Apple M5 rumors

[NotEntirelyConfused]

I can’t see a reason they would delay the mere spec-bump to next year. That won’t help them.

It won't, but unfortunately, that's classic Apple. This is some very long-running brain damage. It goes back at least to nMP, where they just... sat on their asses and did nothing for years, even though there were new Intel chips available that were at least a little better. (And eventually new GPUs too.) Come to think of it, didn't the oMP stall out for a few years before the nMP came out?

I don't have specifics handy but I am certain we saw this in other product lines too, with them just punting on revised Intel chips. (iMac? Especially the iMP.)

Using a product's poor (?) sales to justify not investing in updates (especially relatively low-cost ones) is a guaranteed death spiral. Incredibly stupid and short-sighted. It also shows contempt for customers, which makes them hate you and look for ways to escape.

Skipping a half year for the Macbook Pro isn't that bad, but it's not good. :-(

 

[Cmaier]

It won't, but unfortunately, that's classic Apple. This is some very long-running brain damage. It goes back at least to nMP, where they just... sat on their asses and did nothing for years, even though there were new Intel chips available that were at least a little better. (And eventually new GPUs too.) Come to think of it, didn't the oMP stall out for a few years before the nMP came out?

I don't have specifics handy but I am certain we saw this in other product lines too, with them just punting on revised Intel chips. (iMac? Especially the iMP.)

Using a product's poor (?) sales to justify not investing in updates (especially relatively low-cost ones) is a guaranteed death spiral. Incredibly stupid and short-sighted. It also shows contempt for customers, which makes them hate you and look for ways to escape.

Skipping a half year for the Macbook Pro isn't that bad, but it's not good. :-(

Their employees love using the MBPs. I think they’ll release something in 2025, unless they instead do an early 2026 M5 MBP with the redesign that was supposed to be late 2026 M6.

 

[dada_dave]

It won't, but unfortunately, that's classic Apple. This is some very long-running brain damage. It goes back at least to nMP, where they just... sat on their asses and did nothing for years, even though there were new Intel chips available that were at least a little better. (And eventually new GPUs too.) Come to think of it, didn't the oMP stall out for a few years before the nMP came out?

I don't have specifics handy but I am certain we saw this in other product lines too, with them just punting on revised Intel chips. (iMac? Especially the iMP.)

Using a product's poor (?) sales to justify not investing in updates (especially relatively low-cost ones) is a guaranteed death spiral. Incredibly stupid and short-sighted. It also shows contempt for customers, which makes them hate you and look for ways to escape.

Skipping a half year for the Macbook Pro isn't that bad, but it's not good. :-(

Their employees love using the MBPs. I think they’ll release something in 2025, unless they instead do an early 2026 M5 MBP with the redesign that was supposed to be late 2026 M6.

Yeah I think MBP would be a strange one to do that for, delay only because that product line isn’t selling. As far as I know, the MBP is one of their best selling product lines. The only thing I can think of is either Cliff’s suggestion that they’re moving another upgrade up or there was so much demand from the pandemic, demand is now lower not from poor release cycles but just all their customers shifting upgrade cycles. But even that latter one doesn’t make much sense really to me - though naturally I don’t have access to Apple’s books. Even the former seems risky - if the needed panels and equipment for the physical upgrade get delayed (like with the M1 MBP) then suddenly you might as well have put the M6 in and not essentially skipped months of sales. Of course the rumor may also simply be false. The Oracle of Bloomberg is a little less accurate this far out.

 

[throAU]

i saw this. and i know a lot about apple’s packaging. I think the explanation given is a little confusing and misleading. The issue is that the memory chips are in their own little packages, which are then inside the SoC package. So to add I/O to the memory chips, the memory chip sub-packages would have to get bigger. This would then require the SoC package to get bigger. On a system level, I guess, Apple may find it preferable to not do that; but taking the RAM out of the package means that the combined RAM+SoC take more volume than if they were in the same SoC package (even if you had to expand the size of the SoC package to make it work). Which makes me think something is off about this rumor.

What would be a far better solution than moving the memory out of the package would be to remove it from its little subpackage, and then you can have as many I/Os as you want on the RAM chips without growing the size of the SoC package.

As for latency, it’s 6 picoseconds or so for each millimeter of additional distance, so if the RAM is still close to the CPU, it wouldn’t make a tremendous difference in timing; and since performance = f(bandwidth/latency), and this scheme could, for example, double bandwidth while increasing latency by only a few percent, that part doesn’t trouble me.

Wouldn't the next step for Apple be stacked cache on top/bottom of the package Ala AMD 3d vCache?

That could potentially mitigate some of the latency incurred due to distance for pushing out main memory? Maybe only on Ultra series parts?

 

[exoticspice1]

It won't, but unfortunately, that's classic Apple. This is some very long-running brain damage. It goes back at least to nMP, where they just... sat on their asses and did nothing for years, even though there were new Intel chips available that were at least a little better. (And eventually new GPUs too.) Come to think of it, didn't the oMP stall out for a few years before the nMP came out?

I don't have specifics handy but I am certain we saw this in other product lines too, with them just punting on revised Intel chips. (iMac? Especially the iMP.)

Using a product's poor (?) sales to justify not investing in updates (especially relatively low-cost ones) is a guaranteed death spiral. Incredibly stupid and short-sighted. It also shows contempt for customers, which makes them hate you and look for ways to escape.

Skipping a half year for the Macbook Pro isn't that bad, but it's not good. :-(

They destroyed all professional Mac desktop users good will by releasing the 2013 MP and for 9 years they stayed with that design and in those 9 years only a few faithful remained then in 2019 the 7,1 Mac Pro with specs that AMD put to shame was released.

Now in 2025 their flagship Mac Pro isn't even on M3 Ultra and no CPU, GPU or RAM expansion after purchase. Mind boggling. Tim Cook's Apple has no clue what a workstation is...

 

[Cmaier]

They destroyed all professional Mac desktop users good will by releasing the 2013 MP and for 9 years they stayed with that design and in those 9 years only a few faithful remained then in 2019 the 7,1 Mac Pro with specs that AMD put to shame was released.

Now in 2025 their flagship Mac Pro isn't even on M3 Ultra and no CPU, GPU or RAM expansion after purchase. Mind boggling. Tim Cook's Apple has no clue what a workstation is...

more like they don’t care, because there’s little market for them other than as halo products. At least at the scale Apple operates at.

 

[Altaic]

Y’all should dial back fallacious takes maybe

 

[Yoused]

Well, the reality seems to be that Apple does not see much profit in chasing the high end. nVidia has a serious offering with GH that is good for putting into servers and SCs, and Apple is not interested in trying to vie for some of that space. Beyond that, most business workstation installations are going to go with tried-and-true wintel machines because that is what they know and Mac is just too much effort to pivot to. In that respect, Apple would have to fight to get themselves into that market, and mostly they prefer to let people decide on Apple for themselves.

For a smaller operation that might consider Apple a viable option, the Studio should be quite sufficient for the lion's share of those potential customers. Mac Pro is a very niche product of which a few professionals could make really good use, and Apple is willing to support their needs, but only just. I might even expect them to limit the configurations in the next version to either huge or enormous, because, if you are going to go pro, you should go massively pro.

 

[Jimmyjames]

I don’t disagree with the thoughts expressed in this thread that Apple isn’t likely to make huge inroads to the high end workstation market and could easily concentrate on other things. I do think it’s a balancing act though, and not without consequences. If they withdraw entirely, then many professional applications may also disappear. For every “pro” who uses a multi-thousand pound workstation, there are plenty of aspiring people wanting to get into that industry. If the Mac doesn’t run the apps of that industry, then some of those aspiring pros won’t buy even Mac laptops. I think John Siracusa made the point very eloquently in his now, more than a decade old blog post:

The Case for a True Mac Pro Successor

hypercritical.co

 

[The Hardcard]

Their employees love using the MBPs. I think they’ll release something in 2025, unless they instead do an early 2026 M5 MBP with the redesign that was supposed to be late 2026 M6.

I don’t think it is out of the question that AI software may be a factor. I think this upcoming generation will have major upgrades for running generative AI. It may be hard to hype that and still have to say the proper models for Apple Intelligence claims are months away.

I could see them waiting to the spring to get the whole package together or at least being able to say their AI solution is imminent. They probably would want to wait to release the next iPhones as well, but that would make the market gasp. It is still though going to difficult to brag about what the A19s can do while still saying the Siri the hardware enables is way down the road.

 

[exoticspice1]

more like they don’t care, because there’s little market for them other than as halo products. At least at the scale Apple operates at.

There is no market for Apple because of choices Apple made, they rendered themselves out of the market.

I don’t disagree with the thoughts expressed in this thread that Apple isn’t likely to make huge inroads to the high end workstation market and could easily concentrate on other things. I do think it’s a balancing act though, and not without consequences. If they withdraw entirely, then many professional applications may also disappear. For every “pro” who uses a multi-thousand pound workstation, there are plenty of aspiring people wanting to get into that industry. If the Mac doesn’t run the apps of that industry, then some of those aspiring pros won’t buy even Mac laptops. I think John Siracusa made the point very eloquently in his now, more than a decade old blog post:

The Case for a True Mac Pro Successor

hypercritical.co

Halo parts do sell your lower end parts. AMDs X3D line gave them the title of best gaming CPU and its status will help sales of lower end CPUs.

Same with Nvidias 5090. Intel currently doesn’t have a halo product and it’s hurting their product stack.

Ultimately, pros tend to buy halo products and they have a huge influence on markets.

 

[Cmaier]

There is no market for Apple because of choices Apple made, they rendered themselves out of the market.

Halo parts do sell your lower end parts. AMDs X3D line gave them the title of best gaming CPU and its status will help sales of lower end CPUs.

Same with Nvidias 5090. Intel currently doesn’t have a halo product and it’s hurting their product stack.

Ultimately, pros tend to buy halo products and they have a huge influence on markets.

I think we disagree re: chicken/egg. When phones and media sales became far bigger businesses for apple than all of Mac combined, it was pretty obvious that apple would stop putting in full effort on things like Mac Pro, which amounted to a sliver of a sliver of their overall business.

Even if Apple had released a new market-beating Mac Pro every year, that market would never amount to much. They’d probably make more on Apple TV+ than on that, and with higher profit margins.

Frankly, I’m glad Mac is still a thing. And it’s somewhat surprising that things like Studio exist, but that’s probably because Apple employees want to use such things themselves.

 

[Jimmyjames]

I think we disagree re: chicken/egg. When phones and media sales became far bigger businesses for apple than all of Mac combined, it was pretty obvious that apple would stop putting in full effort on things like Mac Pro, which amounted to a sliver of a sliver of their overall business.

Even if Apple had released a new market-beating Mac Pro every year, that market would never amount to much. They’d probably make more on Apple TV+ than on that, and with higher profit margins.

Frankly, I’m glad Mac is still a thing. And it’s somewhat surprising that things like Studio exist, but that’s probably because Apple employees want to use such things themselves.

I think what @exoticspice1 and I are saying is that judging something like the Mac Pro in terms of revenue alone, is short sighted. Despite minuscule sales, it allows Apple to portray itself as platform for serious professionals. This then creates the halo which increases sales of other products.

 

[Cmaier]

I think what @exoticspice1 and I are saying is that judging something like the Mac Pro in terms of revenue alone, is short sighted. Despite minuscule sales, it allows Apple to portray itself as platform for serious professionals. This then creates the halo which increases sales of other products.

Like i said above, i agree it is a halo thing. But I guess apple did the math and figured out the halo value is less than the cost of fully supporting that market.

 

[B01L]

M6 Extreme Mac Pro Cube would be a pretty sweet halo product...! ;^p

 

[Vincent Hannah]

Their employees love using the MBPs. I think they’ll release something in 2025, unless they instead do an early 2026 M5 MBP with the redesign that was supposed to be late 2026 M6.

Now that I’ve read the actual Bloomberg article, Gurman makes it very clear that a spec-bump M5 MBP is still the next machine: it’s only an issue of whether it gets released in 2025 (October) or early next year.

They did the exact same thing with the M2 MBPs when they slipped to January 2023, but they still shipped the M3s nine months later in the same year. So M5 MBPs in January 2026 with the redesigned M6s still coming in October 2026 is the easiest way to square this circle.

 

[exoticspice1]

They did the exact same thing with the M2 MBPs when they slipped to January 2023, but they still shipped the M3s nine months later in the same year. So M5 MBPs in January 2026 with the redesigned M6s still coming in October 2026 is the easiest way to square this circle.

Simliar to 2019 also. The 15" 2019 was released in March and the 16" 2019 was released in November.