It's gotten significantly better with the advent of local/offline MoE models (e.g. qwen3.5:35b-a3b, qwen3:30b-a3b, gpt-oss:20b-3.6b), which offer a good balance of prompt response speed and output quality.
'Dense' models of yesteryear (e.g. llama:70b, gemma2/3:27b) tend to be significantly slower by comparison, therefore, your hardware spends a lot more time 'maxed out' for a given prompt.
Manufacturers ditching Apple Carplay/Android Auto support will, if not immediately, inevitably pursue rent-seeking behavior in the form of paid subscriptions for services people could otherwise just have for free (and likely better) via phone.
The non-pro/max chipped MBPs have always been a little 'lower spec' in several regards. There used to be a little more separation though, with the non-pro chips available only in the Air & 13" MBP, but back then people complained about Apple having 'too many models'...
I suspect the M5 Pro/Max chipped MBPs will bring some of these improvements you're looking for.
Part of me misses my OG base 14" M4 Pro. The battery on that thing was absolutely phenomenal - literal 12-14+ hours of real-world use. Not so much on the 14" M1 Max (64GB) that I upgraded to after about 2 yrs.
'Real-world idle' efficiency on the newer chips is the main reason I've got the (slight) itch to upgrade, but 64GB+ MBPs certainly don't come cheap.
Charging is a lossy process. Charging a battery, then using it to charge another battery isn't as efficient.
Plus, depending on how/where it's used, having to wait for it to recharge while connected to a power bank might be a non-starter. You also don't necessarily want to recharge while transporting in a bag either because of heat concerns.
> Pai's argument for repealing net neutrality was that it wasn't a Federal government concern. That was originally what prompted California to institute these rules. But suddenly it wasn't a state issue either.
It's pretty wild - it's absolutely a federal concern because it is utterly impractical to enact & enforce state-by-state... but they (Pai & co) know that.