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MacBook Pro with new M5 Pro and M5 Max

628 pointsby scrlkyesterday at 2:02 PM612 commentsview on HN

Comments

miohtamayesterday at 2:07 PM

But is it powerful enough to run Liquid glass?

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owenpalmeryesterday at 2:50 PM

The screenshot of running LM Studio alongside Maya is a massive hardware flex.

Wish it was Blender though ;)

LetsGetTechniclyesterday at 6:05 PM

I have absolutely no need and yet I want ittttt

sakopovyesterday at 6:46 PM

What's a good value for a used MacBook pro these days? Any of the older models worth buying today?

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taf2yesterday at 4:41 PM

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.

mmaunderyesterday at 7:24 PM

Still only 8TB max storage. Ugh!

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addaonyesterday at 4:04 PM

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.

mpalmeryesterday at 2:43 PM

I'm done buying Macs until they prove they can ship an OS

jwryesterday at 2:57 PM

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.

przemelekyesterday at 5:53 PM

Still why especially for Pro there is still version with 24 GB of RAM? It is scary....

roblhyesterday at 3:13 PM

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.

whizzteryesterday at 2:10 PM

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.

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nottorpyesterday at 7:00 PM

There only run that low contrast Mac OS version tho.

alexpham14yesterday at 3:00 PM

Yeah, this feels like the annual “nice, but do I actually need it?” refresh if you’re already on an M4 Pro.

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kwanbixyesterday at 2:29 PM

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?

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whywhywhywhyyesterday at 3:08 PM

$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.

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rayesterday at 9:37 PM

will it run GLM-4.7 locally at any speed?

brikymyesterday at 11:55 PM

Tahoe search slow as fuck on an SOTA M1 MAX from a few years ago? Apple has the solution for you!

smallstepformanyesterday at 5:07 PM

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.

__mharrison__yesterday at 4:03 PM

So below 128gb is the sweet spot for local LLMs...

tgrowazayyesterday at 9:39 PM

> 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

idbejvyesterday at 7:47 PM

Tell me a joke That's a hierarchical

tristoryesterday at 3:06 PM

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.

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tamimioyesterday at 2:54 PM

I will wait for the new mac mini instead

user3939382yesterday at 2:52 PM

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.

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dev0pyesterday at 4:03 PM

I am only interested in one thing: what's the best local AI model it can run?

yieldcrvyesterday at 7:35 PM

> 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

jansanyesterday at 2:12 PM

The performance numbers are impressive, but I do not get the on-board AI spin. What is it used for?

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idbejvyesterday at 7:47 PM

That's big hockey

lenerdenatoryesterday at 5:52 PM

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.

oybngyesterday at 7:49 PM

Imagine these with a functioning keyboard, ports, replaceable battery and a good operating system.

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rvzyesterday at 10:39 PM

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.

pwythonyesterday at 2:47 PM

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.

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MagicMoonlightyesterday at 2:56 PM

You have to pay separately for the charger now. £99, what a bargain.

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MagicMoonlightyesterday at 2:50 PM

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.

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justin66yesterday at 2:52 PM

“An Unrivaled Experience with macOS Tahoe”

exabrialyesterday at 4:28 PM

> MacBook Pro and the Environment

LOL. is it repairable? probably not.

varispeedyesterday at 2:28 PM

Only 128GB. I was hoping they'd do 256GB version. Disappointing.

AbstractH24yesterday at 10:42 PM

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.

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fHryesterday at 6:53 PM

Only good apple product, most overvallued company ever.

DGAPyesterday at 2:41 PM

$5k machine for developers to just run claude code while they browse Reddit.

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butILoveLifeyesterday at 7:02 PM

>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.

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talkingtabyesterday at 11:30 PM

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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