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Skipping the New MacBook Pro? Here Are the Rumors About M5 Models
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You can't buy an Air with a 16" screen and more than 24GB RAM and 2TB SSD though. If I could, I would.
Instead, I own a 16" M1 Pro MBP with 32GB RAM. I rarely do any video editing, and never play games. It's only ever span up the fans once, and most of it's life the GPU's sit virtually idle.
There's a lot of MBP users in a similar bucket. Want the biggest screen and/or need lots of RAM/SSD. Especially software engineers.
The M1 Pro specs are so overkill for my needs, apart from it allowing the RAM I need, that I can't envision upgrading it until a design change occurs. If the 2026 rumour is true, then my machine will be ~5 years old, and by then, sure why not.
In between major design changes, hardly anyone can even tell one iPhone Pro from the next anyway.
They are simple to do. They update the chips yearly, and then basically slap them in the same machines, and maybe update a couple of the other components to newer tech.
I love it, as whenever I do get around to upgrading, I won't be wondering if an overdue new design is just around the corner, I can just go and buy the current model. I still have a 16" M1 Pro MBP, and have no plans to update, but it's good to know there's new releases every year.
That aligns with corporate polices to upgrading Mac hardware if you've worked in a major tech city.
It's tech professional convention in major tech companies for annual phone upgrades and three-four year desktop/laptop changes.
That also influences the upgrade cycle for by no coincidence of the Mac Pro, Mac Studio, and lately the iPad Pro
M3 Pro MacBook Pro 16 inch in Space Black right here? I'm good. It kicks a**! For real. No need to get upgrade. As a matter of fact, I was using 2015 MacBook Pro 15.4 Retina. Its age starting to show, and it was time to upgrade about 6 months ago.
I mean thank dog it's not the end of the 1990's again, when every year (for a period of few years) your config became basically obsolete.
Eh, the difference is, "obsolete" gear now can often be still super powerful - the baseline has gotten crazy high. The new M4 Macs are _way_ faster than my current M1 Mac, but I'm not looking longingly at the M4's, yearning for their speed, because the M1 is still way faster than I really need.
Back in the 90's, it was often the case that anything that wasn't just-released, top-of-the-line hardware, kinda sucked for running the latest software. But now, especially with ARM-based chips, we've gotten to where the baseline of capability is sufficient for a huge percentage of what you want to run.
Agree. If Apple doesn't kill support for it the M1 could prob last 15 years lol
I'm hoping on my next upgrade I can time it to a nice +20% type year and not an M2 type year. I'm guessing things will slow down here eventually though to be more like +10%/yr. I'm actually quite shocked it hasn't happened yet.
M5 iPad pro.........I wonder what the performance in Emulators will be like after apple allowed them in the app store here as the m4 pro mac mini base model is impressive according to ETA prime on YouTube for emulating certain games at 8k here while sipping TDP as the m5 like the m3 on the iMac is seen as a bridge gap chip generation before the M6 releases.
Beyond that Apple screws consumers on unified memory (ram) and SSD storage that is not upgradable as you need at least 1-2TB of SSD storage space along with 48-96gb of unified RAM memory to run steam in parallels in windows or crossover using wine and Linux Unbuntu/SteamOS GUI. Usually if you're going to run steam or any other game store app you need to upgrade the ram and storage space on a mac you buy from them and possibly an ungraded binned chip apple set aside to charge you more here. Apple need wi-fi 7 and pci gen 5 ssd speeds to boost the performance of the m series chip here for those not wanting to buy more unified ram for the SoC to use. Maybe apple is waiting for PCI gen 6 to come out soon in 2026 before they put an SSD speed upgrade to use to cut down on the need to buy more unified memory here or not using it as a RAMDisk like in Windows 11 here and in Linux.
Beyond that Apple screws consumers on unified memory (ram) and SSD storage that is not upgradable as you need at least 1-2TB of SSD storage space along with 48-96gb of unified RAM memory to run steam in parallels in windows or crossover using wine and Linux Unbuntu/SteamOS GUI. Usually if you're going to run steam or any other game store app you need to upgrade the ram and storage space on a mac you buy from them and possibly an ungraded binned chip apple set aside to charge you more here. Apple need wi-fi 7 and pci gen 5 ssd speeds to boost the performance of the m series chip here for those not wanting to buy more unified ram for the SoC to use. Maybe apple is waiting for PCI gen 6 to come out soon in 2026 before they put an SSD speed upgrade to use to cut down on the need to buy more unified memory here or not using it as a RAMDisk like in Windows 11 here and in Linux.
Apple has observed that replacement cycle are
- 4 years: Macs & Apple TV
- 3 years: iPhone, iPad & Watch
Intel has observed that replacement cycle are 5-6 years for PCs
Last Security Update
- 122 months: Windows
- ~1 decade: macOS
- 8-9 years: iOS/iPadOS/watchOS
End users replace based on their use case and budgets.
These are my current Apple devices.
- 2024 iPhone 16 Pro Max 3nm < 2021 iPhone 13 Pro Max
- 2024 Watch Series 10 46mm 3nm < 2018 Watch Series 4 44mm
- 2019 MacBook Pro 16" 14nm < 2011 Macbook Pro 13" 32nm
- 2019 AirPods 2
- 2018 iPad Pro 11" 7nm < 2013 iPad Air
- 2012 iMac 27" 22nm < 2007 iMac 20"
If a iMac 32" 6K M4/M5 16GB memory 256GB storage ideally with Target Display Mode for $1.8k-2.8k was released today I'd replace my dozen year old iMac.
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always love MBP update to next level process.. However, I wonder, w/ advancement of AI rising and rising, do we need faster and faster computer? We won't be doing any AI driven computation on local laptop, it will just all get done in the cloud.