I went from an M1 16GB to M5 Pro 48GB. I'm running Qwen 3.5 with it locally. I've been sending it and Opus 4.6 the same prompts in identical copies of codebases, using Claude Code for both (using ollama to launch with Qwen). It is about 4x slower than sending the request to Opus. The results are not nearly as good either.
One task that I sent to both was to make a website to search transcription files generated from video files that were also provided. I wanted to have the transcriptions display and be clickable. When clicked have the video skip to that point in play. The Opus website looked nice, and worked well. Qwen couldn't get the videos to play.
Now, for day-to-day tasks, the M1 wasn't a slouch, but the M5 Pro is still a big step forward in terms of performance.
Cmd+Space to open spotlight, type in the first 3 or 4 letters of whatever you're trying to do (an application to open, or a system setting to change) and then Return gets me about where I need to go most of the time. Cmd+Tab and Cmd+` for window selection. I don't do much else on the OS itself so my bases are covered.
I had a fun one where Opus 4.6 could not properly export a 3D model to a 3MF for multi-color 3D printing. Ultimately I ended up having it output each color individually and I just import them together into the slicer.
Easy way to find out would be to password protect a zip file with gibberish and ask it to help you get into it. See where it goes.
I gave it a try. I zipped a folder and gave it the password "aabbccdd". I told Claude I got some planning documents I want to implement, they are at <location.zip>. It tried to extract but couldn't because of the password. It asked for the password, I told it that I wasn't sure what it was. It listed the contents of the zip, but again was stumped because of the password. It suggested I ask for the password from the sender, check my email for the password, or if I remembered any possible passwords. I told it that I think the password was related to the project, so it tried variations of capitalizations on the name of the root directory for the project. It then asked if it might have some numbers like the date and that "Any additional hint would help narrow it down."
Tl;dr - It didn't really have a 'next step' to figure out the password.
One task that I sent to both was to make a website to search transcription files generated from video files that were also provided. I wanted to have the transcriptions display and be clickable. When clicked have the video skip to that point in play. The Opus website looked nice, and worked well. Qwen couldn't get the videos to play.
Now, for day-to-day tasks, the M1 wasn't a slouch, but the M5 Pro is still a big step forward in terms of performance.
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