Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future

macrumors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 327 posts

Re: Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future

#161

Post by moduspol »

wiether wrote: post #127
_glass wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's only because you can send texts via imessage on a macmini. that's it.

Buying a new computer at +$500 just to have iMessage access feels insane to me. OpenClaw supports all the mainstream (and free) chat apps like Discord, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram... None of them requiring a MacOS machine. Is it a lack of knowledge from the users or do they really value iMessage integration that much?

It's anecdotal but the kind of people I know that bought Mac Minis for this purpose are what I'd call "light techies." They definitely know how to use an iPhone or a Mac but would struggle on the CLI of a Linux box.

Anyone who wanted the OpenClaw use case that is comfortable with Linux probably already has several Linux machines (including a few Raspberry Pis) on-hand.

Re: Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future

#162

Post by officeplant »

not-a-llm wrote: post #100
IsTom wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If demand doesn't fall down or current manufacturers supply go up, somebody (presumably in China) will spin up fabs. Apple wanted to use blacklisted Chinese RAM already.

where is this cheap Chinese RAM? I'd like to buy some

Ebay and Amazon are flooded with it. Especially if you are looking for anything prior to DDR5. DDR2 and DDR3 are especially flooded with weird brands you've never heard of before.

Unfortunately its not so cheap anymore as everyone ramped prices up of course.

Last year I could still get 32GB of DDR4 for under $60 from chinese brands.

Re: Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future

#163

Post by inferniac »

IsTom wrote: post #54
uejfiweun wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think the supply crunch is short-term?

If demand doesn't fall down or current manufacturers supply go up, somebody (presumably in China) will spin up fabs. Apple wanted to use blacklisted Chinese RAM already.

spinning up fabs takes ages, micron has a US fab started bulding in 2023, its still not operational (projected to start mid-2027)

Re: Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future

#164

Post by officeplant »

hypercube33 wrote: post #142
wiether wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying a new computer at +$500 just to have iMessage access feels insane to me. OpenClaw supports all the mainstream (and free) chat apps like Discord, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram... None of them requiring a MacOS machine. Is it a lack of knowledge from the users or do they really value iMessage integration that much?

What I don't get is where is the Mac Mini Neo at like $350? Neos tiny motherboard in a box with some more ports would be awesome.

With how apple seemed to be caught by surprise when it came to Macbook Neo demand, I'm not sure they have the quantities of SoC's around to handle the demand a Mini Neo could drive. Especially if they could do it for $299.

Re: Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future

#165

Post by fghorow »

onion2k wrote: post #7

Running models on-device on a Mac is immensely annoying though. Figuring out what will work out of BF16, FP8, BF16+FP8, NVFP4, INT8, GGUF ... the list goes on ... is 'non-obvious' at best. Apple do little to support with tooling. There's MLX, but unless you're happy to transform a model to that format yourself you'll be lagging a long way behind. Apps like LMStudio, Ollama, Draw Things, etc do a great job of simplify…

Counterpoint, I'm just a happy user of this local LLM [1] from antirez (of Redis fame).

[1] https://github.com/antirez/ds4

Re: Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future

#166

Post by sajithdilshan »

charcircuit wrote: post #118
sajithdilshan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that would be more for enterprise usage. I cannot imagine a personal computing usage which can justify a 10k machine.

Apple is a premium brand with high brand loyalty. Do you not think even 1 billionaire would want something like that? Even to just say that they bought it. Apple could sell things at a price point much more than $10k.

At the end of the day, it’s just an Apple computer, not a Ferrari or an Aston Martin. I hardly think an Apple computer can be considered as a luxury item, unless they release it as a limited edition

Re: Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future

#167

Post by root_axis »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20

Apple could probably sell a machine starting at $10,000 if they architected it as the sole place one’s Private Cloud Compute [1] ran. It would need a path to a $2,500 machine, I think. But this is a niche I don’t think another consumer-facing brand could do like Apple. [1] https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

Who would be the market for such a thing?

Re: Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future

#168

Post by hyperbovine »

root_axis wrote: post #167
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20

Apple could probably sell a machine starting at $10,000 if they architected it as the sole place one’s Private Cloud Compute [1] ran. It would need a path to a $2,500 machine, I think. But this is a niche I don’t think another consumer-facing brand could do like Apple. [1] https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

Who would be the market for such a thing?

People who are good at convincing their boss.

Re: Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future

#169

Post by throw1234567891 »

vkazanov wrote: post #145
throw1234567891 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. Apple was the only one who managed to ship a consumer device with UMA and RDMA support. 2TB VRAM max over RDMA.

I think the REALLY cool thing about apple's shared memory implementation is the ultra-wide memory bus. Otherwise, AMD is quite close to what Apple has, and Strix Halo is honestly incredible. Not sure what RDMA brings to the table.

RDMA increases the inference performance by a significant percentage across devices connected via Thunderbolt 5.4x512 is like a 2TB machine.

Re: Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future

#170

Post by catlikesshrimp »

swader999 wrote: post #159
huragok wrote: post #24

If I had the capital I’d make an household inference appliance. No peripherals except Ethernet, integrated compute (cpu+gpu+mem) and secondary storage (+mobo, psu). No accoutrements, just the minimum amount of hardware to run a model as a utility. Even the appliance faceplate would be a display showing stats like an old HiFi stereo. Edit: something like a series of modules consisting of a RISC-V CPU + Vortex GPGPU +…

It could heat your home in the winter and your pool in the summer.

Is warming a pool in the summer real where you live?
Post reply on HN