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Comments (189)

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  al_borland
  I always get a little bothered when I see negative reviews from a CPU update in Apple laptops. While a new CPU alone isn’t a thrilling update, it’s important that they do these regularly so consumers looking to buy aren’t forced to buy a 3 year old product with no idea when a refresh will come. I’ve been in this situation many times with Apple and it has been very frustrating. I’m glad they are back on a yearly refresh schedule.I think the issue stems from too many people making their living off reviews that require something exciting to get views. When updates are more evolution than revolution, it makes for a more boring article/video. I always worry that these types of responses will lead Apple to do silly things, like leaving old chips out there too long, or adding pointless features just so there is something new to talk about.
• Sweepi
  > Back in the PowerPC and Intel days, Macs would sometimes go years between meaningful spec bumps, as Apple waited on its partners to deliver appropriate hardware for various machines.Yes and no. Sometimes Intel did not move as fast as Apple wanted, and sometimes Apple didnt feel like it. Especially the MacPro (trash can and old cheese-grate) and the MacMini (2012-2018) were neglected.Today, the MacPro ships with M2 Ultra, the MacStudio ships with M3 Ultra, and its not certain that the MacMini and the iMac will get the M5 or will continue shipping with the M4 for the foreseeable future.
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  davedx
  Not me: I wanted Apple’s software division to innovate like its hardware division. Extra power with nothing to use it on except more and more docker containers isn’t compelling to me. I’ve not upgraded my M1 Macbook Pro and don’t plan to
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  naruhodo
  Apple could have my money in exchange for their hardware. I won't even ask for support. They just need to provide the hardware specifications to Linux developers.
• JodieBenitez
  Still no need to upgrade my M1 MBA... life is good.
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  nl
  I have a M1 Max MPB from 2022 with 32G RAM (which I'm grateful for).More performance (especially for local AI models) is always great, but I'm trying to imagine what I'd want out of a design change!I think slightly thinner would be nice, but not if it runs hotter or throttles.Smaller bezels on the screen maybe?I'm one of those who liked the touchbar (because I think that applications which labelled its shortcuts in the touchbar are awesome) so I think some innovation around things like that would be nice. But not if it compromises the perfect keyboard.I do think MacOS would be improved with touchscreen support.
• jmspring
  I'm still typing this from an M1 MAX MBP w/ 64 gig of ram. I ended up needing more memory so, I swapped to this machine instead of my M1 air w/ 16gig. Both machines are completely capable for most tasks I deal with as a developer. Do I like my work m3? Sure. I wish I had the old m3 air I had to give back. But I'm happy with my machines.It's funny that my ipad has a more current CPU than my two laptops.
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  nchmy
  I thought this was going to be about Apple's various recent catastrophic software innovations, saying "why did you have to mess with a good thing? We just wanted it to stay as-is, even if that's considered 'boring'"
• amelius
  General purpose computing is what we wanted.
• 827a
  Personally: I am extremely excited for a world where we have silicon that's capable of driving triple-A level gaming in the ~20w TDP envelope. M5 might actually be the first real glimpse we've had into this level of efficiency.
• Huxley1
  I can relate. Most users just want stable, quiet performance improvements, not a revolution every update. Do you care more about performance improvements or new features?
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  Normal_gaussian
  I've heard that the M-series chips with metal do great on the whole small model with low latency front; but I have no practical experience doing this yet. I'm hoping to add some local LLM/STT function to my office without heating my house.I'm uncertain as to whether any M series mac will be performant enough and the M1/M2 mac mini's specifically, or whether there are features in the M3/M4/M5 architecture that make it worth my while to buy new.Are these incremental updates actually massive in the model performance and latency space, or are they just as small or smaller?
• dur-randir
  Nah. I want fixes in macos, not "boring" nor "shiny updates".
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  kentm
  Frankly I’d be incredibly exited if the next Apple OS update was “No new major featurs. Bug fixes, perf optimization, and minor ergonomic improvements only”.
• LarsDu88
  Reading this on my brand new M5 Mac :)
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  philipwhiuk
  What happened to the M3 GPU to give it a drop in score?
• kristianp
  This seems like a straw man. Are reviewers really calling the M5 boring?
• fullofdev
  Agree! very happy with the M4 performance.
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  0xbadcafebee
  I hate that computers get faster, because it means I'll be forced to buy another laptop. It goes like this: - Some developer buys a new laptop - Developer writes software (a browser) - When the software works "fast enough" on their new laptop, they ship it - The software was designed to work on the dev's new laptop, not my old laptop - Soon the software is too bloated to work on my old laptop - So I have to buy a new laptop to run the software Before I'd buy a laptop because it had cool new features. But now the only reason I buy a new one is the new software crashes from too little RAM, or runs too slowly. My old laptops work just fine. All the old apps they come with work just fine. Even new native apps work just fine. But they can't run a recent browser. And you can't do anything without a recent browser.If our computers never got faster, we would still be able to do everything the same that we can do today. But we wouldn't have to put down a grand every couple years to replace a perfectly good machine.
• snvzz
  For Exciting, look into RISC-V.That's gonna be wild starting 2026, with the first implementations of RVA23, such as Tenstorrent Ascalon devboards TBA Q2.
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  gsibble
  Mac hardware has so significantly outpaced software needs I think there are diminishing returns. I'm a software developer who uses all sorts of advanced stuff and I only bought an M4 Pro, not a Max, because it wasn't worth the extra money. There are so few applications that max out a CPU for any meaningful amount of time these days like rendering videos or 3D.My M4 iPad Pro is amazing but feels totally overpowered for what it's capable of.I guess what I'm saying is.......I don't need faster CPUs. I want longer battery life, 5G connectivity, WiFI 7, lighter weight, a better screen, a better keyboard, etc..I guess it's odd that Apple spends so much time making faster computers when that is practically an already solved problem.
• anon
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  bigyabai
  We want Apple to compete. When they stopped signing CUDA drivers, I thought it was because Apple had a competitive GPGPU solution that wasn't SPIR-V in a trenchcoat. Here we are 10 years later with SPIR-V in a trenchcoat. The lack of vision is pathetic and has undoubtedly cost Apple trillions in the past half-decade alone.If you think this is a boring architecture, more power to you. It's not boring enough for me.
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  ZenoArrow
  [flagged]
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  bittercynic
  They say no downside, but if you need to run windows 7 in virtualbox, you still need an intel mac (or other non-arm computer).
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  bryanlarsen
  M1 had performance/watt way ahead of x86.M5 has performance/watt below Panther Lake.Is that really what you want?
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  avmich
  > The difference is that with Apple silicon, Apple owns and controls the primary technologies behind the products it makes, as Tim Cook has always wanted.But did customers want it?I'll leave it here, as the point is made.