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Show HN: Apfel – The free AI already on your Mac

apfel.franzai.com

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Re: Show HN: Apfel – The free AI already on your Mac

#152

Post by acuozzo »

naravara wrote: post #59
gherkinnn wrote: post #40

Now this is a development I like. With the Claude bug, or so it is known, burning through tokens at record speed, I gave alternative models a try and they're mostly ... interchangeable. I don't know how easy switching and low brand loyalty and fast markets will play out. I hope that local LLMs will become very viable very soon.

Yeah I don’t think the models are meaningfully differentiated outside of very specific edge cases. I suspect this was the thinking behind OpenAI and Facebook and all trying to lean hard into presenting their chatbots as friends and romantic partners. If they can’t maintain a technical moat they can try to cultivate an emotional one.

> very specific edge cases

Mathematics is hardly an edge case, but SOTA models differ wildly in their ability to write proofs for unsolved problems.

Models also differ wildly in tasks like decompilation for reverse engineering.

Also, so far, the only model I've found which can competently write PTX for SM100 CUDA devices is GPT-5.4pro, but I'm willing to admit that this is more of an edge case than the aforementioned.

AFAICT, the extent to which someone finds models interchangeable is inversely proportional to the novelty of their work.

Re: Show HN: Apfel – The free AI already on your Mac

#155

Post by FinnKuhn »

trollbridge wrote: post #136
FinnKuhn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For small tasks this seems perfect. However it being limited to English from what I can tell is quite a downsite for me.

It can work in other languages? % apfel --model-info apfel v0.6.25 — model info ├ model: apple-foundationmodel ├ on-device: true (always) ├ available: yes ├ context: 4096 tokens ├ languages: zh, en, nl, zh, es, es, ja, en, pt, da, fr, it, nb, vi, tr, en, de, fr, es, pt, ko, sv, zh └ framework: FoundationModels (macOS 26+) Just use the language you want when prompting it, like other LLMs? % apfel "Gib mir ein Rezept f…

Ok, then it might just be pretty bad at German Sie/Du. It manages to translate texts, but is unable to change between Du and Sie. interesting limitation I haven't encountered anywhere before. Even DeepL was able to swap between them.

Here is the chat I used to test this again to highlight this limitation:

you› write a short email to john asking for a good time to meet ai› Subject: Let's Catch Up Soon!

Hi John,

I hope you're doing well! I'd love to grab a coffee or meet up for a chat sometime soon. When do you have some free time this week?

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Best, [Your Name]

you› Please translate this to German ai› Betreff: Lass uns bald treffen!

Hallo John,

Ich hoffe, es geht dir gut! Ich würde gerne Kaffee trinken oder uns für ein Gespräch treffen. Wann haben Sie in dieser Woche freie Zeit?

Ich freue mich darauf, von Ihnen zu hören!

Liebe Grüße [Dein Name]

you› Bitte mit Sie Form anstatt Du ai› Betreff: Lass uns bald treffen!

Hallo John,

ich hoffe, es geht dir gut! Ich würde gerne Kaffee trinken oder uns für ein Gespräch treffen. Wann haben Sie in dieser Woche freie Zeit?

Ich freue mich darauf, von Ihnen zu hören!

Liebe Grüße [Dein Name]

you› Bitte alles mit Du anstatt Sie ai› Betreff: Lass uns bald treffen!

Hallo John,

ich hoffe, es geht dir gut! Ich würde gerne Kaffee trinken oder uns für ein Gespräch treffen. Wann haben Sie in dieser Woche freie Zeit?

Ich freue mich darauf, von dir zu hören!

Liebe Grüße [Dein Name]

My config: % apfel v0.6.13 — model info ├ model: apple-foundationmodel ├ on-device: true (always) ├ available: yes ├ context: 4096 tokens ├ languages: en, fr, zh, zh, ko, en, fr, de, tr, pt, it, pt, es, nl, da, nb, zh, es, es, ja, sv, vi, en └ framework: FoundationModels (macOS 26+)

Re: Show HN: Apfel – The free AI already on your Mac

#156

Post by jomohke »

zopf wrote: post #150

Wow - the model really hallucinates without hesitation. I asked a number of "What do you know about [person, company, etc]?" questions and rather than realizing that it didn't know about them, it just made up an answer for every one of them.

[dead]

Re: Show HN: Apfel – The free AI already on your Mac

#157

Post by a96 »

franze wrote: post #83
joriskok1 wrote: post #53

How much storage does it take up?

4mb download, after install about 15mb, model is already on your mac with mac os x tahoe

It's not, unless you've installed it by turning the feature on in settings. That's where the heavy download will be.

Re: Show HN: Apfel – The free AI already on your Mac

#158

Post by nozzlegear »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #137
convexly wrote: post #29

I like the approach of running everything locally. I'm strongly of the opinion that the privacy angle for local models is going to keep getting stronger and more relevant. The amount of articles that come out about accidents happening because of people handing too much context to cloud models the more self reinforcing this will become.

> I like the approach of running everything locally. I'm strongly of the opinion that the privacy angle for local models is going to keep getting stronger and more relevant. In HN circles perhaps. Average Joes don’t care.

I bet if you clearly explained the benefits and tradeoffs, and then gave them the choice, Average Joes would care.
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