantly. Still no new colours unfortunately. I think those are the two things that would/will be exciting in the future. Give me a green 5g+ capable MBP and I'll be happy. I'm so deeply bored of the drab grey and darker grey versions; we can have tattoos at work now, give me a different colour laptop for christ's sake
by boriskourt
1 subcomments
- Nice starting storage bump
MacBook Pro with M5 Pro now comes standard with 1TB of storage, while MacBook Pro with M5 Max now comes standard with 2TB. And the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 now comes standard with 1TB of storage.
- One thing I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is M5 Pro now supporting 64GB ram . I believe prior gens you had to go Max to get 64. m5 Pro 64GB is $3000 meanwhile to upgrade ram on the max you need the 40 gpu core variant with 64GB is $4300. $1300 dollar mark up for twice the gpu compute and 50% higher mem bandwidth isn't great value imo.
- 128GB RAM maximum? What a shame. I was ready to spend 8k on a laptop. My M3 MAX 128GB will suffice for now.
- I just bought a M5 Macbook Pro 2 weeks ago. Thinking of returning it and getting a M5 Pro with the same configuration but only $200 more. How should I compare M5 vs M5 Pro?
- I don't care about all the use cases in the press release. 3D modelling? Whatever. I have one question:
Will it run Tahoe?
- Can't wait to see the real numbers on https://github.com/devMEremenko/XcodeBenchmark
Especially comparing to M1 Max
- The question is when Apple Laptops are going to be able to run LLMs with a performance comparable to what the AI companies are offering?
- I thought that new models were typically released in October. Have I misremembered or is this an unusual timing vs previous years? If so, I wonder why the earlier release?
- I'm done buying Macs until they prove they can ship an OS
- I would probably upgrade my MacBook Pro at once, if it wasn't for the Tahoe disaster. Now, not so much, I'm inclined to wait until next year.
- I wonder how this compares to my M4 air with 10 GPU cores and 32 MB of RAM. My system can only run ~14B sized models at any reasonable speed. The accuracy of these sized models can be underwhelming. I am looking forward to a time when it would be nice to run models locally at a reasonable price, at a reasonable speed and with reasonable accuracy. I don't think we are there just yet.
- If anyone is up for benchmarking with one of these - please let me know.
Interested to see what FP32 values they have for a site I've been working on [0].
[0]: https://flopper.io
by post_break
1 subcomments
- My M3 Pro with 18gb of ram still feels like a beast. The only thing I can make it suffer with so far is generating meshes from 3D scanning, and even then I'm just patient. Apple is suffering from success with these older laptops, it's a tough sell to upgrade, even from the M1 Max folks.
- I might get it or I might wait for m6 and redesigned body + oled
- Hello are here any heavy users which have multiple VS Code windows with multiple claude code instances like 20 open and actively working at same time with docker containers and frontend development?
How is M1 Max 64gb ram working for you?
- I'm an enthusiast. I absolutely love hardware. From ESP32 and RPi to Threadripper, I love it all. I like the odd performance differences and the obvious ones. I like the chunk of a floppy disk, whir of a disk platter, the scklick and chick of an ODD... I even love the complete silence of my Mac Studio. Thing is, I am kind of sick of Apple releasing new machines with zero new features. I get it. Each M series entry is amazing. What Apple did with their SoMs is the most worthy of using the "magic" label than anything they've ever done, but for the love of all that is good in the world, focus on your darned OS. Make it decent again. I'm not even referring to Liquid Glass. I am more saying I want consistency, I want the UNIX layer to get some love, I want the read-only root to be completely transparent to me and not introduce bugs in random places, I want performance improvements, I want options to disable all of the security layers if I so choose, and I want the ability to drop to a TTY from the login screen back.
- Is the notch gone?
- It doesn't feel like much has changed from the previous gen? Just a new chip + memory?
- Great, I have a MacBook Pro M5 for work which i know IS really fast because the whole suite of specs run in les than two minutes, but except for that my "old" air m1 with 16g of ram feels super snappy.
I am just excited waiting future releases (in 5 or 10 years) able to run local llms for coding.
by owenpalmer
0 subcomment
- The screenshot of running LM Studio alongside Maya is a massive hardware flex.
Wish it was Blender though ;)
by KingOfCoders
0 subcomment
- I thought a Studio would be my local LLM machine 2026, but this is $2000+ for the 126gb option - not for me. I assume $6000 for that Studio machine but it looks now more like $8000.
- I am very excited by this, but I am a bit dampened that the maximum memory available is 128GB. I was really hoping for 256GB, which would allow me to run frontier models locally. I think with 128GB it's still feasible to use this with something like Qwen3-Coder-Next and MiniMax-M2.5, but things like Kimi-K2.5 will require significant quantization to fit and model performance will really suffer.
I'm really wanting to build proper local-first AI workflows at home, and I think Apple has an opportunity to make that possible in a way other companies aren't really focused on, but we need significantly larger memory capabilities to do it, which I know is tough in the current memory market but should be available for a cost.
- Is the M5 Max the first laptop with significantly more memory bandwidth than the M1 Max? Looks like about a 20% jump… might finally be time to re-benchmark CFD workloads.
by hermitcrab
1 subcomments
- Does it still come with a measly 1 year warranty?
- Considering these max out at 128GB of unified ram my guess is the hope of an M5 Ultra with 1TB of unified ram is unlikely to come true... Super disappointing.
by jasonjmcghee
2 subcomments
- I bought an M4 and don't think I can justify upgrading so soon. Certainly has some great improvements.
by LetsGetTechnicl
0 subcomment
- I have absolutely no need and yet I want ittttt
by computerex
0 subcomment
- Here I am still on my twenty twenty eight gigabyte base model M one MacBook Air.
- Kinda funny that the top image is capture one when Apple literally owns Photomator and gives you the option of bundling it when you buy.
by julienb_sea
1 subcomments
- I have an m4 pro MBP, 1tb storage and 24gb RAM. Not seeing any reason to consider an upgrade whatsoever.
- 128gb of memory, it's a nice change for Apple not to lag in that department for once, wonder what such a machine will cost though.
by thefounder
0 subcomment
- So it still can’t run the big AI models locally due RAM limitations. Maybe next time!
- Seems strange that they're releasing new Macbook pros now we now that they'll be legacy products with the Macbook neos.
- What's a good value for a used MacBook pro these days? Any of the older models worth buying today?
- But is it powerful enough to run Liquid glass?
- > An Unrivaled Experience with macOS Tahoe
That much is true.
- I wonder if it is good to just get one and run Linux on a VM. Would that work better than an x64? Anybody knows?
- I've been using the M2 Max with 32 GB and 38-core GPU almost since it came out, I think I can still get a couple more years pretty easily from it.
It's still shrugging off everything I throw at it, including Windows-only games. I've yet to have a moment where I wished it was faster. I was hoping for a newer display or body before I upgraded. The only "essential" features seem to be WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 6 if they make much a difference in everyday life.
by alexpham14
1 subcomments
- Yeah, this feels like the annual “nice, but do I actually need it?” refresh if you’re already on an M4 Pro.
- Still only 8TB max storage. Ugh!
- Still why especially for Pro there is still version with 24 GB of RAM? It is scary....
- Surprised they have a lot of text/numbers but no charts.
- Will trade in my m2 for an m5 mini once they announce it!
- Shout out to LM Studio being featured in one of the product shots!
- I am only interested in one thing: what's the best local AI model it can run?
- So to not get confused, when you ask for a new laptop in your corporate and you say 14 inch Pro Max, don't get lured to get Pro Max Premium, or even Pro Max Plus, just say you want Pro M5 Max, because otherwise you are getting Dell.
And make sure to not say "Just get me a Pro, bro", because you might be getting HP Pro desktop!
- There only run that low contrast Mac OS version tho.
by __mharrison__
1 subcomments
- So below 128gb is the sweet spot for local LLMs...
- Can you imagine if Apple’s software was on the same level as their hardware?
- For local llm bad
by smallstepforman
0 subcomment
- Can Apple marketing please reduce the insane quantity of adjectives in its releases, it has been nauseating to read for decades and sickens me when visiting their sites. Early exit from me and ex-OSX dev for over a decade, wont be back until their core culture changes.
- Apple recently released open models. I wouldn’t be surprised if they start shipping increasingly capable models as part of their platform offering. That would fit perfectly with their hardware trajectory.
- Wow I just spotted that the new price does NOT include the 96w power adapter! That's a new cheeky cost at £79 over in the UK.
I really hate how they price things and hide their profit in sneaky ways now.
- Neat, now put the M5 Pro or Max in a 24-inch iMac, and sell it with a reasonable amount of RAM (more than 24GB).
by squishy47
2 subcomments
- A £3000 laptop doesn't come with a fucking charger. It's £99 extra for the one that came with the m4's. thanks a lot Apple, the enshitification is real!
- That's big hockey
- I will wait for the new mac mini instead
- The performance numbers are impressive, but I do not get the on-board AI spin. What is it used for?
- Finally, wifi 7
- will it run GLM-4.7 locally at any speed?
- $5k machine for developers to just run claude code while they browse Reddit.
by thatwasunusual
1 subcomments
- Not related to this release, but their trade-in for old hardware is a joke to me. My 2019 MBP i9 2.4GHz w/64GB RAM and 2TB SSD is worth $200. It seems to me that they don't even want a trade-in; it makes much more sense to me to just keep the old MBP and use it as a dev server, home assistant, docker hub thing or something.
- Just for fun I maxed out the specs in the configurator. I remember doing that 10 years ago and paying 4K just to be delivered an infamous embarrassment of a laptop (yes the one with the hilarious display issues), which got me this close (pinching my fingers) to leave apple entirely. Today, maxing out yields me 8K and I gotta say, I‘m done. I‘m not paying Apple‘s insane surcharge. The temporary delta is not worth it. Already I‘m seeing corporations buying the lower/lowest tier laptops possible for their devs. Most of their compute is happening outside of the machine anyways.
by unethical_ban
0 subcomment
- I wonder how many more years Apple is going to quote Macbook's improvements vs. Intel-based Macbooks. They must have some analytics that show a large number of people still on those devices for them to use that as a talking point, but it comes off as "coming up with something because the difference in one generation is low".
by anArbitraryOne
0 subcomment
- Cool, make me one without MacOS
- sure the GPU isn't 4090 tier in compute, but the memory let's you run 120bn param models at usable speeds.
- Tell me a joke
That's a hierarchical
- > M5 Pro supports up to 64GB of unified memory with up to 307GB/s of memory bandwidth, while M5 Max supports up to 128GB of unified memory with up to 614GB/s of memory bandwidth
Which roughly translates to 30B Q8 size LLM at 10t/s for the M5 Pro and 60B Q8 size LLM at 10t/s for the M5 Max
For reference, RTX 3090 24GB has a memory bandwidth of approx. 936.2 GB/s, DGX Spark 128GB features a unified memory bandwidth of up to 273 GB/s
- Well that's. Just. Great. I bought a 64GB M4 Max MBP last month. I'm past the 14-day return window. I figured the M5 was near, but assumed M5 Max would come a bit later. Not sure where I came up with that.
- > M5 Max supports up to 128GB of unified memory with up to 614GB/s of memory bandwidth
for reference, the M1 Max has 400GB/s of memory bandwidth, half a decade ago
by lenerdenator
0 subcomment
- I barely push my M2 Pro MBPs. Most of my wants aren't hardware-related, they're software-related. How it runs some games from 10-20 years ago very well, but only through hacky compatibility layers that shouldn't be necessary. How some parts of the OS have gotten "out of sync" with each other.
Actually, I can think of one hardware want: have they gotten it to where you can do external GPUs and the like more easily?
Would still buy one over any other laptop on the market today for what I use them for.
by MagicMoonlight
4 subcomments
- You have to pay separately for the charger now. £99, what a bargain.
by user3939382
3 subcomments
- And your native CLI tools will continue to be from 2011 with 0 attention paid to the dev experience until it’s Swift, and we’ll continue to lock you out of running programs from other human beings we didn’t approve without a 6 step ritual in the OS. Oh and all apps will continue to constantly phone home i.e. pay for the machine so Google Adobe and Microsoft can run updaters and telemetry on it all day.
by MagicMoonlight
1 subcomments
- They’re giving us extra storage… but they’ve put the price up by 200, which is as much as they charged for the storage anyway.
- Tahoe search slow as fuck on an SOTA M1 MAX from a few years ago? Apple has the solution for you!
- Imagine these with a functioning keyboard, ports, replaceable battery and a good operating system.
- “An Unrivaled Experience with macOS Tahoe”
by _nickwhite
0 subcomment
- "128GB ought to be enough for anybody."
- If you are thinking about running the next Deepseek model, then you are going to be a bit disappointed with the M5
Might need to wait for the M5 Ultra or M6 Max with 128GB of RAM until the memory bandwidth is greater than a GTX 5090.
- Now if only Apple shipped an AI model that could be used on it......
- > MacBook Pro and the Environment
LOL. is it repairable? probably not.
- Only 128GB. I was hoping they'd do 256GB version. Disappointing.
by probe_tech
0 subcomment
- [dead]
by AbstractH24
1 subcomments
- TL;DR Is this major change, or just incrimental?
Just about to be time for me to get a new laptop. Typically I buy a generation behind, but want to make sure I won't miss anything huge.
- Only good apple product, most overvallued company ever.
by Singletail
0 subcomment
- Ship it with Sequoia and you have a deal.
- Ugh, more "AI" hype. How useful are the cited hardware features for NON-"AI" processing?
by butILoveLife
1 subcomments
- >unified memory
This is just marketing speak. Stop repeating marketing. It isnt a walled garden, its a walled prison.
Unified memory is just regular memory. There is nothing special about integrated GPUs.
by talkingtab
1 subcomments
- The definitive reasons why you should NOT buy these products.
1. While the hardware and performance are amazing, the user interface is the opposite. Imagine buying a luxury car with amazing performance only to find that simply opening the door is a royal pain, each and every time.
2. Apple will downgrade the usability over time. A year from now, or two, Apple will downgrade your user experience. Imagine that in your luxury car you can see out the windshield, but the dealer insists that you install a new upgrade with a heads-up-display that cannot be turned off.
3. Apple will degrade the performance of your system over time by constantly introducing more features which require better hardware. Your sleek and fast computer will eventually become unusably slow.
4. Apple profits from preventing you from using the computer you own with other software, for example Linux. When your computer cannot run Mac OS (see #3) above or you get sick of the "features" (see #1 and #2 above), you will not be able to do so. The reason for this is if you could try Linux, there is is a strong possibility you will see just how user unfriendly Mac OS is and never go back.
5. You care about the environmental impact of your purchasing decisions. You understand that because you are not able to upgrade the hardware and operating system, your purchase is very likely to end up in a landfill.
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