M5 MacBook Pro No Longer Coming in 2025
macrumors.com
macrumors.com
I would also speculate that there may be some growing pains for the n2 production from TSMC, and/or a desire to get there in the AZ fab production before launch to avoid tariffs hitting their bottom line. They'd rather pay 12-20% more for just the CPU than eat large tariffs on the full cost. I don't think they'd be able to significantly raise prices further based on tariffs, like some other companies with smaller margins are forced to do, on order to be competitive.
The only motivation to upgrade is battery degradation or getting more RAM to run larger LLM models locally.
Frankly, the MBP is still an excellent machine, but I don't travel, anymore, and this big honker that is as wide as my desk, has me spoiled.
With this display, it's similar to two 4:3 aspect displays in my typical use... my IDE or Code pinned on one side, my browser or another app on the right.
Overall, it's been pretty great.
It's really not a big deal. I know quite a few people that have much nicer rigs; especially gamers.
I was really just saying that the MPB has a processor that still rocks, several years later, but the large screen that I use (which is actually not as impressive as some of the gaming screens), has me spoiled, and using a laptop screen feels cramped.
and a slightly better screen in terms of response time, which is nice since ghosting is very present on all of them
https://9to5mac.com/2024/11/15/apple-quietly-gave-the-m4-mac...
So, when choosing a Mac, opt for higher RAM and SSD capacity to reduce swap pressure and spread wear.
If you are cautious, monitor TBW, but interpret the data with healthy skepticism.
Last, but not least, backup regularly!
The only ones I've heard of dying are from brands I'd never trust in the first place, or from bad firmware, and my impression is that it's usually the controller dying, and with the controller being part of the chip itself on Apple Silicon, it's not gonna die without taking the rest of the machine with it, and for the most part, they just aren't.
The M1 is old enough that we'd know about it if the faliure rate was abnormally high.
So you can't do any serious work on a Mac ?
MacOS does that natively. My battery rarely charges above 80% because I "almost never use it on battery so there's no need."
Poorly, mine still hasn't learned, after 3 years, that it spends 99% of its time connected to a Thunderbolt charging monitor. And regularly discharges itself over the weekend because it failed to fall asleep properly.
It's fantastic as a thin client - though it's a bit annoying carrying around a mini PC with me when I travel.
Most of my home stuff is from around 2010, my work laptop is from 2021, and neither at home, nor at work, do I need more programming power.
I have enough cores, RAM, disk space, and graphic cards, to still code whatever I feel like locally, with exception of ray tracing or latest AI models, neither of which are that relevant to my computing activities.
So I will keep using them until they die, or there is no hope left of the battery and need to acquire a new one to take outside the house.
I’ve used both M1 Max and M4 Max machines extensively and while the latter is a good deal faster, it’s only really noticeable with longer sustained tasks and particularly large projects. The high-RAM variants of M1 models in particular should continue to be quite servicable for some time to come.
What excuse besides liking windows or wanting an even cheaper machine do you have not to get one?
To be fair, no M-series Macs have Linux support. For some, the community has added support themselves, without any contributions from Apple.
The Ethernet port is extremely useful in the field or in the lab to connect to various devices. The SD prt is useful for imaging embedded devices, or for getting pictures off my camera.
Market share, right to repair, upgradability, no open source
The academic fiscal year often ends in Aug/Sep, and new faculty usually get a “technology fund” for buying their first computer. A lot of us use that to get the latest Mac. Historically, Apple’s October refresh was just late enough to miss that budget window, but people would still wait a month or two for the new models.
If they push announcements even further (as the article suggests—early 2026), it’s a different story. New hires can’t wait half a year with no laptop, so they’ll just buy whatever’s top-of-the-line right now. For research folks who need GPU power, that could easily mean a 5090-based laptop instead of a Mac.
The average user, even the "power user", does not care/know the difference between an M4 and whatever the M5 will be.
wrt the second part of your comment: Academics care about speed, RAM, battery life, the ability to run the latest AI models at a decent speed (M4 is still relatively slow).
The m4 macbook is running AI slow compared too..... what competitive alternative?
I'm impressed at how fast gpt-oss-20b ran on my m2 24gb system.
How does it compare to Windows laptops?
Are they comparable? No way. Laptops with x86 CPUs and discrete GPUs need a lot of power and dissipate a lot of heat. This makes them larger, heavier, louder, and with terrible battery life. If they are gamer laptops, they also look like toys.
Battery life is worse though. Depending on the use (3-4h gaming, 7-8h regular use) still plenty though.
Unless you work on AI, which most don't, then you don't care that the M4 is a little slow for that purpose. The academics who are working on large dataset frequently have access to cluster computers or large servers running in the university datacenter... or frequently sits under their desk, because they have trust issues.
Most people want something affordable and adequate.
> Academics care about speed, RAM, battery life, the ability to run the latest AI models at a decent speed (M4 is still relatively slow).
Most academics do not give a flying fuck about running local LLMs. Academia is more than LLM researchers.
Most academics probably care most about battery life and portability and whether it runs Teams, like every other person.
Don't expect too much from a single generation upgrade. M4 to M5 won't be anything like the move from Intel to their own silicon.
citation needed. AFAICT, sales data says that "most people" want a bargin and would prefer $200 off than 10% faster newest etc... Most people buy 1 or 2 generations old.
Anyone really geeked about AI performance to the level of not picking something because of it (be it price or performance) should not be looking at a laptop anyways.
I have had classmates that did the entire 5 year engineering degree in Software Engineering, using the computer labs computers, the modern ones running a mix of Windows 95 and Red-Hat dual booting, or the more ancient MS-DOS/Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and terminals to the DG/UX server.
Anyone was happy to have a computer of some sort.
interestingly, i have a teen that will be heading off to college in a couple years. My plan is to send him off to the dorm with a Macbook and not his gaming rig heh. Although, inevitably, it will be up to him to decide how to make the best use of his time..
Not trying to sway you, just thinking about common outcomes!
A common outcome would seem to be a year spent bombing in their classes because they can’t separate themselves from some stupid game to study while accumulating $10-20k in student debt.
In my unsolicited advice, I recommend your son take both devices. I'll spare you my countless war stories, but I can confidently say I have seen many students up a creek without a paddle at some of the most unfortunate times.
So I got it in ~May, when my college program started in September.
The advantage is all of that legacy software that some process relies on and hasn't been meaningfully updated in 10+ years and won't be ported over to the ARM processors that you damned kids are running on because back in my day we paid for one copy of x86 software and that got us through 10 winters, dammit.
I'm enjoying my framework AMD laptop although the battery life with suspend is miserable.
Our Intel Framework does, although you might need to use Linux to utilize it.
Both our models are couple of years old now.
There’s a Linux command for listing supported sleep states, but I don’t have it handy.
That laptop only has 256GB of storage whereas you can throw a 4TB m.2 ssd into the AMD framework if you want.
That laptop only has 2 USB type-c and they're both only 5Gbps (and one legacy USB port). The AMD 7040 framework has 2 USB4 40Gbps ports and 2 regular USB type-c 3.2 ports (and then the whole modular card system in front of those ports).
That laptop looks genuinely nice. With a few small tweaks I'd consider it. Though, in terms of personal preference I wouldn't want to do a chromebook again because of the annoyance of having to rebind the keys on every operating system I install (the pixelbook had the caps lock key bound to super and IIRC F11 was bound to something that doesn't exist on normal keyboards), and I'll never buy an oled screen for/in a computer.
Seems like as impressive as the work & project is, it's always going to be struggling to play catch-up: you're not happy with the extent of M1 implementation, my understanding is M3/M4 just barely work headlessly.
Add to this the recent economic uncertainty and prospective buyers might just have been holding up purchases (thus further adding to inventory if they already front-loaded before tariffs).
As for people buying powerful machines that could be worth going to a 5090 based machine instead, they're probably a fairly small part of the Mac purchaser market in the big picture.
Professors are a very small % of the education market, most of their sales come from high school and college students and during back to school season.
Apple has carved out a niche for itself in the local LLM space, yet it continues to overcharge for RAM and under-deliver in terms of bandwidth.
I have no hopes that Apple will decrease its prices, particularly on top-of-the-line models like those with 128 GB of memory and above.
Yet I certainly believe that it can deliver even more RAM and, in particular, memory bandwidth. Apple clearly offers much more VRAM than consumer NVIDIA GPUs, but Macs are still behind in terms of memory bandwidth and, relatedly, overall performance.
It would be silly of Apple not to jump at the opportunity to eat even more of NVIDIA’s market share among the general public.
It's a total waste of money paying zillions for tiny improvements.
Leopard followed by Snow Leopard.
Every other year is just a major bugfix/rewrite release.
Who's forcing you to get every upgrade every year?
The yearly releases make a lot of sense for everybody, because then you can upgrade on your own schedule, instead of delaying the upgrade because the product was released a full 2 years ago, at a time your older one is on its last breath.
In fact, yearly releases are then also more sustainable, too, since the purchasing would be spread out to each year (on an as-needed basis), instead of having a month-long cycle every 3 years, necessitating the extra infrastructure all along the way (from the stores to manufacturing to shipping).
For Apple computers, the last breath comes almost a decade after they were built.
If you wait until it dies, then you will want to get what's available at that time, but, if you plan from the start, you'll have a lot of flexibility with these machines.
My MBP is the same age as my Thinkpad, and looks much nicer.
My '07 macbook lasted till 2020. It was almost as tough as any thinkpad I've had. My x220t, 2008ish, is still going. Both did damage to the hoods of a few cars.
Last I heard, my iPod nano from 20+ years ago is still being used daily. Only other portable music player I've had last that long was a Walkman.
I've got friends with old ass powerBooks that still get used frequently.
Consider cars: manufactures come out with new ones each year with marginally differences. Is that somehow unsustainable and they should instead keep manufacturing an old design for years? Does that mean once the 2026 model starts manufactuing you go dump your 2025?
It makes more sense to iteratively improve your design and stop manufacturing old things if you can manufacture something better.
The real sustainability argument is about support length (which apple does well), and repairability (which apples does ). Changing to a 3 hear cycle is orthogonal to both of these.
I used to upgrade computers every 1-1.5 years but I think I could easily roll with this for another 2-3 maybe even 4 or 5 years more.
Heck, even if I was given free money I'd be too lazy to switch to an M4 Max just because of the hassle of transferring data that isn't on iCloud/Time Machine.
I was waiting for the M5 to have some other substantial changes like in the display or sound etc.
From my point of view they have to accept if they want a desktop like experience, only PCs with Windows/Linux/BSD are left standing as composable workstations.
Also not all kinds of high-speed network, or real time audio cards are supported.
Stuffing a Studio into a desktop case full of air, and limited set of supported PCIe cards, is a slap into the face of the hardcore users that still hope Apple cares about workstations.
It's disappointing to hear they are delaying this year's Macbooks because I was really hoping to see some improvements like this specifically targeted at running local LLMs.
AMD and Intel already caught up in the unified memory design. Apple might still have some edge (do they ? idk), but it's not a rarety anymore.
Not to mention, I have no faith that these laptops won't thermally throttle - my fan only spins up when I'm running truly demanding workloads, the rest of the time the laptop might as well be fanless.
When everything is done in a browser, the biggest differentiator on a laptop would be monitor and peripheral support, and Apple is behind the competition.
macOS has no support for daisy-chaining with DP MST, no support for a second monitor (new to M1, the 2020 Intel model does support dual external monitors), no way to turn-off antialiasing, limited ports, RAM and storage options, limited repair and expansion options.
Why exactly do we even still use macOS anyways?
Even the cheapest Chromebook laptops have better monitor support and better expandability, at 1/10th the cost.
On the hardware side of things, the big differentiators are build quality and battery life. To get either as good as is found on MacBooks you’re likely to be spending about as much in the x86 world. Those dirt cheap Chromebooks in particular are miserable to use.
On Mac you basically HAVE to get an expensive $200+ TB dock to get a one cable multi-mon setup.
The new M4 MBAs can still only do two external screens at a time. It's better but the competition can do more.
The best part about DP MST is that most monitors already have a DP-Out, so, you can already daisy-chain even without having to buy a cheap dock.
I'm pretty sure DP-Out would be even more popular if not for the macOS users leaving all the negative reviews about the daisy-chaining not working after paying a full half price for a DP MST monitor compared to a Thunderbolt one!
Ironically, some manufacturers simply remove the DP-Out port, and release the resulting product as a Mac-friendly version of an identical PC monitor with a DP-Out.
My fav USB-C / DP MST monitor deals, have been HP Z24m G3 at $149.99 USD in early 2024, and PHILIPS 4K UHD IPS Black 27E2F7901 at $209.99 in mid/late 2024, both 400nits with DP 1.4, USB-C and DP-Out, at far cheaper prices than any comparable Thunderbolt monitor:
https://slickdeals.net/f/17456364-23-8-hp-z24m-g3-2560x1440-...
https://slickdeals.net/f/17650827-philips-creator-series-27e...
Wait, that's a $379 dock? Isn't it a bit too much to pay so much just to get back about the same ports that most non-Macs still have?
If I connect my peripherals like SSD and mouse/kb through this dock, will they continue working during a power outage? Or do I now have to get a UPS for my laptop, too, because I can't use the native ports anymore, and have to use a dock to connect the most basic equipment?
> Dell U2724DE
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-ultrasharp-27-thunderbo...
$599 USD for QHD 2560x1440? That's just not very competitive.
I got a QHD 2560x1440 with RJ45 and a DP-Out for $149 brand new, for HP Z24m G3:
https://slickdeals.net/f/17456364-23-8-hp-z24m-g3-2560x1440-...
So, it's basically a 4x premium for TB.
---
Many monitors on the market today do come with a dock built-in, but most of the time, it's a DP MST kind of dock, so, the daisy-chaining won't work in macOS, since it has no support for DP MST.
Thunderbolt is VERY rare across most monitors. It's even more rare on the models that go on sale and aren't broken in some fundamental way (IIRC, some Samsung TB monitor that was on sale, would actually have terrible reviews specifically because it still didn't work daisy-chained properly).
Since you're a Dell fan, I've just casually looked over the filters at https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/computer-monitors/ar/8605, and it's got 42 for USB-C, but only 6 for Thunderbolt; that's 7 times more non-Thunderbolt monitors that Thunderbolt.
If we limit the search to QHD 2560x1440, there's 11 USB-C, but only 1 Thunderbolt. You're basically paying 2x more, or $300 more, for a "free" Thunderbolt dock.
Compare to DP-Out options. For example, HP Z24m G3 2560x1440 was on sale for many months throughout 2024 at $149.99 USD brand new, it does have DP-Out and RJ45, a very quality monitor.
As for battery life, I'm not doing video encoding or compiling on my Mac, so, battery life is just a matter of power consumption. There are many ARM-based Chromebooks that are powered by like 5W CPUs. By definition, they're INCAPABLE of consuming their 50Wh battery in less than 10 hours; this often results in a better battery life than my MacBook Air, simply because M1 is still a 15W CPU, and can easily made to waste lots of cycles doing pointless webpage busywork that noone cares about, diminishing the battery life.
Yes, they've finally fixed the regression with a second monitor come M4, but it's still missing the most basic ports and expansion features.
As far as port counts go, to get anything close to what a TS4 adds, you’re looking at a desktop of some kind or maybe one of those monstrous 17”+ workstation or gaming laptops (but even most of those have fewer ports).
The HP is calibrated and has amazing colours, and it's 90Hz, too, although I keep it at 60Hz.
The Philips monitor is 4k UHD and also IPS Black, same 2000:1 contrast as all IPS Black panels share, so, I'm not sure why you'd get the Dell with the lower resolution and lower brightness at a higher price. The only true benefit of Dell is 2.5GigE and 120Hz, but 350nits is actually a downside compared to 400nits of the cheaper monitors I've listed.
BTW, you've never addressed the UPS issue.
Do any docks at all work when the power is out? How do you take that into account when you need to connect stuff like SSD, kb and mouse? Do you suffer data loss on your SSD because your laptop lacks standard ports and dock use is required that can't be powered by the laptop anymore? Or do you get UPS for your laptop just for the dock? I just don't understand how the dock requirement is not a big deal. I got a laptop simply because it's fanless and has an integrated UPS, I didn't need it to be portable otherwise.
I guess you’d probably need a UPS for a powered dock, I don’t know. The power is out too infrequently where I live for it to be an issue and it’s nice for the dock to be able to charge for one cable swapping between machines.
4k@27in may be too small pitch, but QHD@27in would be too pixelated. Especially on macOS that does NOT allow turning off antialiasing.
I'm currently using the 400nit HP Z24m G3 @ 2560x1440 @ 24in with my 16GB MBA M1, the colours are absolutely amazing compared to the cheaper Lenovo monitors.
Firefox works great, because it lets you turn off antialiasing, but there's no way to turn it off in Brave or Chrome, which results in super washed out and blurry text everywhere.
Honestly, macOS is not production ready at this point. Data loss because you have to use an external SSD through a dock, poor monitor support with regressions after moving to Apple Silicon, no ports for anything, inadequate RAM/storage that cannot be upgraded in any way besides the external SSD through a dock with a UPS.
Basically, the most simple things are super complicated.
Didn't it used to be the opposite with the Macs, where they were actually simpler and more flexible?
Laptops in general haven’t been flush with ports for a very long time now, unless we’re talking about workstation laptops and sometimes gaming laptops. I have an old late-00s 15.4” Precision that has more ports than a lot of consumer desktops and entry-level motherboards these days, but by and large laptops come with maybe a third as many at most. Apple laptops haven’t been replete with ports like that since the PowerBook G3 “Pismo” was EoL’d back in 2000. People who need that many ports usually get a tower of some kind.
Those are old non-Apple monitors and they look worse (colors and texts) than when plugged on Windows though.
(And I do hate macOS)
This is factually inaccurate. It's perhaps true on the Air and base model Pro, but not the others.
I hate on Apple's bs all the time, but it seems like the reality in your situation is that you got nearly the cheapest mac laptop 5 years ago, with a shitty screen, bumped the ram, and you're doing just fine still, except for some esoteric limitations that I just factored into my budget when buying one recently and aren't blocked by, namely external monitor support without MST.
I didn't get that computer at that time because of some of those limitations, sticking with my prior intel 13" until last year, until I finally convinced myself it was time. Doesn't mean they aren't worth complaining about though, I think 5 years on an Air is pretty good, they've always favored mobile utility over stationary excellence
Meant to say that I didn't get the lower specced M series around the time you did even though I was generally still sticking with the base models, because of the constraints you mentioned, opting to just wait until it was more feasible to spend more later on and continue suffering
So, if you agree with the constraints I've mentioned, how are they inaccurate? The early-2020 Intel MacBook Air does support dual external monitors, it's an M1 regression where it's no longer supported, and it took them until M4 to finally fix the regression, it's present in every MBA until then, and in several MBP models, too.
It was only in 2024 that the gap between the computer I did have became significantly noticeable enough, and the configuration became more tolerable in their stupid pricing ladder to accept it. Because the money was also finally there on my side, the 4.5k CAD I paid was actually relatively fine, when you consider that it's relatively cheap within the scope of investments in professional tools.
In prior years, I had a 14" M2 Pro, M3 Pro, sitting in my cart with minimum 32gb of ram, but it felt too highly priced for what it was. Then in 2024 I got a 16" 48gb Pro. Even though I'd prefer 64, it had the right balance for me in my overall budget for my only physical tool investment (rather than focusing on the specific upgrade costs). "Can I spend ~4.5k CAD on this tool and be happier than I was doing my work?", the answer was yes, and it's been great, but I'm not sure I'd have been as happy with it earlier.
So I have no issue when something like a laptop being pushed back, it was all very arbitrary anyway. Can they release is a Mars based yearly cadence?
Seasons -> harvest -> traditions freeze working/holidaying times -> kids start school a certain time -> gotta sell them computers to be ready at those times.
Something like that, in a million different ways.
If the new M* processor was every ten months, nobody would have the foggiest idea when it was coming out
If you're completely uninformed, why post at all? What value do you add to the conversation?
Has the community decided _how_ we can talk about things now?