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Dilemma: maxed out M5 MBA or wait for M6 MBA?
- Thread starter Populus
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- purchase advice ram specs
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Thank you. I’ll probably deal with more heat with the M5 as that’s the final step on the 3nm cycle, and it has a quite high clockspeed, but… at least it’s a step where Apple Silicon design team decided to increase the cache memory, just like they did on the M2, and the M2 turned out to be a fantastic SoC. Fingers crossed that the M5 receives an awesome support going forward!
thadoggfather
macrumors P6
Yeah, my M2 iPad Pro has also 1TB of storage capacity, and while I’ve never needed more than a quarter of that storage in my iPad, it felt weird having half the storage on my main Mac.
unkl bob
macrumors regular
To OP: I am prolly near the bottom of this group's knowledge re: the RAM/Storage supply sweet spot, but my LOGIC is just fine, thank you. There are, I believe, many remote devices that can be easily re-used with your new replacement (16 Gb & 512 Gb type) computer with ease, both RAM and Storage. (Look up OWC, for instance...) After watching all the crazy price hikes, it seems those two items are mostly the reason.
IMHO, having a $$ remote system would lower my fears of losing $$$$ on an unwise investment in a new computer. (I have 'a friend' who bought an M1 16" MBP for the screen and now has a 32" monitor that works perfectly w/a MM.) Yes, they may take up some desktop space, they can stay put if/when you upgrade. ymmv
IMHO, having a $$ remote system would lower my fears of losing $$$$ on an unwise investment in a new computer. (I have 'a friend' who bought an M1 16" MBP for the screen and now has a 32" monitor that works perfectly w/a MM.) Yes, they may take up some desktop space, they can stay put if/when you upgrade. ymmv
Unfortunately, the chip wasn't that great. At least an M3 chip is required for getting full AI functionality.
thadoggfather
macrumors P6
Apple raises prices on Macs, iPads, and more by hundreds of dollars
RAMageddon strikes again.
www.theverge.com
Price increases are here
+200 for base model MacBook airs
+300/500 for 14 and 16 inch pro
Ram jumps are +200 still but 512 to 1tb is now +300 instead of +200. You got your new laptop just in the nick of time
Apple raises prices on Macs, iPads, and more by hundreds of dollars
RAMageddon strikes again.
Price increases are here
+200 for base model MacBook airs
+300/500 for 14 and 16 inch pro
Ram jumps are +200 still but 512 to 1tb is now +300 instead of +200. You got your new laptop just in the nick of time
View attachment 2640867
Yeah, I know…
Honestly the price rise is not as big as I feared because it affected only the base price. Funnily enough, in my country the RAM upgrades are now cheaper lol, it was 250€ each upgrade and now it is just 220€.
But yeah, the base 13” MBA went from 1199€ (1089€ education price) to 1429€ (1319€ education price). That’s an extra 230€ on the base model that adds cost to all the configurations.
If I had bought the 1TB/24GB, the best value proposition from my point of view, it would have been 1699€ (1529€ edu price) before the price increase. Now, the 1TB/24GB is 1979€ (1869€ edu price), which is more than what the M5 1TB/32GB cost me.
However, if I were to buy this 1TB/32GB machine now, instead of 1949€ (1810€ edu price) it would set me back 2199€ (2067€ edu price).
The price increase in the 1TB/24GB is 270€, while the price increase in the 1TB/32GB is 250€.
Interestingly, the 1TB/24GB is now slightly more expensive than the 1TB/32GB before the price increase. Whether those extra 250€ were worth the wait for the M6 MacBook Air, I’m not so sure. Because I’d probably be waiting for that machine until spring ‘27, and that’s three quarters of a month. A time during which the prices will probably keep rising because the RAM and storage availability is a problem that’s far from solved…
I needed the machine now, and I’ve gotten a 32GB machine for the price of a 24GB one. But if it were now, maybe I would’ve settled with the 1TB/24GB for 1579€ and called it a day, as I’m still not sure I’ll need the whole 32GB of RAM
thadoggfather
macrumors P6
thadoggfather
macrumors P6
yeah I'm set fortunately. Got 15 inch 24/1 for $1249 and 5% rewards too.
1BadManVan
macrumors 68040
Glad I got my air a couple months ago. Base model air in Canada is now $1800. Nearly what I paid for the 24gb/1tb config.
Yea it's predictably bizzare. The 24gb/1Tb 15" MBA M5 I bought last month, is now $300 more... Capitalism...
Yeah, the 1TB/24GB at least here in Europe is the one that got the most hefty price increase. It was a great value so congrats @thadoggfather @1BadManVan @dizmonk
I think that having purchased the 32GB of RAM model in my case has its bright side: I have almost a month (until I receive it) to think about keeping it or not, I’ll try to get the back to school gift (there may be a chance), the warranty will start one month later…
And if Apple releases an M7 MacBook Air in spring, I’ll be able to see if storage and RAM prices go crazy, and decide whether to sell my M5 MBA or not.
I would have bought the 1TB/24GB machine, but it wouldn’t have given me this extra month to plan what to do…
I think that having purchased the 32GB of RAM model in my case has its bright side: I have almost a month (until I receive it) to think about keeping it or not, I’ll try to get the back to school gift (there may be a chance), the warranty will start one month later…
And if Apple releases an M7 MacBook Air in spring, I’ll be able to see if storage and RAM prices go crazy, and decide whether to sell my M5 MBA or not.
I would have bought the 1TB/24GB machine, but it wouldn’t have given me this extra month to plan what to do…
thadoggfather
macrumors P6
yeah just wait and see IMO, I somehow doubt if they skip M6 that they'll refresh the MacBook Airs that soon. Even though it has been an every spring cadence for a while.
The refresh cycle may get shaken up, like all things recently.
I ordered yesterday the MacBook Air with 32 Go Ram and 512 Go of storage, with Edu Price (1564 euros, I never spent that much on a MBA). Delivery scheduled at the beginning of august. I hope also that I could get the back to school offer, since the delivery will probably occur after Back to school launch.
Wonder if the next MBA will get the M7 chip in 2027.
I choose to get 32 Go of RAM on the Macbook Air M5 to work with local LLM and RAG. I don’t know if it will work properly, I’m a newbie.
What do you think ? @Populus, what do you intend to do with 32 go of Ram in your MBA M5 ?
Wonder if the next MBA will get the M7 chip in 2027.
I choose to get 32 Go of RAM on the Macbook Air M5 to work with local LLM and RAG. I don’t know if it will work properly, I’m a newbie.
What do you think ? @Populus, what do you intend to do with 32 go of Ram in your MBA M5 ?
I’m also a newbie, @Geekett . I’ve asked here and other forums regarding local LLMs, I’ve even asked other LLMs about this, and honestly all the replies fall in either of two categories: one group says 32 GB is the bare minimum, well others bluntly say that no useful LLM is able to run comfortably in such a tiny amount of RAM, they say minimum should be 128 GB.
At the same time, we are seeing how new approaches such as MoEs, our new compression methods, occur in the near future allow bigger models to run in 32 GB even less. To be honest, I’ve got this amount of RAM not only with local LLMs in mind, but also with other applications and software, and also future proofing, including future iterations of AI.
Right now, M7 looks really really well, and if I had to load a chip with a lot of RAM, it would definitely be the M7. But the question isn’t if a future chip will be much better, that’s a given, but rather if right now the M5 is a good purchase for the next year and a half, and in my opinion, I think it is.
I think we both did a good purchase, and that your machine is a great value; just be sure to watch closely the storage because maybe it could become a bit tight. But otherwise, I think it’s a good purchase. Nonetheless don’t get your hopes very high regarding local LLMS. This is a bit of a jump into the unknown in a field that gets new advancements every few weeks.
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Completly agree we jumped in the unknown regarding local AI. I made a bit of research before pulling the trigger, asked also Gemini and Claude. And in the end, it appears that most people saying 32 Go is not enough are coders. And for an usage like mine (documents analysis, RAG, «writing» ...) and probably yours, MBA 32 Go could be even be confortable.
Anyway, despite the cost of the upgrade, I thought this time, not having enough Ram could be very frustating and I agree that 512 Go of SSD could be a bit tight, but for the moment, I don’t need more. And I know that the more storage I have, the messier I am. Because of my budget, I had to make a choice between Ram and storage upgrade. 1 To would have been great, but spending 250 € more seemed a too big bullet to bite to me.
Hope Apple won’t be more greedy and that we'll have a good Back to School offer 🍀 and that we would get it without hassle.
Yeah, most people who talk about local LLMs seem to be coders. Maybe that’s why they say you need a huge amount of memory. Maybe it’s for the context. Yes, in my case I want to experiment with local LLMs for something similar to what you say; document analysis, RAG, and maybe some knowledge management.
You know what? Since the announcement of the new prices, I’ve been wondering if I really needed the 32 GB. Right now I’m happy I chose one terabyte of storage, but not so sure about the 32 GB. Why? because I keep seeing that 1TB/24GB configuration at 1550€ as a great value, and because I’m not sure I will take advantage of the full 32GB of RAM. But what’s done is done, and right now that 1TB/24GB configuration would cost me more than what my 32 GB machine cost me. I just hope that in the case of selling it in the future, I will be able to recover at least part of that extra money.
And who knows? Maybe in the future new models, new compression methods, or even new features for Siri AI on macOS get benefited from having the maximum amount of memory available on the M5.
Either if you regret having just 512 GB or I regret having too much memory, we both have to accept that we won’t be able to purchase a Mac with such a great value anymore, as prices won’t be lower anytime soon, and there’s even the possibility that future machines will be even more expensive. So don’t worry, you can always use external drives and I can always try to recover part of the extra €250 that I spent in the 32 GB machine.
Yeah, this is some sort of copium lol
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1BadManVan
macrumors 68040
Considering the large price increase, I think going 32gb was the right call. We might all be hanging onto our current Mac’s longer than originally intended.
Definitely happy I got my 24gb/1tb model when I did. Especially in Canada, the price of the base model is nearly what I paid for my upgraded model now!
I know I’m late to this thread but I feel like if someone intends to push their laptop to thermal limits, indicating some power usage, saying they’d wanna keep that laptop 8-10 years is a bit weird.
Most likely a few years down the road you’ll want to upgrade to take advantage of the latest processors and get stuff done faster.
Not to mention around the 5 year mark you might stop getting OS updates. Perhaps the M series will last longer to 7 years or so for updates but I’m sure by then you’ll be losing new OS features anyway.
At a maximum, a laptop is a 5 years purchase, up to 7. And that’s for regular users. For power users 2-3 years.
Most likely a few years down the road you’ll want to upgrade to take advantage of the latest processors and get stuff done faster.
Not to mention around the 5 year mark you might stop getting OS updates. Perhaps the M series will last longer to 7 years or so for updates but I’m sure by then you’ll be losing new OS features anyway.
At a maximum, a laptop is a 5 years purchase, up to 7. And that’s for regular users. For power users 2-3 years.
thadoggfather
macrumors P6
Not really the comparison you are making, but MBPro doesn't always make sense if you aren't going with the Pro SoC upgrade (IMO) in order to just have the active cooling (fan) help out with sustained workloads.
This doesn't seem night and day to me, considering the much larger footprint and in some cases, much larger bill for the hardware (unless you can still find a base M5 SoC Pro on sale pre-price hike).
People also likewise might not want to get hosed on resell or trade in 5 years, to shave a few more minutes off. That's why I think getting a machine at the price you want, with NAND/RAM you want, assuming you can find a reasonable price which is now becoming much harder - makes a lot of sense.
Even the rumored OLED MBPro is going to be recycling M5 series and skip M6 possibly, due to all this shake up. But it's hard to predict what's going to happen for Apple's pipeline, make the decision you need to now:
Do you need to upgrade or just want to? Can you stomach a possible further price increase if you keep waiting? How is your current machine holding up, and how much different is it than current offerings?
All valid introspective questions to be asking before taking out your wallet.
Thanks for your opinion. I’m just a consumer that wants to leave the door open to be able to use the computer for some pro-sumer tasks, but at a learning level, not professional. Fortunately I’ll have plenty of years to do that on this machine.
And yeah, maybe I receive the “good stuff” for future macOS versions only for 5 years. I’m fine with that. From that point towards I think I’ll have whatever I need. And there’s always the plan B of selling this one to get the M7 (as long as the M7 doesn’t come with an OLED display, as my plan was to get the last IPS LCD MacBook Air… but the price increase pushed me to get it before it).
JPack
macrumors P6
Today's report from Gurman about Apple skipping M6 Pro/Max further confirms your decision was probably the right one.
It implies a major architectural shift for M7 - enough of a change that Apple would prefer to go without M6 Pro/Max, rather than launch it and for it be non-competitive.
It implies a major architectural shift for M7 - enough of a change that Apple would prefer to go without M6 Pro/Max, rather than launch it and for it be non-competitive.