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Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

• rvz 1mo ago
  > M5 Ultra features a massive amount of high-bandwidth unified memory, up to 512GB, and delivers a staggering 1.2TB/s of unified memory bandwidth that is 50 percent higher than M3 Ultra. Apple never needed to participate in the AI race to zero. Because they were already at the finish line years ago building their own chips that can run large >100B parameter AI models locally.
  • nasaeclipse 1mo ago
    As someone who works in AI now, I have found it pretty amazing that Apple basically didn't do much with AI software, and focused more on the hardware side. I think this is what the future of AI is going to look like, local models run on your mac for your workflow. It's possible that they're working on their own LLM that's going to work very well on their chips, and possibly outperform anything out there when they do release it.
    • ngvrnd 1mo ago
      nth mover advantage.
      • Havoc 1mo ago
        Has yet to materialise
    • compounding_it 1mo ago
      >local models run on your mac for your workflow. 10 years ago 32GB ram laptops sounded too much. 8 was enough. These days even I would get that much ram since it’s soldered. 64GB is higher end. In a few years we should see such high end hardware commonplace. Working with a local LLM to get work done is the ideal way to go which has mostly hardware limitation as of now that gets solved in due time.
      • parineum 1mo ago
        > 10 years ago 32GB ram laptops sounded too much. 8 was enough. These days even I would get that much ram since it’s soldered. 64GB is higher end. Ten years ago I got 64gb of ram in my laptop, same as I have now. I bought both for business and personal use. System ram capacity hasn't changed much in 10 years. It makes me curious how old you were 10 years ago.
        • swiftcoder 1mo ago
          > Ten years ago I got 64gb of ram in my laptop We were definitely outliers that long ago. I put 64 GB in a MacBook Pro back in 2019, and that was (a) overkill for everything I ever ran on that machine, and (b) stupidly expensive by 2019 standards (albeit almost affordable by 2026 standards)
    • givinguflac 1mo ago
      |It's possible that they're working on their own LLM Yep, Siri AI; they’re doing it in public.
      • robotresearcher 1mo ago
        ‘Apple Foundation Model’
      • raizer88 1mo ago
        Didn't they fire half of siri team yesterday?
    • llm_nerd 1mo ago
      >I have found it pretty amazing that Apple basically didn't do much with AI software The iPhone 15 was almost entirely marketed based upon AI (I would say fraudulently so, advertising features they still haven't delivered), and a huge portion of the OS work was on local AI or AI integration. And for that matter Apple has been dumping enormous sums into their own AI development. Their failure to have a lot to show for it doesn't void the fact that they tried really, really hard. It's bizarre how often this "Apple sat on the sidelines and let the AI people fight...so smart!" narrative appears on HN. Apple hasn't gone down the path of spending hundreds of billions on nvidia GPU data centres, but they absolutely tried really hard to matter in AI.
  • teekert 1mo ago
    Is there anything comparable that runs Linux, doesn't necessarily look as good, but is perhaps (a lot) cheaper/fixable? Or is this really pretty optimal? I mean this is not nvidia based right? It's all custom? So we can use it under Asahi perhaps? I want to get something for my company to run local models, wondering what would be a good option.
    • intelkishan 1mo ago
      Asahi was stuck at M3 last time I checked it out.
      • rowanG077 1mo ago
        M2 even.
      • notenlish 1mo ago
        Development on m3 is ongoing, m2 is supported
    • datakan 1mo ago
      I love linux and would be using it if the ARM support was better. It's just not there and most distros that support ARM do it a little poorly. I just haven't seen anything even remotely comparable to Apple Silicon and unfortunately Linux is struggling very hard to support it.
      • Marsymars 1mo ago
        It's not quite that ARM support isn't good on Linux, it's that there aren't high-performance ARM chips with strong general-purpose software stacks. Like the Raspberry Pi is very well supported, but otherwise the only upmarket devices are things like Ampere workstations and hyperscaler server chips.
    • Lunar5227 1mo ago
      Strix platform maybe?
  • LeBit 1mo ago
    1.2TB/s is 2/3 the speed of an nVidia 5090. But you get a generic computer and much more RAM. And you lose a couple of organs.
    • noodletheworld 1mo ago
      How much memory does that come with?
      • rbinv 1mo ago
        32 GB GDDR 7
    • snapcaster 1mo ago
      is it still effectively 2/3rds? Don't know enough to compare a discrete GPU/CPU setup to something like this where it's more integrated
      • danielEM 1mo ago
        There is no magic, if the data you compute as atomic chunk don't fit in cache then memory bandwidth R/W limit kicks in and architecture does not matter. On contrary - having multi gpu setup of same price and same memory size with even slower memories may give you effectively much higher bandwidth but at the cost of power consumption.
    • bel8 1mo ago
      The real downside for me is not having Linux support. It would take Apple one or two engineers to make Linux life much easier on macs. But Linux is outside their walled garden so it's ignored.
      • LeBit 1mo ago
        I’m done with macOS. My Mac Mini is strictly a headless server for llama.cpp. I use a Linux workstation. If I were limited to use Mac hardware , I would install Linux in VMware Fusion and work from there.
  • jjice 1mo ago
    I was so blown away at all the discourse surrounding "Apple fumbling on models". They should never have been in the model game to begin with. Apple crushes hardware over the last decade and that's a huge advantage today. In the end, massive models have proven to be very strong, but small models have proven to be good enough (especially with the recent Qwen 2.8 27B drop) and that's where I imagine the future will lie for consumers.
    • chasd00 1mo ago
      I suspected Apple would let everyone else blow all their money then, when the dust settles, deliver a better experience to end users and clean up.
      • jjice 1mo ago
        Agreed. Apple doesn't innovate anymore, but they're generally pretty good at adapting once other people have.
        • maherbeg 1mo ago
          I think this is a bit of a crazy statement. Everyone expects Apple to somehow build a category leading product every year. I'd expect something innovative every couple of years * the iPhone * the iPad * apple watch * airpods * unified memory laptops and computers Those are all products that either created a category or changed that industry.
          • jjice 1mo ago
            I think that each of the products you name is the top or near the top of their category, but these weren't creating a category. I don't think my original comment says anything about "changing that industry", so that's a bit of a strawman. They absolutely change the industry they're in. They're just not first to any of those categories that you mentioned (maybe unified memory, I'm not sure). They weren't the first smart phone, tablet, smart watch, or true wireless earbuds. They did a damn fine job making each of those though. I am typing this on a my work macbook wearing AirPods, and AppleWatch, listening to audio on my iPhone. Apple does a really good job with their products. Realizing how surrounding by Apple I am...
  • dgellow 1mo ago
    They did participate early on with Apple Intelligence and failed miserably. Really good move to not double down and let the others explore the space first
• mococa 1mo ago
  I know they are a phone company, but I think they should focus on local models software, not only hardware.
  • Matl 1mo ago
    Software wise there's plenty to choose from already. Ollama/llama.cpp, LM Studio, Lemonade, vllm etc. Anything Apple would bring to the table?
    • evilduck 1mo ago
      Maybe https://mlx-framework.org https://mlx-framework.org FWIW, Ollama, LM Studio and Lemonade (and oMLX) also wrap Apple's MLX framework.
  • kksweet 1mo ago
    They aren't a phone company, and haven't been ever. They're a hardware company first
    • dosisking 1mo ago
      > They're a hardware company first More specifically, they're a hardware dongle company first
    • flyingjoe 1mo ago
      More like an "ecosystem company". It's the Hardware, Software and Services in combination. None would work without the other (to reach the scale apple is)
      • Danox 1mo ago
        Probably too young if it was easy these companies would still be around I miss them SGI, Sun, Digital, Acorn, particularly SGI and Acorn. All were roadkill of Wintel.
  • mleo 1mo ago
• anshumankmr 1mo ago
  >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.
  • nemomarx 1mo ago
    it's not super well optimized I think. unreal engine 5 is taxing even without a lot of gameplay or stuff on screen
    • flaunf221 1mo ago
      I'm not sure who that line is supposed to impress. Gamers focusing on graphically demanding AAA games would laugh at this. People who don't game much probably won't know whether this is good or not.
  • deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
  • JauntyHatAngle 1mo ago
    But it has the right creative vibe which is the point really. Apple has a general creative aesthetic which plays well with artsy games like mixtape. It's a very deliberate choice when if it doesn't make sense to gamers.
  • wilg 1mo ago
    cutscenes are often the most demanding part of a game!
    • trashface 1mo ago
      There are some older games (not that old, one of the metal gear/raiden games had it, so like 10-15 years) where the cut scenes are actually prerendered video playback - so not very demanding. Don't know if mixtape does this though.
  • serbuvlad 1mo ago
• callamdelaney 1mo ago
  Usable ram amounts in late October
  • pixl97 1mo ago
    Usable, not affordable.
    • nozzlegear 1mo ago
      Subjective
• SXX 1mo ago
  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
  • Void_ 1mo ago
    VAT?
    • cs02rm0 1mo ago
      I think the $34/GB figure might be inclusive of VAT and the $4560 not, which would be $28.5 otherwise. Not sure.
      • SXX 1mo ago
        Oops sorry its just typo. Its 5460 not 4560.
    • SXX 1mo ago
      AFAIK UK VAT is 20% and it's 27% higher price. Its just what you get for living in UK I guess.
  • dgellow 1mo ago
    That US price is before sales tax no?
    • cute_boi 1mo ago
      Correct. It is better to go to delaware and purchase it.
      • AbsurdCensor 1mo ago
        Or just use Privacy.com and use an address in Delaware. Then you can buy it where ever.
• FuckButtons 1mo ago
  ~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.
  • SXX 1mo ago
    It cant be 14k for 512GB because 96 -> 256 upgrade alone cost $4000
• mrtksn 1mo ago
  Apple Studio with maxed out M5 Ultra, 256GB RAM and 16TB storage is 18,299$. 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 :)
  • intrasight 1mo ago
    So is downpayment on a house. I would buy the house and just pay for tokens as needed. The house will get more valuable and that wealth would buy a lot of tokens in the future - which will probably get cheaper. EDIT: or buy AAPL. If I had bought Apple stock instead of buying a Mac LC II in 1992, then I would have about $2 million in Apple stock.
    • physicalecon 1mo ago
      [dead]
    • garciasn 1mo ago
      With the way RAM prices are going up, you could expect to make 20% profit on any purchase.
      • intrasight 1mo ago
        I tripled my money on my RAM purchase of three years ago. So, yes, for short-term appreciation that's hard to beat. But I don't think it's something that will continue.
    • d_runs_far 1mo ago
      Had I done that as well, then maybe I wouldn't have gotten intrigued by HyperCard, then Director/Authorware, then Flash, then HTML, then...
    • 1mo ago
• tester756 1mo ago
  When will Apple's Mx CPUs use Intel's 18A/18A-P/14A node(s)?
  • etempleton 1mo ago
    Maybe in a year or so or maybe never. It depends on how 14a turns out and if it is comparable to TSMC 2NM. They may also choose to utilize 18a-p / 14a for other chips and not the M-series.
• SilverSlash 1mo ago
  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?
  • skinfaxi 1mo ago
    A number of people in these comments, it would seem.
    • usrnm 1mo ago
      So, rich enthusiasts it is, then
      • fearmerchant 1mo ago
        I'm going to buy one to watch youtube videos and surf social media.
        • grumpyprole 1mo ago
          And to read rumour sites about the next model.
  • ericd 1mo ago
    I think there's some mental inertia around what a computer is and what it's worth. This thing can build custom software for you, mostly autonomously. It can monitor things happening on the internet that are relevant to you, in a holistic and flexible way. We have one crawling the web for local events we'll like, and it judges them based on what it knows about us, and it tells us about the best matches every weekend, which has yielded some awesome outings we wouldn't have known about. It reads the literature on a subject in seconds and uses it as context to help in decision support. It's not the same value proposition as a computer 3 years ago, where most people are mentally anchored on what a computer should cost. Having it at home means that you can use it as a personal agent that always puts your interests first, regardless of what ad model the commercial providers decide to put in, and you can stash in it your medical data, what you buy, what you make, your worries, hopes, and dreams, without worrying about that being used as training data, or worse, something to exploit you commercially. I think it'll become considered totally reasonable to consider spending the cost of a small car on a computer, for many families. Also, a lot of companies are looking at how to run capable models locally to cut some of their (massive) cloud AI bills. An easy answer is worth a lot to them.
• nelsonic 1mo ago
  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.
  • oscarteg 1mo ago
    As someone who is a beginner at home networking and have a Mac Mini running as a Plex server at home; what is the use case for the 10gb network card?
    • user00005 1mo ago
      My example is I'm looking for a new media creation machine to replace my homebuilt PC from 2015. Since that old machine can't run Windows 11 and also because Apple storage is so expensive, my idea is to turn the PC into a Linux storage machine with a 10G NIC. Then I should just be able to edit off of the storage instead of worrying about caching it locally. The prices are ridiculous though. I may just keep rolling with my Windows 10 setup.
    • snovv_crash 1mo ago
      It feels stupid having my internet be faster than my computer can connect to it
    • AbsurdCensor 1mo ago
      As long as everything is using 10gb, faster transfer speeds when moving data between computers. For downloads, it wont help unless you have 10gb fiber, but for most folks, 2.5gb is quite fast. Hell my spinning media NAS has a hard time saturating when moving files between internal servers.
  • Phemist 1mo ago
    RAM and SSD in apple gear has always been way over-priced. There was a short blessed period in March where the M5 Max macbook pro was out, but the general 30% price hike had not yet happened. In this period, given the insane inflated RAM prices, the price apple was charging for the M5 Max with 128 GB RAM was actually _reasonable_.
• xattt 1mo ago
  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.
  • j45 1mo ago
    The regular Mac mini will blow you away, search YouTube for video editing reviews using different Mac mini’s.
    • geerlingguy 1mo ago
      I use both the base M4 Mac mini and an M4 MacBook Air for Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, and Fusion, and while they're not as almost-always-perfectly-smooth as my Mac Studio, they're about 100x better than the experience I used to have on my old Intel MacBook Pros in the 2010s. I edit 4K ProRes and H.265 footage, sometimes with multicam (up to 4 streams) and color adjustments, titles, etc. It's only after stacking 3-5 effects before things can stutter, really. Or if you try doing something CPU-intense in the background _while_ running some heavy creative software. I just don't do that.
• recursivedoubts 1mo ago
  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.
  • intrasight 1mo ago
    Yes. I commented elsewhere that it's only twice as expensive as my first mac which has 128kb.
    • high_na_euv 1mo ago
      You should compare with competition, not what was decades ago. E.g how is the perf/$ vs Wildcat lake
  • jgalt212 1mo ago
    when was the turing test beaten?
    • goda90 1mo ago
      I think it was determined that the Turing test is too easy because humans are too easily fooled.
      • bbor 1mo ago
        Yes, which is exactly and entirely the point of the whole paper. Somehow missed still -- despite how important AI has become, shockingly few people actually read the short, layperson-accessible paper that started the whole field. I kinda have to link it now, so uhh here's a random PDF: https://www.hec.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Computing%20Machinery%20and%20Intelligence%20by%20Alan%20Turing.pdf https://www.hec.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Computing%...
      • acchow 1mo ago
        Humans are equally fooled into believing each other are conscious.
• paxys 1mo ago
  More validated by the day that my $450 M4 Mac Mini (16GB) was the best deal in computing for a long, long time.
  • hasteg 1mo ago
    I live right next to a micro center and remember when they started offering that deal... still so pissed at myself for not buying one. I ended up just buying a raspberry Pi for what I was doing, but seeing as where the prices are now, I messed that up a bit. Also my worst sin was not buying 64GB of DDR5 when I was doing my computer upgrades back in August last year.
    • brookst 1mo ago
      I returned an M4 Mac mini, 64GB, unopened... because I thought it was excessive for my needs then. I swear it'll be one of the things flashing before my eyes when this all ends.
    • aucisson_masque 1mo ago
      Mac mini aren't that good for home made server, raspberry sure ain't powerful but there are in-between. Not being able to upgrade the SSD or the ram is a big issue, not so much on a portable laptop.
      • zamadatix 1mo ago
        Out of all of my home servers, the M4 Mac Mini is probably my favorite and runs many workloads even though it sits on a 96 core Epyc server now (needed the massive amounts of PCIe for something else). I was able to upgrade my SSD with a 3rd party one, not that sticking an NVMe drive on one of the thunderbolt ports would have been a bad pick. About the only place it didn't make sense is if you wanted a ton of RAM.
    • Huppie 1mo ago
      I feel so incredibly lucky I chose to overdo it a bit on RAM when I upgraded last year... though I remember deliberating to go for 192GB (it's 96GB now) but motherboard support was somewhat more complicated and it felt like a waste of 300 euros...
• amazingamazing 1mo ago
  I should have bought a 100 m4 mac minis when I had the chance. Thanks hyperscalers for buying all the supply and renting it back. A m4 mac mini is better than al of these per dollar, msrp adjusted. Hopefully by the end of the decade China figures out manufacturing at scale and fixes this.
  • j45 1mo ago
    How much ram would each of those have 100 had?
    • amazingamazing 1mo ago
      16gb unified
      • AbsurdCensor 1mo ago
        Aren't you kind of stuck with smaller models on the mini though? Even with the pro you'd be stuck with a max of four daisy chained over thunderbolt and with the 160 gig memory bandwidth you'd probably be far better off with other configurations.
        • j45 1mo ago
          They can be connected to share ram and processing. Depending on the use case for known processes the LLM requirements are much, much, simpler and lower to make and keep it more predictable.
          • AbsurdCensor 1mo ago
            I really haven't seen any 16gb Mac Mini cluster setups running large models at any appreciable speed for the reasons previously provided. Do you happen to have examples that folks are actually using?
      • j45 1mo ago
        Neat.. Roughly.. 1.6 TB of RAM? Was there a view of how you say that being allocated and split up or was there spare capacity too?
• walrus01 1mo ago
  If I compare to like, January 2024, the prices for RAM these days make me want to weep.
• nonewideas 1mo ago
  Cannot believe "moar transistors" is still the only idea they have.
  • simlevesque 1mo ago
    They pionneered unified memory a few years ago.
    • artisin 1mo ago
      No. Apple did not invent or pioneer the concept of unified or shared memory, but they did create an exceptional implementation of it.
      • bigfishrunning 1mo ago
        I feel like this is true of almost everything apple does -- they take something clunky from a year ago and "pioneer it" by improving the UX.
• stuff4ben 1mo ago
  M5 Pro in a Mac Mini with 64GB RAM and 10Gbit Ethernet seems like the perfect Jellyfin server and Ollama test server. All for just over $3K (I specced with only 1TB local nvme).
  • paxys 1mo ago
    Probably worth it for Ollama but you can run Jellyfin off a raspberry pi.
    • stuff4ben 1mo ago
      True re: the Raspberry Pi, but I was thinking the 10Gbit Ethernet would allow more concurrent streaming in my household. But it's probably overkill.
      • AndroTux 1mo ago
        If your household consists of more than 15 people consuming 4K content at the same time, the 10G upgrade may be worth considering. Edit: never mind, 2.5G is now the default, so you'll probably need more than 40 people to saturate that with streaming video.
    • al_borland 1mo ago
      > you can run Jellyfin off a raspberry pi. This may depend on the size of your library. I tried installing Jellyfin on a Synology NAS, which runs Plex just fine, and it ran so poorly it was basically unusable. It “worked”, but it was painful.
      • Keyframe 1mo ago
        not sure which cpu that Synology has, but I run jellyfin on ugreen nasync dxp8800 plus which has intel with QSV and it breaks no sweat in both transcoding (if needed) and serving over 10GBE.
        • al_borland 1mo ago
• Roark66 1mo ago
  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.
  • kamranjon 1mo ago
    I think you misread, it’s 170gb/s for base M6 model and 1.2tb/s for M5 ultra.
  • deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
  • riobard 1mo ago
    Unified memory is about address space. The bandwidth is still determined by bottlenecks to the processor. CPU/RAM links are still fairly narrow.
• ciupicri 1mo ago
  > M6 supports up to 32GB of unified memory to multitask across demanding apps I can't believe that Apple still comes with this bullshit like 32 GBs is a lot. It's a lot for video memory - vRAM, but not RAM.
  • al_borland 1mo ago
    The M6 is a base level chip, for normal users. Anyone needing more than 32GB of RAM is likely going with higher end chip that supports more RAM.
    • ciupicri 1mo ago
      I can accept the fact that something is low level, but don't present it like it's high level.
• coldtea 1mo ago
  >M6 supports up to 32GB of unified memory Is this a joke? >Additionally, M5 Ultra features a massive amount of high-bandwidth unified memory, up to 512GB Now we're talking. But at what cost?
  • arcatech 1mo ago
    The Pro and Ultra variants are the ones with the higher RAM amounts. They didn’t announce the M6 Pro yet.
    • coldtea 1mo ago
      Yeah, but they still write regarding plain M6: "M6 also introduces a Dual 16-core Neural Engine, providing up to 2x the peak compute over previous generations to make on-device AI workflows run even faster" .
    • kjs3 1mo ago
      They've announced there won't be a M6 Pro in favor of getting M7 out the door.
  • brianwawok 1mo ago
    At the price points they are hitting, can’t afford over 32 GB on the cheaper model. 256 memory gets you to like 11k. So like 15-20k.
• r0fl 1mo ago
  Maxed out Studio is $30,000+ tax in Canada if financed through Apple. That's wild!
  • brianwawok 1mo ago
    The storage is pretty silly. Bring that down and the max isn’t nearly as bad, more like 12k
• TimByte 1mo ago
  Gonna go sell a kidney, should just about cover a base Mac Studio. Guess I'll need a payday loan for the power cable
• xiphias2 1mo ago
  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
  • rrgok 1mo ago
    On what hardware you running Omarchy?
    • xiphias2 1mo ago
      Just Beelink, but it doesn't matter at all. I ordered an ASUS Zephyrus G16 with 5090 NVIDIA card + 1.9kg (quite an overkill, and I know that I will have to limit power output), but hasn't arrived yet. But what's fun is that I love QML+QuickShell with its hot reloading, Hyprland with its Lua support. With AI nowdays it's just so easy to do deep UI changes that wasn't possible a year ago.
  • Axsuul 1mo ago
    I had a chance to try Omarchy past few days and it's just very different vs macOS. I honestly never had a problem with the windowing system ever since I built my own customization scripts (i.e. Hammerspoon). I can see the appeal for someone who wants ultimate customization though but macOS still wins overwhelmingly when it comes to polish, ecosystem, user experience, and apps (nothing comes close).
    • cosmic_cheese 1mo ago
      It’s not just Omarchy, there’s really not much out there in the desktop Linux sphere for those who are mostly happy with how macOS works out of the box. Everything is either in a similar vein to the Omarchy setup (hyper-minimal tiling WM), Windows-like (KDE, Cinnamon, most other DEs), or a chimera with a grab bag of design bits from every desktop and mobile platform (GNOME, Pantheon, COSMIC). It’s a bit depressing because it means that if I ever feel forced to switch my daily driver, it won’t come without a dump truck load of friction, frustration, and lost productivity, which I’ve validated by using the various Linux desktops on secondary machines.
• neverrroot 1mo ago
  Wouldn’t it be amazing for Apple to give us a MacBook Air 15” M6 with a 15W sustained passive TDP capability? Just amazing engineering push, the competition got the message and we benefit.
• ricardobayes 1mo ago
  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?
• mrchrome 1mo ago
  [dead]
  • AndroTux 1mo ago
    Where does the M6 geekbench score come from?
    • mrchrome 1mo ago
      It's an estimate, for now, based on Apple's claims. I will update it to the real geekbench score when it comes out.
• deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
• LoganDark 1mo ago
  Is Apple just going to announce everything silently from now on? No more getting excited for the big events to see what's new -- it just appears on the blog one day? Also: "a staggering 1.2TB/s of unified memory bandwidth" -- yay, the GPU has reached the year 2020! (I'm a bit bitter that my M4 Max is near useless for local LLMs because of its low memory bandwidth.)
  • wmf 1mo ago
    I assume they'll have events for the MacBook Ultra and M7.
    • LoganDark 1mo ago
      I'm getting kind of tired of them announcing the base level chip and then waiting forever to release the more powerful versions. I'm also pretty upset that it's unlikely to change now that they've found it's good for business. Like releasing only the base level iPhones first.
• bayindirh 1mo ago
  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...*
  • qwertytyyuu 1mo ago
    Echos of the ai race as well haha
  • mr_toad 1mo ago
    Apple levelled up in the middle of a fight.
  • forinti 1mo ago
    Cheap RAM in 500 yards. ->
    • RankingMember 1mo ago
      [apparent tunnel to cheap RAM painted on rock face]
      • bayindirh 1mo ago
        ...and Apple zooms through it like it's a real tunnel.
  • derwiki 1mo ago
    Reading Infinite Games, they tell an anecdote about a Microsoft exec on a flight telling an Apple exec that the Zune was a way better portable music player than the iPod. The Apple exec was just “yup, you’re probably right” and then soon after the iPhone dropped
    • kccqzy 1mo ago
      That just sounds like a standard introvert response when one doesn’t want to walk.
• deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
• tw1984 1mo ago
  will be great fun if one M5 Ultra with 512GB memory at 1.2T bandwidth capable of doing 3x smallish local model inferencing each at Opus 4.5 level of intelligence.
  • brianwawok 1mo ago
    The memory bandwidth and size seems to be there, but what is the tokens per sec on like a qwen model? And you can basically do 3x opus 4.5 on the $100 a month claude plan. Your payback will be near infinity years after electricity.
    • tw1984 1mo ago
      you are assuming the idea, the data, the code being touched by opus worths nothing. how about measuring returns in the sense that I no longer need to share my flagship idea with some random 3rd party just because it hosts the LLM I am using?
• GreenLightGo 1mo ago
  From what I’ve noticed, Apple products have been getting worse in quality year after year. Sometimes they even ruin their own devices with updates... I guess it’s all because of marketing.
  • LeoPanthera 1mo ago
    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
    • GreenLightGo 1mo ago
      I’m mostly talking about their iPhones, where new updates sometimes make older models worse. I know a lot of people whose iPhones started lagging after iOS updates.
      • dwayne_dibley 1mo ago
        Hard disagree, I'm still rocking an iphone 7.
      • Danox 1mo ago
        Still using a iPhone 11 Pro (2019) no problem running the latest update.
  • QAtration 1mo ago
    still using my m1 Pro and battery life is still great, dont to see any point to change smthing
• varispeed 1mo ago
  512GB late october sounds lame. and 512GB is so 2025. Give us 1TB version. Where is the competitive spirit?
  • rrgok 1mo ago
    Yeah, for developers it should be 128GB base version.
  • bilbo0s 1mo ago
    >Where is the competitive spirit? To be fair, where is the competitor at this form factor?
    • varispeed 1mo ago
      Xiaomi is coming. Hopefully they'll make 1TB box.
• Artgor 1mo ago
  I have Mac M1 Max and I'm quite happy with it. But these advances make me think that maybe I should upgrade to Mac M6 (or something) when it is released.
• w10-1 1mo ago
  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.
  • cromka 1mo ago
    > Leasing now an option, only $50/month (cheaper than inference subscription?) For which configuration, though?
  • GoofGarage 1mo ago
    I looked at multiple configurations, and mathed it out. With leasing, you pay ~75% of the capital cost (excl. tax) over 3 years, but end up with no asset. Apple computers tend to have excellent resale value, and Mac Minis/Studios have the least depreciation of them all. I understand the benefits to both taxes and cash flow, but boy is Apple winning big on those lease offers for Studios.
    • mathisfun123 1mo ago
      > but end up with no asset consumer electronics has literally never been an asset. > Apple computers tend to have excellent resale value do you think the new leasing category might change that? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1vxzg6v/apple_introduces_new_mac_studio_with_m5_max_and/p5t111u/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1vxzg6v/apple_i...
      • echoangle 1mo ago
        Trade in value isn’t the market resell value though, you’re losing money for the convenience of having a trusted and easy buyer.
• iandanforth 1mo ago
  FWIW scaling up from https://huggingface.co/avlp12/Qwen3.8-27B-Alis-MLX-6bit 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.
• gardaani 1mo ago
  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-matters-ai/ 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.
  • curious_cat_163 1mo ago
    > I'd skip M5 and M6 chips for LLM work and wait for a year for M7. Please say more? Is it because it is a one-time cost, unlike a recurring subscription of Claude/Codex?
    • tyre 1mo ago
      If you expect a large leap in performance, buying now means that (a) you will want to buy again in a year but (b) the large leap in performance hurts the resale of what you buy today. Local models will be that much better in a year, so unless you have to have a top-of-the-line local rig today (the argument goes), stick with Claude for another year.
  • bhouston 1mo ago
    The M6 doubled the neural engine from 16 to 32 cores. I would expect that the M7 doubles that again to 64 from 32? That would make sense. I believe that the CPUs are actually limited by ram bandwidth more than the neural engine right when it comes to LLM processing? Maybe the M7 introduces something new to get around the current ram bandwidth problems on the non-Ultra chips.
    • wmf 1mo ago
• Axsuul 1mo ago
  Can anyone recommend the perfect sweet spot for someone who wants to run their own inference?
  • AbsurdCensor 1mo ago
    For me it's be Strix Halo, 128gb machine, especially running Qwen models. Except when I bought it, it was $1,900, now it's $4,600 for the same box. (Wow that's insane) For tinkering and learning, it's been great. Tie it into something like Hermes and you have a pretty powerful AI assistant in a box. And when you need to step up your model, you just do something like OpenRouter and it makes it pretty easy.
    • bsagdiyev 1mo ago
      Seconded. I just got a Strix Halo box a few months back and it is great. Does everything I need it to.
  • rkangel 1mo ago
    Thinkstation PGX maybe? Got the recommendation from these articles: https://www.xda-developers.com/qwen-3-8-27b-reverse-engineering-job-frontier-model/ https://www.xda-developers.com/qwen-3-8-27b-reverse-engineer... https://www.xda-developers.com/lenovo-thinkstation-pgx-review/ https://www.xda-developers.com/lenovo-thinkstation-pgx-revie... But haven't had a chance to try it myself.
  • netsroht 1mo ago
    I have been looking for a good local setup for a while now. Qwen 3.8 27b is really good for a dense model of this size IMO. I already had an RTX 4090 and I forked ninfer [0] with the obsession to squeeze everything out of this card for this model. Results: 149 tok/s decode speed (aggregate with concurrency about ~270 tok/s) with prefill speeds faster than 2500 tok/s. And all of this with full 262k albeit quantized context. Fast prefill speed is really important when launching multiple clients such as opencode or pi at the same time and especially if they launch subagents. This is why I also implemented a caching tier so computed contexts can be faster loaded from RAM (or disk). Speeds feel almost like with official SOTA openai or anthropic models. Im currently measuring a pareto front in J/tok in order to set power limits of this card without sacrificing too much performance. Since we are talking about full power draw of ~480W which is fine during the day (with solar panels) but during night when the sun doesn't shine (even with a battery) I'd like to limit this a little bit. [0] https://github.com/tensorninja/ninfer-4090 https://github.com/tensorninja/ninfer-4090
• cute_boi 1mo ago
  > Apple’s developer frameworks and tools — including Core AI, Core ML, Metal, and Xcode Can we please kill the xcode. It is worst pile of garbage I have to use just to develop ios app.
  • hyperbovine 1mo ago
    This is why so many iOS apps these days are based on Electron/Capacitor/React Native/etc.
    • Weryj 1mo ago
      That's probably because they want to develop cross-platform.
• LeoPanthera 1mo ago
  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.
  • ericboehs 1mo ago
    Great news. Qwen 3.8 Flash Next (125B A6B) is coming out tomorrow. 4 or 6-bit should run nicely on 128GB. Should bench better than Opus 4.7.
    • AbsurdCensor 1mo ago
      I have had a difficult time with running 120b models on my 128gb setup, especially with any larger context size. The 6bit of Qwen 3.5 is already just over 100gb, and when you go down to 4bit it seems a bit lobotomized.
  • deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
  • Marsymars 1mo ago
    Well the upside is that you can run a laptop-sized model and still have enough memory left over to run a couple of Electron apps.
  • rahimnathwani 1mo ago
    If I had 128GB unified RAM I'd try hf.co/unsloth/Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF:BF16 which needs 55GB for just the weights. Something like this would give you three concurrent sessions, each with 240k token context: sudo sysctl iogpu.wired_limit_mb=110000 llama-server -hf unsloth/Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF:BF16 -c 786432 --parallel 3 -ngl 99 -fa on
  • fghorow 1mo ago
    It's not exactly straight out of one of the labs -- it's heavily quantized -- but have a look at [1]. [1] https://github.com/antirez/ds4 https://github.com/antirez/ds4
• hn0tdqaek4 1mo ago
  Well said
• notenlish 1mo ago
  When is the m6 air coming though
• vldmrs 1mo ago
  I would love to see real LLM performance benchmarks for these machines. Apple statement regarding LLM performance seem little vague.
• logotype 1mo ago
  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.
  • post_break 1mo ago
    Contact Apple care and see what they can do. They have been known to do upgrades if you buy around the same time. But with the ram situation that courtesy might be gone now.
  • darken 1mo ago
    M5 Ultra if the portable form factor is not a requirement. (I have a M5 Max 128GB 2TB for context.) That being said: you might want to consider at least 2TB storage. Having 256GB RAM to fit models is less useful when you can only store a 3 or 4 large models on your disk. The M4 -> M5 transition doubled the drive bandwidth (at least for the MacBook Pro, I'd assume the Studio is no different) making them extra nice for loading large models. Then again, you can always add an external NVMe drive over thunderbolt, so the tradeoff is less straightforward than with a portable MBP.
  • pornel 1mo ago
    You should be able to cancel it for free. In EU you also have 14 days to return products bought online, for any reason.
  • sail0rm00n 1mo ago
    M5 Ultra and toss in a MacBook Neo or older MacBook Air to SSH in
  • asimovDev 1mo ago
    Ultra definitely. M5 Max is too hot for a laptop from hearsay. I have a M3 Max in 14in chassis and it's a jet engine that gets really hot
• madduci 1mo ago
  A Macbook Neo with an M6 and 16 GB RAM at $699/€699 would be a killer feat
• ComputerGuru 1mo ago
  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!
  • zimzam 1mo ago
    How are they "making bank" by giving out 0% loans?
    • ComputerGuru 1mo ago
      My friend, the same way everyone else does. It goes from 0% to 28% interest when you miss a payment. Those are rates normal lenders fall asleep dreaming of.
  • stasomatic 1mo ago
    Are you sayin 0% is bad? What is better then? If you have the means, pay outright, no? It used to be a lot worse, paying $16K+ for a 128MB Quadra something based RIP in mid nineties . Do you mean that these things are overpriced from the get go?
    • ComputerGuru 1mo ago
      I am merely pointing out additional revenue streams for Apple here. They make money off the hardware and again off the financing. Car manufacturers and have much lower margins and finance via their financial arms with much less predatory terms than your average credit card. The zero percent APR is very attractive, and easy to convince yourself to go with something above what you can afford. Times are good for Apple.
      • stasomatic 1mo ago
        Good for them. Things cost what they do. I hear you that one can fall into the 0% interest trap, but that’s on us. Not that I want it to happen, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple could get away with even higher prices today. Like 50% more retail on everything. They are holding the line, but I wonder for how long and why. They can pretty much charge what they want.
• shafkathullah 1mo ago
  Saw a 768GB RAM mac coming soon, would wait for that.
  • knollimar 1mo ago
    Saw like a leak or just speculation?
• int32_64 1mo ago
  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...
• blueTiger33 1mo ago
  fucking awesome
• m3kw9 1mo ago
  yesterday someone posted a link saying xiaomi "matched" apple's latest M series performance. Was that for less than 24 hours?
• gizmodo59 1mo ago
  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?
  • tyleo 1mo ago
    Lots of people use the Mac Mini to run the frontier models over night or while traveling. I have a rack in my basement and have thought about throwing one in. You can get a cheaper machine but Apple feels a little more, “rack and forget,” if you have less price sensitivity. Mac Mini + MacBook Neo w/ ssh can be a better setup than MacBook Pro for many people.
    • throwaway219450 1mo ago
      If it’s purely for experimentation then why not the DGX Spark/GB10? It’s up about 10% from release RRP which is quite good (you might argue it was overpriced then, but prosumer and workstation GPU prices are up 100%). 4TB NVMe is not cheap these days - it’d cost at least $500 for a stick - and you get 128GB at a similar bandwidth to an M5 Pro. Nevermind that Apple still insists on providing base systems with only 512GB of non-upgradable SSD. The equivalent spec mini (4TB/64/10G) is almost $5k for half the VRAM. Not as good a CPU compared to the M5/6 but you also get 20 cores and full CUDA.
      • tyleo 1mo ago
        That does not sound like rack and forget. Just looking at prices it’s also way more expensive.
  • henry2023 1mo ago
    You just described why the datacenter business is hard and as a corollary why space datacenters will not be economically viable.
  • jameshart 1mo ago
    You could spend 100 a month leasing one of these for three years and get the best of both worlds
• deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
• lvl155 1mo ago
  Every time Intel/AMD gets close enough, Apple just crushes competition in terms of SoC. I don’t know who’s on that chip team but they’re world-class. Hope they get paid more than a bunch of AI idiots Meta hired to do absolutely nothing (but I know they are not even close).
• luciana1u 1mo ago
  [flagged]
• jbverschoor 1mo ago
  Very well timed for John Ternus's first quarter.
• mark_l_watson 1mo ago
  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.
  • ActorNightly 1mo ago
    Honest question - why are you so stuck on Macs for local inference? A 4 GPU linux box with 3090s, which are $1500 a piece right now, will blow this thing out of the water. Even 2x3090 rig will run most of the good local models like Gemma4:31b at 100+ tok/sec The VRAM of the GPUs are MUCH faster than the unified ram within Apple Silicon. The only difference is the initial model load, which takes longer from disk to VRAM due to PCIE limitations, but once the model is loaded, GPUs can prefill and and generate tokens way faster than any Apple Silicon. So is your desire to upgrade to mac because you just aren't aware of how to set up a GPU rig, or is it something else?
    • deleted 1mo ago
      [deleted]
    • TruthSHIFT 1mo ago
      Upgrading RAM is still probably cheaper than spending $6000 on a linux box. You're correct that inference will be much faster on the Linux box. But, the mac's unified memory can load larger models. And as OP mentions, it's still hard to beat cloud pricing at home.
    • theshrike79 1mo ago
      A Mac mini running an LLM is quiet A PC with similar capabilities is going to sound like a jet taking off.
      • lowbloodsugar 1mo ago
• Jskewel 1mo ago
  The M6 is useless for AI. Is there any model which is actually useful and fast on 32GB?
  • dabeeeenster 1mo ago
    Qwen3.8
    • Jskewel 1mo ago
      Not nearly fast enough on 32GB, would like to be wrong though.
  • bottlepalm 1mo ago
    My jaw dropped, not even a 64GB option, 128 would have been nice. 32 is an insult.
• FpUser 1mo ago
  Call me when Linux will be officially supported. After that I can look and see what else can I get for the price and maybe then ...
• bilsbie 1mo ago
  Is this the best bet for running local AI now? The choices are overwhelming.
• siavosh 1mo ago
  What's everyones recommendation for one to run a good local LLM model on?
  • bigyabai 1mo ago
    If you don't want to wait for prefill, you're going to want a CUDA dGPU system.
  • manmal 1mo ago
    1-2 RTX5090 will be better value than Macs because they have the memory bandwidth for somewhat fast local inference.
    • asimovDev 1mo ago
      and they will become obsolete much slower if at all compared to when the mac will be barely usable once macos stop supporting it in 8 years or so. although maybe by that time there will be local models that you could run straight on the same mac that will reverse engineer it for you and write linux drivers
• throwfaraway135 1mo ago
  "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?
  • kridsdale1 1mo ago
    Just the other day I mentioned how odd it was that Mixtape felt just like AI-Art. At first glance it has great visual style and seems cool. But spend more than 5 minutes with it and you’ll agree there’s nothing there. It has zero ART inside. It’s one hundred percent vibes. I’m not claiming this title was made by GenAI. I’m saying something much more insulting: that the human artists who made it have no talent.
  • docmars 1mo ago
    That's pretty embarrassing. It's such a poor representation of gaming. I'm surprised anyone is still talking about it.
    • bigyabai 1mo ago
      It would have been funny to see Tomb Raider return for it's 12th annual performance comparison in a 2026 Apple keynote.
      • rxyz 1mo ago
        They should have used Cyberpunk or Control. They are few years old now but are native Mac games with ray tracing
    • SockThief 1mo ago
      Well, there's 24 people still playing it now on Steam
      • dprkh 1mo ago
        I never even heard of this game.
• jambalaya8 1mo ago
  Super psyched for the upcoming Mac Mini. Maybe the old NUC can be tossed.
• rconti 1mo ago
  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.
• calf 1mo ago
  So I had just bought from Amazon in July an M4 mini, brand new, for a lucky post-hike price of 832 CA$ (682 USD); it was the very last unit at that price and I snatched it the morning it listed on the Apple/Amazon.ca official vendor. So far I've been using it for a month and it's been great (switching back from a Windows desktop for a decade). Today I entered this new M4 mini's serial as a trade in for the M6 base mini, and the retail price went from $1249 CAD to $824 "once trade-in received". That's the automatic estimate, so basically I'd be paying twice for an upgrade...
• rtaylorgarlock 1mo ago
  "hacker news"
• thomasfl 1mo ago
  This fits neatly in the backpack with the MacBook Pro, if I need more compute power.
• xyst 1mo ago
  Now if only I can natively run Linux on their hardware.
• anigbrowl 1mo ago
  Hmm, I was about to get a MBP with an older Max chip, guess I should wait for prices to slide a bit.
• patatino 1mo ago
  My macbook pro M1 is still running fast and silent.
• g42gregory 1mo ago
  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.
  • g42gregory 1mo ago
    Ok, I just read the announcement word by word. There is a neaural accelerator in each GPU core. So presumably 64 vs 80 neural accelerators, with corresponding inference performance difference. It will make a difference for pre-fill.
• tomcatawk 1mo ago
  Apple is a terrible company through and through that should have been broken up million years ago. But, nobody dares to question apple. My 2019 macbook pro recently started giving me CATERR errors. There are a few forums and LLMs tell me it is logic board. I took it to Best Buy - a location suggested by apple support and they say we could replace battery but there is no guaranteee it will work. Logic board replacement would be $600 to $800. Unfortunately, only Apple can repair it given how every component is integrated and soldered. There is no help available from Apple support or anyone on this issue. Apple creates "Planned Obsolescence" deliberately. Every year they launch new products with minor improvements and that basically distorts markets. There is MEGA scalping going on for Mac Mini but Apple does not care. As a trillion dollar corporation seeking profits Apple does nothing to help price gauging. Unfortunately, there is no competition. Microsoft is 10x deep into its own issues. I wish we had startups who came up with strong competition for Apple.
  • stasomatic 1mo ago
    My 2019 macbook pro recently started giving me CATERR errors. It's a seven year old laptop. Did you want to be buried with it? All in good humor, my guy, only wondering about your expectations. The error seems to be Intel related, Apple is the manufacturer, but you are out of warranty. What is your issue?
    • hairsplit 1mo ago
      Muh nagios, I can’t be buried but I expect it to run forever like my Toyota. Apple has been caught before to deliberately slow down macs and iPhones. It doesn’t matter it has intel processor or not. Apple’s current suppliers are Broadcom and Qualcomm. Do you get to their throats? No. You blame apple since laptop is sold under apple brand.
      • stasomatic 1mo ago
        How can "it" run forever? Things burn out, overheat, bit rot, SSD read/writes, blah blah. The warranty is the warranty, or you get an extended one. Comparison to a Hilux seems fair on surface but isn't in reality. At some point your Toyota is a ship of Theseus. It's doable under the vehicle constraints. Just musing, cheers.
• chmod775 1mo ago
  How much did Larry Ellison pay to have his daughter's pet video game project featured on there?
• 5ersi 1mo ago
  Just bought AMD AI 395+ 64GB RAM for 2000eur. Mac mini would be 2x for about similar performance. Pass.
• mixtureoftakes 1mo ago
  cool but maybe i was expecting much more from both m5 ultra and the next gen so it feels somewhat underwhelming. Hopefully m6 max is more than just a 10% improvement over m5 max
• alluro2 1mo ago
  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.
  • kwanbix 1mo ago
    Yeah, if I could install Linux without any hacks I will get one. Even if I prefer the body of a X1 Carbon ThinkPad, its keyboard and trackpoint.
    • bluecalm 1mo ago
      I am in the same boat. I would buy a Mac if I could run Linux on it. As it is I will pay more for X1 Carbon with a worse CPU just to run free OS on it.
      • stasomatic 1mo ago
        But you aren't buying a Mac at that point, no? The hardware is 1/2 or 1/4. I'd get an X1 myself if it could run macOS, I like the looks and the aesthetic, don't much care about Linux besides my Proxmox / HA/ *arr setup on an old NUC. Why can't we have it all, eh? :)
        • NamlchakKhandro 1mo ago
          LLMs and unified memory
        • bigyabai 1mo ago
          > I'd get an X1 myself if it could run macOS There's actually a number of Thinkpads that can. Searching "thinkpad macos efi" will reveal a number of OpenCore configurations that support booting into the various x86 builds of macOS. I set it up once and was surprised to see that even my touchscreen worked, in addition to a HW accelerated desktop.
• mlhpdx 1mo ago
  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.
  • znpy 1mo ago
    You just never let tour cpu/gpu die get cold! No cycles, no issues! /s
• apparent 1mo ago
  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.
• znpy 1mo ago
  I wonder why they even bothered with m5 ultra instead of going m6 ultra directly, honestly. What’s the point?
  • bottlepalm 1mo ago
    Yield probably.
    • znpy 1mo ago
      i see, fair point
• CurbStomper 1mo ago
  [dead]
• maestroquirk 1mo ago
  Will forever miss the 499$ mac mini!
• chknkachunga 1mo ago
  My m2 max is still running strong, but may upgrade soon
• xacky 1mo ago
  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.
• senderista 1mo ago
  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?
  • shepherdjerred 1mo ago
    Honestly, waiting 5 years until the supply constraints are lesser
• kulahan 1mo ago
  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!!
  • upboundspiral 1mo ago
    It's all marketing talk, sort of. Our transistors are about 30 nm give or take. But we've found new ways of aligning them so that if we had continued using old techniques, the density we get would be "2nm". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_nm_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_nm_process
    • throwaway128967 1mo ago
      Imagine if any other industry worked like this. "Our Quarter Pounder may weigh only 1/8 oz, but we figured out how to pack double the flavor in each mouthful, so we're still selling it as a Quarter Pounder."
• loopxo 1mo ago
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• Einenlum 1mo ago
  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
  • oceansky 1mo ago
    You can try Asashi Linux on supported apple silicon macs
• diebillionaires 1mo ago
  i wish i could use their hardware, but i refuse their software
• gehsty 1mo ago
  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..)
• trompetenaccoun 1mo ago
  >up to 1.2x faster multithreaded performance as compared to M5 Massive. I feared it would only be up to 1x the speed of an M5 /s
• coverband 1mo ago
  I'm so disappointed with the memory pricing we have to endure... MacStudio M5 Pro is $2,499 base with 36GB RAM, but when you increase it to 256GB, the price jumps to $9,499!!!
• apatheticonion 1mo ago
  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?
• nocodeexportcom 1mo ago
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• hackersnooze1 1mo ago
  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.
  • bel8 1mo ago
    I tried to love my work issued m4 pro for many months but couldn't stand macOS so asked for a linux compatible machine.
    • regexorcist 1mo ago
      Yeah for a lot of us macOS really gets in the way of using the otherwise excellent hardware. My daily driver is an M1 Pro with Asahi and it's easily my favorite computer ever. It's a real shame that the newer M models can't run Linux.
    • selfawareMammal 1mo ago
      Out of curiosity what do you need to do with the OS that you can't on MacOS? Ive always found Linux too ugly looking to use and in terms of functionalities I'm not sure what I'm missing in MacOS
      • bel8 1mo ago
        It's about friction. Examples: Docker on Linux is miles better and efficient. Window management and Desktop environment on Linux is whatever I want it to be. Open source gives me freedom: I (LLMs) can investigate/fix/change anything since it's all opensource. Don't like round borders? Easy. Want to fix a bug or improve a behaviour? Not impossible, often easy.
• diddid 1mo ago
  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.
• sanjay_dev 1mo ago
  I'm still using M1 pro, which still runs buttery smooth. No complains but yes 16 gb ram feels little less in some tasks.
• traversajulian 1mo ago
  do 4x512gb builds actually make sense now to run a big model (beyond a cool demo)? or are 200-500B moe models the sweet spot? In which case clustering 256gb builds might make more sense.
• ydna404 1mo ago
  I used to think Apple was ngmi but turns out they didn't have to do anything new and still win
• Dansvidania 1mo ago
  I think I remember that at the 8nm architecture times there were talks about "reaching the physically possible limit" with the size of the transistors. These are 2nm. While normally pretty cynical, I am experiencing one of those "what a time to be alive" moments.
  • crakenzak 1mo ago
    I hate to be that guy, but the nm number is completely unrelated to the actual size of the features printed on the chip. It’s become mainly a "chip manufacturing generation" label. But generation over generation, the features printed on the chips are becoming significantly more compact and advanced, so truly "what a time to be alive"! ;)
    • Dansvidania 1mo ago
      that is incredibly disappointing, but thanks for clarifying that for me. why would the industry keep using the 'nm' unit when it no longer measure the actually etched features, how is the number even picked? :D /facepalm
• teiferer 1mo ago
  Does anybody know how much AI was used to build this? The release cadence that Apple has with its CPUs is impressive.
• vga1 1mo ago
  If only their stuff could reliably run Linux on the release day.
• spwa4 1mo ago
  This is weird. These options are very different from existing options. The M6 memory bandwidth only went up a little bit, which means the bigger AI compute is not going to be worth much in practice. A base M6 should only be close to matching an M1 pro (and it's not even close to an M1 max) M1 pro: 16 GPU cores, 200GB/s memory bandwidth M6: 12 GPU cores, 170GB/s memory bandwidth Now the AI compute is over 5x more. So it should probably be possible to make models that perform better on the M6, but the same models just won't work. But the M5 pro mac mini will wipe the floor with the base M6, as most of its stats are double that of the M6 chip. Should be double the performance easily. Perhaps also relevant: the M5 pro mac mini should have very similar to double the performance to the Nvidia DGX Spark, assuming the model fits the memory. So that is probably the chip it should be compared to for a quick guess about benchmark results.
• linuxhansl 1mo ago
  I feel so left behind with Linux machine on x86. It's rather interesting that Apple (and Arm) are blazing the trail while Intel is seemingly left in the dust. Maybe not entirely on raw performance, but definitely on performance per watt.
  • perbu 1mo ago
    Intel has been making pretty good progress on efficiency the last year and efficiency is the name of the game, you basically can't do performance without it. I think Intel will rise again.
    • jtrn 1mo ago
      My less-than-one-year-old Core Ultra 9 275HX was supposed to be much more power-efficient than previous generations, but I’m not impressed with it at all. Yes, it’s a gaming laptop, but why does it need 70 watts just to idle? And when playing Factorio with a CPU-heavy save, the PC uses 170 watts, while my M5 uses 50 watts on the exact same save. I don’t know how much the CPU alone is to blame for this, but I’m tired of x86 and Intel. My Linux laptop/server with Ubuntu and an AMD CPU is somewhat better (Also a gaming laptop), though. It’s only drawing 25 watts while idle while hosting six web services. So, if I were to go by just my anecdotal experience, having used about 10 different laptops over the last five years, Macs are just in another league when it comes to efficiency. However, the AMD/Linux combination is getting somewhat better at a slow pace, while Windows/Intel is stuck with terrible efficiency.
• senorqa 1mo ago
  ...Additionally, M5 Ultra features a massive amount of high-bandwidth unified memory, up to 512GB, and delivers a staggering 1.2TB/s of unified memory bandwidth that is 50 percent higher than M3 Ultra. That's faster than majority of GPUs available today: 5090 ~1.8TB 5080 1TB 5070 0.72TB My R9700 0.64TB :(
• ruguo 1mo ago
  My M2 still does everything I need, but the M6 is seriously tempting.
  • dazzatron 1mo ago
    Yeah. I keep looking at these updates but then my M2 feels blazing fast and I tell myself I'll wait for the next update.
    • testfrequency 1mo ago
      +1. I have a maxed out M2 Ultra Mac Studio that has aged incredibly well. I’ve yet to be tempted by any recent benchmarks, and I keep feeling like they’ve yet to produce their groundbreaking leap silicon since.
• securethink 1mo ago
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• aetherspawn 1mo ago
  All I wanna know is how many tokens per second on 100B MoE?? Have we cracked 100 yet. When we crack 100 tok/s at 2M context for <$10K I’ll buy one.
• zhengbijun123 1mo ago
  A little expensive, but very powerful.
• adabovehuman 1mo ago
  "in demanding games like Mixtape" I was going to stop making low effort comments, but, come on, you have to agree Apple started making those first.
• shevy-java 1mo ago
  I had a look at RAM prices lately. Two 32GB RAM I bought about 3 years ago, now cost exactly 300% as they did back then. AI companies owe us a lot of money here. They drove up the prices. They should pay us the difference.
• grougnax 1mo ago
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• calini 1mo ago
  Why do I only have two kidneys dude
• abhishxk1 1mo ago
  I have a m1 pro macbook, its still runs very smoothly. Moving from Intel to M series chipsets were a game changer.
• mateenah 1mo ago
  look at the prices !! crazy
• BirAdam 1mo ago
  So many people talk about wanting Linux on Apple Silicon, and while Asahi can run on M1/M2 and has some support on M3, it's not optimal. Also, software quality in Linux, while higher than most alternatives, has been trending downward. I am more eager to have NetBSD's Apple Silicon support improve than I am Linux's. https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/apple/ https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/apple/
• hn97hhnqt7 1mo ago
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• sdevonoes 1mo ago
  I would love to buy the machine but I hate Tahoe.
• sylware 1mo ago
  If Apple does design a RISC-V frontend to their MX microarchitecture... ARM better keep those ISA license fees close to zero.
• stub_out 1mo ago
  Curious how the M6 neural engine compares for local LLM inference. That's the real benchmark now.
• foldr 1mo ago
  With 512GB of RAM, it may finally be feasible to run both Slack and Teams.
• hello_dang_ 1mo ago
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• okokwhatever 1mo ago
  A computer created around a GPU and/or a shared ram to run LLMs should not be called a computer anymore. It should be called an inference engine. I'm not against it but it could be stripped down to reduce some cost and it would be the perfect companion in a lab.
• Ruca_AI 1mo ago
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• apksmb 1mo ago
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