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

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

#181

Post by cosmic_cheese »

majestik wrote: post #8

Ok, I didn’t want to take the bait but this one’s just too much. > “He also described a shift toward running AI locally rather than in the cloud – a move motivated by privacy, security, and the rising cost of inference as agents consume more tokens.” Classic Apple. No more just beating the “security and privacy” drum, now its “tokens are expensive!” Cloud scary. Cloud expensive. Mac good. Buy Mac! > “He also singled…

I’m not seeing how it’s bad that a company is pushing in the direction of user hardware ownership. Of course it’s self-serving, that’s what companies do, but with most of the rest of the industry increasingly leaning in the direction of eliminating powerful general purpose computers in favor of thin dumb clients with useful compute being gated by subscriptions, it’s nice to see some dissent.

AI features not being constantly shoved in my face and just selectively silently integrated where it’s most useful is preferred to what the rest of the industry has been doing, too. I think most of us are pretty sick of AI getting tacked onto things that don’t need it and then given prominent promotion and UI positioning, potentially at the cost of features we actually use.

They could be doing more, sure, but directionally this all seems fine?

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

#182

Post by mikeocool »

Sebastian_09 wrote: post #89

What I’m not sure to understand is that if you want to just run Claude code or openclaw type software with llm apis or subscriptions (and not run local models) to benefit from a local file system and always-on capability for ‘second brain’ type of workflows, I guess you don’t need a Mac mini but can run it on a raspberry pi or an old laptop ? Does anyone have experience with that ?

Yeah I find the Mac mini trend is kind of baffling.

It seems like it's driven either by 1) people hearing Macs are good for AI, buying one, and using Claude for inference, not realizing that you interact with the anthropic API from an internet connected hair dryer. Or 2) people want their agents to have blue bubbles.

I find it hard to believe that enough normal people are doing on device inference is driving Mac Mini's out of stock. And even if they were the Mac mini is not actually a very good platform for it.

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

#183

Post by surfaceofthesun »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #170
swader999 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes. Solar thermal heaters on the roof are common in Florida and other parts of the south. Some people also use heat recovery devices attached to the AC condenser. Further north I've only seen natural gas heating (e.g. in very rich NYC exurbs). The amount of shade over the pool has a big effect.

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

#184

Post by bdcravens »

SoMomentary wrote: post #128
windex wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, for openclaw and APIs you dont need a big PC. I run something lightweight on the RPI4 8gb. Many people run local LLMs which is where a mac is useful. Frankly I dont think you can beat the value of an openrouter subscription and API calls.

Why not go direct to the source instead of paying an extra 5.5%? Seems like it'd be trivial to have AI wire up connections to your preferred inference providers and save yourself some money over time.

If you're referring to the markup charged by OpenRouter, you can use harnesses like OpenClaw/Hermes without it and go direct like you're saying. If you're talking about actually "routing", then you don't get that out of the box. However, the popular use of those harnesses doesn't often use the smart routing approach with a single agent. Instead, the approach is to create multiple agents, each with a role and a model tailored to that role by cost and functionality.

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

#185

Post by spacedcowboy »

blitzar wrote: post #70
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/

Apples on stage use cases for their hardware and software makes me wonder if they actually use computers over there, or what a "job" at apple entails. I am unsure that apple themselves understand why their hardware (top end & bottom end) has been so successful, without this understanding leaning into these use cases isn't really going to be possible.

Having worked at Apple for over a couple of decades, I can attest there are some very (very) capable and intelligent people there.

I trust they know more about their business model than some rando on the internet, sorry.

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

#186

Post by dgellow »

mikeocool wrote: post #182
Sebastian_09 wrote: post #89

What I’m not sure to understand is that if you want to just run Claude code or openclaw type software with llm apis or subscriptions (and not run local models) to benefit from a local file system and always-on capability for ‘second brain’ type of workflows, I guess you don’t need a Mac mini but can run it on a raspberry pi or an old laptop ? Does anyone have experience with that ?

Yeah I find the Mac mini trend is kind of baffling. It seems like it's driven either by 1) people hearing Macs are good for AI, buying one, and using Claude for inference, not realizing that you interact with the anthropic API from an internet connected hair dryer. Or 2) people want their agents to have blue bubbles. I find it hard to believe that enough normal people are doing on device inference is driving Mac Mini…

I assume people ask an LLM what to use to run locally, and it suggests a Mac mini

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

#187

Post by tristor »

auston wrote: post #143
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 +…

Here you go: https://www.truffle.net/

I feel like this is some sort of satire? There's no actual information or substance to anything on any page of that site.

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

#188

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

egorfine wrote: post #129
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/

Apple is quite hostile to professional users, so no.

Sadly, that is an outdated PoV. It has probably not been valid, since last century.

It's just that Apple isn't really focused on software development professionals, and it's still fashionable to throw shade on them, so we hear a lot of kvetching about it, in communities like this.

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

#189

Post by awakeasleep »

mikeocool wrote: post #182
Sebastian_09 wrote: post #89

What I’m not sure to understand is that if you want to just run Claude code or openclaw type software with llm apis or subscriptions (and not run local models) to benefit from a local file system and always-on capability for ‘second brain’ type of workflows, I guess you don’t need a Mac mini but can run it on a raspberry pi or an old laptop ? Does anyone have experience with that ?

Yeah I find the Mac mini trend is kind of baffling. It seems like it's driven either by 1) people hearing Macs are good for AI, buying one, and using Claude for inference, not realizing that you interact with the anthropic API from an internet connected hair dryer. Or 2) people want their agents to have blue bubbles. I find it hard to believe that enough normal people are doing on device inference is driving Mac Mini…

One aspect you're missing is that people running a claw type agent thing need to run it on a Mac to automate software in the Apple ecosystem.

Neo-Siri in iOS 27 removes the need for a lot of this, but before then, if you want to ask a robot about information that is stored in Apple notes, or to send an iMessage, a Mac mini is your only practical option.

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

#190

Post by eitally »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #23
mmoustafa wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The out-of-stock $6000 M3 Ultra Mac Studios with 800GB+ memory bandwidth are going for $24,000 on eBay, so yes definitely

Let me clarify, I think Apple could sell a device at the scale Apple sells at around the $10 to 25 thousand price point. Like, take out the price sheets for the Apple Car. Then sell me an AI tower at those price points.

I think so, too, and I think it'll end up being a race between Apple & NVIDIA (or NVIDIA partners) to see who realizes this first. It would probably be easier for Apple to do it because it wouldn't require a form factor adjustment [over the Mac Studio they already have]. That said, NVIDIA already offers chipsets for both the lower end (DGX Spark with Vera + GB10, at roughly the $4500 price point) and higher end (DGX Station with Vera + GB300, for $85-100k). The DGX Station is equivalent to ~5-6 RTX6000 GPUs attached to a mid-range CPU server, but far more than most individual developers would want or need. I've heard through the grapevine that NVIDIA's received consistent feedback that they need something like a "GB20" that slots above the Spark/GB10 and can simultaneously run larger models for inference while hosting a dev environment on the same box. You can daisy-chain Sparks just like you can daisy-chain Mac Minis, but you're still constrained on model performance based on what a single device can accommodate.
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