Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- Mac mini Pro line is doomed, they never made enough of it; skipped M5 Pro, now skipping M6 Pro, it is like 2014-2018 again. Now ordering a custom M4 Pro build take 3 months+ to ship with an increased price.by chazeon
- At this point can Apple profit from selling any contracts they have with TSMC?
If they make a deal with say google to delay their own chips, could they profit more than by selling their production?
Demand is so crazy idk if this would begin to make sense
by 6thbit - In the long run I truly believe local AI will win and Apple will be the world's most important AI company because of these chips. Imagine something like today's Opus running for free and in complete privacy on your local machine with a beautiful Apple UX on top. For most tasks for most people, that's a much better proposition than a frontier model in the cloud you have to pay for and send all your data to and that only works when you're online.by habosa
- I would say local AI is very real. I use it but so many here am on other forums do so nowadays as well. This is the reason I just cannot fathom the valuations of the AI firms out there.by MASNeo
- >In the long run I truly believe local AI will win
What do you mean by 'win'?
For a normal coder/person's use cases, yes. But AI companies are becoming more specialised in different fields and these tailored models will be leagues ahead in those niches.
by khurs - Well this kind of sucks. I've been waiting for the M6 MBPs because they're rumored (strong rumors, though) to finally remove the notch that has been a historic self-own. But it sounds like I might as well wait longer for the M7 lineup. Or maybe get a Framework Pro instead.
- You can turn off the notch, I mean crop it out at least.by herf
- Same, have a very old MBP. Not sure what to do because I don’t want to wait a year and a half. That coupled with today’s price increases make it a tougher decision.by illusive4080
- The notch does not matter at all, you will forget it's there.by Schiendelman
This means there won't be a redesigned MBP this year since there won't be M6 Pro/Max chips. People were expecting a redesigned slimmer MBP with OLED display later this year, myself included.The M7 Pro and M7 Max are scheduled for as early as the end of 2027, while the M7 Ultra is on track for 2028.I was holding out for one until I decided to switch from an M1 Pro 16" MBP to an M5 Air 15" due to the expected price increase. I think many M1 Pro/Max generation people were waiting to upgrade this year.
by aurareturn- It seems likely the MB Ultra will ship with the M5 Ultra.by Schiendelman
- > This means there won't be a redesigned MBP this year since there won't be M6 Pro/Max chips.
They can release a redesigned MBP with the base M6 chip.
by GeekyBear - Isn't that switch basically a downgrade? You get some more single core performance and some weight savings, but also a worse (and smaller) screen, less multicore performance, less GPU performance, less video encoding performance and a smaller battery? I'm on an M2 Max myself, and glad they introduced a larger form factor Air, but it seems like a long way from an upgrade.by keldaris
- Current MBPs are such a delight, I really don't want to think about a thinner MBP again, I just get shivers remembering the Ive butterfly keyboard modelsby asimovDev
- Well, I guess this is the silver lining to the price increases. I'd been thinking about an M5 128GB for local inference (eg DS4), probably off the table now given that it jumped $2k overnight. But I was on the fence about it for a long time given that even the M5 is not that good compared to even a 4090. It would have been good, but not "omg" good.
If they are pulling out all the stops to make the M7 more competitive.. guess I can wait for that?
by sho - I imagine they weren't planning for their plans to be leaked so publicly, as yes it will now mean some buyers will delay their purchases.by khurs
- Seems like a made-up distinction that shouldn't be necessary since M6 has not even released. I suspect this is a marketing ploy to meant to drive up both interest while also increasing prices for the next generation of Mac hardware.by evanjrowley
- It’s an amusing conspiracy theory, but I don’t get it.
Are you thinking Apple is leaking that there will be a long wait for much more expensive chips in order to… what?
by brookst - Why? The specs and benchmarks will show the differences, there’s no marketing around that.by ErneX
- Whether it matters for the consumer (who only sees released and announced end results) or not is irrelevant.
It can still be a very real, not made-up distinction, if the actual facts on the ground are that Apple designed an M6 line, but then scrapped that design and asked the team to create a new design with emphasis on AI-focused specs.
It's not the name that's important (the M7 could still come out as M6), is them skipping a design, or cpu "Tick-Tock model" step.
by coldtea - Made up how? They'll do a refresh of lower end devices, but not the high core count versions.
It's the same thing as how the Mac Studio got an M4 Max refresh, but they didn't make an M4 Ultra so if you want the 28+ core CPU or 60+ core GPU, that's still using an M3 Ultra.
This time it'll be across all the Pro, Max, and Ultra versions, if you want those they'll stay at the previous generation for the M6 cycle.
Not that weird - Apple has a huge set of chips and hardware and software products. Putting every single thing on a fixed identical update cycle together won't always make sense.
by wlesieutre - > Seems like a made-up distinction that shouldn't be necessary since M6 has not even released.
Why would it? Each generation of the M series has an architectural improvement on their chipsets. The difference between an M1 and an M1 Pro is the allocation and arrangement not the architecture. M6 to M7 presumably will have architectural changes.
by Kirby64 - > Seems like a made-up distinction that shouldn't be necessary since M6 has not even released.
The claim is that M6 will be released, but the only variants will be lower end.
When they get to the M7 generation, they will make high end variants.
It's a real distinction because each generation of parts shares an architecture.
The article has an entire section speculating what the M6 parts will be, but says they'll top out around 200GB/s memory bandwidth and 12 graphics cores.
by Aurornis - What it's saying is that the M6 will be released, but not the M6 Pro or M6 Max. Instead, Apple will wait to release new Max/Pro chips for a future generation.
It's not simply marketing since the Pro/Max chips of a generation use the same cores as the regular version, just more of them or different combinations of performance and efficiency cores.
by mdasen - What's their backup plan if the AI world doesn't pan out? What if it turns out people want base compute capability and lots of RAM for filestore cache and programs?
Maybe this strategy works, even in that world.
Remember when we all thought (were told we thought) the world was heading to 3D views of our 2D lived experience like a solid Cube of GUI we could rotate around and live inside? Well Apple took the simple 2D square pane of virtual desktops and .. made it a SONY strip. One variable: sideways.
So here we are being told AI is the future. Apple seems to be saying "yes but it will run local" which might be a safe bet if AI comes true but I wonder how many of us want the AI outcome, which is morally speaking the 3D immersive GUI cube here: what if we don't want that?
by ggm - "What if it turns out people want base compute capability and lots of RAM for filestore cache and programs?"
Can't it do both? The M1 Pro with 16gb+ is still more than nearly everyone needs.
by khurs - this is the backup strategy. the "AI doesn't pan out" scenario is basically if claude and openai go bankrupt, we continue running local models on our hardware.
there isn't a future where we all just decide that nah, we don't want AI anymore. usefuly things don't disappear.
by notatoad - AI was the only reason I bought a new computer (a refurb M3 max with 64GB). Without AI, no idea what we should bother with, it depends on what application comes out to drive local computing power (maybe better games? Yawn).by seanmcdirmid
- Without AI everyone’s computing needs were pretty well satisfied with current phones and laptops. LLMs are the one thing that could drive new demand if they can run locally.by jimbokun
- AI already has massive, growing adoption, whereas "3D immersive GUI cubes" never really had any.by olalonde