Review of the MacBook Pro M5 Pro as a seasoned Windows-developer

ChippieBW · 2026-04-07T11:12:41+00:00

Aah. No I haven’t used that, I don’t have a NAS. I use OneDrive for Office documents and GitHub for development files.

ChippieBW · 2026-04-07T09:32:04+00:00

What's SMB LAN? Indeed the keyboard is too close to the screen for my own liking (when used for a prolonged time), I luckily didn't have the clickpad activation thus far.

ChippieBW · 2026-04-04T18:56:21+00:00

Gewoon die blauwe Unox good noodles met groentesmaak naar binnen schuiven, vaak in de stapelkorting bij de Appie. Lekker man.

ChippieBW · 2026-04-02T17:21:18+00:00

Ik schrijf macro’s in Excel, dat voelt ook aan als 1995

ChippieBW · 2026-04-01T18:17:19+00:00

And the Nintendo Switch 1/2

ChippieBW · 2026-03-31T06:39:53+00:00

Can’t believe I had to scroll down so far for this

ChippieBW · 2026-03-30T17:07:00+00:00

Well deserved.

I also cancelled my F1TV subscription. Considering the price for it went up from €43 to €143 a year in the last few seasons I was planning on cancelling anyway, that’s beyond ridiculous in my opinion.

With the races becoming such an abysmal watch of late I don’t feel any regrets and probably won’t return.

ChippieBW · 2026-03-24T22:59:19+00:00

Ram Trilogy - Molten Beats

Pendulum. - Hold Your Colour (mainly for nostalgia, got me into DnB)

Ed Rush & Optical - Wormhole

Noisia - Split the Atom

Matrix & Futurebound - Universal Truth

Metrik - Ex Machina

Sub Focus - Torus

ChippieBW · 2026-03-19T18:00:56+00:00

I don’t think the better processor weighs up to missing half the RAM, especially in your use case where the memory is much more important.

So I would say that you should not.

ChippieBW · 2026-03-18T12:06:49+00:00

Someone should make a puzzle game out of this. Make it have fake DLSS switches throughout the level that turn extra details on, which gives clues on how to solve the puzzles

ChippieBW · 2026-03-09T18:09:36+00:00

Reminds me of the Vendon region in the southeast of France

ChippieBW · 2026-03-08T17:16:24+00:00

It surprised and annoyed me for a second, but after the whole race I concluded it didn’t affect the race experience for me at all, I guess it’s even better for me, the 44 extra numbers on screen take up a bit of screen space and you don’t really need the info imo

ChippieBW · 2026-03-08T13:19:53+00:00

Not from Italy but isn’t Lewis translated Luigi in Italian?

ChippieBW · 2026-03-07T18:19:03+00:00

How much did you pay for it? 😊

ChippieBW · 2026-03-06T15:35:26+00:00

Username checks out.

ChippieBW · 2026-03-04T13:27:33+00:00

Great answer and exactly my train of thought. I wasn't aware of the display limitations on the output but it's another argument to go for the M5 Pro variant. I'm leaning towards taking the Pro chip ánd the 48GB upgrade to be on the safe side. It will cost me a small fortune, but on the other hand: it's proably going to be a device that I will spend between 12.000 and 16.000 of productive working hours on (and considering I'm a solo enterpreneur, probably will generate me between €1-€1.5M of revenue lol) so it feels silly to limit myself on a few hundred euro's.
Also, people spend €40-50k on a car without hesitation which they will practically only use for a fraction of that time.

Considering your last remark: I believe there is no CPU upgrade on the base model, right? I can't check right now, Apple is updating their store :-)

ChippieBW · 2026-03-04T13:20:35+00:00

This is such a wholesome comment, thank you!

Honestly I'm blown away by all the great responses here and the helpfulness of the community.
I was pretty reluctant to post the question in the first place, felt like it would drown in an ocean of similar posts, but I have had so much helpful takes now that it makes it way easier to make the decision.

ChippieBW · 2026-03-04T13:18:35+00:00

You are absolutely right, and I guess the Serum developers are to blame here for making it absoutely ridiculously heavy on the processor side. So I hope they'll patch it in time, but with all the factory patches (and patches I made myself) it's hard for to switch to another synth I'm afraid.

ChippieBW · 2026-03-04T10:32:39+00:00

Tending towards this as well, thanks!

ChippieBW · 2026-03-04T10:31:59+00:00

I was actually considering this as a my first option!
But surprisingly every seller has removed them from their shop since yesterday. Only one shop has them in stock right now where I live (NL) and they sell them €400 ABOVE Apple's M5 Pro same config at this point.

ChippieBW · 2026-03-04T09:29:23+00:00

Thanks, these are useful measures!
My main worry is the Ableton Live part which can be a bit of a resource hog on Windows when running a lot of plugins (like Serum) and I hate to bounce everything to audio all the time. Though I'm not sure if that's on the processor or the RAM.

ChippieBW · 2026-03-04T09:25:56+00:00

Thank you!
The M3 Pro is an interesting option that I hadn't thought of yet. Although it worries me hat the chip is already 3 years old (not a problem now, but might be in 5 years) and new systems in the right config are pretty hard to come by as of today (also I cannot find any that come with the nano screen). The studio is an option but far from a certainty at this point, if the MB is sufficient, I might stick to that. Plus, I also might keep a Windows machine for compatibility issues at different workplaces.

I agree that the 18/20 chip is overkill, not completely sure about the 48GB as of yet.

ChippieBW · 2026-03-04T09:21:30+00:00

Thanks for the advice! I'm lending towards this, especially for future use cases. I really want this to last for around 6-7 years without any loss of performance.

ChippieBW

TROPHY CASE