Time Machine Fail! Setting Up the M5 MacBook Pro + Benchmarks vs M3 MacBook Air
This is the new base 2025 M5 MacBook Pro, replacing last year’s M4. Not much changed besides the chip, but the chip has some pretty good upgrades. I unboxed it, restored it from a Time Machine backup, and ran some first benchmarks. This isn’t sponsored, and no products were provided to me.
Configuration and price
The M5 comes only as a 14-inch, in silver or space black. I chose space black this time. It starts at $1,599 with a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16 GB of memory and 512 GB of storage. I upgraded to 24 GB for $200, for $1,799. You can go up to 32 GB, 4 TB, and the nano-texture display, which I have on my M4 Max MacBook Pro and absolutely love.
In the box: paperwork, a power adapter in the US, and a MagSafe cable that matches the color.
I really like the look of space black. I just don’t usually keep one because of the fingerprints and dust. Physically, I can’t see any difference from the M4, except a few modifier-key icons moved away from the center.
Restoring from Time Machine
My backup of the M4 Max MacBook Pro is on an OWC Express 1M2 (the 40 Gb/s version, fine for Thunderbolt 4) with a 4 TB SSD inside.
- Choose your language and region, then the option to transfer from a Mac, Time Machine backup or startup disk.
- It needed a software update first, since my other Mac runs macOS 26.0.1. That took about eight minutes.
- Plug in the backup drive, enter its password (it’s encrypted), and pick the most recent backup.
- Choose what to bring over. I skipped Photos (I use iCloud Photos), a folder I no longer need, and network settings.
- Set a password for the account, agree to the terms, and wait. My roughly 170 GB took about nine minutes. The time-remaining numbers jump all over and mean nothing.
Then the usual: updates (I download but don’t install automatically), Apple Account, analytics, Screen Time, Apple Intelligence and notification summaries, and Siri.
FileVault: with the new version, Apple doesn’t keep a copy of your recovery key in iCloud. When you turn FileVault on, you get a key to save yourself. If you lose it and forget your Mac password, you’re out of luck, so write it down, print it, or put it in a safe.
Then Touch ID, Apple Pay (I added cards later), and light or dark mode.
The restore that didn’t
When I logged in, nothing had transferred: wrong wallpaper and Dock, missing apps and files, and no clock in the menu bar. This has never happened to me. So I went to General → Transfer or Reset → Erase All Content and Settings and did it again.
The second time went smoother, though it oddly asked for Wi-Fi again and spun for a while. Then everything was there: wallpaper, Dock, all my apps, even the apps I had open on the other Mac. I don’t know what went wrong the first time.
One tweak I make: with lots of menu bar icons, the notch gets in the way, so I use a utility called Menu Bar Spacing to tighten them up.
M5 MacBook Pro vs M3 MacBook Air
Both base models. The M3 Air has an 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU and no fan.
| Geekbench | M5 MacBook Pro | M3 MacBook Air |
|---|---|---|
| Single-core | 4,110 | 2,995 |
| Multi-core | 17,485 | 12,010 |
| Metal | about 76,000 | about 44,000 |
The M5 has new neural accelerators in every GPU core, and it shows in local AI. Generating the same image in Draw Things with the Flux.1 Dev model took the M5 4 minutes 13 seconds and the M3 about 15 minutes, more than three times longer.
Should you upgrade?
In everyday use (the web, email, work, Photoshop), the M5 will feel about like the M4. From an M4: probably not. From an M3: maybe, depending on what you need. If you do local AI work, the M5 is a pretty big boost. I’m testing it with Final Cut Pro next, since I had problems editing on the base M3 MacBook Pro.
Links
- M5 MacBook Pro
- OWC Express 1M2 80G
- OWC Express 1M2 40G
- WD Black SN850X
- OWC Envoy Ultra
- Cheap 5K vs Apple Studio Display
- The Everyday Mac Display - BENQ MA270U
In this video
- 00:00 Intro & What’s New in the M5 MacBook Pro
- 00:23 M5 Specs, Configuration, and Pricing
- 01:06 Unboxing: What’s in the Box
- 01:21 First Look: Space Black MacBook Pro
- 01:46 Physical Differences Between M4 & M5
- 02:45 Time Machine Backup & Restore Setup
- 06:06 First Restore Attempt Fails
- 08:55 Second Restore Attempt Success
- 10:33 Menu Bar & Display Customization Tips
- 11:39 CPU Benchmarks: M5 vs M3 MacBook Air
- 12:34 Metal GPU Performance Test
- 13:39 Local AI Test Using “Draw Things”
- 14:34 Image Generation Speed Comparison
- 15:20 Final Thoughts: Should You Upgrade?
Some links in this post are affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I may receive a small commission. See my ethics statement.
