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Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

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Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#341
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading Infinite Games, they tell an anecdote about a Microsoft exec on a flight telling an Apple exec that the Zune was a way better portable music player than the iPod. The Apple exec was just “yup, you’re probably right” and then soon after the iPhone dropped

Zune was probably a better player. It was too late, and arrived when MS didn't much care. There are emails unearthed in various lawsuits where you can read Bill Gates screaming at his subordinates: "why the hell can't our partners like Sony and Creative create a similar device? Give them all, give them early access to everything, work with them". In the end MS felt compelled to make their own.

It let you squirt over a song to your friend

https://youtu.be/ud6rwVkbovA

And they could listen to it 3 times in 3 days

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been really weird reading laptop reviews over the last few months. I've seen a bunch of reviews where they have their usual bar graphs comparing a bunch of laptops, and the laptop that is at the bottom is an Apple. It's the really inexpensive Neo, of course, but even the M5 laptops are consistently beat on performance and battery life by Intel Windows laptops. I assume the M6 will take the crown back and then a…

> It's the really inexpensive Neo, of course, but even the M5 laptops are consistently beat on performance and battery life by Intel Windows laptops. Of course you can beat the entry level MacBook Neo by comparing it to larger, more powerful, more expensive laptops. The M5 is an entire family with a range of performance. Intel/AMD have done a lot to improve performance but they’re not beating the high end M5 chips on…

You can also beat the Neo on every measure by comparing it to $700 Windows laptops. https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/dell-xps-13-2026-review

It's also not hard to find a Windows laptop that beats the M5 on battery life. Single-thread performance is the only remaining measure where the M5 is king.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#343
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to see how defensive some of these pro-China posters get on HN and elsewhere. I'm genuinely curious why there seems to be an inferiority complex here with respect to America/American companies.

I'm not a pro-china poster, i'm from germany and didn't find this 'funny'. Apple is the second richest company on the world (which doesn't need help/protection?!) and they have experts in chip design. Xiamoi is some random chinese company not known for high end chips and was able to catch up impressivly in a short period of time. This fact doesn't get funny or wahtever just because apple brought out a new chip today.…

> Xiamoi is some random chinese company not known for high end chips and was able to catch up impressivly in a short period of time

Xiamoi is a huge company and is a commonly known brand. They’ve been making chips for a long time. They didn’t start a few months ago and catch up with Apple on their first try.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#344
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably worth it for Ollama but you can run Jellyfin off a raspberry pi.

True re: the Raspberry Pi, but I was thinking the 10Gbit Ethernet would allow more concurrent streaming in my household. But it's probably overkill.

If your household consists of more than 15 people consuming 4K content at the same time, the 10G upgrade may be worth considering.

Edit: never mind, 2.5G is now the default, so you'll probably need more than 40 people to saturate that with streaming video.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#345
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DRAM market is cyclical. I don’t think anyone truly knows when, but it will happen. Fab capacity is being bought online; there’s just lead time. Noticeably greater intelligence is being achieved at the same number of parameters (see: Qwen3.8). I think the future will be bright, it might be a matter of time. And for tinkers, a used Epyc + DDR4 server can be great fun and epic value.

100%. We're probably on the cusp of over-capacity, a glut, cheap RAM, bankruptcies, and shortages.

The memory companies report that they're sold out through 2027... so it might be a while

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#346

I know, this is a bit of a meaningless comment, but it's funny in a way. Feels like late 90s again: - Xiaomi: We have matched Apple in CPU performance. - Apple: *Meep Meep...*

Seems most computer companies are still boasting that they can beat the M1 and it's like...congrats on beating a 6 year old chipset?

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#347

I know, this is a bit of a meaningless comment, but it's funny in a way. Feels like late 90s again: - Xiaomi: We have matched Apple in CPU performance. - Apple: *Meep Meep...*

Reading Infinite Games, they tell an anecdote about a Microsoft exec on a flight telling an Apple exec that the Zune was a way better portable music player than the iPod. The Apple exec was just “yup, you’re probably right” and then soon after the iPhone dropped

To be fair, the Zune actually was a better media player than the ipod in almost every way. That wasn't a false statement.

The issue was the abysmal marketing and "me too" attitude Microsoft had (and still has).

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#348

I know, this is a bit of a meaningless comment, but it's funny in a way. Feels like late 90s again: - Xiaomi: We have matched Apple in CPU performance. - Apple: *Meep Meep...*

Seems most computer companies are still boasting that they can beat the M1 and it's like...congrats on beating a 6 year old chipset?

I still have zero urgency in upgrading from my M1 MBP.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#349
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when was the turing test beaten?

1966 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect It turns out the limiting factor isn't how sophisticated algorithms are, it's how gullible humans are.

It was always a bad test, despite the greatness of Turing. The human organism is built to 'project' humanity onto anything available; apart from this none of the peculiar phenomena of the so-called 'modern human' is even intelligible, even the possibility of science. I bring all that is in me onto you as soon as you seem to be saying something, and reciprocally. We do this at the drop of a hat, and all specifically human life depends on it. But this power shows its 'gullibility' with 'gods' as also with Eliza. I am not snide about it because it is overreach by something the significance of which is overwhelming , but one is indeed amazed by the failure to reflect on the part of the ones eg giving LLMs rights - to take extreme case of a very widespread cultus - as if /they/ were the rational party, not ancients placating the storm god.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#350
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zune was probably a better player. It was too late, and arrived when MS didn't much care. There are emails unearthed in various lawsuits where you can read Bill Gates screaming at his subordinates: "why the hell can't our partners like Sony and Creative create a similar device? Give them all, give them early access to everything, work with them". In the end MS felt compelled to make their own.

> Zune was probably a better player. In some ways, anyway. Never owned a Zune myself, but a university classmate did and I was shocked by how poorly it handled non-Latin languages… she had a ton of Japanese and Korean songs loaded onto it, and their metadata all displayed as "missing character" blocks. She used it a lot like one might use an iPod Shuffle despite it having a nice screen because the only way to tell wh…

IIRC the Zune had a much better DAC on the device than any ipod. I own two of them and the sound quality was always notably great.
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