The one that always surprises me is that there is absolutely no image editor of any kind.

But really, I just don't use that many desktop apps (or at least, not generic ones) so I don't have much of an issue on MacOS.

What’s missing in the terminal app?

I have an M1 air and 8th gen intel Dell (openbsd) and I’m much happier wit the Dell for hacking on stuff. MacOS is pretty much a nightmare if your workflow is not apps and IDE centered.

Pretty sure you can run Asahi on that? Might have been worth the effort instead of swapping out the machine as it's still pretty capable.

I've used Macs for 20 years starting on the day 32-bit Intel Macs were released, and agree with the GP. Linux and Plasma spoiled me, going back to macOS and its windowing system feels like a step backward, especially for development, where using multiple windows is a must. Task switching is.. not good? I don't get window previews I can switch through when I hover over the dock, but I do on Linux.

Yes, I know about Yabai and the other things that modify the existing window manager. The problem is the window manager itself.

Outside of the windowing system, running native Linux if you're deploying to Linux beats using an amalgamation of old BSD utils + stuff from Homebrew and hoping it works between platforms, or using VMs. The dev tools that are native to Linux are also nice.

When it comes to multiple monitors, I want a dock on each monitor. I can do that in Plasma, but I can't in macOS, unless I use some weird 3rd party software apparently.

Agreed, as a software engineer of ~8 years now Mac is actually my _preferred_ environment -- I find it an extremely productive OS for development whether I'm working on full stack or Unity game dev in my free time.

Stuff like the containerisation story on Macs is so miserable. The fact that so many devs use Docker and on Mac and pay the orders of magnitude file costs (or do a bunch of other shenanigans) really makes for an unfun experience.

Really wish someone could have figured out something a bit better in that space in particular. Docker compose is a "least worst" option for setting up a project with devs when many are uncomfortable with other solutions, but it really takes the oxygen out of anything that might "work"

I've been on a mac for ~4 years now.

It was a bit of a struggle to get used to it, coming from windows.

The only thing I really miss now is alt-tab working as expected. (It's a massive pain to move between two windows of the same program)

Wow, this account's recent comment history is just full-on blasting with pro-apple opinions and attacking anyone who posts even a tinge of negativity about Apple or its recent product(s). I find it amusing we'd become so defensive about for-profit companies and their products..

  > Sounds more like a you problem

The biggest problem with Linux is poor interfaces[0] but the biggest problem with Apple is handcuffs. And honestly, I do not find Apple interfaces intuitive. Linux interfaces and structure, I get, even if the barrier to entry is a big higher, there's lots of documentation. Apple less so. But also with Apple there's just things that are needlessly complex, buried under multiple different locations, and inconsistent.

But I said the biggest problem is handcuffs. So let me give a very dumb example. How do you merge identical contacts? Here's the official answer[1]

  Either:
  1) Card > Look for Duplicates
  2) Select the duplicate cards, then Card > Merge Selected Cards.

So yeah, maybe a lot of this is due to unfamiliarity, but it's not like they are making it easy. With Apple, it is "Do things the Apple way, or not at all". But with Linux it is "sure whatever you say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯". If my Android phone is not displaying/silencing calls people go "weird, have you tried adjusting X settings?" But if my iPhone is not displaying/silencing calls an Apple person goes "well my watch tells me when someone is calling" and they do not understand how infuriating such an answer is. Yet, it is the norm.

I really do want to love Apple. They make beautiful machines. But it is really hard to love something that is constantly punching you in the face. Linux will laugh when you fall on your face, but it doesn't actively try to take a swing or put up roadblocks. There's a big difference.

[0] But there's been a big push the last few years to fix this and things have come a long way. It definitely helps that Microsoft and Apple are deteriorating, so thanks for lowering the bar :)

[1] https://support.apple.com/guide/contacts/merge-contact-cards...

[2] Except it actually doesn't

Mac laptop hardware is objectively better, but I am on the same camp as the parent post. For most development workflows, Linux is my favorite option. In particular, I think NixOS and the convenience of x86_64 is usually worth the energy efficiency deficit with Apple M.

It will be interesting to see how this evolves as local LLMs become mainstream and support for local hardware matures. Perhaps, the energy efficiency of the Apple Neural Engine will widen the moat, or perhaps NPUs like those in Ryzen chips will close the gap.

Thanks for sharing Aerospace, can’t believe I overlooked it! It’s like finding out someone fixed half the things that make macOS feel like a beautiful prison .Somehow it makes the whole OS feel less… Apple-managed.

I kinda agree with the OP, but then I was a Linux user for well over a decade. I do think that C/C++ libraries are much, much more of a pain on Mac as soon as you go off the beaten path (compiling GDAL was not pleasant, whereas it would be a breeze on Linux).

Some of this is probably brew not being as useful as apt, and some more of it is probably me not being as familiar with the Mac stuff, but it's definitely something I noticed when I switched.

The overall (graphical) UI is much fluider and more convenient than Linux though.

I have to agree. The loss of sense of reality among Linux fanboys is really annoying.

I had been a Linux notebook user for many years and have praised it on this board years ago. But today the Linux desktop has regressed into a piece of trash even for basic command line usage while providing zero exclusive apps worth using. It's really sad since it's unforced and brought upon Linux users by overzealous developers alone.

Mac OS trounces Linux in absolutely every way on the desktop it's not even funny: performance, battery life, apps, usability, innovation. Available PC notebook HW is a laughable value compared to even an entry level Apple MacBook Air. Anecdata but I have no less than five "pro" notebooks (Dell Lattitude, XPS, and Lenovo Thinkpad) come and go with basic battery problems, mechanical touchpad problems, touchpad driver issues, WLAN driver issues, power management issues, gross design issues, and all kind of crap come and go in the last five years so I'm pretty sure I know what I'm talking about.

The one thing Mac isn't great for is games, and I think SteamOS/Proton/wine comes along nicely and timely as Windows is finally turning to the dark side entirely.

I’ve found Macs to be good for most dev stuff with the exception of non-Dockerized C++.

Unfortunately I do a lot of C++… I hate the hoops you have to go through to not use the Apple Clang compiler.

Speaking of the P14s, I have an Intel version from 2 years back and battery life is poor. And I hunger for the mac's screen for occasional photography. The other thing I found difficult is that there's no equivalent of the X1 Carbon with an AMD chip. It's Intel only. The P14s is so much heavier.

Seconded. I have a mostly CLI setup and in my experience Nix favors that on Mac, but nonetheless it makes my Nix and Linux setups a breeze. Everything is in sync, love it.

Though if you don't like Nixlang it will of course be a chore to learn/etc. It was for me.

The AMD chips I'm using with integrated graphics have 6+ hours of battery life (system76 pangolin) and the newer intel ultra chips are decent on battery too. +/- a bit depending on how hard you end up pushing them machine. Huge improvement over my frist linux laptop, though it had a nvidia chip set but would go only 2-3 hours per charge.

Yes, there is a dilemma in the Linux space. But is running Linux on a MacBook a viable option these days? Is Ashahi Linux solid enough?

I much prefer a framework and the repairability aspect. However, if it's going to sound like a jet engine and have half the battery life of a new m series Mac. Then I feel like there's really no option if I want solid battery life and good performance.

Mac has done a great job here. Kudos to you, Mac team!

Not that useful as a heads up.

MacOS is great for development. Tons of high profile devs, from Python and ML, to JS, Java, Go, Rust and more use it - the very people who headline major projects for those languages.

2ish hours battery life is crazy. It's 8+ hours with the average Macbook.

The issues I see people struggle with on a Mac is that development often needs things in a non-default and often less-secure setup.

There isn't a "dev switch" in macOS, so you have to know which setting is getting in your way. Apple doesn't like to EVER show error alerts if at all possible to suppress, so when things in your dev environment fail, you don't know why.

If you're a seasoned dev, you have an idea why and can track it down. If you're learning as you go or new to things, it can be a real problem to figure out if the package/IDE/runtime you're working with is the problem or if macOS Gatekeeper or some other system protection is in the way.

I can tell you in one sentence: try to have a DNS server when mDNSResponder sits on port 53 (for example because you use the new virtualization framework).

And there are a lot of such things, which are trivial or non problem in Linux.

Why is it unfair? The OP literally stated "To any Linux users". They aren't saying it's worse, just that if you're coming from Linux it can be hard to adapt. Sounds reasonable to me.

As a Linux user, I sometimes dream about the Apple hardware, and I tell myself "How hard can it be to get used to MacOS?! It has a shell after all!". The OP reminded me that it can be quite difficult.

That can be true while still being a genuine irritant. Windows and POSIX shells are different enough that you'd never assume that a script would be compatible between them - but the same is not true between your average Linux distro and macOS, which leads people to repeatedly get bit when trying to write a script that supports both.

Usually there's an accessibility option of some kind that disables animations; at least it exists in android and I feel like it existed in iOS (though I haven't used that in ages). I'm surprised Mac doesn't have something similar.

How about Asahi Linux, or a Fusion/Parallels VM on macOS?

Can't you literally install Linux on Apple hardware?

There are surprisingly a lot of permission headaches and rug pulls in the last few big OS updates that have been really annoying.

For me, who came from linux the only thing I don't like is the overview menu's lack of an (x) to close a window. The way slack stacks windows within the app so it's hard to find the right one. Pressing the red button doesn't close the app from appearing in your CMD+Tab cycle between apps, you also have to press CMD+Q. (Just a preference to how windows and linux treat windows, actually closing them. Rectangle resolved the snap to corner thing (I know MacOS has it natively too but it's not too great in comparison).

Things I prefer: Raycast + it's plugins compared to the linux app search tooling, battery life, performance. Brew vs the linux package managers I don't notice much of a difference.

Things that are basically the same: The dev experience (just a shell and my dotfiles has it essentially the same between OS's)

docker being nerfed is pretty much the only thing I can think of.

Docker works very weirdly (it's a desktop application you have to install that has usage restrictions in enterprise contexts, and it's inside a VM so some things don't work), or you have to use an alternative with similar restrictions (Podman, Rancher Desktop).

The OS also has weird rough edges when used from the terminal - there are read-only parts, there are restrictions on loading libraries, multiple utilities come with very old versions or BSD versions with different flags than the GNU ones you might be used to coming from Linux, the package manager is pretty terrible. There are things (e.g. installing drivers to be able to connect to ESP32 devices) that require jumping through multiple ridiculous hoops. Some things are flat out impossible. Each new OS update brings new restrictions "for your safety" that are probably good for the average consumer, but annoying for people using the device for development/related.

Big fan of the podcast Late Linux Linux btw

I suggest you head over to /r/unixporn, and you'll probably be presently surprised. Contrary to popular belief, most of this stuff is not very hard to setup. Of course, there are people also showing off custom tooling and the craziest (and sometimes silliest) things they can pull off, but a beautiful interface is usually something you can do in under an hour. It is customary to include a repo with all configurations, so if you wanted to direct copy paste, you can do it much faster than that.

Unless you're talking about the look of the physical machine. Well then that's an easier fix ;)

https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/

In my opinion, Apple is the one doing very poorly on (software) looks recently. Liquid Glass looks like a joke. Both KDE and GNOME look better. The new Expressive Material 3, on Android, actually looks great.

It's unfortunate that MacOS continues to get worse as the hardware gets better.

I still have 94% of my battery health left on my 2020 M1, and I have all the speed I need as a casual, avergae user.

I spilled a sugary coffee drink in my keyboard, and having it replaced under AppleCare+ meant they also replaced half the rest of the machine (battery, display etc). I think I'm set for another 5 years.

Battery power on M1 16” was so good when new that even severely degraded is still pretty good.

My 2021 16" M1 Max is at 85% battery - which is still totally fine for me.

um no; that's a reason to upgrade the battery, not get a new laptop

How’s that running on M machines these days?

It is night and day between the last intel macbook and the m1. I held out for a long time because of poor python support, but that was not a good move. The m1 is much better.

Very much so.

No fan noise, no warmth, unless you are really really pushing it.

in terms of speed, it makes it feel like the original retina did when they first came out. oh and a pretty fast disk as well.

In terms of performance, thermals, and battery life, it was a huge upgrade for me when I moved from Intel to the M1 Max. M1 Max to the M4 Max... improvements were mainly on very heavy tasks, like video transcoding with Handbrake or LLMs with Ollama.

Yes... to any Apple Silicon machine.

That doesn’t make much sense to me, there are literally billions of phones that people are using all the time.

Apple has over 2.3 billion active devices of which a small percentage are Macs (an estimated 24 million were sold in 2024 and around twice that in iPads).

The most difficult to scale part of a cell network is number of devices connected, not bandwidth used anyway and cellular Macs aren’t going to add significantly more load to a network. And that assumes that Apple even cares what a carrier thinks.

I’m in Australia, not the USA, and for all people like to complain about internet here, we have excellent mobile coverage and it’s relatively affordable, but it’s all priced by usage.

I have 4 devices on my plan with shared 210GB of 4G usage between them for around AUD$200 (USD$130) a month on Australia’s best network (Telstra). I work remotely from cafes a lot (probably around 20-30 hours a week) as a developer and get nowhere close to that usage. I update all my apps, download all my podcasts, listen to lossless music and stream video whenever I want during breaks (although I’m not a huge out-of-home video consumer). I do literally nothing to limit my bandwidth usage and am lucky to use 30-40GB a month across all my devices.

Osx has, for a little while now, had a "metered" flag for networks. Not sure which apps, if any, respect it, but it's there

> cracked-screen iPhones

Sheesh, what do you have against MiFi 4G pocket routers?

I want my computer to have an always on cell modem just like my phone does.

The Apple Silicon chips all run in a version of always on these days because the efficiency cores are so, well, efficient.

Additionally, while you may want to burn the battery in multiple devices and deal with having to manage that, I don’t want to.

Apple has been selling cellular iPads since the beginning and I love never having to worry about pairing mine.

Tethering to an iPhone or iPad Is much better than it used to be, but it’s still not perfect.

Apple makes their own modems these days and even with Qualcomm had a capped per device license fee more than covered by the premium they charge for cellular in, say, the iPad.

I know so many people who want this convenience and are willing to pay for it that it just seems like stubbornness at this point that they’re willing to put modems in iPads and not MacBooks.

The pairing has become almost flawless as well. Years ago, it was slow and inconsistent, but now the hotspot feature is almost perfect and automatic. Honestly, I don’t really think about it anymore.

I leave my setup plugged in, using a low-profile USB-C to lightning cable on the iPhone SE stuck on the back of my screen and wired hotspot on macOS is a great experience.

We're discussing a MacBook someday with a built-in phone, the closest I've found is an iOS device wired to my MacBook as a wired hotspot. It's like having fast wifi everywhere.

Using my personal phone (that I also use for other things like calls) wouldn't be like having wifi everywhere on my Mac, for example if I walk away from my laptop while on the phone the Mac would lose internet.

> Why carry around two cellular modems?

Why not? If I had both with me, I'd rather just have my phone on Airplane mode preserving the battery and my focus.

> Are you ever out and about with your computer but not your phone? I've been happy to hotspot my computers and tablets to my phone, which I always have with me.

I'd really really like to be. The amount of dependence I have on the phone being there at all times is insane. I just want to leave with my laptop and be good to go, no possibility of receiving a call or getting distraced with stupid group chats.

My phone recently died spontaneously, and if I didn't replace it immediately, I can't work online from cafes or anywhere else without depending on the place having open wifi.

It’s hard to explain, but having an always-on connection on a tablet or laptop just feels like absolute magic.

You sort of have to experience it first hand.

For tablets, at least with T-Mobile, for $25 you get unlimited data. You only get a limited amount of tethering data.

The battery is good enough that I often travel with just my phone charger. I can plug the laptop in at night when the slow charge rate isn't a hindrance and be fine with the all day battery life

>USB-C chargers are everywhere now

USB-C 15W Chargers may be everywhere, but higher power charger required for MacBook Pro is not.

I would have agreed if the devices is using 10W or 20W where you could charge it slightly slower. Not for a 70W to 100W MacBook Pro though.

My MacBook M1 Pro w/ 441 cycles started doing a fun thing where if the battery gets under about 50% and you put it to sleep, the ONLY way to power on the device is to use the exact charger it came with. Higher powered Apple Studio Display PD, or even good 3rd party chargers, do not bring it back to life. This occurs even when the battery has 40-60% remaining if the laptop goes to sleep.

Had a similar issue with my 2018 MBP Intel - the 86/87 Watt Apple charger was the only thing it would come to life with as the battery aged if the device got too low.

I agree. I currently have 2 or 3 brand spanking new chargers sitting in the orginal Mac box.

On the go, I've bought a small GaN with multiple ports. At home, I already have all of my desks wired up with a Usb-c charger.

USB-C chargers are everywhere but definitely not at the wattage needed to drive a laptop.

When I buy a new laptop and sell my old one, I either have to sell the old one with the charger or keep the charger and sell the old one without. I don't actually have a bunch of spare chargers capable of charging a laptop (phone, sure).

This is especially true for someone moving up to an MBP from an MBA, which takes less juice.

I mean, every laptop needs a charger.

If you sell your old laptop when you buy a new one, you generally sell it with old charger. And different Apple laptops take chargers of different maximum watts (they're compatible but not optimal), so they're not all the same anyways.

There's a reason they generally make sense to bundle. Especially with laptop chargers, which provide a whole lot more power than some random little USB-C charger you might have. Sometimes letting the free market decide actually gives customers what they want and find most useful.

Apple overprices everything in the EU on top of not shipping new features. Currency risk is a thing but nowhere near the premium they charge. I personally vote with my wallet and stopped buying anything from them.

1599 plus a 20% VAT is 1918. That's... far from the worst it's been TBH.

ASUS’s ZenBook Duo (UX84060) is over 50% dearer in Australia than in the USA.

When it was announced, I expected it to be at least 4000 AUD (~2600 USD). When I heard it was starting at 1500 USD instead (~2300 AUD), I was astonished and very excited. And it still is that price… but only in the US. In Australia it is 4000 AUD (the 32GB/1TB model, which is 1700 USD, ~2600 AUD). So I sadly didn’t get one.

Is the rest of the world subsidising the US market, or are they just profiteering in the rest of the world?

The EU requires a 1 year warranty on electronics, where in the US it's only 90 days. The higher cost of electronics reflects this.

They've always been like this, it's why the market share is as as low as it is vs US.

what happened to US tariffs? how can they be cheaper in the US than EU?

Tariffs... Someone has to pay them and it sure isn't Apple.

There are more 90W-capable USB-C chargers in my home than there are laptops. I certainly don't need another one. Honestly I'd be fine for them to just remove the box altogether and use paper envelope like Steve Jobs did once.

>Don't forget the environmental impact of a smaller box

Compared to the marginal environmental impact to source materials, build hardware and parts, assemble, ship, stock, and transport to customer each unit, the box could be 10x larger and it wouldn't make a dent.

I think they're trying to decide whether it's worth jumping all the way to an M5 or whether they'd rather just get an M4 or M3 at discount.

How did we already get to no-one being impressed by 20% better PER YEAR already.

Macs barely got faster for ages with Intel - they just got hotter and shorter on battery life.

20% per year is a doubling every 4y. That is awesome.

IIRC on macbooks, memory is actually not that important because of the insanely fast SSD and swap. Though LLMs are probably a different story

Part of me misses my OG base 14" M4 Pro. The battery on that thing was absolutely phenomenal - literal 12-14+ hours of real-world use. Not so much on the 14" M1 Max (64GB) that I upgraded to after about 2 yrs.

'Real-world idle' efficiency on the newer chips is the main reason I've got the (slight) itch to upgrade, but 64GB+ MBPs certainly don't come cheap.

This gap makes no sense to me. I wonder if Apple is just leaning into this cycle because it's easier to make M5s than more advanced processors, so you can sell this sooner?

From a buyer's perspective, I don't like it at all.

Just things like waiting on the download for an Xcode update before I can get to work would be a lot more tolerable on 1.4 Gbps than the like 600 Mbps on the WiFi 5. Or worrying if this video is buffering because a backup started in the background.

But I gave up on waiting and just got Ethernet put in in the places where I'm likely to sit with my laptop - now I plug in to charge and automatically get 2.5 Gbps Ethernet at the same time using a USB-C dock and a long USB 3 cable.

With NVMe NASes and 5Gbit, 8Gbit and 8Gbit FTTH available for reasonable price in many places, it's easy to saturate any WiFi connection by just downloading stuff (games, AI models, etc), backing up files, or accessing your files on NAS (and editing videos straight off NAS is recently trendy).

A NVIDIA 2080 graphics card from 2018 still surpasses the M5 for gaming. The M5 Pro coming early next year will likely finally catch up with the 8-year-old 2080.

I'm happy to hear your games work well for you, but it sounds like the games you're playing aren't demanding compared to modern AAA titles. Most games released in the last year or two don't run well on my 2080 test system at anything approaching decent graphics.

I can confirm this is not the case. I don't use crossover but crossover is wine. I use kegworks which is also wine. It is a pain in the ass. Steam app runs like garbage over wine. Games like tf2 I got more consistent fps on my 2012 mac which can run it natively than I do on this 12/16 whatever core 4ghz beast. I used to get like 90fps pegged in that now even on low graphics configs I'm barely doing 50fps and losing frames like crazy when there's a lot of action.

Most games just flat out do not work that I've tried. Plenty will stop you with anticheat.

About the only sorts of games that actually work well over WINE on this rig (m3 pro) are ones that came out 15 years ago.

Native games like no mans sky actually got worse over time. When I first got this mac I was so impressed by the performance of nms even though its an old game at this point. I could run it entirely on ultra. Then nms put out an update and that ended, back to medium-low and no AA unless I want to experience pervasive graphical glitches like flashing purple.

Other games have some internal lock to their fps I'm not sure why even as native mac games. This is true for cities skylines. It is capped at 40fps, maybe through rosetta layer limitations? I'm not sure.

The gaming world is so deeply ingrained with Windows technologies. Even with the GPK from Apple, I don't see the mods and patches that some Windows players enjoy.

I get that it is good for some games, but when people say "gaming PCs" on Windows, they usually mean AAA titles. The stuff on endcaps at BestBuy for sale for PC and console. Those games won't run well on Macs unless you spend insane amounts on a Max or Ultra variant.

The M5's GPU specs seem to put it near a high-end NVIDIA card from 2018. Impressive as all get out for a power-friendly chip, but not really what I think of when I hear "good for gaming"

mac mini is amazing, even though happy to hear people play games on macbooks

As they should. Those are like 10 year old games.

The trend I see that is more concerning is that previously mac friendly game devs have already abandoned the platform. Valve no longer maintains mac os builds of their games like cs or tf2. City skylines 1 had a first party mac release but City skylines 2 skipped mac os.

+1 on this... it also gives them more opportunity to work out any issues when piecing the larger chips together while catching any post-production issues on the simpler, lower end parts before they hit bigger customers.

Apple knows their sales numbers, so I imagine is that they know the base model will sell the most quantity. Having it out now means more sales at the highest MSRP before talk of the next model release.

Buyers who walk into an Apple store for a base MacBook Pro will wait if they hear a new model is coming out. So if you have a buyer basing purchases on the generation number, it makes sense to launch that model as soon as possible.

Pro/Max buyers generally are checking into specs and getting what they need. Hence the M2 Ultra still being for sale, for some niches that have specific requirements.

It takes 3 months to manufacture a chip end to end. If you find a hardware bug once complete, you have to start over and you end up with a three month delay.

Looks like the Pro and Max will be on a three month delay.

I thought the Pro and Max usually get announced at the same time and the Ultra comes later...

so, macbook pro m5 normal, macbook pro m5 pro, macbook pro m5 max. I see M4 still in the offer, which costs more. No wifi 7 on m5 (normal or not). 32GB these days, unified or not, in a pro machine.. I haven't paid much attention to macs over the past few years but I wonder what would Steve Jobs say about this shit.

Apple is exempt from US-China tariffs.

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/12/nx-s1-5363025/apple-iphone-ta...

Are there any markets where they are 15% cheaper due to not having the US's tarriffs?

It has always been this way. Base M1's max RAM was 16GB, M2/M3's was 24GB, M4's was 32GB.

They are running out of ways to differentiate their products.

Wait what!?!? My MacBook M1 has 64GB of memory for crying out loud.

The fact that it's unified just means it's shared between CPU/GPU usage which can be a good thing. A lot of the performance comes from more channels and a more stable distance from the CPU itself... Getting really fast performance from RAM is more difficult with a detachable interface in the middle, and longer traces.

Still not the fastest ram, that they use for dedicated GPUs, but faster than most x86 options.

RAM has always been unified on every M series CPU.

It just means it's shared between GPU and CPU. Has its advantages in specific workloads, but dedicated super fast GPU RAM usually is better. Everything else in this statement in marketing bullshit and Apple trying to look like they invented the wheel and discovered fire.

It's unified on the Air too though?

The $1599 M5 Macbook Pro: Good enough for a guy who thinks a 12-year-old MacBook with 8 gigs of ram is "still perfectly usable"

:)

This is great but it's apples to oranges until they have Pro & Max variants we can directly compare against the M4 line.

4TB was available before, maybe only coupled with a Max CPU, which seems not available yet for M5.

ARM Windows still has so many pain points, depending on your niche.

Wow maybe it's worth a try

Meh, I have a Space Black 16" atm, it looks more grey than anything and the smudges are negligible at best. I'm just bored of the lack of variety. The Air is I guess supposed to be the quirky fun computer and the rest are just for "serious" professionals that can only see in grey and silver.

This is Apple: the last time they shipped a pcie/replaceable wifi card was thirteen years ago on the Mid-2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro.

Even pre-Apple Silicon, it's been a decade since users could upgrade MacBook's RAM or internal storage.

I run our office IT, and WiFi 7 is just better at managing congestion. We have a floor in a busy building and 5Ghz is chaos. 6E is fine, it's just strangely old for a company like Apple.

It’s more a statement on price and the assumption the more expensive one with the “more capable” chip like the MAX would be expected to not be less performant than any in the lineup. It would be a disappointment, especially for me as I’m about to buy a 16” in November regardless, to be a generation behind while paying more, and it would be not unusual for product reasons to nerf the lower prices chip to ensure it didn’t canabalize the more expensive models sales.

I have to say if I had any choice I would delay my purchase until the 16” catches up rather than buying a generation behind. If I see specs saying M5 14” is more performant for my workloads than my more expensive 16” I’m even more motivated to delay. Most product managers would be aware of these things.

I can see why that sounds sensible, but my personal obsevations are that heavy duty power users almost universally prefer the bigger screens, and those people also want the highest level settings. Most people I know who want smaller screens are not serious power users.

I can see an overlap with people who want smaller computers who also want max power, but I just would not believe that is a significant group. (again, all personal observations)

More pixels? Thats the only reason I can think of. 13/14 inch is what I tend to go for since I use my laptop as a desktop 80% of the time. 16 is really too big for my needs.

I also think the 15 inch MacBook Air filled the non-power-user-but-likes-big-screen niche.

> The M5 Pro refresh will come later.

Did they announce this or are you speaking for Apple?