681: The Price of Your Nightmares

What It Covers

Accidental Tech Podcast covers Apple's March 2025 product wave, including the M5 MacBook Air, M5 Pro and Max MacBook Pros, M4 iPad Air, iPhone 17e, a refreshed Studio Display, and the new Studio Display XDR — which replaces the discontinued Pro Display XDR at a 27-inch five-k form factor with 120Hz refresh and mini-LED backlighting.

Key Questions Answered

• •M5 Pro/Max core architecture inversion: Apple flipped the traditional big-to-small core ratio in the M5 Pro and Max chips. Previous M4 Pro had eight performance cores and four efficiency cores; M5 Pro has five super cores and ten performance cores — a near-complete reversal. This design targets real-world Mac workloads where most tasks don't need the deepest pipeline, potentially improving efficiency without sacrificing throughput. Benchmarks will confirm whether the tradeoff holds under sustained load.
• •64GB RAM now available in MacBook Pro M5 Pro: For the first time, buyers can configure a MacBook Pro with 64GB of unified memory using the M5 Pro chip, without stepping up to the M5 Max. This drops the entry price for a 64GB MacBook Pro by over $800 compared to last year, when 64GB required the M5 Max tier. Buyers who need memory headroom but not GPU cores now have a significantly more cost-effective path.
• •Studio Display XDR specs and compatibility caveats: The new Studio Display XDR delivers 120Hz adaptive sync (47–120Hz range), 1,000 nits sustained and 2,000 nits peak HDR brightness, 2,304 mini-LED dimming zones, and Adobe RGB plus P3 color support — all at 27 inches and five-k resolution. However, 120Hz output requires an M2 Pro, Max, or Ultra chip or newer. M1 and base M2 and M3 Macs are capped at 60Hz, a critical purchasing consideration.
• •Pro Display XDR discontinued with no large-monitor replacement: Apple officially discontinued the 32-inch six-k Pro Display XDR and stated the Studio Display XDR replaces it. No six-k or larger monitor is currently available from Apple. Buyers who require large-format high-resolution displays must now turn to third-party options or the used market, where XDR supply is limited given its historically low sales volume and age of remaining stock.
• •iPhone 17e adds MagSafe, correcting the 16e's primary flaw: The iPhone 17e ships with MagSafe support, which was absent on the 16e — a notable omission given the ecosystem of magnetic accessories, mounts, and wallets that depend on it. The 17e also includes an A19 chip with no CPU core binning, though the GPU is reduced to four cores from six. Storage starts at 256GB at the same $599 price the 16e charged for 128GB, effectively doubling base storage at no added cost.
• •Studio Display pricing unchanged despite identical panel specs: The refreshed base Studio Display retains its $1,599 starting price and $400 height-adjustable stand upcharge despite shipping the same 27-inch, 600-nit, 60Hz panel introduced in 2022. The internal upgrades — A19 chip, Thunderbolt 5 with daisy-chaining, Wi-Fi 7 via N1 chip — do not address the screen itself. Comparable third-party monitors with similar or better panel specs are available at substantially lower prices, making this a difficult value proposition.
• •Local AI model running on Mac: a poor purchasing justification today: Running large language models locally on a Mac requires substantial unified memory — configurations that cost thousands of dollars — while frontier models continue growing in size and capability. Server-side inference from major providers remains more capable and accessible than anything runnable on consumer hardware. Unless a buyer is already actively running local models, purchasing a high-RAM M5 Mac specifically for future AI workloads is not a well-supported strategy given current and projected model demands.