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Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

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Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#51
I should have bought a 100 m4 mac minis when I had the chance. Thanks hyperscalers for buying all the supply and renting it back.

A m4 mac mini is better than al of these per dollar, msrp adjusted.

Hopefully by the end of the decade China figures out manufacturing at scale and fixes this.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#52

The 512GB Ultra is amazing, sure. But who is it for exactly? VC funded big spender founders? In that case why would they need local AI? The ultra rich enthusiast? But there can't be too many of those. So who actually buys these?

this comment has always existed behind every apple release, most especially anything vaguely pro-ish.

to answer your question : looking at the aftermarket availability of Apple's prior best and brightest : practically no one buys them.

"people here buy them" , well, 'here' is one of the most affluent groups of people in the world.

They're available as movie and television set pieces (undoubtedly disappearing into the home of someone close to the staff post-production), and for administrative/boss types that can slip the cost into a ledger somewhere that few will ever see.

It has been a hobby of mine every few years to check out the apple site and see how big I can option a machine. My record was when I was in high school years ago and was able to option some pro studio-ish apple desktop thing to like 61,000 usd out the door.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#53
post #27
post #5

I know they are a phone company, but I think they should focus on local models software, not only hardware.

They aren't a phone company, and haven't been ever. They're a hardware company first

More like an "ecosystem company".

It's the Hardware, Software and Services in combination. None would work without the other (to reach the scale apple is)

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#54
post #35
post #14

96GB -> 256GB upgrade costs 4000 GBP in UK or $5460. $34 for GB. In US its $4000 upgade so $25 for 1GB. Also: > 512GB memory option for M5 Ultra coming late October

VAT?

AFAIK UK VAT is 20% and it's 27% higher price. Its just what you get for living in UK I guess.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#55
post #2

> M5 Ultra features a massive amount of high-bandwidth unified memory, up to 512GB, and delivers a staggering 1.2TB/s of unified memory bandwidth that is 50 percent higher than M3 Ultra. Apple never needed to participate in the AI race to zero. Because they were already at the finish line years ago building their own chips that can run large >100B parameter AI models locally.

They did participate early on with Apple Intelligence and failed miserably. Really good move to not double down and let the others explore the space first

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#56
post #16

Apple Studio with maxed out M5 Ultra, 256GB RAM and 16TB storage is 18,299$. The 512GB RAM version apparently is coming in October, considering that the difference between 96GB and 256GB is priced at 4000$, the 512GB upgrade must be eye watering. So, on the mini the RAM upgrade runs at 25$ per GB on all tiers, the same as the Studio therefore the upgrade to 512 will probably cost 6400$. The fully maxed out Apple Stud…

So is downpayment on a house. I would buy the house and just pay for tokens as needed. The house will get more valuable and that wealth would buy a lot of tokens in the future - which will probably get cheaper.

EDIT: or buy AAPL. If I had bought Apple stock instead of buying a Mac LC II in 1992, then I would have about $2 million in Apple stock.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who works in AI now, I have found it pretty amazing that Apple basically didn't do much with AI software, and focused more on the hardware side. I think this is what the future of AI is going to look like, local models run on your mac for your workflow. It's possible that they're working on their own LLM that's going to work very well on their chips, and possibly outperform anything out there when they do…

>local models run on your mac for your workflow. 10 years ago 32GB ram laptops sounded too much. 8 was enough. These days even I would get that much ram since it’s soldered. 64GB is higher end. In a few years we should see such high end hardware commonplace. Working with a local LLM to get work done is the ideal way to go which has mostly hardware limitation as of now that gets solved in due time.

> 10 years ago 32GB ram laptops sounded too much. 8 was enough. These days even I would get that much ram since it’s soldered. 64GB is higher end.

Ten years ago I got 64gb of ram in my laptop, same as I have now. I bought both for business and personal use. System ram capacity hasn't changed much in 10 years.

It makes me curious how old you were 10 years ago.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#59
post #40

The 512GB Ultra is amazing, sure. But who is it for exactly? VC funded big spender founders? In that case why would they need local AI? The ultra rich enthusiast? But there can't be too many of those. So who actually buys these?

You can connect up to 4 of them via RDMA so 2TB total RAM. Its cheaper than Nvidia AI hardware.

also way slower if we're just going against 'nvidia hardware'.
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