The M5 MacBook Pro still gets the Broadcom WiFi chip but the M5 iPad Pros get the N1 and C1X (Sweet).

All in all, apple is doing some incredible things with hardware.

Software teams at apple really need to get their act together. The M1 itself is so powerful that nobody really needs to upgrade that for most things most people do on their computers. Tahoe however makes my M1 Air feel sluggish doing the exact same tasks ive been last couple of years. I really hope this is not intentional from Apple to make me upgrade. That would be a big let down.

Base models only:

- M1 | 5 nm | 8 (4P+4E) | GPU 7–8 | 16-core Neural | Memory Bandwidth: 68.25 GB/s | Unified Memory: 16 GB | Geekbench6 ~2346 / 8346

- M2 | 5 nm (G2) | 8 (4P+4E) | GPU 8–10 | 16-core Neural | Memory Bandwidth: 100 GB/s | Unified Memory: 24 GB | Geekbench6 ~2586 / 9672

- M3 | 3 nm (first-gen) | 8 (4P+4E) | GPU 8–10 | 16-core Neural | Memory Bandwidth: 100 GB/s | Unified Memory: 24 GB | Geekbench6 ~2965 / 11565

- M4 | 3 nm (second-gen) | 10 (4P+6E) | GPU 8–10 | 16-core Neural | Memory Bandwidth: 120 GB/s | Unified Memory: 32 GB | Geekbench6 ~3822 / 15031

- M5 | 3 nm (third-gen) | 10 (4P+6E) | GPU 10 | 16-core Neural | Memory Bandwidth: 153 GB/s | Unified Memory: up to 32 GB | Geekbench6 ~4133 / 15,437 (9-core sample)

So how many hardware systems does Apple silicon have for doing matrix multiplies now?

1. CPU, via SIMD/NEON instructions (just dot products)

2. CPU, via AMX coprocessor (entire matrix multiplies, M1-M3)

3. CPU, via SME (M4)

4. GPU, via Metal (compute shaders + simdgroup-matrix + mps matrix kernels)

4. Neural Engine via CoreML (advisory)

Apple also appears to be adding a “Neural Accelerator” to each core on the M5?

It’s unfortunate that this announcement is still unspecific about what they improved in the Neural Engine. Since all we know about the Neural Engine comes from Apple papers or reverse engineering efforts (https://github.com/hollance/neural-engine), it’s plausible that they addressed some quirks to enable better transformer performance. They have written quite interesting papers on transformers on the Neural Engine:

- https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/neural-engine-tra...

- https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/vision-transforme...

Things have definitely gotten better with MLX on the software side, though it still seems they could do more in that area (let’s see what the M5 Max brings). But even if they made big strides here, it won’t help previous generations, and the main thing limiting Apple Intelligence (in my opinion) will continue to be the 8 GB of unified memory they still insist on.

"When compared to Intel-based systems, it delivers up to 86x faster AI performance"

I'm imagining the engineers responsible for running the tests finely tuning the test suite for days and days so they could get that number into the press release, lol. There's no way that's a coincidence and someone definitely advocated for that line being the way it is.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-unveils-new-14-...

Apple is binning the iPad Pro chips:

   Storage      CPU
   ≤ 512GB      3 P-cores (and 6 E-cores)
   1TB+         4 P-cores (and 6 E-cores)

Any word on whether this chip has "Memory Integrity Enforcement" capability, as included in Apple's A19/A19 Pro chips?

https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement...

The modern Apple feels like their hardware teams way outperforming the software teams.

First time seeing Apple using "AI" in their marketing material. It was "Machine Learning" and "Apple Intelligence" before...

Marketing:

M5 announcement [1] says 4x the peak GPU compute performance for AI compared to M4. I guess in the lab?

Both iPad and MBP M5 [2][3] say "delivering up to 3.5x the AI performance". But all the examples of AI (in [3]), they are 1.2-2.3X faster than M4. So where this 3.5X is coming from? What tests did Apple do to show that?

---

1. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-unleashes-m5-th...

2. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-unveils-new-14-...

3. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-introduces-the-...

Let's not pretend these are machines for hardcore computing jobs which belong on servers in terms of work/cost. Apples laptops are still amazing because we can do crazy amounts of work quickly without running out of battery. The edit, recompile, test loop is fast for programmers equipped with these expensive machines. And you can carry them everywhere without much risk of failure.

I am wondering if Apple's focus is off lately with this drive for AI. So far all they are showing in that presentation is that I can have

"the ability to transform 2D photos into spatial scenes in the Photos app, or generating a Persona — operate with greater speed and efficiency."

And by making Apple AI (which is something I do not use for many reasons, but mainly because of Climate Change) their focus, I am afraid they are losing and making their operating Systems worse.

For instance, Liquid Glass, the mess I was lucky enough to uninstall before they put in the embargo against doing so, is, well, a mess. An Aplha release in my opinion which I feel was a distraction from their lack of a robust AI release.

So by blowing money on the AI gold rush that they were too late for, will they ultimately ruin their products across the board?

I am currently attempting to sell my iPhone 16E and my M1 Macbook Air to move back to Linux because of all of this.

This is only the base model, no upgrades yet for the Pro/Max version. The memory bandwidth is 153GB/s which is not enough to run viable open source LLM models properly.

It feels like apple is “ a square peg in a round hole” when it comes to AI - atleast for now.

They are not the hardware provider like nvidia, they don’t do the software and services like OpenAI or even Microsoft/oracle. So they are struggling to find a foothold here. I am sure they are working on a lot of things but the only way to showcase them is through their phone which ironically enough feels like not the best path for apple.

Apple’s best option is to put llms locally on the phone and claim privacy (which is true) but they may end up in the same Siri vs others situation, where Siri always is the dumber one.

This is interesting to see how it plays out

M5 is 4-6x more powerful than M4, which was 5x more powerful than M3, which was 4x more powerful than M2, which was 4x more powerful than M1, which itself was 6x faster than an equivalent Intel processor. Great!

Looking at my Macbook though, I can say with utmost certainty that it isn't 4000x faster than the Intel one I had 5 years ago.

So, where is the disconnect here? Why is actual user experience not able to keep up with benchmarks and marketing?

And here I am, selling my Macbook M4 Pro to buy a Macbook Air and a dedicated gaming machine. I've tried gaming on the Macbook with Heroic, GPTK, Whiskey, RPCS3 emu and some native. When a game runs, the performance is stunning for a Laptop - but there is always glitches, bugs and annoyances that take out the joy. Needles to mention lack of support from any sort of online multiplayer, due to the lack of anticheat support.

I wish Apple would take gaming more seriously and make GPTK a first class citizen such as Proton on Linux.

The big win would be a linux capable device. I don't have any interest in mac os x but the apple m parts always seem amazing.

In theory this would be where qualcomm would come in and provide something but in practice they seem to be stuck in qualcomm land where only lawyers matter and actual users and developers can get stuffed.

I guess I'm waiting for the M5 Max chip. Hopefully it's configurable with 256 GB RAM for LLMs and some VMs.

One that’s be a nice quality of life improvement in MacBook(Air/Pro) is built-in 5G connectivity. I’d spring for that convenience not needing to connect to a hotspot draining precious battery on my phone. I thought we were closer given Apple started making their own modems, but it is still a miss.

It's surprising to me macs aren't a more popular target for games. They're extremely capable machines and they're console-like in that there isn't very much variation in hardware, as opposed to traditional PC gaming. I would think that it's easier to develop a game for a MacBook than a Windows machine where you never know what hardware setup the user will have.

They push these new generations out so quick, and with crazy performance boosts. Impressive

I keep seeing all those crazy screenshots from games on Mac, and yet there are barely any big releases for this platform. I guess it benefits a whole range of software, not just games, but still that's a pity.

I can't find a single moore's law chart that includes 2025 data (they all seem to cut off around 2020 actually).

Does anyone know if we're still on pace with Moore's law?

Is it me or did they use to avoid calling it "AI"?

I just want them to fix all the MacOS liquid 'ass issues.

Any reason they don't have an apple TV pro with an M* chip that's targeted towards gaming?

Despite the flak Apple gets, there M-series continues to impress me as I learn more about hardware.

Surprised they aren’t beating the “performance per watt” drum they normally would be on Mx releases. I’m assuming this will be a bit of a snoozer until the M5X/M5 Ultra or an M6 hits the pipeline.

If anything, these refreshes let them get rid of the last old crap on the line for M1 and M2, tie up loose ends with Walmart for the $599 M1 Air they still make for ‘em, and start shipping out the A18 Pro-based Macbooks in November.

Interesting that there's only the m5 on the macbook pro. I thought the m4 and m4 pro/max were at the same time on the macbook pro

> Apple 2030 is the company’s ambitious plan to be carbon neutral across its entire footprint by the end of this decade by reducing product emissions from their three biggest sources: materials, electricity, and transportation.

But never, ever, through not shipping incremental hardware bumps every year regardless of whether there's anything really worth shipping.

Vision Pro went from M2 to M5, that's quite a jump in horse-power.

M5 Chip currently only avaialble with up to 32 GB of RAM on the 14 inch Macbook pro variant, just FYI.

[1] https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/14-inc...

I'd argue that calling the new matrix multiplication unit they added to the GPU cores a neural engine instead of a tensor processing unit is a branding error that will lead to confusion.

The existing neural engine's function is to maximize power efficiency, not flexible performance on models of any size.

What does “4x the peak GPU compute performance” mean here? No latency difference, but higher throughput? The footnote was not at all helpful

> Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.

A lot of Apple hardware is impressive on paper, but I will never buy a Mac that can't run Linux. I simply don't want to live in Apple's walled garden.

Then there is the whole ARM vs x86 issue. Even if a compatible Linux distro were made, I expect to run all kinds of software on my desktop rig including games, and ARM is still a dead end for that. For laptops, it's probably a sensible choice now, but we're still far from truly free and usable ARM desktop.

I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to be making some of the best hardware out there only to have it completely wasted on useless "liquid glass" UIs and locked down to a half-baked OS (looking at you iPadOS).

I find this thread amusing. My M3 MacBook Pro just works. My family's iPhone 15s just work. My iPad Mini 6 just works. My wife's 3 year old iPad just works. Her 3 year old MacBook Air just works. My kids 3 year old M1 MacBook just works. I am an old man. My MCSE was on NT 3.51. I wrote my first code in 6502 ML. The first production network I handled used SNA. The level of Apple kit just working is a so far beyond anything I have experienced in 30+ years of being in tech.

No "max" or "pro" equivalent? I wanted to get a new Macbook Pro, but there's no obvious successor to the M4 Max available, M5 looks like a step down in performance if anything.

Wonder how it compares with the M4 Max that I've just bought haha

I’d like a filter to remove all mention of AI and associated performance from copy like this. Maybe I can build it with… nvm.

Seriously, can’t you tell me about the CPU cores and their performance?

Does it run Linux?

if only the Linux support was good. Or any other UNIX-like that made it usable without having to deal with macOS. It's a shame, because the hardware is top tier.

I wonder how much of the nVidia DGX Spark announcement was meant to precede this M5 announcement by a day or two; M5 MBP has higher performance with a monitor attached and with a (bit) lower price tag.

If you could yank the screen out, it probably evens out :)

I have seen quite a few such announcements from competitors that tend to be so close that I wonder if they have some competitor analysis to precede the Goliath by a few days (like Google vs rest, Apple vs rest etc).

I wish I could get the nano texture glass on a lower spec iPad Pro. I probably only need the 512 GB model and the glass is only available on 1 and 2 TB modes.

"complementing the Neural Accelerators in the CPU and GPU" seems to be a misprint; I don't believe they have the accelerators in the CPU too.

Still super interesting architecture with accelerators in each GPU core _and_ a dedicated neural engine. Any links to software documentation for how to leverage both together, or when to leverage one vs the other?

I would buy a mac mini with an M* chip in the blink of an eye if merely upgrading the RAM didn't double the cost of the unit

Is this the first time Apple released just the base chip and not the Pro nor the Max version at the same time?

Are they trying to milk the market in small increments? Especially before Christmas.

The MBP 14 M5 release came a bit unexpected. Many analysts mentioned beginning of 2026.

When will M5 Pro and Max be released?

What are your thoughts on comparing M4 Pro against the base version of M5?

Did anyone else notice that the base storage has been upgraded to 512G? I knew this was coming after iPhone 17s storage upgrade!

> M5 brings its industry-leading power-efficient performance to the new 14-inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Apple Vision Pro

Not for Mac mini?

For my use case I need MSL to support fp64. Until that happens I don't care what hardware changes they make: I'm not going to be filling racks with M5s and they're not producing something I can use to even tinker with AI with in my spare time. Apple has lost the AI war before it even got started IMO.

I know it's only shared system RAM and not VRAM, but the M5's 150GB/s isn't going to be very fast when doing AI inference. A fairly old rtx 3060 12GB does 360GB/s. But I guess quantity is a quality all of it's own when it comes to RAM and inference.

I’m glad I opted to get the base model M4 Mac Mini rather than upgrade the memory for longevity.

With the same number and types (P/E) of cores, the M5 seems more like a feature refinement over M4. I wonder if this is a CPU that Apple released primarily for AI marketing purposes and perception, rather than to push the envelope.

I find the Apple naming conventions / product updates confusing.

The MacBook Pro with the m5 is the low end model? an M2 Ultra is better than the m5?

I understand what they’re doing from a roadmap standpoint - but as a pure consumer is a bit confusing

Emm… why it says that a charger is not included on the purchase. That’s just crazy.

It’ll be interesting to see how quickly this chip becomes available in the MacBook Air and Mac mini. So far those still have the previous M4 only.

If it doesn’t happen later this week, how long would the wait be? A few months? More?

Too underwhelming. Apple under Tim Cook has been running out of steam. What prevents Apple from having 100s of GPU cores and higher memory bandwidth? They need to catch the AI wave before they perish under it.

A unified memory bandwidth of 1,224 gigabits per second is quite impressive.

32GB is the maximum memory configuration for the 14-inch laptop, which isn’t sufficient for running local LLMs. I think a Mac Studio or Mac Mini with higher memory would be more useful.

I'll take one inside an iPad mini, thank you very much.

32GB RAM limit on current M5 models. Now wait for M5 Max.

The claimed 1.6x increase in video game frame rate compared to M4 seems pretty good. Looking forward to seeing it tested out in practice.

I get they want to have a lot of their own swift-based bindings but I wish they could also keep their MPS pytorch bindings up to date...

>The 10-core GPU features a dedicated Neural Accelerator in each core

"The neural engine features a graphic accelerator" probably M6

Is my M2 Ultra studio with 128GB of ram just “dead weight” now? Wish I would have got just a Mac mini or Mac Pro….

What's sad is there's still no asahi support for m4. I have one and I barely ever use it for that reason.

It's kind of crazy that they insist on doing basically one of these every year. A lot of people complain that the iPhone stopped changing (meaningfully) between updates several years back. I think Apple Silicon is bound to be the same. I will say that the M4 Mac Mini was groundbreaking in terms of a budget-friendly Apple product -- I hope they recognized why it was loved and continue to iterate in that direction.

I don’t understand why they don’t advertise this cpu as one capable of running local LLMs, because it can, right?

I'm waiting for the day when the iphone would be equipped with an M chip. Maybe not long of a wait I hope.

"Over 4x GPU compute performance" sounds wild until you realize it's relative to the M4

Assume they released this ahead of their end of month event in response to all the leaks from the past weeks.

Are we going to see SOTA local coding models anytime soon with this hardware or is it still long way to go?

The chips are great. Now they just need to improve the quite stagnant laptop hardware to go with it.

Cool. My maxxed out M4 Max MBP is scheduled for delivery tomorrow. Guess I’ll return it.

14" MBP M4 Pro or 14" MBP M5, that’s the question.

Does the M5 feature the UltraFusion connector which would enable the Ultra variant?

I just wish I could game on my ridiculously equipped and expensive MacBook.

If only the Windows ecosystem could make the processor transition as smooth as Mac.

Yes, but where are the production desktop app using on-device AI right now?

This morning I was looking to maybe replace my Macbook Pro 2018, which had the horrible keyboard and finally seems to be crippled enough to not be fun to use anymore — now this!

However, I have been disappointed by Apple too many times (they wouldn't replace my keyboard despite their highly-flamed design-faux-pas, had to replace the battery twice by now, etc.)

Two years ago I finally stopped replacing their expensive external keyboards, which I used to buy once a year or every other (due to broken key-hinges) and have been so incredibly positively surprised by getting used to the MX Keys now. Much better built, incredible mileage for the price. Plus, I can easily switch and use them on my Windows PC, too.

So, about the Macbook — if I were to switch mobile computing over to Windows, what can I replace it with? My main machine is still a Mac Mini M2 Pro, which is perfect value/price. I like the Surface as a concept (replacable keyboards are a fantastic idea, battery however, super iffy nonsense), and I've got a Surface Pro 6 around, but it's essentially the same gloss-premium I don't need for my use.

Are there any much-cheaper but somewhat comparable laptops (12h+ battery, 1 TB disk, 16-32GB RAM, 2k+ Display) with reasonable build quality? Does bypassing the inherent premium of all the Apple gloss open up any useful options? Or is Apple actually providing the best value here?

Would love to hear from non-Surface, non-Thinkpad (I love it, but) folks who've got some recommendations for sub $1k laptops.

Not my main machine, but something I take along train rides, or when going to clients, or sometimes working offsite for a day.

I think it would be amazing to be able to buy an M5 based open platform.

Wish boot camp was free again… sick of paying for parallels.

This is quite weird move and confusing (probably on purpose). This chip M5 is released in Macbook PRO but previous macbook pro had M4 Pro or M4 Max so their more like macbook air series to even like ipad pro series.

They say "M5 offers unified memory bandwidth of 153GB/s, providing a nearly 30 percent increase over M4" but my old Macbook M2 Max have 400GB/s

Thats cool, but so much software only supports CUDA.

Good old Brits, taking over the world with an ISA extraordinarily efficient that at inception they discovered that the processor still kept operating by sucking voltage from leakage currents even though the power was off.

From: https://www.theregister.com/2012/05/03/unsung_heroes_of_tech...

"> The power test tools they were using were unreliable and approximate, but good enough to ensure this rule of thumb power requirement. When the first test chips came back from the lab on the 26 April 1985, Furber plugged one into a development board, and was happy to see it working perfectly first time.

> Deeply puzzling, though, was the reading on the multimeter connected in series with the power supply. The needle was at zero: the processor seemed to be consuming no power whatsoever.

> As Wilson tells it: “The development board plugged the chip into had a fault: there was no current being sent down the power supply lines at all. The processor was actually running on leakage from the logic circuits. So the low-power big thing that the ARM is most valued for today, the reason that it's on all your mobile phones, was a complete accident."

> Wilson had, it turned out, designed a powerful 32-bit processor that consumed no more than a tenth of a Watt."

No M5 mac mini?

No wifi 7. No 5g. No 16". No upgrade to Max ram. No upgrade to screen. No Bluetooth 6. No upgrade for me. I’ll stay with my M1 Max for now.

Do I want to buy this, an M1 or an M4?

why is Apple focusing on AI? do they have any AI products like Google, Meta or OpenAI?

never see the day that I would say that Apple device is one of the best to run LLM

Are we headed back to the bad old days of very proprietary systems, where megacorps dictate everything?

Apple's software division has lost their way. They've done nothing but add flashy features and move buttons around, deprecating things and breaking backwards compatibility (yeah, 32bit has been awhile now, but alas), meanwhile retreating on stability.

Snow Leopard still remains the company's crown achievement. 0 bloatware, 0 "mobile features on desktop" (wtf is this even a thing?), tuned for absolute speed and stability.

Does M5 run Sonoma?

why only on the 14'' not the 16'' ?

Wake me up when I can play video games on my MacBook and I'll upgrade my MacBook M1 Pro.

Until then, I take a mini PC with me along with my M1 when I travel and use game streaming for gaming and offload dev and AI work via ssh + ssh remote tools.

To me, M5 has amazing hardware, but they put square wheels on a Ferrari

this is cool and all, but what im really exited about is the possibility that one day they update their laptops so the keys stop leaving marks on the screen.

I know we are a few major scientific breakthroughs away from that even being remotely possible, but it sure would be nice.

It's disappointing to me how far behind other chipmakers are in having unified gpu/cpu memory bus. Only AMD Strix Halo even attempts this. Well this announcement tipped my hand and I'm finally buying a new macbook :)

I wonder if they informed Jensen about it.

No 16”?

I appreciate Apple propping up the GPU performance of their SoC but it feels a bit pointless when all the libraries they provide are so insular and disconnected from the rest of the industry.

I personally wish they would learn from the failure of Metal.

Also unleashes? Really? The marketing madness has to stop at some point.

... no benchmarks?

Imagine Apple released a laptop that shipped without MacOS. Just the hardware, drivers, and the integrated M-series chips.

   The MacBook Zero

Now if some game companies would just port their wares to Apple Silicon and the MacOS libraries already...

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When it allows installing any Linux with working drivers, I will consider it. Otherwise, you can go back to your garage and I will continue to make fun of people using Macs.

It seems this generation focuses more on GPU and AI acceleration rather than CPU. The M5 chip allows Apple Vision Pro to render 10% more pixels and operate at up to 120 Hz. It delivers up to four times the peak GPU compute performance compared with M4, provides 30% higher graphics performance, and offers 15% faster multithreaded CPU performance.

A computing device named M5 with highly advanced AI capabilities meant for enterprise (or Enterprise) computing environments? Uh-oh, I think I'll pass; I saw this episode of Star Trek (TOS: The Ultimate Computer) before. Hope the owner's manual comes with a warning not to wear a red shirt anywhere near it, dohohoho.

(Perhaps it would be safer to wait for The Next Generation?)

> A nearly 30 percent increase in unified memory bandwidth to 153GB/s

I'll believe the benchmarks, not marketing claims, but an observation and a question.

1. AMD EPYC 4585PX has ~89GB/s, with pretty good latency, as long you use 2xdimm

2. How does this compare to the memory bandwidth and latency of M1,M2,M3,M4 in reality with all of the caveats? It seems like M1 was a monumental leap forward, then everything else was a retraction.