Need advice on my Mac upgrade path

Hardware
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MPU Friends, I discovered the Mac a few years ago after decades on PCs, and haven’t looked back. My current setup is an M1 MacBook Pro 16" 32 GB/1 TB. I also have a Studio Display XDR, an iPad M4 Pro, an iPhone 14 PM, and the AW Series 8.

I’m a lawyer, and use this for my practice. I’m also a power user with about 75 apps installed. This year, I was planning on upgrading hardware because my firm has the income to fully deduct the upgrades. (The other attorney in my firm does not use a Mac.)

Prices have gone crazy. But next year I my firm might not have the same income; it fluctuates. So if I’m upgrading, now would be a good year. Which path should I choose? Thank you for your suggestions!

1. Add a Mac Studio M5 Max with Moderate Specs (when released). I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. It would give me a main system that would always be running, SpamSieve would filter junk emails 24/7, and if something happened to my MBP, I would not be without a system. I could remote-in to access the Studio from any device including my iPad Pro, and Parallels would always be running so I can access our accounting software.

But, it would require maintaining two systems, with all their software, updates, and licenses. And, having to sync my Dropbox and other files before using my MBP.

2. Add a Mac Studio M5 Ultra with High Specs (when released). This would add the ability to run an LLM locally for confidentiality purposes. But $$$$$, and I think cloud AI, which we can access through Amazon Bedrock to get most enterprise-level controls, will outpace local LLMs for a few years at least.

3. Replace my MBP Pro M1 Pro with an MBP Pro M5 Max 16" 64 GB / 2 TB. Why didn’t I do this a few months ago? :sob: It’s now about $6,000 USD with sales tax. This would let me keep one machine (with its pros and cons), and use Siri AI. I’d upgrade my iPhone to the 18 PM. But my MBP Pro M1 Pro is still going strong.

(Edited for grammar.)

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I went through the same process recently. I have been waiting a while for the Mac Studio to catch up in processor capability. Not only did it not happen - but Mac Studio top-end configuration went down from 512 Gb to 96 Gb. That’s on a machine where RAM can never be upgraded.

Bottom line - The M5 Max 128 Gb Macbook Pro is currently the most capable Mac made. If you are even remotely considering running local LLMs (even part-time for your most private documents) the 128 Gb option is a no-brainer.

I cannot imagine buying a Mac Studio with less RAM and a less powerful processor than a MacBook. Makes no sense.

And if the situation changes - MacBooks hold their value quite well on resale.

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I am in a similar situation, but yours is worse because of time pressure . I have a MacStudio with M1Ultra and 128 GB RAM. I have plenty of RAM (and more than is easily available now), but the M1 is not completely supported in the Apple AI world. I have an M5 MacBook Pro 14" with 24 GB RAM. That does not have enough RAM.

My plan is to get a high-end M5 Mac Studio with 128 GB RAM. But not clear when and even if that will ever be possible. I think that the current rumors are that there will be a high-end M5 MacStudio available at the end of the year. I believe that you will be able to get 128 GB at that time if you are willing to pay for it. I would not consider the current 96GB limit on the current MacStudio likely to persist.

For a while there were rumors that Apple might skip high-end M5 Studios and jump to M6 for that. Now there are rumors that there will be a high-end M5 and M6 high-end will be skipped in favor of M7. Th “instability” of the rumors make decisions more complex.

I happen to vastly prefer Desktops.

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What about option 4?

4. Be content with what you have now (no upgrade)

Besides having the means, is there a reason you need to upgrade now?

Your current setup is quite nice and I’m wondering what extra a lawyer needs to run her/his practice.

(For perspective: I still do development work on my MacBook Air M1 8 GB / 256 GB)

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What is the benefit of a desktop over a laptop run in clamshell model?

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Seems the fundamental decision is whether to spend the already available funds on a new computer or not. Considering the future is hazy and in many cases doesn’t happen, make the decision in light of the present. Prices could go up further, stay, or go down. No man knows.

From the post, I think you want to spend the funds. Then, in my view, the only option is #3. Options 1 & 2 don’t exist (and may not). You keep the computers for a while. So, as MacSparky says, “buy once, cry once.”

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Connectivity and thermals.

I have six peripheral devices hanging off of my Mac Studio and still have a couple of ports to spare. Plus an SD card reader on the front of the box, where it belongs.

The most important things I do on my Mac require sustained, heavy workloads. I suspect the heat sink and fan matter more to the performance I get than the chip specs.

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Options 1 and 2 imply that you need power at your desktop more so than you need that same power on the road. Option 2 is higher power than Option 1.

Option 3 implies that you routinely/consistently/often enough need the same power on the road as you need at your desktop.

Which is it?

–
JJW

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I think the heat is more of an issue with the 14" MacBook than the 16"

You can check for any thermal events since your last reboot with

pmset -g thermlog

I have had my 16" MacBook Pro for about a month. It has run near continuously - including background LLM often running for hours. I have not had a thermal throttling event yet.

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  1. be content (with the M1)

for me, unless I’m running LLMs locally and need the extra compute. Unless you’re seeing slowdowns on the spinning beachball of death, your M1 is getting your “normal” job done. You might notice a slight increase in app performance with the M5, but in my experience it won’t be much.

The privacy consideration would be the decision point in my calculus. How often is that a concern (for legal work, I’d guess often)? If so, I’ve seen several claims that LLMs run better on Ultra series processors, so maybe go with the new M5 Studio, or maybe find a used M3 Ultra Studio.

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It would really depend on how much you move around and use the laptop in different places. Assuming you do that, I’d probably continue to go all-in on the laptop (upgraded or not) and get a cheap Mac Mini for the automation.

If you mostly work at your desk and/or seriously want to change your working style, then the next Max Studio could be good. My understanding is that after the M5 Max, the next really good AI option is going to be the M7 Ultra in a couple years, so you could plan on selling and upgrading then and rely more on cloud models in the meantime (but you’ll be able to do a lot with local models on the M5 Max.)

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I’d go for a 16” M5 Pro - it’s not clear to me that the Max chip would gain you anything substantial.

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64Gb is the max memory permitted with M5 Pro

For running local LLM - both now and into the future - the difference between M5 Pro 64Gb vs. M5 Max 128Gb is quite notable

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Sure, but the OP suggested a 64 GB config as his option 3 device upgrade path.

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This is true. (And I greatly appreciate all of your participation in my thread and your thoughtful ideas.)

But @cornchip put something in my head: Do I tend to work in one place? And the answer is no. I work from three places, only one of which is my office.

So now I’m considering a single, high spec MBP, once unthinkable in price, but this is the new reality. The question is, how much benefit would I get from being able to run LLMs locally? I’m looking into that.

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Even assuming you do not use a local LLM, for someone who does document-heavy work a local AI agent orchestrator such as Claude Cowork/Dispatch is a complete gamechanger. It’s also another argument to shift to one personal computer as compared to a desktop/laptop combo.

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I don’t regret buying a M1 Ultra Studio and would definitely recommend a high specced desktop as these allow sustained workloads to run really well (anything from LLMs to video processing). The heatsink on my Ultra sounds like a fighter jet when running medium sized LLM models, so I think having a desktop makes sense - a laptop will be thermally constrained in comparison, and therefore performance will be severely throttled as a result - no matter the chip.

My MacBook on the other hand is excellent for short and non-sustained tasks, but despite being a M1 Max and 64GB, it has never been able to keep up with any task that requires sustained performance without hitting major bottlenecks; performance noticeably drops as it heats up. Laptops by their nature are not designed for sustained workloads, they are designed to be portable with a lot of compromise in cooling and performance.

So, if you need portability and primarily do single threaded tasks (e.g. browsing and office work), a laptop is the best choice. However, if you want to be able to push the system to it’s limit with multi-threaded tasks that take a lot of time (and cause thermal heating) - and you don’t want to compromise on performance - the Studio is a clear winner.

I find my M4 iPad enough in the age of AI when working away from my desktop and travelling, so I see a desktop and iPad as my setup for the foreseeable future - and I recommend it. Having an always on cellular device is a huge upgrade from Wifi-only. In fact, over time, I’ve come to much prefer it as it gives me access to apps that otherwise on the Mac have sub-par websites as equivalents (e.g. my flight and hotel apps are great, but the corresponding websites suck). My main use case for a MacBook in the past was coding, but I haven’t written any code this year as Claude Code has done the hard work for me.

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Since you are not into local LLMs presently, you will probably be fine maxing out according to your budget the M5 Max. If you really move into that area, my guess would be the M7 specs would really appeal to you at that point. FWIW.

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An M5 Max will be less thermally constrained than an M1 Max. Keeping the computer unobstructed on a desk in an air conditioned room is also helpful.

My computer ran a local LLM workflow all night.

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Agreed that the M5 is much better than the M1 for AI. I also have access to M5s at work in our labs and they can run local models much better.

I’ve been able to compare the M1 Macbook and M1 Studio though, and the M1 MacBook is always throttled by MacOS when it gets hot while the M1 Studio has the fan kick in and performance isn’t throttled. So, while there are not warnings, the system is reducing the performance due to the thermal limits.

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