If I were to guess, it's likely that sales projections are down right now, and they're hoping by keeping the existing line a bit longer, new buyer numbers will be larger in the spring. Most people don't upgrade every generation and a lot of people are still running M1/M2 devices.
I would also speculate that there may be some growing pains for the n2 production from TSMC, and/or a desire to get there in the AZ fab production before launch to avoid tariffs hitting their bottom line. They'd rather pay 12-20% more for just the CPU than eat large tariffs on the full cost. I don't think they'd be able to significantly raise prices further based on tariffs, like some other companies with smaller margins are forced to do, on order to be competitive.
kingkongjaffa · 5h ago
Yeah I’m on an M1 and it’s still outstanding.
The only motivation to upgrade is battery degradation or getting more RAM to run larger LLM models locally.
Don't forget SSD degradation since it's not a user replaceable part and you can't do true external boots (it copies to the internal storage). That's my biggest worry.
nelox · 1h ago
No widespread failures have been reported on M1s. SSDs often exceed their expected lifespan, especially when spec’d generously. But, monitoring tools can misreport, so be cautious drawing conclusions from early TBW readings.
So, when choosing a Mac, opt for higher RAM and SSD capacity to reduce swap pressure and spread wear.
If you are cautious, monitor TBW, but interpret the data with healthy skepticism.
Last, but not least, backup regularly!
israrkhan · 1h ago
I upgraded only for large memory (upgraded from 16G M1 to 48G M4). Battery life was still outstainding when i upgraded.
Analemma_ · 5h ago
I upgraded from an M1 to an M4 MBP recently and although the performance gains were mostly incremental, the matte screen (fucking finally Apple) is really nice and a good reason to upgrade if you ever plan on using it in a brightly-lit area. It’s a must-have.
brailsafe · 2h ago
> the matte screen (fucking finally Apple)
and a slightly better screen in terms of response time, which is nice since ghosting is very present on all of them
cassianoleal · 26m ago
Are they still using MicroLED? I can't stand the bloom in dark conditions on my M2, it's horrendous!
spullara · 2h ago
I was so bummed when they removed the matte screen option many years and glad to see it back. My next one will definitely be matte.
ChrisMarshallNY · 4h ago
I run an M4Pro Mini, connected to an LG 49" ultrawide. I have an M1Max MBP, collecting dust, upstairs.
Frankly, the MBP is still an excellent machine, but I don't travel, anymore, and this big honker that is as wide as my desk, has me spoiled.
ChrisMarshallNY · 1m ago
Hmm... I guess someone thought that I was boasting about my setup.
It's really not a big deal. I know quite a few people that have much nicer rigs; especially gamers.
I was really just saying that the MPB has a processor that still rocks, several years later, but the large screen that I use (which is actually not as impressive as some of the gaming screens), has me spoiled, and using a laptop screen, feels cramped.
tracker1 · 4h ago
I switch to 45" UWQHD myself.. slightly taller with bigger pixels for work and enjoy it immensely. I've had a few issues where my vision got dramatically worse a couple years ago so even my 32" 1440p was a struggle at times.
With this display, it's similar to two 4:3 aspect displays in my typical use... my IDE or Code pinned on one side, my browser or another app on the right.
Overall, it's been pretty great.
wmf · 4h ago
N2 production in Arizona won't start for years. Also I'm expecting M5 to be on N3.
tracker1 · 3h ago
s/N2/N3, in any case... the planned node.
cosmic_cheese · 4h ago
Really, they could probably get away with selling M4 devices for another couple cycles. As far as performance is concerned, even going back to the M1, the only group feeling inadequacies large enough to make upgrading a “must” are those whose needs sit within spitting distance of cusp of consumer/prosumer computing. Battery life is still industry leading with only a handful of competitors just recently being able to claim similar real world numbers (thanks mostly to Lunar Lake, which isn’t available for many models and comes at the cost of some performance).
I’ve used both M1 Max and M4 Max machines extensively and while the latter is a good deal faster, it’s only really noticeable with longer sustained tasks and particularly large projects. The high-RAM variants of M1 models in particular should continue to be quite servicable for some time to come.
Traubenfuchs · 2h ago
What about current macbooks is not industry leading?
What excuse besides liking windows or wanting an even cheaper machine do you have not to get one?
cozzyd · 5m ago
Linux support is not industry leading, nor presence of Ethernet port. Sadly others are following in lack of ports as I can't find a new Thinkpad that has both an Ethernet port and an SD slot.
kaladin-jasnah · 2h ago
You should also consider liking Linux, or wanting to support the right to repair movement. Or disliking Apple for whatever reason, such as their generally very closed nature. My biggest criterion for buying consumer electronics is being able to replace the software easily, followed by being able to replace the hardware easily. Nothing else is particularly important.
rowanG077 · 45m ago
The OS is one of the important part of the experience of using a computer. So it makes sense to filter first on what kind of OS matches what you want. I run a M2 MBP and I wouldn't use it if I couldn't run linux. But in terms of hardware it's a truly great machine. The first laptop where I'm satisfied by the power. M4 doesn't have linux support(yet).
behnamoh · 5h ago
Apple seems to overlook how much timing matters for Mac sales in academia. Macs—especially MacBooks—absolutely dominate among professors (I’d guess ~90% in my department).
The academic fiscal year often ends in Aug/Sep, and new faculty usually get a “technology fund” for buying their first computer. A lot of us use that to get the latest Mac. Historically, Apple’s October refresh was just late enough to miss that budget window, but people would still wait a month or two for the new models.
If they push announcements even further (as the article suggests—early 2026), it’s a different story. New hires can’t wait half a year with no laptop, so they’ll just buy whatever’s top-of-the-line right now. For research folks who need GPU power, that could easily mean a 5090-based laptop instead of a Mac.
radicaldreamer · 2h ago
Apple has pretty sophisticated modeling for their sales cycle so I assume that it they aren't simply looking at the academic lifecycle.
Professors are a very small % of the education market, most of their sales come from high school and college students and during back to school season.
titanomachy · 5h ago
To a first approximation, 100% of Apple’s customers are not university professors.
Detrytus · 5h ago
What about university students? They also start their classes in September, and while they have no "budgeting deadline", they still need to buy some computer around that time.
kcplate · 16m ago
Considering a base MBA M4 can be had for $899 (and it's a monster) and a base MBP is about 80% more, I can’t imagine the bulk of freshman buyers who have so many things to buy just to go to university for their first year would opt to spend an extra $650 on an MPB.
chasd00 · 5h ago
> What about university students?
interestingly, i have a teen that will be heading off to college in a couple years. My plan is to send him off to the dorm with a Macbook and not his gaming rig heh. Although, inevitably, it will be up to him to decide how to make the best use of his time..
shortrounddev2 · 2h ago
Isn't it up to him to bring his gaming rig?
kcplate · 13m ago
Not the original commenter, but if I was that parent, I’d explain to my kid the amount of money I would be contributing towards their education and expenses if they bring it…and if the don’t bring it. They can make the educated choice then.
cvwright · 5h ago
I think Apple has historically used the college student market to clear out their remaining stock of last year’s MacBooks. Otherwise why release the new models just after classes have started?
OJFord · 2h ago
I agree with that - 'back to school sale' sounds a lot better than 'end of line clearance'.
Telemakhos · 2h ago
I think you might be surprised at the extent to which iPad sales cannibalize MacBook sales in the current crop of undergrads, especially ones who don't anticipate having to write papers or code. An iPad Air will do everything many college students need at half the price and size and weight, and it can have a pen, which the MacBook can't. When you do get a surprise assignment that the iPad can't do, there are always lab computers, and many universities will loan out laptops upon request.
titanomachy · 1h ago
What kind of university degree doesn’t require writing?
j_bum · 2h ago
Anecdotally, I got my MBP as a graduation present when I graduated high school and was heading off to college many years ago.
So I got it in ~May, when my college program started in September.
maratc · 5h ago
Nothing changes about them, as (previously) new Apple MacBooks weren't available until October, more than a month after their classes start.
Detrytus · 3h ago
But the argument here was that one month delay was not ideal, but acceptable, but a longer delay will have more severe effect on demand.
whizzter · 5h ago
I think it might just be the other way around, if they front-loaded a lot of inventory shipments before tariffs were due to hit they might be loaded with unusually high inventory levels that needs shifting and will be hard to do so at price if a new model is out.
Add to this the recent economic uncertainty and prospective buyers might just have been holding up purchases (thus further adding to inventory if they already front-loaded before tariffs).
As for people buying powerful machines that could be worth going to a 5090 based machine instead, they're probably a fairly small part of the Mac purchaser market in the big picture.
mrcwinn · 2h ago
I can assure you that by now Apple has a near perfect model for timing releases to optimize sales.
ryao · 4h ago
They could just buy the M4 models.
moralestapia · 5h ago
They would just buy the M4? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The average user, even the "power user", does not care/know the difference between an M4 and whatever the M5 will be.
behnamoh · 5h ago
Like I said, most people want something that's the "latest"; M4 is already one year old.
wrt the second part of your comment: Academics care about speed, RAM, battery life, the ability to run the latest AI models at a decent speed (M4 is still relatively slow).
nickthegreek · 5h ago
m4 laptop checks the boxes on ram options (albiet a high price) and battery life.
The m4 macbook is running AI slow compared too..... what competitive alternative?
I'm impressed at how fast gpt-oss-20b ran on my m2 24gb system.
mrweasel · 4h ago
Most of academics write papers, they care about none of those things.
Unless you work on AI, which most don't, then you don't care that the M4 is a little slow for that purpose. The academics who are working on large dataset frequently have access to cluster computers or large servers running in the university datacenter... or frequently sits under their desk, because they have trust issues.
zamadatix · 2h ago
It's tough for me to justify upgrading an M1 device to an M4 device for the AI performance improvement, going from an M4 to an M5 for a small segment of the user base is not moving the needle enough to sway something like this.
Anyone really geeked about AI performance to the level of not picking something because of it (be it price or performance) should not be looking at a laptop anyways.
AceJohnny2 · 5h ago
> (M4 is still relatively slow).
How does it compare to Windows laptops?
rbanffy · 2h ago
There are Windows laptops with faster GPUs. Being Nvidia certainly helps with software support.
Are they comparable? No way. Laptops with x86 CPUs and discrete GPUs need a lot of power and dissipate a lot of heat. This makes them larger, heavier, louder, and with terrible battery life. If they are gamer laptops, they also look like toys.
socalgal2 · 2h ago
> most people want something that's the "latest"
citation needed. AFAICT, sales data says that "most people" want a bargin and would prefer $200 off than 10% faster newest etc... Most people buy 1 or 2 generations old.
zaphirplane · 1h ago
Double reverse Citation needed
rbanffy · 2h ago
> M4 is still relatively slow
Don't expect too much from a single generation upgrade. M4 to M5 won't be anything like the move from Intel to their own silicon.
exasperaited · 2h ago
> most people want something that's the "latest"
Most people want something affordable and adequate.
> Academics care about speed, RAM, battery life, the ability to run the latest AI models at a decent speed (M4 is still relatively slow).
Most academics do not give a flying fuck about running local LLMs. Academia is more than LLM researchers.
Most academics probably care most about battery life and portability and whether it runs Teams, like every other person.
cromka · 5h ago
But as you said, 90% use Apple anyway, so why would Apple bother at all?
crinkly · 2h ago
As someone who hangs around with academics outside the comp sci field regularly they mostly seem to have old MacBooks which are falling to bits. Not sure I’ve even seen an ARM one yet. They mostly don’t need a lot of juice and don’t want anyone changing anything on it. Also I don’t think I’ve seen anything more than a sneer on AI.
sys_64738 · 5h ago
Is anybody buying x86 based laptops nowadays? It seems that there are few advantages over ARM based Windows/Linux or the M-series laptops.
lenerdenator · 5h ago
Most people buying laptops, probably.
The advantage is all of that legacy software that some process relies on and hasn't been meaningfully updated in 10+ years and won't be ported over to the ARM processors that you damned kids are running on because back in my day we paid for one copy of x86 software and that got us through 10 winters, dammit.
simmonmt · 2h ago
Uphill both ways
lenerdenator · 36m ago
And you were thankful to have two uphills. A lot of people didn’t even have that!
drdaeman · 2h ago
I do. Wanted a discrete GPU and ability to run all the games I love on the go, including those that may want a little bit of GPU performance and don't have a macOS port. Can't realistically do this on non-x86.
wmf · 4h ago
Windows on ARM doesn't work well and has very low sales.
SwamyM · 4h ago
Most of corporate America is still primarily using x86 systems.
shortrounddev2 · 2h ago
Anyone not buying a macbook, which is still like 70% of the market
criddell · 5h ago
I think that's still most of what Dell, HP, and Lenovo sell.
scarface_74 · 2h ago
This take is about as bad as the old Slashdot take well over a decade ago - “do people still watch TV? I haven’t owned a TV in a decade.”
unethical_ban · 4h ago
Link me to a reliable brand of ARM laptop that runs Linux and is high performance!
I'm enjoying my framework AMD laptop although the battery life with suspend is miserable.
I would love it if Apple just fully embraced Asahi, dedicated resources to it. Imagine 'you can now run either macOS or Linux on your Mac, or both, your choice' - not an an Apple subsystem for Linux, actual Linux, and all peripherals working right across the line.
Seems like as impressive as the work & project is, it's always going to be struggling to play catch-up: you're not happy with the extent of M1 implementation, my understanding is M3/M4 just barely work headlessly.
mixmastamyk · 4h ago
Unfortunately the AMD models don't support real sleep, only "nap," like a tablet. Guess how I found out?
Our Intel Framework does, although you might need to use Linux to utilize it.
STELLANOVA · 2h ago
I got M1 Max with 64GB and 32 core GPU fro $1500 refurbished with zero cycle battery on 100%. As most companies doing refresh/write-off after 3 years 2025 is really a year where you can get a beast of machine for the money. I also have M4 Max for work and differences are only on really heavy tasks but for 3X less money I guess M1 Max is still good deal. This delay also means that M2/M3 ones will be good buy next year as well.
thimabi · 1h ago
What I’d most like in future MacBooks is the continuation of increases in memory size and bandwidth.
Apple has carved out a niche for itself in the local LLM space, yet it continues to overcharge for RAM and under-deliver in terms of bandwidth.
I have no hopes that Apple will decrease its prices, particularly on top-of-the-line models like those with 128 GB of memory and above.
Yet I certainly believe that it can deliver even more RAM and, in particular, memory bandwidth. Apple clearly offers much more VRAM than consumer NVIDIA GPUs, but Macs are still behind in terms of memory bandwidth and, relatedly, overall performance.
It would be silly of Apple not to jump at the opportunity to eat even more of NVIDIA’s market share among the general public.
resters · 8m ago
Welcome to the world where Tim Cook has to present gold offerings to the US president and spend most of his time navigating massive new taxes on imports the company relies on.
maratc · 5h ago
"There's a rumor about certain Apple product and it says that the previous rumor about same product was wrong."
dialup_sounds · 1h ago
Mark Gurman is the ouroboros of Apple news.
dluan · 2h ago
need more gold foil blocks
SlowTao · 4h ago
The more I think about it the more I find it kind of odd yet somewhat endearing that we have so much of our lives determined by the orbit of the planet. Not so much things that are actually affected by it like seasons and its impacts on ecology, but on a yearly scale we had software updates, new hardware and financial reconciliation. Things that all feel so abstract and yet are tied to the cycle of our rock spinning around the sun. The druids approve!
So I have no issue when something like a laptop being pushed back, it was all very arbitrary anyway. Can they release is a Mars based yearly cadence?
lordnacho · 4h ago
Isn't this one of those "how Roman roads determined our rail gauge" things?
Seasons -> harvest -> traditions freeze working/holidaying times -> kids start school a certain time -> gotta sell them computers to be ready at those times.
Something like that, in a million different ways.
bombcar · 48m ago
and things that don’t fall on a yearly cadence of X times a year are really hard to think about.
If the new M* processor was every ten months, nobody would have the foggiest idea when it was coming out
crinkly · 6h ago
Good. Hopefully we're going back to more sensible and sustainable 2-3 year cycles.
thewebguyd · 5h ago
Would be nice to do that for OS releases too. I feel like the yearly macOS releases are too ambitious at this point, and Apple's software quality is suffering. 2-3 year cycles would be much more sustainable. Hardware is good enough now to not need a new release ever year.
bombcar · 45m ago
All I want is software tic-toc.
Leopard followed by Snow Leopard.
Every other year is just a major bugfix/rewrite release.
mrweasel · 4h ago
5+ years for home users and systems administrators. I have a 2020 M1 MacBook Air, it's fine for everything I need. The only issue is, as other points out, the external monitor issue. Only one monitor, and certainly no daisy chaining of displays.
crinkly · 3h ago
Yep that. I just upgraded my M1 Pro MBP to an M4 Pro MBP and I can’t tell the difference really. I’ll leave it 6 years this time.
selectodude · 2h ago
My M1 Pro turns 5 pretty soon and I don’t even have the tinge of an itch to upgrade. Which maybe isn’t great for Apple since Nvidia ended up getting my $1000 this year.
crinkly · 2h ago
I’ve done the same last year. But it was so I could play games :)
cnst · 4h ago
How's a "2-3 year cycle" sensible or sustainable?
Who's forcing you to get every upgrade every year?
The yearly releases make a lot of sense for everybody, because then you can upgrade on your own schedule, instead of delaying the upgrade because the product was released a full 2 years ago, at a time your older one is on its last breath.
In fact, yearly releases are then also more sustainable, too, since the purchasing would be spread out to each year (on an as-needed basis), instead of having a month-long cycle every 3 years, necessitating the extra infrastructure all along the way (from the stores to manufacturing to shipping).
rbanffy · 2h ago
> your older one is on its last breath.
For Apple computers, the last breath comes almost a decade after they were built.
If you wait until it dies, then you will want to get what's available at that time, but, if you plan from the start, you'll have a lot of flexibility with these machines.
My MBP is the same age as my Thinkpad, and looks much nicer.
zmmmmm · 2h ago
Apple is in such an interesting position right now. Having made the decision for whatever reason to go with a unified memory architecture, they are now almost unique in terms of being able to offer super power efficient laptops with very large GPU memory. If they were to just double the memory bandwidth and do nothing else they could break away as a preferred way to run especially inference but maybe even training for small LLM models. Given the bottlenecks on availability and pricing of nVidia cards we are already toying with the idea of building a small local LLM stack based on Macs for this reason. If Apple made it more compelling we could easily go from toying with it to seriously considering it.
It's disappointing to hear they are delaying this year's Macbooks because I was really hoping to see some improvements like this specifically targeted at running local LLMs.
makeitdouble · 2h ago
> they are now almost unique
AMD and Intel already caught up in the unified memory design. Apple might still have some edge (do they ? idk), but it's not a rarety anymore.
zmmmmm · 37m ago
The edge is, "it actually works". Eg: I just set the device to "mps" in PyTorch, everything is using the GPU.Until nVidia gets monopoly treatment for CUDA and are forced to open their software stack, Metal is the next best thing as far as I can tell.
Not to mention, I have no faith that these laptops won't thermally throttle - my fan only spins up when I'm running truly demanding workloads, the rest of the time the laptop might as well be fanless.
pyaamb · 2h ago
which is why I was surprised to hear some reports that Apple was planning to abandon UMA in future chips. Can't imagine why they would do that
Razengan · 2h ago
I have a 16" M2 Max with 32 GB of RAM and I do pretty much everything on it, and I've yet to have a moment where I thought "ugh I wish this was faster"
I used to upgrade computers every 1-1.5 years but I think I could easily roll with this for another 2-3 maybe even 4 or 5 years more.
Heck, even if I was given free money I'd be too lazy to switch to an M4 Max just because of the hassle of transferring data that isn't on iCloud/Time Machine.
I was waiting for the M5 to have some other substantial changes like in the display or sound etc.
socalgal2 · 2h ago
I have a M1 Max. Running image/video generation I often which it was faster, much faster.
shortrounddev2 · 2h ago
Same problem as their phones. They don't do anything new or interesting year over year. The CPU gets a bit faster, but that's it. They haven't provided a compelling reason to upgrade in a few years
sethops1 · 2h ago
I'm on an iPhone 12 and I don't want to upgrade to anything that supports Apple Intelligence. Hoping this thing lasts forever.
cnst · 4h ago
I'm writing this on a 16GB M1 MacBook Air, but I've gotten disillusioned with macOS and Macs.
When everything is done in a browser, the biggest differentiator on a laptop would be monitor and peripheral support, and Apple is behind the competition.
macOS has no support for daisy-chaining with DP MST, no support for a second monitor (new to M1, the 2020 Intel model does support dual external monitors), no way to turn-off antialiasing, limited ports, RAM and storage options, limited repair and expansion options.
Why exactly do we even still use macOS anyways?
Even the cheapest Chromebook laptops have better monitor support and better expandability, at 1/10th the cost.
cosmic_cheese · 4h ago
No support for MST daisy chaining is unfortunate, but not really a dealbreaker since most users spending a lot of time at a desk are using either a standalone dock (e.g. CalDigit TS4) or a monitor that has a dock built in (like Dell’s U2724DE) which also achieves one-cable multimonitor (+charging). The limit on number of monitors isn’t an issue on the newer low end models.
On the hardware side of things, the big differentiators are build quality and battery life. To get either as good as is found on MacBooks you’re likely to be spending about as much in the x86 world. Those dirt cheap Chromebooks in particular are miserable to use.
goosedragons · 3h ago
MST makes getting a dock cheaper. It's very cheap to get a hub or dock that can do two or even three monitors over MST, with power pass through and a few extra USB ports for a mouse and keyboard or printer. Like $30-$50. Maybe you spend another $50 for a decent extra charger to go with it.
On Mac you basically HAVE to get an expensive $200+ TB dock to get a one cable multi-mon setup.
The new M4 MBAs can still only do two external screens at a time. It's better but the competition can do more.
cnst · 3h ago
Yeah, my $79 Chromebook, could literally already do 2 external USB-C monitors, at 1/10th the price of an M4 MacBook Air!
The best part about DP MST is that most monitors already have a DP-Out, so, you can already daisy-chain even without having to buy a cheap dock.
I'm pretty sure DP-Out would be even more popular if not for the macOS users leaving all the negative reviews about the daisy-chaining not working after paying a full half price for a DP MST monitor compared to a Thunderbolt one!
Ironically, some manufacturers simply remove the DP-Out port, and release the resulting product as a Mac-friendly version of an identical PC monitor with a DP-Out.
My fav USB-C / DP MST monitor deals, have been HP Z24m G3 at $149.99 USD in early 2024, and PHILIPS 4K UHD IPS Black 27E2F7901 at $209.99 in mid/late 2024, both 400nits with DP 1.4, USB-C and DP-Out, at far cheaper prices than any comparable Thunderbolt monitor:
Wait, that's a $379 dock? Isn't it a bit too much to pay so much just to get back about the same ports that most non-Macs still have?
If I connect my peripherals like SSD and mouse/kb through this dock, will they continue working during a power outage? Or do I now have to get a UPS for my laptop, too, because I can't use the native ports anymore, and have to use a dock to connect the most basic equipment?
Many monitors on the market today do come with a dock built-in, but most of the time, it's a DP MST kind of dock, so, the daisy-chaining won't work in macOS, since it has no support for DP MST.
Thunderbolt is VERY rare across most monitors. It's even more rare on the models that go on sale and aren't broken in some fundamental way (IIRC, some Samsung TB monitor that was on sale, would actually have terrible reviews specifically because it still didn't work daisy-chained properly).
Since you're a Dell fan, I've just casually looked over the filters at https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/computer-monitors/ar/8605, and it's got 42 for USB-C, but only 6 for Thunderbolt; that's 7 times more non-Thunderbolt monitors that Thunderbolt.
If we limit the search to QHD 2560x1440, there's 11 USB-C, but only 1 Thunderbolt. You're basically paying 2x more, or $300 more, for a "free" Thunderbolt dock.
Compare to DP-Out options. For example, HP Z24m G3 2560x1440 was on sale for many months throughout 2024 at $149.99 USD brand new, it does have DP-Out and RJ45, a very quality monitor.
As for battery life, I'm not doing video encoding or compiling on my Mac, so, battery life is just a matter of power consumption. There are many ARM-based Chromebooks that are powered by like 5W CPUs. By definition, they're INCAPABLE of consuming their 50Wh battery in less than 10 hours; this often results in a better battery life than my MacBook Air, simply because M1 is still a 15W CPU, and can easily made to waste lots of cycles doing pointless webpage busywork that noone cares about, diminishing the battery life.
Yes, they've finally fixed the regression with a second monitor come M4, but it's still missing the most basic ports and expansion features.
conradfr · 2h ago
I have two monitors plugged on my M1, one on the HDMI port and the other one on HDMI through a USB hub.
Those are old non-Apple monitors and they look worse (colors and texts) than when plugged on Windows though.
(And I do hate macOS)
brailsafe · 2h ago
> Macos has no support for a second monitor
This is factually inaccurate. It's perhaps true on the Air and base model Pro, but not the others.
I hate on Apple's bs all the time, but it seems like the reality in your situation is that you got nearly the cheapest mac laptop 5 years ago, with a shitty screen, bumped the ram, and you're doing just fine still, except for some esoteric limitations that I just factored into my budget when buying one recently and aren't blocked by, namely external monitor support without MST.
I didn't get that computer at that time because of some of those limitations, sticking with my prior intel 13" until last year, until I finally convinced myself it was time. Doesn't mean they aren't worth complaining about though, I think 5 years on an Air is pretty good, they've always favored mobile utility over stationary excellence
davidf18 · 6h ago
It is from July 10.
No comments yet
evtothedev · 6h ago
My completely uninformed bet is that with the release of open source GPT, they're planning to embed this on all laptops. That will require a huge bump in the baseline specs, and therefore you have cascading delays.
reaperducer · 5h ago
My completely uninformed bet
If you're completely uninformed, why post at all? What value do you add to the conversation?
Lammy · 5h ago
There's nothing wrong with speculation that's clearly labeled as speculation.
nickthegreek · 5h ago
There certainly can be. Reputation risk/being canceled, misinformation spreading, ethicial/legal issues depending on the topic, public opinion influence, authority problems, not understanding the community you are participating in, etc.
brailsafe · 1h ago
Seems like their comment engages a curious person to wonder how likely it might be. That's as much value as I generally expect to get from any comment.
I would also speculate that there may be some growing pains for the n2 production from TSMC, and/or a desire to get there in the AZ fab production before launch to avoid tariffs hitting their bottom line. They'd rather pay 12-20% more for just the CPU than eat large tariffs on the full cost. I don't think they'd be able to significantly raise prices further based on tariffs, like some other companies with smaller margins are forced to do, on order to be competitive.
The only motivation to upgrade is battery degradation or getting more RAM to run larger LLM models locally.
So, when choosing a Mac, opt for higher RAM and SSD capacity to reduce swap pressure and spread wear.
If you are cautious, monitor TBW, but interpret the data with healthy skepticism.
Last, but not least, backup regularly!
and a slightly better screen in terms of response time, which is nice since ghosting is very present on all of them
Frankly, the MBP is still an excellent machine, but I don't travel, anymore, and this big honker that is as wide as my desk, has me spoiled.
It's really not a big deal. I know quite a few people that have much nicer rigs; especially gamers.
I was really just saying that the MPB has a processor that still rocks, several years later, but the large screen that I use (which is actually not as impressive as some of the gaming screens), has me spoiled, and using a laptop screen, feels cramped.
With this display, it's similar to two 4:3 aspect displays in my typical use... my IDE or Code pinned on one side, my browser or another app on the right.
Overall, it's been pretty great.
I’ve used both M1 Max and M4 Max machines extensively and while the latter is a good deal faster, it’s only really noticeable with longer sustained tasks and particularly large projects. The high-RAM variants of M1 models in particular should continue to be quite servicable for some time to come.
What excuse besides liking windows or wanting an even cheaper machine do you have not to get one?
The academic fiscal year often ends in Aug/Sep, and new faculty usually get a “technology fund” for buying their first computer. A lot of us use that to get the latest Mac. Historically, Apple’s October refresh was just late enough to miss that budget window, but people would still wait a month or two for the new models.
If they push announcements even further (as the article suggests—early 2026), it’s a different story. New hires can’t wait half a year with no laptop, so they’ll just buy whatever’s top-of-the-line right now. For research folks who need GPU power, that could easily mean a 5090-based laptop instead of a Mac.
Professors are a very small % of the education market, most of their sales come from high school and college students and during back to school season.
interestingly, i have a teen that will be heading off to college in a couple years. My plan is to send him off to the dorm with a Macbook and not his gaming rig heh. Although, inevitably, it will be up to him to decide how to make the best use of his time..
So I got it in ~May, when my college program started in September.
Add to this the recent economic uncertainty and prospective buyers might just have been holding up purchases (thus further adding to inventory if they already front-loaded before tariffs).
As for people buying powerful machines that could be worth going to a 5090 based machine instead, they're probably a fairly small part of the Mac purchaser market in the big picture.
The average user, even the "power user", does not care/know the difference between an M4 and whatever the M5 will be.
wrt the second part of your comment: Academics care about speed, RAM, battery life, the ability to run the latest AI models at a decent speed (M4 is still relatively slow).
The m4 macbook is running AI slow compared too..... what competitive alternative?
I'm impressed at how fast gpt-oss-20b ran on my m2 24gb system.
Unless you work on AI, which most don't, then you don't care that the M4 is a little slow for that purpose. The academics who are working on large dataset frequently have access to cluster computers or large servers running in the university datacenter... or frequently sits under their desk, because they have trust issues.
Anyone really geeked about AI performance to the level of not picking something because of it (be it price or performance) should not be looking at a laptop anyways.
How does it compare to Windows laptops?
Are they comparable? No way. Laptops with x86 CPUs and discrete GPUs need a lot of power and dissipate a lot of heat. This makes them larger, heavier, louder, and with terrible battery life. If they are gamer laptops, they also look like toys.
citation needed. AFAICT, sales data says that "most people" want a bargin and would prefer $200 off than 10% faster newest etc... Most people buy 1 or 2 generations old.
Don't expect too much from a single generation upgrade. M4 to M5 won't be anything like the move from Intel to their own silicon.
Most people want something affordable and adequate.
> Academics care about speed, RAM, battery life, the ability to run the latest AI models at a decent speed (M4 is still relatively slow).
Most academics do not give a flying fuck about running local LLMs. Academia is more than LLM researchers.
Most academics probably care most about battery life and portability and whether it runs Teams, like every other person.
The advantage is all of that legacy software that some process relies on and hasn't been meaningfully updated in 10+ years and won't be ported over to the ARM processors that you damned kids are running on because back in my day we paid for one copy of x86 software and that got us through 10 winters, dammit.
I'm enjoying my framework AMD laptop although the battery life with suspend is miserable.
Seems like as impressive as the work & project is, it's always going to be struggling to play catch-up: you're not happy with the extent of M1 implementation, my understanding is M3/M4 just barely work headlessly.
Our Intel Framework does, although you might need to use Linux to utilize it.
Apple has carved out a niche for itself in the local LLM space, yet it continues to overcharge for RAM and under-deliver in terms of bandwidth.
I have no hopes that Apple will decrease its prices, particularly on top-of-the-line models like those with 128 GB of memory and above.
Yet I certainly believe that it can deliver even more RAM and, in particular, memory bandwidth. Apple clearly offers much more VRAM than consumer NVIDIA GPUs, but Macs are still behind in terms of memory bandwidth and, relatedly, overall performance.
It would be silly of Apple not to jump at the opportunity to eat even more of NVIDIA’s market share among the general public.
So I have no issue when something like a laptop being pushed back, it was all very arbitrary anyway. Can they release is a Mars based yearly cadence?
Seasons -> harvest -> traditions freeze working/holidaying times -> kids start school a certain time -> gotta sell them computers to be ready at those times.
Something like that, in a million different ways.
If the new M* processor was every ten months, nobody would have the foggiest idea when it was coming out
Leopard followed by Snow Leopard.
Every other year is just a major bugfix/rewrite release.
Who's forcing you to get every upgrade every year?
The yearly releases make a lot of sense for everybody, because then you can upgrade on your own schedule, instead of delaying the upgrade because the product was released a full 2 years ago, at a time your older one is on its last breath.
In fact, yearly releases are then also more sustainable, too, since the purchasing would be spread out to each year (on an as-needed basis), instead of having a month-long cycle every 3 years, necessitating the extra infrastructure all along the way (from the stores to manufacturing to shipping).
For Apple computers, the last breath comes almost a decade after they were built.
If you wait until it dies, then you will want to get what's available at that time, but, if you plan from the start, you'll have a lot of flexibility with these machines.
My MBP is the same age as my Thinkpad, and looks much nicer.
It's disappointing to hear they are delaying this year's Macbooks because I was really hoping to see some improvements like this specifically targeted at running local LLMs.
AMD and Intel already caught up in the unified memory design. Apple might still have some edge (do they ? idk), but it's not a rarety anymore.
Not to mention, I have no faith that these laptops won't thermally throttle - my fan only spins up when I'm running truly demanding workloads, the rest of the time the laptop might as well be fanless.
I used to upgrade computers every 1-1.5 years but I think I could easily roll with this for another 2-3 maybe even 4 or 5 years more.
Heck, even if I was given free money I'd be too lazy to switch to an M4 Max just because of the hassle of transferring data that isn't on iCloud/Time Machine.
I was waiting for the M5 to have some other substantial changes like in the display or sound etc.
When everything is done in a browser, the biggest differentiator on a laptop would be monitor and peripheral support, and Apple is behind the competition.
macOS has no support for daisy-chaining with DP MST, no support for a second monitor (new to M1, the 2020 Intel model does support dual external monitors), no way to turn-off antialiasing, limited ports, RAM and storage options, limited repair and expansion options.
Why exactly do we even still use macOS anyways?
Even the cheapest Chromebook laptops have better monitor support and better expandability, at 1/10th the cost.
On the hardware side of things, the big differentiators are build quality and battery life. To get either as good as is found on MacBooks you’re likely to be spending about as much in the x86 world. Those dirt cheap Chromebooks in particular are miserable to use.
On Mac you basically HAVE to get an expensive $200+ TB dock to get a one cable multi-mon setup.
The new M4 MBAs can still only do two external screens at a time. It's better but the competition can do more.
The best part about DP MST is that most monitors already have a DP-Out, so, you can already daisy-chain even without having to buy a cheap dock.
I'm pretty sure DP-Out would be even more popular if not for the macOS users leaving all the negative reviews about the daisy-chaining not working after paying a full half price for a DP MST monitor compared to a Thunderbolt one!
Ironically, some manufacturers simply remove the DP-Out port, and release the resulting product as a Mac-friendly version of an identical PC monitor with a DP-Out.
My fav USB-C / DP MST monitor deals, have been HP Z24m G3 at $149.99 USD in early 2024, and PHILIPS 4K UHD IPS Black 27E2F7901 at $209.99 in mid/late 2024, both 400nits with DP 1.4, USB-C and DP-Out, at far cheaper prices than any comparable Thunderbolt monitor:
https://slickdeals.net/f/17456364-23-8-hp-z24m-g3-2560x1440-...
https://slickdeals.net/f/17650827-philips-creator-series-27e...
Wait, that's a $379 dock? Isn't it a bit too much to pay so much just to get back about the same ports that most non-Macs still have?
If I connect my peripherals like SSD and mouse/kb through this dock, will they continue working during a power outage? Or do I now have to get a UPS for my laptop, too, because I can't use the native ports anymore, and have to use a dock to connect the most basic equipment?
> Dell U2724DE
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-ultrasharp-27-thunderbo...
$599 USD for QHD 2560x1440? That's just not very competitive.
I got a QHD 2560x1440 with RJ45 and a DP-Out for $149 brand new, for HP Z24m G3:
https://slickdeals.net/f/17456364-23-8-hp-z24m-g3-2560x1440-...
So, it's basically a 4x premium for TB.
---
Many monitors on the market today do come with a dock built-in, but most of the time, it's a DP MST kind of dock, so, the daisy-chaining won't work in macOS, since it has no support for DP MST.
Thunderbolt is VERY rare across most monitors. It's even more rare on the models that go on sale and aren't broken in some fundamental way (IIRC, some Samsung TB monitor that was on sale, would actually have terrible reviews specifically because it still didn't work daisy-chained properly).
Since you're a Dell fan, I've just casually looked over the filters at https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/computer-monitors/ar/8605, and it's got 42 for USB-C, but only 6 for Thunderbolt; that's 7 times more non-Thunderbolt monitors that Thunderbolt.
If we limit the search to QHD 2560x1440, there's 11 USB-C, but only 1 Thunderbolt. You're basically paying 2x more, or $300 more, for a "free" Thunderbolt dock.
Compare to DP-Out options. For example, HP Z24m G3 2560x1440 was on sale for many months throughout 2024 at $149.99 USD brand new, it does have DP-Out and RJ45, a very quality monitor.
As for battery life, I'm not doing video encoding or compiling on my Mac, so, battery life is just a matter of power consumption. There are many ARM-based Chromebooks that are powered by like 5W CPUs. By definition, they're INCAPABLE of consuming their 50Wh battery in less than 10 hours; this often results in a better battery life than my MacBook Air, simply because M1 is still a 15W CPU, and can easily made to waste lots of cycles doing pointless webpage busywork that noone cares about, diminishing the battery life.
Yes, they've finally fixed the regression with a second monitor come M4, but it's still missing the most basic ports and expansion features.
Those are old non-Apple monitors and they look worse (colors and texts) than when plugged on Windows though.
(And I do hate macOS)
This is factually inaccurate. It's perhaps true on the Air and base model Pro, but not the others.
I hate on Apple's bs all the time, but it seems like the reality in your situation is that you got nearly the cheapest mac laptop 5 years ago, with a shitty screen, bumped the ram, and you're doing just fine still, except for some esoteric limitations that I just factored into my budget when buying one recently and aren't blocked by, namely external monitor support without MST.
I didn't get that computer at that time because of some of those limitations, sticking with my prior intel 13" until last year, until I finally convinced myself it was time. Doesn't mean they aren't worth complaining about though, I think 5 years on an Air is pretty good, they've always favored mobile utility over stationary excellence
No comments yet
If you're completely uninformed, why post at all? What value do you add to the conversation?