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Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

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Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#371

Post by wmf »

bhouston wrote: post #232
gardaani wrote: post #169

Rumors say that Apple will only release M6 base variant and skips M6 Pro, M6 Max and M6 Ultra variants to concentrate all efforts to create a good AI capable M7: "According to reports from Bloomberg, Apple will be skipping its M6 Pro, M6 Max, and M6 Ultra chips to accelerate development of the M7 chip. That means the only chip to be released from the M6 family will be the base M6. The reason for this break with tradi…

The M6 doubled the neural engine from 16 to 32 cores. I would expect that the M7 doubles that again to 64 from 32? That would make sense. I believe that the CPUs are actually limited by ram bandwidth more than the neural engine right when it comes to LLM processing? Maybe the M7 introduces something new to get around the current ram bandwidth problems on the non-Ultra chips.

LPDDR6 is coming.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#372

Post by aatd86 »

wat10000 wrote: post #355
VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It was better in every way you can quantify in a tech specs listing, and not in any way that actually matters to the customer.

me still thinking about the iRiver H320 I was lusting after...

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#373

Post by shuwix »

derwiki wrote: post #176
bayindirh wrote: post #117

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

Actually, Microsoft came with "modern" smart phone much sooner. Actually too soon, technology wasn't there (price, computing power, size, weight, battery life).

Apple never came first ... but often just at the right moment and had marketing skills to make it a new trend.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#374

Post by michaelbuckbee »

avalys wrote: post #76
serf wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Movie set pieces, as a motivation for Apple making these high-end configs available? That makes no sense. For one thing, you can’t tell from a movie what the specs are. A $999 Mac Studio looks exactly the same as a $20,000 one. For another, Apple updates the industrial design on their products so rarely, a 6-year-old Mac, iMac or MacBook also looks nearly indistinguishable from a brand-new one.

Movie production (editors, sound design, and a portion of fx work).

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#375

Post by conmod278 »

ericd wrote: post #37
SilverSlash wrote: post #25

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?

I think there's some mental inertia around what a computer is and what it's worth. This thing can build custom software for you, mostly autonomously. It can monitor things happening on the internet that are relevant to you, in a holistic and flexible way. We have one crawling the web for local events we'll like, and it judges them based on what it knows about us, and it tells us about the best matches every weekend,…

Nvidia is definitely working on a AI Rack machine fully built for on-prem uses for companies.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#376

Post by __alexs »

shuwix wrote: post #373
derwiki wrote: post #176

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

Actually, Microsoft came with "modern" smart phone much sooner. Actually too soon, technology wasn't there (price, computing power, size, weight, battery life). Apple never came first ... but often just at the right moment and had marketing skills to make it a new trend.

Windows CE (1996) was garbage compared to Palm OS (also 1996.)

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#378

Post by ericd »

zamadatix wrote: post #340
ericd wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's some mental inertia around what a computer is and what it's worth. This thing can build custom software for you, mostly autonomously. It can monitor things happening on the internet that are relevant to you, in a holistic and flexible way. We have one crawling the web for local events we'll like, and it judges them based on what it knows about us, and it tells us about the best matches every weekend,…

By this kind of logic we'd paying something like ~$10,000/month for our internet connections. The perceived value needs to exceed the cost but that does not make it the only factor to consider price with. What makes this expensive & sell well is it's not very fungible at the moment. Where else are you going to get 512 GB of high speed memory with a well supported accelerator attached that you can throw in the corner…

I think the difference besides the supply crunch there is that everyone connected gets the ~same internet, just faster or slower. Quantitative, not qualitative difference. On the other hand, a computer that can run Gemma 4 8B versus one that can run DeepSeek Flash are different enough experiences that I'd say they're effectively a difference in kind. It's been a bit since we had such serious stratification in outright capability in computing, rather than just how long it takes to get something done, or how many of something it can serve at once. In the early 90s, I think there were a lot more of those "this computer can do this thing, this one just can't" scenarios.

Closest competition I see right now are stacks of 2-4 connected DGX Sparks, similar lowish speed high mem, and about the same cost/gig.

Re: Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

#380

Post by wmf »

LoganDark wrote: post #115

Is Apple just going to announce everything silently from now on? No more getting excited for the big events to see what's new -- it just appears on the blog one day? Also: "a staggering 1.2TB/s of unified memory bandwidth" -- yay, the GPU has reached the year 2020! (I'm a bit bitter that my M4 Max is near useless for local LLMs because of its low memory bandwidth.)

I assume they'll have events for the MacBook Ultra and M7.
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