Paying devils advocate on this…
Completely agree - M5 should be for the MBA, iMac etc, and there should only be two processor options for the MBP, Pro and Max. It's so whacky, how can the Mac Pro still be on M2. I think given the stagnation of the product offerings, monkeying around with processor releases and types is the only way to encourage upgrading or fill people with the sense they are missing out on the best performance.
Comments as these really discredit the engineering brilliance that goes into the design and fabrication of a state-of-the-art chip like the M5.
I have a MBP intel i7 16" from late 2019 that I bought at the beginning of 2020, so about to turn 6 years old. It works like a charm for the kind of work I do: office stuff, presentations, internet browsing, e-mails... It is not outdated for what I use it for. I even have Windows 10 installed in a bootcamp partition to play some old PC games I like. For most people, a computer does not get outdated in a couple of years unless you need the highest absolute performance. So if you got a Mac a couple of years ago and you use it like I do, you do not need the new one.
So, the M4 Max MacBook isn't "pro"?
They had a good system but they didn't follow it. Dual core CPUs with hyper threading showed up as i3, i5, and i7. Then an i3 showed up with six cores in the 2018 mini. Logically it should have been i7, four cores with hyper threading; i5, four cores no hyper threading; i3 two cores with hyper threading; Pentium, two cores no hyper threading; Celeron one core with hyper threading; Atom, one core no hyper threading.
They had a good system but they didn't follow it. Dual core CPUs with hyper threading showed up as i3, i5, and i7. Then an i3 showed up with six cores in the 2018 mini. Logically it should have been i7, four cores with hyper threading; i5, four cores no hyper threading; i3 two cores with hyper threading; Pentium, two cores no hyper threading; Celeron one core with hyper threading; Atom, one core no hyper threading.
They you could go up the same way so i9 would be six cores without hyper threading the all the double digits could have hyper threading so I-value just becomes core count.
But logic and Marketing have never gotten along.
The M series chips are great, and if didn't (try to) do so much deep learning work on my M2 Air I would keep it for ages. I think the better speakers in the Pro, the SD card slot and the HDMI port do mean that all round it's a much better offering for me than the air. I use an iPad Pro M4 with Magic Keyboard whenever I need to travel light (and if for work, it's just doc editing and email). The extra mass would be annoying but it's still fairly light compared to the 16, which was a bit of a beast (whilst it does have better thermal behaviour it's not a deal breaker for me). I actually think the 14 Pro is a sweet spot for performance and portability - but if your compute requirements aren't that high I can see an m1 lasting for ages.
This should have 0 dislikes. Great to see that there are so many people on here that hate the concept of logical reasoning but I’m not surprised.
I will replace my Intel iMac with a MacBook pro M5. I waited 5 generations on purpose I didn't want to take the plunge into a new technology and platform.
