alt Hacker NewsApple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
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I know, this is a bit of a meaningless comment, but it's funny in a way. Feels like late 90s again:
- Xiaomi: We have matched Apple in CPU performance.
- Apple: *Meep Meep...*Even w/the pricing spike, inflation adjusted we are back to roughly the prices of a new Mac SE/30 for something that can beat a turing test w/o sweating.
I yield the floor to no one when it comes to pessimism, but that's incredible.
I'm still using M1 pro, which still runs buttery smooth. No complains but yes 16 gb ram feels little less in some tasks.
Rumors say that Apple will only release M6 base variant and skips M6 Pro, M6 Max and M6 Ultra variants to concentrate all efforts to create a good AI capable M7:
"According to reports from Bloomberg, Apple will be skipping its M6 Pro, M6 Max, and M6 Ultra chips to accelerate development of the M7 chip. That means the only chip to be released from the M6 family will be the base M6.
The reason for this break with tradition: AI. Apple had been planning major neural-processing upgrades for the M7 family and ultimately decided those improvements were important enough to justify accelerating the next generation rather than completing the M6 lineup." https://9to5mac.com/2026/08/08/apple-m7-chip-heres-why-it-ma...
I'd skip M5 and M6 chips for LLM work and wait for a year for M7.
Apple Studio with maxed out M5 Ultra, 256GB RAM and 16TB storage is 18,299$. The 512GB RAM version apparently is coming in October, considering that the difference between 96GB and 256GB is priced at 4000$, the 512GB upgrade must be eye watering.
So, on the mini the RAM upgrade runs at 25$ per GB on all tiers, the same as the Studio therefore the upgrade to 512 will probably cost 6400$.
The fully maxed out Apple Studio then will be 24699$. It's 17199$ if you don't upgrade the storage(1TB).
Nevertheless I itch to have one :)
More validated by the day that my $450 M4 Mac Mini (16GB) was the best deal in computing for a long, long time.
Apple still has the best hardware so I moved to it for the last few years, but the closed software ecosystem is terrible for taking advantage of it.
I wasn't able to debug network errors (restartin my Mac worked), Metal was missing low level disassembly / debugging tools (there is some hard to use UI), but the worst thing was the inflexible windowing system.
Even getting all the window handles on all screens/desktops with their titles and programs is impossible.
I just decided that I move to Omarchy 4 (basically Hyperland + QuickShell) + NVIDIA GPU, and I already was able to customize it more than my Mac in years.
I will miss Apple's hardware for sure, but not MacOS and the missing hardware documentation
Add ARM boot camp, MacOS is too restrictive compared to modern Linux. Asahi's devs can't keep up with the constant hardware releases so official support is important.
The 512GB Ultra is amazing, sure. But who is it for exactly? VC funded big spender founders? In that case why would they need local AI? The ultra rich enthusiast? But there can't be too many of those. So who actually buys these?
I wonder to what extent the timing of this release was driven by their need to increase prices, but not wanting to apply it to in-market hardware. It's kind of a weird time to drop new Macs, between WWDC and the iPhone release, but not early enough that it could be purchased by college students. I get that most students use laptops, but if I were heading off this year I might use an iPad + Mac mini for more horsepower while maintaining portability.
I run a lot of local models (I am always experimenting) on my 32G M2-Pro MacMini - I would love to upgrade.
The financial aspects don’t work however: I can learn and experiment with what I have for local models, and I pay as I go on FireWorks.ai for open model inferencing and no matter how much I use this service my monthly bill is between $10 and $40 and much faster than any reasonable home rig.
Hybrid ‘small local’ and buying inference is the way I choose.
Leasing now an option, only $50/month (cheaper than inference subscription?), so even cash-poor can go the amortized-investment route.
I've often felt there is tremendous value locked up in underutilized old computers. It would be interesting to see Apple in 3 years offering compute as a service using lease returns (or more likely, partnering with someone else to operate it (perhaps exclusively in secondary markets like China or India, to address political demands for local siting or jobs). Apple is in the best position to work around or even gap-fix older software/hardware limitations in a controlled environment, and now they can do so without cannibalizing new hardware sales.
>fluid frame rates in demanding games like Mixtape.
not getting on that bandwagon but wasn't that not the most demanding game as its a just a nonstop cutscene.
I somehow find it better to give 2 frontier model companies 100-200/month than dropping 10 grand on a hardware that will get old in no time with bad TPS. I really want to have a fully local model but seems like one more generation wait and we will be there?
I like my Mac mini as much as the next person, but I don’t think an M5 ultra 64gb with 4tb should be as much as a DGX Spark with 128gb and 4tb.
I bought a 128GB M4 Max Mac Studio a while back, and for a while I thought like I had done really well to buy it when I did.
The problem I'm having now is that no models are targeting RAM of that size. Everything is either much smaller, targeting laptops, or much larger, targeting hardware well out of reach of enthusiasts.
Please, AI people, start making models targeting 128GB machines again. The last interesting one was Qwen 3.5 122B.
Why do they focus so much on hardware when their biggest problem is software? I don't get it. My Dell XPS 13 is probably not that powerful in terms of performance but Linux is so much more productive. This drives me crazy
Nice! Linux Please.
My M5 MacBook Pro, while amazing, is basically relegated to being a thin client with amazing battery life that exclusively SSH's into my desktop PC for work.
I could spawn a Linux VM / use Docker/Podman locally, but dealing with allocating memory, hard drive space and whatever other limitations non-native containerisation incurs isn't worth the squeeze.
Plus I really want to have Vulkan access, both so I can actually play games like a sane person and also use standardized local LLM tooling (MLX is cool but I don't like dedicating time learning things that I can't leverage elsewhere).
If the Mac Mini / Studio range had Linux support, I might actually consider buying one for my home lab. I know others already do and just put up with MacOS - but if I buy a "pro" product, I want it for "professional" usage damn it
Great devices for watching YouTube and video editing I guess?
96GB -> 256GB upgrade costs 4000 GBP in UK or $5460. $34 for GB.
In US its $4000 upgade so $25 for 1GB.
Also:
> 512GB memory option for M5 Ultra coming late October
Just bought AMD AI 395+ 64GB RAM for 2000eur. Mac mini would be 2x for about similar performance. Pass.
I was just comparing this to an rtx6000 96gb build and when the f*ck did nvidia double the price?
If you want to comfortably afford this gen you had to trade options on memory stocks...
The page says 170G/s memory bandwidth for the NPU and 1.2T/s for the GPU. Why the discrepancy if it's all "unified memory"? The former is nothing to write home about as far as AI compute is. The latter is really nice.
Which one is it you can run local models on? I suppose the NPU only.
Can anyone recommend the perfect sweet spot for someone who wants to run their own inference?
I would love to see real LLM performance benchmarks for these machines. Apple statement regarding LLM performance seem little vague.
I still struggle with local llm being a reason to drop insane money on one of these - they are targeting people who want high performance local LLMs, that value privacy over using 3rd party api, but also dont want to use Nvidia? small part of the pie by any reckoning?
This feels like paying a lot for something that is just not very good yet - cloud models are too good vs local models (may change in the future..)
Does anyone know if they’re actually at 2nm transistors, or if this is more marketing talk? It’s kinda like when TVs advertised their contrast ratios (do they still do that?) but they all used their own measurement methods, so dynamic contrast ratio became a worthless metric.
Do you think that little moniker will just disappear in a decade or so as we reach 0nm advertisements, or do you think they'll just add more decimal places? 0.0001 nm! Next year, 0.00001!!
My macbook pro M1 is still running fast and silent.
I feel like the M series macs have been some of the most positively received computers ever made. I am yet to meet someone who doesn't love theirs, myself included.
FWIW scaling up from https://huggingface.co/avlp12/Qwen3.8-27B-Alis-MLX-6bit and some other sources:
You might expect the M5 Ultra to produce 50 t/s from Qwen 3.8 27B with a good context length.
I did a little stint studying thermal cyclic fatigue in multi-die packages (many years ago) and I'm wondering how the issues there are solved these days.
Damn. I just bought a maxed out MacBook Pro M5 Max 128GB 8TB, still waiting for it to be delivered. I could get 256GB RAM M5 Ultra 1TB for roughly the same price, and it's double the memory bandwidth. Which one would you recommend? I do plan to run local LLMs.
Sick. Particularly stoked for the 10gb network card ($100 option) when using the Mac Mini as a server. Just wish the memory + NVMe prices could come back down to pre ai-goldrush prices. As $2999 for the M5 Pro with 64GB RAM feels painfully over-priced.
Was the quad die layout expected? I've checked a couple articles and can't find any commentary on it, but I don't remember hearing this rumored.
How many Neural Accelerators does M5 Ultra has in its 64 vs 80-GPU variants?
Anybody knows?
Just to clarify, Neural Accelerators have nothing to do with Neural Engine.
So the idea of networking multiple Mac Minis via RDMA over Thunderbolt 5 to run local LLMs is intriguing, but doesn't really seem reasonable at this price point? What are the more cost-effective alternatives?
Tangential, but what would be the ideal Mac option for home movie editing, casual gaming and amateur CAD fiddling in Fusion?
I plan on maximizing my residual student benefits, and taking advantage of education pricing.
Interesting that "coding" is now part of the marketing brochure as one of the use cases, while that was historically kind of missing. Is this new?
0% APR for 12 months (24 for iPhones only?) from Apple Financial Services for a device that can approach or even exceed what we were paying for new cars just a few years ago. Apple is definitely making bank off these financing offers, and with very little risk as unlike a car these Mac Studios don’t lose 20% of their value when you drive them off the lot.
Interesting times, to say the least!
"M6 features a powerful, larger 12-core GPU that provides higher geometry rates and updated Dynamic Caching to deliver stunning visuals and fluid frame rates in demanding games like Mixtape."
Why choose the worst game of the year? Just because it's made by the daughter of Larry Ellison?
~12k for 80 core gpu with 256gb, 14k in October for 512gb. Seems like that could make for a very descent on prem inference server.
Gonna go sell a kidney, should just about cover a base Mac Studio. Guess I'll need a payday loan for the power cable
The M6 is useless for AI. Is there any model which is actually useful and fast on 32GB?
What's everyones recommendation for one to run a good local LLM model on?
Will forever miss the 499$ mac mini!
If I compare to like, January 2024, the prices for RAM these days make me want to weep.
Maxed out Studio is $30,000+ tax in Canada if financed through Apple.
That's wild!
I was blown away by M1 Pro, and used it for 4 years before it became a little sluggish, and replacing it with an Asus S16 running on Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (an excellent laptop). One of the main reasons was missing my old Linux setup.
I've briefly tested M5 Pro in an Apple store and was surprised by how quick it felt and did anything. A tangible and significant difference, and I really feel it would be good getting it, or M6.
However - before, MacOS was a big factor driving me towards Apple - now, it would be hard for me to give up my Linux setup and all the stuff I love about it, even for such performance...Linux progressed really nicely, while MacOS deteriorated at the same rate, and it's changing the balance and the decision for me.