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Apple Foundation Models

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Re: Apple Foundation Models

#41

Post by coldtea »

_the_inflator wrote: post #11
pprotas wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cynic (or realist?) in my thinks this abstraction layer is Apple's way of making sure that users give their own Apple Intelligence credit for the underlying LLM functionality, even if another company is actually providing the LLM.

Assembled in Cupertino once more. ;)

Yeah, Apple just designs and writes the SoC, CPU, graphics unit, neural unit, compiler (Swift), OS, graphics layer, 3D API, core libs from graphics to persistence, filesystem, broadband chip, and a few more things besides...

Re: Apple Foundation Models

#43

Post by willis936 »

tarcon wrote: post #15
daniel_iversen wrote: post #4

Is this Apple encouraging developers to go through their api abstraction layer to use LLMs so that when they launch their own (which I think we’ve heard they’ve been spending lots of money on training and might be somehow involved with Siri or current Apple AI?) that they can easily help devs make a seamless transition? Or is it just a developer nicety or something else?

Apple has some clever mechanics to protect user data. I had to work with App tracking stuff lately and their approach to keeping user details private with anonymized cohorts (SKAN, Differential Privacy) before reporting tracking events to third party platforms was surprisingly well thought out. There is value in having them in your loop if you care about privacy.

It would be cool if they offered some kind of prompt sanitation option.

Re: Apple Foundation Models

#44

Post by saagarjha »

coldtea wrote: post #41
_the_inflator wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assembled in Cupertino once more. ;)

Yeah, Apple just designs and writes the SoC, CPU, graphics unit, neural unit, compiler (Swift), OS, graphics layer, 3D API, core libs from graphics to persistence, filesystem, broadband chip, and a few more things besides...

Notably good models are not on that list.

Re: Apple Foundation Models

#46

Post by simondotau »

DrScientist wrote: post #40
mft_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Mac with 4TB of storage but it’s still annoying when every new AI app I try installs its own virtual environment with a fresh copy of Python, PyTorch, other duplicate libraries, and then models on top of that.

As an occasional python user I'm always amazed and frustrated that it seems that the only way to be able to use/build anything is to create a whole separate environment. And now given everybody now does this I guess the incentive to stop breaking stuff reduces even further. Might as well have static binaries.

The meme phrase “it’s fractally wrong” applies to the entire python ecosystem, IMHO. Virtual environments are just another layer of this fractal wrongness in the layer cake of ecosystem awfulness.

It’s a nice language though.

Re: Apple Foundation Models

#47

Post by Maxious »

VadimPR wrote: post #45

How can you practically use this in software if you're to deploy this to users? Asking a user to create and enter their own API key is a bar too high for good UX.

> For production, route requests through your own back end with .proxied

Apple is offering developers with less than 2 million downloads free AI models via their servers https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/08/apple-bets-cheaper-ai-will...

Re: Apple Foundation Models

#48

Post by geden »

saagarjha wrote: post #44
coldtea wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Apple just designs and writes the SoC, CPU, graphics unit, neural unit, compiler (Swift), OS, graphics layer, 3D API, core libs from graphics to persistence, filesystem, broadband chip, and a few more things besides...

Notably good models are not on that list.

Neither are other capex heavy items like chip fabs.

Re: Apple Foundation Models

#50

Post by alwillis »

rock_artist wrote: post #16

While I'm happy with Apple introducing this abstraction. my main concern was with local models. I'd love using Gemma4 as an example. but thinking of a user. if 10 Apps each uses same model and downloads it, the phone will be bloated. I still didn't understand if Apple provided a way for multiple apps uses same on-device model (without tricky namespaces and permissions). I didn't see anything suggesting that's the cas…

Check out “Bring an LLM provider to the Foundation Models framework” - https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2026/339
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