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Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

macrumors.com

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Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#531

Post by bensyverson »

jchw wrote: post #422
bensyverson wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People really have a twisted idea about how corporate America works. Apple does not have a psyops division cooking up ever more elaborate ways to seed demand for low-end, low-margin Macs via bot armies. They honestly don’t need to, because they’re making an avalanche of cash from the iPhone. People really were talking about and buying Minis due to OpenClaw, because they wanted something that was on all the time and h…

You're suggesting there is no chance that Apple is engaging in guerilla marketing, which you discredit by referring to as a "psyop" when it is in fact a well-documented and pretty mundane practice, because they sell a lot of iPhones? I mean, it's pretty much just blind conjecture that they may be marketing in stealth in the first place, so really who knows on that front. But you gotta be smoking something to think Ap…

You're right, Apple has a long history with guerrilla marketing, especially gray-area tactics like bots and paid commenters. Even though there is no evidence of this, it "feels" true, so it must be true, right? Why wouldn't they do it, after all? They don't really care that much about protecting the brand, and these types of tactics have zero chance of blowing up in their face.

Even though they can and do pay for the highest-profile placements, they also do shady guerrilla marketing "just in case," because they have a whole lab that just analyzes channel efficiency, and they've discovered that anonymous comments on Reddit in random channels have 8.7x the effectiveness of YouTube ads, especially among the coveted Pale Incel demo.

This is how they got to be a trillion dollar company after all! It was marketing, not product.

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#532

Post by astura »

postexitus wrote: post #488
20k wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies absolutely do have people who's job it is to sit on social media and promote these products, its marketing 101

Yeah, through multiple layers of approvals. Not shtposting on hacker news.

Shit posting looks like natural use of social media so it's actually preferred

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2017/02/20/reddit-i...

“I have worked over 100 of these kinds of campaigns and never had it come back on the client. I’ve been doing viral marketing and reputation management since 2005. =In the past year I’ve worked for a major entertainment network to magnify a rumor within sports entertainment, as well as damage control on a rumor that came out of an actor being hired on a film before the production company was ready to announce that casting.”

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#533

Post by eptcyka »

reliabilityguy wrote: post #499
eptcyka wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specifically is the dispute about factual accuracy at the root of this discussion?

There is no factual accuracy at all, only speculation and empty claims. Do you have a proof that Apple has bot farms to push its narrative?

I have no proof, only personal experience interacting with commenters on HN. No other tech company gets as much positive support when exerting its soft power under the guise of (bullshit) technicalities, e.g. all the issues with EU digital markets, API restrictions, 30% tax. Specifically, people were defending Apple vehemently when they feature gated remote phone control for EU citing concerns about EUs privacy laws (???).

I never stated that I know for a fact that Apple deploys bots, but I would not be surprised. I don’t even need to know if anyone is paid or not - if I cannot distinguish paid posts from fanatic apologism, then I need not care. The resulting posts are worrying all the same.

Similarly, I do not know if Apple was caught off guard by the demand - I wouldn’t trust this article. But Apple does plan production well ahead of time and forecast demand rather precisely. They could’ve been wrong. Them being unable to produce enough 1/2tb mac studios seems like a loss to me.

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#534

Post by bluGill »

postexitus wrote: post #488
20k wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies absolutely do have people who's job it is to sit on social media and promote these products, its marketing 101

Yeah, through multiple layers of approvals. Not shtposting on hacker news.

It is multiple layers of approval, but there is no reason to think they wouldn't approve this. At least not from the limited information I have. The approval is about covering themselves, so if they won't get sued (either because it is legal or they can cover their tracks) they will approve it. There is more than lawsuits they track, but the exact set of things is different for each company and I have no idea what Apple works on.

Thus this could be Apple marketing, or it could be someone independent.

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#535

Post by anticorporate »

com2kid wrote: post #446
20k wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies absolutely do have people who's job it is to sit on social media and promote these products, its marketing 101

Having worked at multiple large companies more often than not the truth is there are 5 levels of approval for every tweet that goes out and writing a single blog post can take months. The smart companies out source their gorilla marketing to a third party, having realized their own inadequacies.

I worked in community marketing for few rather large software companies. The struggle is real. Almost every CMO I worked for seemed to make it their mission to squeeze any life out of social conversation with actual users and replace it with bland, boring "on message" communication about synergies for leveraging pivots enabling disruption at enterprise scale.

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#536

Post by jchw »

bensyverson wrote: post #531
jchw wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're suggesting there is no chance that Apple is engaging in guerilla marketing, which you discredit by referring to as a "psyop" when it is in fact a well-documented and pretty mundane practice, because they sell a lot of iPhones? I mean, it's pretty much just blind conjecture that they may be marketing in stealth in the first place, so really who knows on that front. But you gotta be smoking something to think Ap…

You're right, Apple has a long history with guerrilla marketing, especially gray-area tactics like bots and paid commenters. Even though there is no evidence of this, it "feels" true, so it must be true, right? Why wouldn't they do it, after all? They don't really care that much about protecting the brand, and these types of tactics have zero chance of blowing up in their face. Even though they can and do pay for the…

Why do you care so much that this is a totally realistic argument? You don't personally have to like it, it's not about how it makes you feel as a fan of Apple.

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#537

Post by bensyverson »

eloisant wrote: post #489
bensyverson wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People really have a twisted idea about how corporate America works. Apple does not have a psyops division cooking up ever more elaborate ways to seed demand for low-end, low-margin Macs via bot armies. They honestly don’t need to, because they’re making an avalanche of cash from the iPhone. People really were talking about and buying Minis due to OpenClaw, because they wanted something that was on all the time and h…

It doesn't matter how much cash the iPhone does, some people have "boost the sales of the Mac Mini [or other product]" in their OKR.

True, but so what? Is the idea that they sponsored the creation of OpenClaw and Claude Cowork, CIA-style? Or is the idea that this (presumably lower-level, given that they're working on the mini) marketing employee had a large discretionary budget and was able to identify the trend and immediately capitalize on it with no corporate bottlenecks, mobilizing a series of commenters to underscore the narrative that you need a Mac mini to get into AI?

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#538

Post by andai »

bensyverson wrote: post #530
beAbU wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple does not have a psyops division This sounds exactly like the kind thing that someone running a psyop for Apple would say.

This is exactly the kind of paranoid conspiracy thinking I was talking about. If you see red yarn between everything, you're impervious to reality. Honestly, I'm an Apple user since 1988 and shareholder. I use my full-ass name on hn. I wish they'd give me money to promote the brand, but in reality they have something even more valuable than paid shitposting: authentic word of mouth and devoted users. That comes out o…

>This is exactly the kind of paranoid conspiracy thinking I was talking about.

This sounds exactly like the kind thing that someone running a psyop for Apple would say.

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#539

Post by andai »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #417
bensyverson wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People really have a twisted idea about how corporate America works. Apple does not have a psyops division cooking up ever more elaborate ways to seed demand for low-end, low-margin Macs via bot armies. They honestly don’t need to, because they’re making an avalanche of cash from the iPhone. People really were talking about and buying Minis due to OpenClaw, because they wanted something that was on all the time and h…

I was buying my own Mac specifically for LLMs around this same time, didn't care about OpenClaw, but people I knew IRL were immediately asking me about buying a Mac for OpenClaw, and whether they should get a Mac Mini or what, and these were not programmers or tech nerds. There was genuine hype. Macs are lower cost alternatives to Nvidia GPUs.

Yeah, though most people weren't even running local LLMs, they just heard you need a Mac Mini to run OpenClaw so they got one.

Re: Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

#540

Post by giancarlostoro »

andai wrote: post #539
giancarlostoro wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was buying my own Mac specifically for LLMs around this same time, didn't care about OpenClaw, but people I knew IRL were immediately asking me about buying a Mac for OpenClaw, and whether they should get a Mac Mini or what, and these were not programmers or tech nerds. There was genuine hype. Macs are lower cost alternatives to Nvidia GPUs.

Yeah, though most people weren't even running local LLMs, they just heard you need a Mac Mini to run OpenClaw so they got one.

I think it might have been a mix of the two to be fair, but probably a lower portion of devs. For example, I have a Macbook Pro with an M4 Pro but in about two more years once I've put aside money for a newer laptop I'll wait for the next "updated" models and buy another Mac just for the inference, the speed improvements and the unified RAM.
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