[HN Gopher] Leaked Apple M5 9 core Geekbench scores
___________________________________________________________________
Leaked Apple M5 9 core Geekbench scores
Author : aurareturn
Score : 158 points
Date : 2025-09-30 16:00 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (browser.geekbench.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (browser.geekbench.com)
| aurareturn wrote:
| Vs a 9 core M4 iPad:
| https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/14173690?baseli...
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Related, but not yet posted to HN that I know of:
|
| _Leaked unboxing video reveals unannounced M5 iPad Pro in full_
| - https://9to5mac.com/2025/09/30/leaked-unboxing-video-reveals...
|
| https://x.com/markgurman/status/1973048229932507518 |
| https://xcancel.com/markgurman/status/1973048229932507518
|
| _Exclusive! Unboxing the iPad Pro with the M5 before Apple!_ -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnzkC2q-iGI
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Exclusive! Unboxing the iPad Pro with the M5 before Apple!
|
| Big boy is bitching about a meager 10% increase in CPU and 30%
| increase in GPU as a nothing burger. "Who would upgrade from M4
| to M5?" exactly. The difference is when you upgrade from older
| to latest. Most people do not upgrade annually. I'm looking to
| replace my 6th gen tablet, but now I might just get an m4
| _after_ the m5 is official and get a nice discount on what will
| be a helluva upgrade for me.
|
| Some of the comments in the threads you linked also suggest
| Russia has infiltrated Apple, but my guess would be some where
| in the Chinese side of the supply chain.
| larusso wrote:
| I also don't understand what people expect. Also it seems
| that everybody is constantly grilling their machines.
| Otherwise I can't understand this need for even more power. I
| have the iPhone 16ProMax and upgraded from a 13ProMax. I
| didn't really feel a difference. Mainly because I don't use
| my phone for high performance applications or gaming.
|
| [edit] typo
| zamadatix wrote:
| Lines up about exactly with the improvements in the A18 Pro i.e.
| ~+10% single and ~+15% multi.
| runjake wrote:
| And the GPU is up by about ~30%! This falls in line with the
| recent jumps in the A chips as well.
| bhouston wrote:
| Nice. The iPads generally measure around ~8% slower than the
| MacBooks, I guess for cooling reasons. So we should see
| approximately a 4400 single core Geekbench score for the MacBook
| series. This is nice.
|
| Single thread MacBook progression on Geekbench:
|
| M1: 2350
|
| M2: 2600
|
| M3: 3100
|
| M4: 3850
|
| M5: 4400 (estimated)
|
| https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| I think we will land around 4300. On paper N3P is 5-10% more
| transistors and 5-10% more efficiency. Naively this puts the
| perf lift range from 10.25% (1.05 * 1.05) to 21% (1.10 * 1.10).
| 4300 would be around halfway estimate. Gains in iPhone and
| iPads perf are heavily supported by new cooling tech. When
| compared to iPhones and iPads, Macbook Pros are much less
| thermally constrained and M5 Macbooks are keeping M4 design.
|
| TL:DR I expect a smaller MBP M4 to M5 pop compared to iPads M4
| vs M5 because the latter are benefiting from new cooling tech.
| eek2121 wrote:
| Keep in mind that a big part of the huge jump in recent chips
| was that GB6 added support for SME, and to my knowledge, no app
| uses SME as of yet. GB5 is a better benchmark for all these
| chips for this reason.
|
| The actual IPC increase and perf/clock of these chips excluding
| SME specific acceleration is MUCH smaller.
| bhouston wrote:
| I've benchmarked these myself on things like my project's
| build time on M1, M2 and M3 and I did see similar gains. So I
| disagree from experience.
| aurareturn wrote:
| SME is just the AMX coprocessor that's been in Apple chips
| since 2019. SME made it easier to target the AMX. But it's
| been in use and available to developers since 2019.
| wmf wrote:
| The point stands that virtually no apps used AMX (either
| directly or through a framework).
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > The point stands that virtually no apps used AMX
| (either directly or through a framework).
|
| AMX has been present in every M series chip and the A
| series chips starting with the A13.
|
| Any app using Apple's Accelerate framework will take
| advantage of it.
| Choco31415 wrote:
| Here's the multi core Geekbench progression:
|
| M1: 8350
|
| M2: 9700
|
| M3: 11650
|
| M4: 14600
|
| M5: 16650 (estimated)
|
| This is assuming an 8% uplift as mentioned. Also nice.
| bhouston wrote:
| Will the base core count and mix between perf and efficient
| cores remain the same? That has lead to different scaling
| factors for the multicore performance than the single core
| metrics.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Possibly, at least compared to the previous M4 generation.
| For the lowest tier M models to this point:
| M1 (any): 4P + 4E M2 (any): 4P + 4E M3 (any):
| 4P + 4E M4 (iPad): 3P + 6E M4 (Mac): 4P + 6E
| M5 (iPad): 3P + 6E (claimed) M5 (Mac): Unknown
|
| It's worth noting there are often higher tier models that
| still don't earn the "Pro" moniker. E.g. there is a 4P + 8E
| variant of the iMac which is still marketed as just having
| a normal M4.
| nodesocket wrote:
| For reference I have a M4 Pro mac mini, top spec model with
| 14 cores and score: single: 3960 multi:
| 22521
| porphyra wrote:
| Nice. Lots of people still claim that M1 is super duper fast
| but now we're at almost twice the performance!
| mpalmer wrote:
| M1 is still fast, the speed of its successors does not change
| that.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I use one for software development and it's great.
| Sometimes rust builds are slow and I'd love to force that
| to be faster with hardware (optimizing build time would be
| a huge undertaking with not-so-great returns), otherwise
| I'm totally content. I also have an M2 Max with 32GB of RAM
| that still feels like magic. I've never had computers that
| felt so fast for so long.
| nullbyte wrote:
| I am very curious how GPU performance will be, especially for AI
| tasks
| matdehaast wrote:
| It feels like Intel and AMD are asleep at the wheel with their
| mobile lineup. I've been looking at non-apple equivalents that
| have similar performance/power as the M lineup and it seems they
| all lag about 20%+.
|
| For $800 the M4 Air just seems like one of the best tech deals
| around.
| hu3 wrote:
| > For $800 the M4 Air just seems like one of the best tech
| deals around.
|
| Only if you don't mind macOS.
| matdehaast wrote:
| And therein lies the problem. Apple has managed to push a
| hardware advantage into something that makes a difference.
| apercu wrote:
| I used to not, but it's getting worse and worse.
|
| Still better than all the alternatives for someone like me
| that has to straddle clients expecting MS Office, gives me a
| *nix out of the box, and can run logic, reaper , MainStage.
| CharlesW wrote:
| I understand the point you're making, but FWIW I run Windows
| and Linux under Parallels and it works great. Colima/Lima is
| excellent, too: https://github.com/abiosoft/colima
|
| Windows on ARM performance is near native when run under
| macOS. `virtiofs` mounts aren't nearly as fast as native
| Linux filesystem access, but Colima/Lima can be very fast if
| you (for example) move build artifacts and dependency caches
| inside the VM.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| There's also UTM, available free for download or you can
| make a donation to the devs by purchasing it from the App
| Store.
| kwanbix wrote:
| If you are OK with the closed apple ecosystem, sure, but I
| mean, 20% is not that much for 99% of the population.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I really admire what apple has done with
| the M CPUs, but I personally prefer the freedom of being able
| to install linux, bsd, windows, and even weirder OSes like
| Haiku.
| jamespo wrote:
| I'd like to have haiku as a boot option, but how well does it
| work on modern laptop hardware?
| dijit wrote:
| I keep hearing this, but I'd venture that a majority of those
| making it will most likely end up on Windows full time
| anyway. Which is not materially worse than MacOS, no matter
| how much MacOS is shooting themselves in the foot.
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| With WSL2, Windows is better, sad, but true.
| dijit wrote:
| Hahahahhahahahahhahahahahaha
|
| No.
|
| Even if it was better than lima (and the builtin
| posix/unix environment), which: it ain't, it doesn't
| nearly make a dent in the mandatory online account,
| copilot shit and all the rest.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > but I mean, 20% is not that much for 99% of the population.
|
| As long as you're ok being tethered to the wall, and even
| then, guzzling power.
|
| The whole point of Apple Silicon is that its performance is
| exactly the same on battery as tethered to the wall _AND_ it
| delivers that performance with unmatched power efficiency.
|
| Its the same on pure desktop. Look at the performance per
| watt of the Mac Mini. Its just nuts how power efficient it
| is. Most people's monitors will use more power than the Mac
| Mini.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I was just looking at an HP laptop with a snapdragon X
| processor that claimed 34 hours of battery life while
| watching video.
|
| It'd be tempting if I had any idea what the software
| compatibility story would be like. For example, the company
| I'm contracting with now requires a device monitor for SOC2
| compliance (ensuring OS patches are applied and hard drive
| encryption remains on). They don't even want to do it, but
| their customers won't work with them without it.
|
| Surprise surprise, a quick check of the device monitor
| company's website shows they don't support ARM architecture
| devices at all.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| It may still work. The prism emulation is pretty good,
| almost on par with Rosetta2.
|
| I have the surface laptop 7 with the X elite in it. The
| only thing I've ran into that outright didn't run was
| MSSQL server.
|
| It's not my main machine, that is still an M4 Macbook pro
| but I hop on it occasionally to keep up with what Windows
| is doing or if I need to help someone with something
| windows specific. I've got WSL2, Docker, VSCode, etc. all
| running just fine.
|
| It's decent, but not amazing. Feels a little slower than
| my M2 Air I have but not much, most of that is probably
| just windows being windows.
|
| Would be nice to be able to get Linux running on one of
| these
| zdragnar wrote:
| Sadly, I'm doing dotnet work, including a legacy webforms
| codebase. Not running mssql server directly, but lots of
| other tools- visual studio, sql server profiler, sql
| server management studio, that sort of thing. EVEN IF all
| of that worked, I have already verified from the company
| that supplies the device management software that they
| don't support non-x86 architectures.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Bummer. They are neat little laptops, and with the X
| elite 2 (assuming they end up in some windows laptops and
| aren't exclusively for the new android chromebooks) it's
| about the closest we'll get to a MacBook on Windows for
| now.
|
| I wish Microsoft put more pressure on vendors to support
| ARM.
| dijit wrote:
| The last Snapdragon X Elite claims really didn't pan out
| though.
|
| Which left me bitter quite honestly as I was looking
| forward to them a lot.
| pico303 wrote:
| My "fancy" Windows work laptop has 45 minutes of battery
| life, while my M3 MacBook Pro will go 14 hours compiling
| C++ or running JavaScript and Docker images, and do so
| twice as fast as my work laptop could. I'd say you get what
| you pay for, but my work laptop was around the same price
| as my M3.
|
| I wouldn't be opposed to going back to Linux. But once you
| stop looking for power sockets all the time and start
| treating your laptop like a device you can just use all day
| at any moment, it's hard to go back.
| spwa4 wrote:
| That's because your company's security department has
| virus scanners scanning every bit of code (including 99%
| of the virus scanner itself).
| elAhmo wrote:
| Huge majority people don't really case about whether an
| ecosystem is closed or not. Power users, such as developers,
| actively chose Macbooks, and those users are most likely to
| care about that.
|
| You really think an average person shopping for a computer at
| Bestbuy cares about installing a different OS on their
| machine?
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > I personally prefer the freedom of being able to install
| linux, bsd, windows, and even weirder OSes like Haiku.
|
| I certainly don't think that matters to the vast majority of
| the population
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| The majority of the population is running a $300 laptop
| from Amazon. They certainly aren't popping used car money
| every 2-3 years like the real enthusiasts are.
| Greed wrote:
| Agreed. Even as an enthusiast if I could take the performance
| hit and keep the M4's battery life, I'd do it in a heartbeat
| just for the ability to run linux.
| whycome wrote:
| 20% is just the performance difference. They noted the low
| cost for an Air model as well. What would an equivalent be at
| that price point? Would it have the same passive cooling and
| weight features?
| Zak wrote:
| It does not appear to me that Macs are _closed_ in the sense
| that iOS is. It is possible, at least to install Linux on
| Apple silicon Macs.
|
| There are certainly many more options on the PC side, but
| it's not because Apple actively blocks users from running
| another OS.
| kwanbix wrote:
| As far as I understand, the only Linux you can install on
| an M CPU is Asahi linux. Apple is not doing anything
| actively, but is also doing nothing to help linux be
| ported.
| bhouston wrote:
| I use a MacBook Air 15" has my full stack main development
| machine. It is just light and portable on the go. At home I
| just plug it into a docking station with 10 GigE and output to
| a 48" OLED monitor - a beautiful setup.
| robbinb wrote:
| just curious what brand etc monitor and docking station
| you're using here.
| bhouston wrote:
| I have had really good experience with OWC docking stations
| - rock solid compared to Dell ones I've had in the past:
| https://www.owc.com/solutions/connectivity
|
| I won't recommend my monitor because it has auto-dimming
| you can not turn off. Good but not great.
| criddell wrote:
| > it seems they all lag about 20%
|
| So they are about one generation behind? That's not bad really.
| What's the AMD or Intel chip equivalent to the M2 or M3? Is
| somebody making a fanless laptop with it?
| Rohansi wrote:
| Apple is also always at least one generation ahead on the
| process/lithography too because they buy out all of the
| initial capacity. That alone accounts for a decent chunk of
| the difference.
|
| I don't think the market is there for fanless non-Mac
| laptops. Most people would rather have a budget system (no $
| for proper passive cooling) or more powerful system.
| criddell wrote:
| > Most people would rather have a budget system
|
| The low end of the market is for sure bigger but I think
| Apple has shown that the higher end can be profitable too.
| Dell, HP, Lenovo, and the other big laptop makers aren't
| afraid of having a thousand different SKUs. They could add
| one more for a higher end machine that's fanless.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| The reduced horsepower relative to M-series isn't a problem for
| me as much as efficiency is. Both Intel and AMD seem to
| struggle with building a CPU that doesn't guzzle battery
| without also seriously restricting performance.
|
| This really sucks. The nice thing about high end (Mx Pro/Max)
| MBPs is that if you need desktop-like power, it's there, but
| they can also do a pretty good job pretending to be MacBook
| Airs and stretch that 100Wh battery far further than is
| possible with similarly powerful x86 laptops.
|
| This affects ultraportables too, though. A MacBook Air performs
| well in bursts and only becomes limited in sustained tasks, but
| competing laptops don't even do burst very well _and still need
| active cooling_ to boot.
|
| On the desktop front I think AMD has been killing it but both
| companies need to start from scratch for laptops.
| rapind wrote:
| > On the desktop front I think AMD has been killing it but
| both companies need to start from scratch for laptops.
|
| IMO Apple is killing it with the mac mini too. Obviously not
| if you're gaming (that has a lot to do with the OS though),
| but if you're OK with the OS, it's a powerhouse for the size,
| noise, and energy required.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Yeah for most "normal" users the Mini is pretty ideal. It's
| got enough power that it's overkill for most folks while
| being the least intrusive a desktop could possibily be:
| it's tiny, it doesn't have a power brick, it doesn't make
| any noise, and it's not going to impact your power bill
| hardly at all.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| I've been running a Mac mini as a gaming machine for years;
| an egpu is much cheaper than building a whole new desktop
| tower.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > The reduced horsepower relative to M-series isn't a problem
| for me as much as efficiency is
|
| Same here. I actually don't care for macOS much, and I'm one
| of those weirdos who actually likes Windows (with WSL).
|
| I tried the surface laptop 7 with the snapdragon X elite, and
| it's..OK. Still spins up the fans quite a bit and runs hotter
| than my 14" M4 Pro. It's noticeably slower than the MacBook
| too, and isn't instant wake from sleep (though it's a lot
| better than Wintel laptops used to be).
|
| So I've been on Apple Silicon macs for the last 4.5 years
| because there's just no other option out there that even
| comes close. I'm actually away from my desk a lot, battery
| life matters to me. I just want a laptop with great
| performance AND great battery life, silent, runs cool, high
| quality screen and touchpad, and decent speakers and
| microphone.
|
| MacBooks are literally the only computer on the market that
| checks all boxes. Even if I wanted to/preferred to run
| Windows or Linux instead, I can't because there just isn't
| equivalent hardware out there.
| vient wrote:
| > building a CPU that doesn't guzzle battery
|
| It may be the software problem as well. On Windows I
| regularly need to find which new app started to eat battery
| like crazy. Usually it ends up being something third-party
| related to hardware, like Alienware app constantly making WMI
| requests (high CPU usage of svchost.exe hosting a WMI
| provider, disabling Alienware service helped), Intel Killer
| Wi-Fi software doing something when I did not even know it
| was installed on my PC (disabling all related services
| helped), Dell apps doing something, MSI apps doing
| something... you get the idea.
|
| It seems like a class of problems which you simply can't have
| on macOS because of closed ecosystem.
|
| Without all this stuff my Intel 155H works pretty decently,
| although I'm sure it is far away from M-series in terms of
| performance.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Windows doesn't do it any favors, for sure. Running Linux
| with with every tweak under the sun for better life still
| leaves a large gap between x86 laptops and MacBooks,
| however, and while there's probably some low hanging
| optimization to be taken advantage of there I think the
| real problem is that x86 CPUs just can't idle as low as
| M-series can, which is exacerbated by the CPU not being
| able to finish up its work and reach idle as quickly.
| remix2000 wrote:
| Depends how you frame it; in my eyes, I'd be paying $1.4k USD
| after sales tax (at least here in the EU) for a laptop with
| measly 16 gigs of RAM... I could buy two normal laptops to
| outperform that for a price of one!
| bayindirh wrote:
| Honestly asking, can you use either of them for a decade?
|
| From replacement parts and physical endurance perspective, I
| mean.
| remix2000 wrote:
| I don't think it's realistic to expect any tech made in the
| twenties last a decade...
| bayindirh wrote:
| I _still_ expect Mac and Thinkpad hardware to last a
| decade, sans their batteries. A good desktop PC made from
| better parts will also endure without much effort.
| criddell wrote:
| If you use the $1.4k USD laptop for 2 years, that works out
| to around $2 / day. If it's a Mac, it probably has some
| resale value at the end of the time bringing the cost down
| closer to $1 / day.
|
| For a work machine, that's pretty easy to justify.
| remix2000 wrote:
| I wouldn't expect an Apple product to last that long...
| This is from my personal experience and also family members
| who tried Apple, so your mileage may vary, I just wouldn't
| trust it.
|
| Ignoring that though, if work machine means an Excel
| machine, then it's probably overspending IMO. If work
| machine means workstation, then you'd probably rather want
| one of the >1.6k models with more working memory... or just
| don't go Apple.
| franczesko wrote:
| AMD asleep? I didn't think this is accurate
| matdehaast wrote:
| If you read the first half of the sentence then yeah.... The
| complete sentence clarifies "with their mobile lineup"
| pizza234 wrote:
| Each Ryzen generation increased performance significantly, so
| AMD is definitely not asleep at the wheel.
| matdehaast wrote:
| I'm talking specifically about their mobile lineup, not
| desktop. And more specifically the performance to power
| efficiency the M series is getting. It is more than 2
| generations behind.
| pizza234 wrote:
| Each Ryzen mobile generation also improved efficiency, in
| particularly the last generation (AI PRO 300).
|
| Intel, on the other hand, started a few generation ago with
| an edge in terms of efficiency, and now they're behind;
| they are definitely the one that fell asleep.
|
| The fact that ARM may have unreachable efficiency doesn't
| mean that AMD, as x86 producer, is doing nothing.
| satellite2 wrote:
| For the same price you have an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 which has 50%
| higher performance in cpubenchmark
| matdehaast wrote:
| Think you are mistaken. The M4 beats the Ryzen AI 365 in both
| single and multicore benchmarks
| satellite2 wrote:
| M4 23884
|
| 365 29861
|
| https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M4+10+Core&i
| d... https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+AI+
| 9+365&...
| matdehaast wrote:
| Interesting, on Geekbench they have very different
| scoring
|
| 365: 2515/12552 M4: 3763/14694
|
| https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-
| ai-9-365 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/11020192
| FootballMuse wrote:
| Passmark is an outdated benchmark not well optimized for
| ARM. Even so the single thread marks are 3864 (AI365) vs
| 4550 (M4)
|
| OTOH, Geekbench correlates (0.99) with SPEC standards,
| the industry standard in CPU benchmark and what
| enterprise companies such as AWS use to judge a CPU
| performance.
|
| https://medium.com/silicon-reimagined/performance-
| delivered-...
| satellite2 wrote:
| I see you are citing a 6 month old post which itself
| isn't really well sourced isn't really reaching consensus
| and doesn't have a definitive answer.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43287208
|
| The article in question doesn't mention subpar ARM
| optimizations.
| FootballMuse wrote:
| Double lol
|
| https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-
| amd_ryzen_ai_9_365...
|
| Edit: Looks like OP stealth edited "double" to "50%". Still
| lol.
| satellite2 wrote:
| I edited 15sec after posting but you got me on speed.
|
| It's interesting I've seen that often on trending posts.
| There is enough traffic that any variation of a comment
| will have readers
| AlphaAndOmega0 wrote:
| I own an M4 iPad Pro and can't figure out what to do with even a
| fraction of the horsepower, given iPadOS's limitations. The
| rumors about an upcoming touchscreen Mac are interesting, perhaps
| Apple will deign to make their ridiculously overpowered SOCs
| usable for general purpose computing. A man can dream..
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I own an M4 iPad Pro and can 't figure out what to do with
| even a fraction of the horsepower, given iPadOS's limitations._
|
| It's a nice problem to have, since for most of computing
| history it's been the other way around. (Meaning the hardware
| was the constraint, not the OS.)
| dijit wrote:
| I suppose, that's an interesting way of framing it - yet in
| my gut I feel like I am paying for something that I am locked
| away from.
|
| Sometimes though Youtube will make the iPad uncomfortably hot
| and consume the battery at an insane pace.
|
| So, I guess there's _someone_ using the performance.
| jchw wrote:
| I disagree. For a lot of the personal computing era, the
| problems with OSes and hardware were mostly a matter of
| technical progress. The problem with iPadOS is totally
| different; it's a problem that was basically manufactured in
| and of itself, and completely artificial at that. I do not
| think this is a good problem to have at all.
| bigyabai wrote:
| I don't think hardware has been a real constraint since the
| Pentium era. We've been living in a world of CPU surplus for
| close to 2 and a half decades, now.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I've been RAM limited more than CPU limited for some time.
| In my personal workflows, 32GB was not enough and I'd
| receive out of memory errors. I bumped that up to 64GB and
| the memory errors went away. This was in a Hackintosh so
| RAM upgrades were possible. I've never tried an M* series
| chip to see how it would behave with the same workflow with
| the lower RAM available in affordable machines.
| sib wrote:
| >> I own an M4 iPad Pro and can't figure out what to do with
| even a fraction of the horsepower, given iPadOS's
| limitations.
|
| > It's a nice problem to have, since for most of computing
| history it's been the other way around. (Meaning the hardware
| was the constraint, not the OS.)
|
| For anyone who works with (full-size) image or video
| processing, the hardware is still the constraint... Things
| like high-ISO noise reduction are a 20-second process for a
| single image.
|
| I would be happy to have a laptop that was 10x as fast as my
| MacBook Pro.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| > The rumors about an upcoming touchscreen Mac are interesting
|
| What rumors have you seen? Anytime I've seen speculation, Apple
| execs seem to shut that idea down. Is there more evidence this
| is happening? If anything, Apple's recent moves to "macify"
| iPadOS indicate their strategy is to tempt people over into the
| locked down ecosystem, rather than bring the (more) open macOS
| to the iPad.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| https://x.com/mingchikuo/status/1968249865940709538
|
| > @mingchikuo
|
| > MacBook models will feature a touch panel for the first
| time, further blurring the line with the iPad. This shift
| appears to reflect Apple's long-term observation of iPad user
| behavior, indicating that in certain scenarios, touch
| controls can enhance both productivity and the overall user
| experience.
|
| > 1. The OLED MacBook Pro, expected to enter mass production
| by late 2026, will incorporate a touch panel using on-cell
| touch technology.
|
| > 2. The more affordable MacBook model powered by an iPhone
| processor, slated for mass production in 4Q25, will not
| support a touch panel. Specifications for its second-
| generation version, anticipated in 2027, remain under
| discussion and could include touch support.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Current rumors point to the M6 generation of MBPs being a
| significant redesign and featuring an OLED touch panel
| screen.
|
| I don't understand the appeal, even a little bit. Reaching up
| to touch the screen is awkward, and every large touchpanel
| I've used has had to trade off antiglare coating
| effectiveness to accomodate oleophobic coating. For me, this
| would be an objective downgrade -- the touch capability would
| never get used, but poor antiglare would be a constant thorn
| in my side. I can only hope that it's an option and not
| mandatory, and I may upgrade once the M5 generation releases
| (which is supposedly just a spec bump) as insurance.
| mc32 wrote:
| Smudges are off-putting... but, there are times when it
| would be very convenient to be able to scroll or click on a
| touchscreen. There are times when presenting when a
| touchscreen would be preferred over a mouse or touchpad.
| It's not often, but they are nice to have.
|
| And, in regards to smudges, I mean, just don't use the
| touchscreen unless you have to and problem avoided.
|
| Antiglare can be a thing but that can be avoided by
| avoiding string lighting behind you.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| There's still the issue of accidentally triggering things
| (when e.g. adjusting the screen) and sometimes you don't
| have control of your surrounding lighting. I'd still
| prefer touch to be entirely optional.
| latexr wrote:
| > Anytime I've seen speculation, Apple execs seem to shut
| that idea down.
|
| They also said they weren't merging iOS and macOS, and with
| every release that becomes more of a lie.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOYikXbC6Fs
| CharlesW wrote:
| Strategies change. That was 7 years ago, pre-Apple Silicon.
| It turns out that people want windowing options on their
| large and expensive tablet, to do long-running tasks in the
| background, etc.
| jtbayly wrote:
| If that were all they were doing, nobody would be
| concerned. It's the crapifying of the MacOS in order to
| make it work fine with a touch interface that drives
| everybody bonkers about the slow merge.
| jama211 wrote:
| I have Tahoe and it's just as good at being a desktop os
| as any of the previous os's. Not sure what you're
| referring to.
| ethanwillis wrote:
| There have been lots of complaints all over the place
| that contradict your experience.
|
| One article that talks about it:
| https://osxdaily.com/2025/09/19/why-im-holding-off-on-
| upgrad...
|
| For less discerning users maybe the rough edges aren't
| that noticeable. But the point of choosing Apple products
| is you should be a discerning consumer.
| latexr wrote:
| > That was 7 years ago, pre-Apple Silicon.
|
| There have been rumours of Apple wanting to shift Macs to
| ARM chips for _14_ years. When they made that
| announcement, they already knew.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_transition_to_Apple_sil
| ico...
|
| It was obvious it was going to happen. I remember seeing
| Apple announcing iPads doing tasks my Mac at the time
| could only dream of and thinking they would surely do the
| switch.
|
| > It turns out that people want windowing options on
| their large and expensive tablet, to do long-running
| tasks in the background
|
| The problem isn't them making iOS (or iPadOS) more like
| macOS, it's them doing the reverse.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _When they made that announcement, they already knew._
|
| Yep, the ongoing convergence made that pretty clear. The
| emphatic "No" was to reassure 2018's macOS _developers_
| that they wouldn 't need to _rewrite their apps_ as xOS
| apps anytime soon, which was (and is) true 7 years later.
|
| This is the same session where Craig said, _" There are
| millions of iOS apps out there. We think some of them
| would look great on the Mac."_ and announced that Mohave
| would include xOS apps. Every developer there understood
| that, as time went on, they would be using more and more
| shared APIs and frameworks.
|
| > _The problem isn't them making iOS (or iPadOS) more
| like macOS, it's them doing the reverse._
|
| That ship has sailed, but it's also completely overblown.
| latexr wrote:
| > but it's also completely overblown.
|
| Speak for yourself. I for one despise the current
| direction of the Mac and the complete disregard for the
| (once good) Human Interface Guidelines. It's _everywhere_
| on macOS now.
|
| Simple example: The fugly switches which replaced
| checkboxes. Not only to they look wrong on the Mac,
| they're less functional. With checkboxes you can click
| their text to toggle them; not so with the switches.
|
| I'm not even going to touch on the Liquid Glass bugs, or
| I'd be writing a comment the length of the Iliad.
| justinator wrote:
| Chances that there are both a folding iPhone and a
| Touchscreen Mac somewhere in the skunk works of Cupertino are
| 100%.
|
| The Apple Vision Pro was a far more extreme product and was
| kept pretty well under wraps. (tho a market failure).
| zaptrem wrote:
| > perhaps Apple will deign to make their ridiculously
| overpowered SOCs usable for general purpose computing
|
| They've been doing exactly this since the first M1 MacBooks
| came out in 2020.
| ajross wrote:
| > can't figure out what to do with even a fraction of the
| horsepower
|
| That's sort of the funny thing here. Apple's situation is
| almost the perfect inverse of Intel's. Intel fell completely
| off the wagon[1], but they did so at exactly the moment where
| the arc of innovation hit a wall and could do the least damage.
| They're merely bad, but are still selling plenty of chips and
| their devices work... just fine!
|
| Apple, on the other hand, launched a shocking, world-beating
| product line that destroys its competition in basically all
| measurable ways into a market that... just doesn't care that
| much anymore. All the stuff we want to spend transistors on
| moved into the cloud. Games live on GPUs and not unified SOCs.
| A handful of AI nerds does not much of a market make.
|
| And iOS... I mean, as mentioned what are you even going to do
| with all that? Even the comparatively-very-disappointing Pixel
| 10 (I haven't even upgrade my 9!) is still a totally great all-
| day phone with great features.
|
| [1] As of right now, unless 18A rides in to save them, Intel's
| best process is almost five _YEARS_ behind the industry leader
| 's.
| tyleo wrote:
| It's surprising to me MacBooks have such low market share. I
| got my first Mac after using Windows all my life and I'm
| stunned. The laptop: 1. Lasts all day on battery 2. Doesn't
| get hot 3. Compiles code twice as fast as my new Windows
| desktop
|
| I really don't like macOS but I've shifted to recommending
| Mac to all my friends and family given the battery,
| portability and, and speed.
| ajross wrote:
| I won't buy or recommend one just on principle. I've spent
| way too much of my life advocating for open firmware and
| user-customizable systems to throw it all in the trash for
| a few hours of battery. I absolutely tell everyone they're
| the best, and why, but my daily driver has been a Linux box
| of some form (OK fine I have a windows rig for gaming too)
| for decades, and that's not changing.
|
| Also, again, most folks just don't care. And of the
| remainder:
|
| > Compiles code twice as fast as my new Windows desktop
|
| That's because MS's filesystem layer has been garbage since
| NT was launched decades ago and they've never managed to
| catch up. Also if you're not apples/applesing and are
| measuring native C/C++ builds: VS is an OK optimizer but
| lags clang badly in build speed. The actual CPU is faster,
| but not by nearly 2x.
| kstrauser wrote:
| >> Compiles code twice as fast as my new Windows desktop
|
| >That's because MS's filesystem layer has been garbage
| since NT was launched decades ago [...]
|
| I confess that this kind of excuse drives me batty. End
| users don't buy CPUs and buy filesystems. They buy entire
| systems. "Well, it's not really that much faster, it's
| just that part of the system is junk. The rest is
| comparable!" That may be, but the end result for the
| person you're talking to is that their Windows PC
| compiles code at half the speed of their Mac. It's not
| like they bought it and selected the glacial filesystem,
| or even had a choice in the matter.
|
| That's right up there with "my Intel integrated graphics
| gets lower FPS than my Nvidia card." "But the CPU is
| faster!" Possibly true, but still totally irrelevant if
| the rest of the system can't keep up.
| nhod wrote:
| It definitely depends on what circles you run in. When
| someone I know or is a degree of separation away from me
| pulls out a PC, it is always a little bit of a surprise.
| jyap wrote:
| Regarding market share and your friends and family
| recommendations, you're thinking first world. Rest of the
| world wants and can only afford sub-$500 laptops.
| criddell wrote:
| I've found that the $1000 Mac laptop is worth about $500
| after 3 years and the $500 laptop is worth $50. The price
| difference over time really isn't that big and the Mac is
| going to have a better trackpad and display and longer
| battery life.
| serf wrote:
| larger initial purchases are harder on the lower income
| earners regardless of the long term value they offer;
| that's one of the hard parts about being poor, it also
| makes positive economic decisions harder to accomplish.
| cromka wrote:
| Since Apple actually makes a significant amount of money
| selling hardware itself, I really wonder why they actually
| wouldn't allow people to install Linux on it, with a full
| support. After all, it's not like this would jeopardize
| macOS/iPadOS AppStore earnings -- Linux users would simply buy
| into Apple Hardware they haven't even considered before, and
| only a fraction of macOS/iPadOS users would switch to using
| Linux.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| do they disallow it or just not provide active support?
| Active support requires paying for employees to keep it
| working. Ignoring it and having volunteers do it requires
| nothing.
| runjake wrote:
| Questions for you:
|
| 1. If you don't know what to do with it, why did you buy it?
|
| 2. If you wanted a general purpose computer, why did you buy an
| iPad?
|
| 3. Which iPadOS limitations are particularly painful for you?
| Rohansi wrote:
| There are other differences with the iPad Pro lineup
| unrelated to the SoC. It's just strange to think that a very
| capable laptop chip is being put into a device with far more
| limitations.
| runjake wrote:
| I'd rather that than an underpowered chip.
|
| It was mentioned, as almost a side comment somewhere, that
| the M chip is in there for multitasking and higher end
| image/video editing for "Pros". I could certainly use the
| M4 in an iPad Pro for iPadOS 26 and it's multitasking. I
| run into occasional slowness when multitasking on my M2
| iPad Air.
| lanza wrote:
| > I own an M4 iPad Pro and can't figure out what to do with
| even a fraction of the horsepower, given iPadOS's limitations.
|
| Literally everything you do gets the full power of the chips.
| They finish tasks faster using less power than previous chips.
| They can then use smaller batteries and thinner devices. A
| higher ceiling on performance is only one aspect of an upgraded
| CPU. A lower floor on energy consumed per task is typically
| much more important for mobile devices.
| mort96 wrote:
| Right but what if I don't notice the difference between
| rendering a web page taking 100ms and it taking 50ms? What if
| I don't notice the difference between video playback
| consuming 20% of the chip's available compute and it
| consuming 10%?
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that users of the announced Blender for
| iPad port will notice any additional horsepower.
| jsheard wrote:
| It'll get even weirder if the rumoured MacBook Lite with an
| iPhone processor ends up happening. Incredibly powerful tablets
| constrained by a dumbed down operating system, sold right next
| to much weaker laptops running a full fat desktop environment.
| gloxkiqcza wrote:
| Well A19 Pro beats M1 in benchmarks so while the rumored
| MacBook might be weaker than mid to high-end iPads, it won't
| be a slow machine in general.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| AFAICT, lots of "AI" related stuff runs slow on M1,M2,M3,M4
|
| I don't know if this already exists but it would be nice to see
| these added to benchmarks. Maybe it's possible to get Apple
| devices to do stable diffusion and related tech faster and just
| needs some incentives (winning benchmarks) for people to spend
| some effort. Otherwise though, my Apple Silicon is way slower
| than my consumer level NVidia Silicon
| liuliu wrote:
| No, iPad Pro won't be faster than 4090s or 4070s (or even 5%
| of the speed of 4090).
|
| But newer chips might contain Neural Accelerator to close the
| gap a little bit (i.e. 10%??).
|
| (I maintain https://apps.apple.com/us/app/draw-things-ai-
| generation/id64...)
| sroussey wrote:
| What improvements did the A19 Pro provide for Draw Things?
| Fwirt wrote:
| There are a number of interesting creative apps for iPad that
| can make full use of its capabilities. A good example is Nomad
| Sculpt. There's also CAD software, many DAWs. I haven't tested
| Numbers yet but I would assume its fairly well optimized.
|
| This really reminds me of the 80/20 articles that made the
| frontpage yesterday. Just because a lot of HN users lament the
| fact that their 20% needs (can't run an LLM or compile large
| projects on an iPad) aren't met by an iPad doesn't mean that
| _most_ people 's needs can't be satisfied in a walled garden.
| The tablet form factor really is superior for a number of
| creative tasks where you can be both "hands on" with your work
| and "untethered". Nomad Sculpt in particular just feels like
| magic to me, with an Apple Pencil it's almost like being back
| in my high school pottery class without getting my hands dirty.
| And a lot of the time when you're doing creative work you're
| not necessarily doing a lot of tabbing back and forth, being
| able to float reference material over the top of your workspace
| is enough.
|
| At this point Apple still recognizes that there is a large
| enough audience to keep selling MacBooks that are still general
| purpose computing devices to people who need them. Given their
| recent missteps in software, time will tell if they continue to
| recognize that need.
| mort96 wrote:
| I would not want to use CAD software or a DAW without a
| proper mouse and keyboard, and maybe a 3D mouse too. An
| interface made for touch really isn't suitable. Even
| connecting a mouse to an iPad is a pretty shitty experience,
| since all the UI elements are too big and you have to wait
| around for animations to finish all the time.
| serbuvlad wrote:
| Yes but there is simply no reason to have two devices. There
| are a large number of Windows tablet-laptop combo machines
| that work perfectly well and prove touch apps work perfectly
| well on a desktop OS.
|
| Yeah, that took a long time for MS to get to not suck after
| Windows 8, but touch and tablet interactions on Windows 10
| and Windows 11 work perfectly well.
| CompoundEyes wrote:
| I work with Logic Pro X often. I bought an iPad Pro M4 and
| the Logic version for it is really compelling. Touch faders
| and the UI are well thought out. The problem is they want me
| to subscribe to use it. I wish I could just outright purchase
| it for $300.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > There's also CAD software, many DAWs.
|
| Assertions like this are what kill the iPad. Yes, DAWs
| "exist" but can only load the shitty AUs that Apple supports
| on the App Store. Professional plugins like Spectrasonics or
| U-He won't run on the iPad, only the Mac. CAD software "runs"
| but only supports the most basic parametric modeling. You're
| going to get your Macbook or Wintel machine to run your
| engineering workloads if that's your profession. Not because
| the iPad _can 't_ do these things, but because Apple
| recognizes that they can double their sales gimping good
| hardware. No such limitations exist on, say, the Surface
| lineup. It's wholly artificial.
|
| I'm reminded of Damon Albarn's album _The Fall_ - which he
| allegedly recorded on an iPad. It 's far-and-away his least
| professional release, and there's no indication he ever
| returned to iOS for another album. Much like the iPad itself,
| _The Fall_ is an enshrined gimmick fighting for recognition
| in a bibliography of genuinely important releases. Apple
| engineers aren 't designing the next unibody Mac chassis on
| an iPad. They're not mixing, mastering and color-grading
| their advertisements on an iPad. _God help them_ if they 're
| shooting any footage with the dogshit 12MP camera they put on
| those things. iPads do nothing particularly well, which is
| acceptable for moseying around the web and playing _Angry
| Birds_ but literally untenable in any industry with cutting-
| edge, creative or competitive software demands. Ask the pros.
| cainxinth wrote:
| I buy the higher end Apple products not because I plan to use
| all their power immediately, but because I keep my devices a
| very long time and want them to retain usability right to the
| end.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| Same here. My launch-day M1 MBP is starting to show its age
| finally, M5 with twice the perf will be a nice upgrade.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| Is it, tough? I feel like everything on my M1 is still as
| snappy as it was on day 1. My previous MacBook definitely
| showed it's game after 4 years, but I'm happy to use this
| one for at least another 2-4.
| bapak wrote:
| > I own an M4 iPad Pro and can't figure out what to do with
| even a fraction of the horsepower
|
| Look at glassy UIs. Worth it.
| criddell wrote:
| I bought an M4 iPad Pro and ended up returning it because I just
| don't like the magic keyboard. My current iPad is from 2018 and I
| use the Smart Keyboard Folio and (for me) it's just about
| perfect. Small, lightweight, not too expensive, easy to clean,
| and works great.
|
| I've been hoping there were enough people like me that a third
| party would make a replacement but that never happened.
|
| I know my current iPad Pro won't last forever so I suppose I'll
| end up with a Magic Keyboard setup eventually.
| tylerflick wrote:
| Still rocking a 2018 pro as well. At this point I would pay
| Apple for OS upgrades as I don't see any reason to buy a new
| model.
| sandbags wrote:
| Likewise. It still works fine for all the things I use it
| for. Long may it last!
| summarity wrote:
| I for one wonder if there's any new hardware features. M3
| introduced nested virtualisation.
| sroussey wrote:
| I imagine the hardware based memory pointer security that was
| introduced in the A19.
|
| Edit with link: https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-
| integrity-enforcement...
| ksec wrote:
| iPad M5 vs M4 [1], this is coming from leaked unbox video of M5
| iPad Pro. So it should be legit.
|
| Single-Core Score 4133 3748 110.3%
|
| Multi-Core Score 15437 13324 115.9%
|
| Same maximum clock speed. So assuming no special thermals
| solution on the new iPad Pro such as vapour chamber. This is 10%
| pure IPC improvements although the M5 has 6MB L2 Cache. 2MB
| higher than M4.
|
| Not shown here are the E-Core performance. Which if we were to
| trust the A19 Pro test they are 20 to 30% higher than previous
| generations. And GPU is also a lot faster on A19 Pro.
|
| M5 also comes with 12GB Memory as baseline, which is 4GB higher
| than M4 you get on iPad Pro. I hope M5 MacBook Air continues to
| get 16GB as baseline, looking like a very decent upgrade for
| anyone that is on M1 or still on Intel platform. Would be perfect
| if MacBook Air gets Vapour Chamber like iPhone Pro. I don't mind
| paying slightly more for it.
|
| [1]
| https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/14173685?baseli...
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Frankly it's borderline unethical that they offered 8gb models
| past like...M1. 12gb isn't enough IMO for anyone who wants a
| machine that will last but at least it's a step in the right
| direction.
|
| My friend with an M3 MacBook was complaining about the speed. I
| told them that was ridiculous and they must be doing something
| incredibly intensive. I came and took a look at it - I know
| chrome tabs are a memory hog but my God this thing slowed to a
| crawl with even lightweight usage despite being weeks old. I
| told him to return it immediately.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I am totally satisfied with the utility of my Apple Silicon
| Mac mini that is now 5 years old. Calling it "unethical"
| shows you have a weird point of view out of touch with
| mainstream use cases.
| zf00002 wrote:
| Reading on my 8gb M2 Air that I have not once ever felt is
| lacking.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Glad you've had a good experience, maybe we just got a
| bad computer. But I know what I saw ultimately and what
| it was was a brand new M3 machine running like crap.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Try installing Vitals.app open source app to see what's
| going on:
|
| https://github.com/hmarr/vitals
|
| Stats is another good one too:
|
| https://github.com/exelban/stats
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| No need for a personal attack dude.
| acdha wrote:
| > I know chrome tabs are a memory hog but my God this thing
| slowed to a crawl with even lightweight usage despite being
| weeks old. I told him to return it immediately.
|
| Wouldn't it be easier to use Firefox or Safari? Chrome is a
| hog but it's not like we don't have multiple great
| alternatives which also use something like half of the
| battery and don't oppose privacy measures.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Not my computer, I'm not going to say "don't like your
| computer? Change browsers." They returned it, got a little
| more ram, and they're happy now. I don't know what their
| use case is that in-depth so I'm not going to tell them to
| completely change their browsing habits and usage unless
| they are open to that. $200 later they were happy.
|
| Given the field they are in, I imagine they use chrome like
| many do for compatibility/testing reasons
| ksec wrote:
| Chrome, for at least the past 2 years have drastically
| improved multiple Tab memory usage. It also now default
| unload tabs which is unused just like Firefox. While it still
| isn't as good as Firefox in 100+ Tabs scenario Chrome is not
| too far off. Unlike Safari which as of version 26 still
| doesn't care much about multi tabs usage.
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| I can't wait to suffer M5 with macOS 26, such a disappointment.
|
| Edit: Let me double down, macOS 26 is the worst OS that Apple has
| shipped in the last two decades.
| razighter777 wrote:
| Shame this fantastic, carefully engineered and unique technology
| is locked behind closed source drivers, non-upgradable hardware
| and tamper resistent boot processes. I love apple silicon... if
| only they would launch some sort of product or documentation
| allowing M-series processors to be practical for more general
| purpose computing...
| netule wrote:
| I love being able to run local LLMs with decent performance on
| a laptop without external hardware, but it would be really nice
| if there was better gaming support.
| viktorcode wrote:
| > and tamper resistent boot processes
|
| Bootloader is unlocked on Macs. That's how Asahi Linux started
| CharlesW wrote:
| >, _if only they would launch some sort of product or
| documentation allowing M-series processors to be practical for
| more general purpose computing..._
|
| Apple isn't the only company who can do this, but the reason
| they'll continue to have the lead for the foreseeable future is
| for all the reasons you dislike them. This is the benefit of
| near-complete vertical integration.
| lvl155 wrote:
| Too bad Apple refuses to innovate on AI. Epic management failure.
| sroussey wrote:
| Blame it on the bean counters.
| maz1b wrote:
| Where's the M4 Ultra/M4 Extreme?
|
| M5 Ultra/M5 Extreme/M5 Super?
| jyap wrote:
| Per the title, this is a leaked benchmark. It's not an Ars
| Technica full benchmark article.
| pier25 wrote:
| There won't be an M4 Ultra as the chip was not designed with a
| fusion connector.
|
| The Extreme versions were only rumors. But maybe Apple will
| finally make one with the M5 and release a proper Apple Silicon
| Mac Pro.
| risho wrote:
| >There won't be an M4 Ultra as the chip was not designed with
| a fusion connector.
|
| which is the same thing that people said about the m3
| pier25 wrote:
| Really? The M3 Ultra still uses the ultra fusion connector.
| stego-tech wrote:
| Damn impressive if true, but I'll be honest, I _still_ don't feel
| the need to replace my M1 iPad Pro or my M1 Pro Macbook Pro.
| They're both more than amazing for my use cases - though if Apple
| suddenly took gaming seriously, like extending Rosetta to act as
| a translation layer for Windows games a la Proton, I'd gladly
| throw down for an M5 Ultra when it's released.
| jmkni wrote:
| Yeah they've reversed-cannabalised themselves
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| In all honesty, I don't think cpu has ever been a huge
| limitation for me outside of gaming. The biggest bottlenecks
| for me have always been disk speed and memory. My soon-to-be
| decade old xps 13 gets on well enough, except it only has 8gb
| of soldered on ram. _That_ absolutely is a bottle neck for me.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| > though if Apple suddenly took gaming seriously, like
| extending Rosetta to act as a translation layer for Windows
| games a la Proton, I'd gladly throw down for an M5 Ultra when
| it's released
|
| No joke, if I could run my Steam library on my phone, I'd
| probably buy a new phone every year (and might need to, given
| what the thermals and rapid charge/discharge cycles would do to
| battery longevity). But Apple's current strategy is to provide
| a tool, then let developers do the work themselves; compare to
| Valve's efforts (and occasionally stepping on rakes when games
| update themselves).
| thenaturalist wrote:
| Local LLMs will be one of those things where you'll feel a
| difference.
|
| Not much else I can think of as well.
|
| M1 is still insane. Apps, OS emulation... just chuggs along.
| ziofill wrote:
| I don't know how often it happens that a 5 year old chip
| still gets praise, but I guess not very often.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Just upgraded my M1 Pro to an M4 Max. Roughly an order of
| magnitude faster local inference, though I haven't
| benchmarked it.
|
| Outside of that though, it's really hard to tell the
| difference. M1 is/was a beast and plenty fast enough for
| daily work.
| addaon wrote:
| I use my M1 Max MacBook Pro for pretty serious CFD with
| OpenFoam. It's astonishing how good it is... but a newer
| machine would be nearly 2x faster, which matters when single
| runs can take 1-3 hours.
| willis936 wrote:
| I know Asahi is in choppy waters this year, but it is a
| seriously impressive project in (imo) a good state. I was
| surprised that I could run a one-liner script and an hour later
| play a 32-bit windows x86 3D openGL game on an ARM apple
| machine with reasonable performance.
| amelius wrote:
| To what extent can these improvements be ascribed to Apple, as
| opposed to the particular silicon fab process node?
| nchmy wrote:
| I'm also curious about this. And, even moreso - did apple just
| start designing chips from scratch or did they buy someone who
| already had some cutting edge technology? Its hard to believe
| that they're beating everyone just out of nowhere...
| criddell wrote:
| Right after the launch of the original iPhone, Apple bought
| P.A. Semi for $27 billion to work on chips for future
| iPhones.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| A lot of those guys had a BBQ at my apartment complex for a
| celebration hosted by my roommate, who worked at Apple's
| Silicon Team with them. Lots of cool things to talk to them
| about. This was around the time of the iPhone 7.
|
| A huge number of them were Iranian.
| colinprince wrote:
| actually, $278 million
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi
| dagmx wrote:
| It's not out of nowhere. It's just that people didn't pay
| attention to their mobile chips.
|
| But Anandtech had articles as far back as the A12 7 years ago
| where it was competing with the intel chips of the era
|
| A secondhand link because anandtech is restructured now
| unfortunately https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/05/appl
| es-a12-bionic...
| alberth wrote:
| Looks like an improvement over the M4 iPad of:
| Single Core: ~12% (3679 vs 4133) Multi Core: ~15%
| (13420 vs 15437)
|
| Which is in alignment historically with improvements from a new
| node improvement.
|
| https://browser.geekbench.com/ios_devices/ipad-pro-13-inch-m...
| pier25 wrote:
| > _since M5 will be on the new (smaller) 2nm node_
|
| AFAIK the M5 is still 3nm being produced at the TSMC N3P node.
| alberth wrote:
| Thanks, I updated my wording as such.
| red369 wrote:
| I frequently forget that the 2 nm naming has nothing to do
| with the physical size anymore. I hate that naming system.
|
| From Wikipedia: Node name Gate pitch Metal pitch Year 5 nm 51
| nm 30 nm 2020 3 nm 48 nm 24 nm 2022 2 nm 45 nm 20 nm 2025 1
| nm 40 nm 16 nm 2027
| pier25 wrote:
| I'm no expert but I think it's more related to the
| resolution of the photolithography process.
| ceayo wrote:
| Why would it have 9 cores? Feels a bit weird to have an (a)
| uneven and (b) not a power of two amount of cores on a processor.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Having one core dedicated to coordination tasks and maybe to
| get all interrupts when other 8 are churning things is always a
| good idea from my perspective (HPC admin and programmer).
|
| Also Apple is not shy of odd numbered cores. iPad 2 had a tri-
| core GPU for example.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Nothing magic about even or power of two core counts.
|
| https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/chip_multiprocessor
|
| Lots of "odd" counts by your two criteria (though not many
| _odd_ counts).
| dylan604 wrote:
| AMD used to have a 3 core desktop CPU. IIRC it was because one
| of the intended 4 cores was bad but they could salvage the
| package by making it 3 cores. The 3 core option was so popular,
| that they kept it once the 4th core issues were resolve with a
| software patch. Clever people figured out how to enable it once
| installed and got a 4th core for free. Never used it myself,
| and only heard tales about it. Could be urban legend.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Some models of the M4 iPad had 3P + 6E = 9 cores as well, so
| it's certainly not unusual. Like another commenter said, the
| "why" can be binning for chips which come out with a broken P
| core.
| l5870uoo9y wrote:
| Unrelated question, where are these cores produced?
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| TSMC.
| Zak wrote:
| I'm not especially impressed that Apple came up with a mobile CPU
| that pretty much doubles the performance of the three year old
| Ryzen 6850u in my Thinkpad. What I'm impressed with is it's doing
| that in an iPad, which presumably doesn't have a fan.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| It does not.
| grigio wrote:
| if only it could run Linux..
| modeless wrote:
| Intel's best single core score is listed as 3240 for the Core
| i9-14900KS, a 250W desktop monster chip. Is this score of 4133
| for an equivalent test? Is Intel that far behind?
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Yes.
| RachelF wrote:
| Yes. AMD is a little better.
|
| But bear in mind that Geekbench runs very short benchmarks for
| single core especially, so that the CPU never starts thermal
| throttling.
|
| The Apple chips are fast and efficient, and "feel" even faster
| because of the their single core burst performance and on chip
| very fast RAM.
| commandersaki wrote:
| Anyone thinking Apple October event? New iPad, budget Macbook?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-09-30 23:00 UTC)