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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

#301

Post by 0x457 »

hawk_ wrote: post #252
redox99 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

32GB of fast unified memory is enough for Qwen 3.8 27B. - 16GB for the weights at Q4 - 9GB for the full 256K context at Q8 - 7GB spare for overhead and system. The problem is that these Macs have 32GB of slow unified memory. Edit: I'm thinking of a headless Mac mini, if you meant running it on the same machine you're using of course you'll need more memory, but LLMs are best served from a headless server so that's wh…

Is this for setup for agentic coding? Why not also run the IDE compiler etc... on the same machine to use those CPU cores as well?

Keep in mind that if you want MTP it adds a few gigs. If you use sub-agents it turns already slow generation into even slower generation. Won't be doing any compling (so rust, c and probably go are not avaiable) becase those add memory pressure during compiling.

32gb of unified memory is enough enough for system to be used for anything other than LLM generation.

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

#302

Post by [deleted] »

pizza234 wrote: post #140
jasode wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I realize I’m somewhat limited (16GB RTX 9070), but still, it seems really far off from the kind of experience even a basic $20/month subscription gets me. I just ordered a new Mac Studio M5 Max 128GB $5899 ($6400 with tax) to be able to run the bigger "consumer size" models in the 70B parameter range (~96 GB). That said, I have no illusions that this expensive setup with a Qwen Flash coding LLM will be comparable t…

> Why did I initially spend the extra $1600 if I knew ahead of time that it wasn't as good as cloud AI? Because I thought I could use some local LLM for the easy tasks or when I hit cloud rate limits. The maths don't check. With Deepseek Flash one goes a very long way with 1600$ - even 10$/month, for easy jobs, are more than 13 years, and at a higher quality.

[deleted]

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

#304

Post by anslopic »

adastra22 wrote: post #139
amazingamazing wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have 2TB of VRAM you can’t run one of the big models which are comparable?

The post was replying to someone with 16GB. (And also: no, even the best open weight models are not as good as what you can use on your ChatGPT subscription. They’ve gotten a lot better, but not that much better.)

[flagged]

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

#305

Post by anslopic »

adastra22 wrote: post #113
apparent wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI subscriptions are too highly subsidized right now I've been running into annoying limits with Claude recently. It gives me like 5 questions over the course of 15 mins and then tells me to wait 5 hours. When companies can change things up to make the base subscription nearly useless (the last question always gets messed up, too), then you realize the value of owning your own infrastructure.

On the $200/mo plan I have never hit a five hour limit, and I struggle to use my full credits each week. $200/month is vastly cheaper than owning and operating comparable hardware.

[flagged]

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

#306

Post by rglover »

Danox wrote: post #298

What’s going on isn’t Apple behind in AI model building I thought I read that somewhere on the MacRumors site in the last two years, that Apple is behind its tech peers and Apple might as well just close the doors. I always thought Apple was in a good position because unlike their peers they didn’t burn billions of dollars trying to build an AI model that has no financial moat around it. I still think they’re in a go…

They're making the smartest possible move: let others burn insane amounts of capital and time finding the quirks and once they see a viable lane, execute.

It's old Steve Jobs logic. Works backwards from the customer experience to the technology (they're the only big player I see doing this).

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

#307

Post by anslopic »

0x457 wrote: post #150
adastra22 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the $200/mo plan I have never hit a five hour limit, and I struggle to use my full credits each week. $200/month is vastly cheaper than owning and operating comparable hardware.

> On the $200/mo plan I have never hit a five hour limit, and I struggle to use my full credits each week. I started tasking fable with huge projects over the weekend and now I hit at very least fable limit by monday.

[flagged]

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

#308

Post by thinkafter »

adastra22 wrote: post #139
amazingamazing wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have 2TB of VRAM you can’t run one of the big models which are comparable?

The post was replying to someone with 16GB. (And also: no, even the best open weight models are not as good as what you can use on your ChatGPT subscription. They’ve gotten a lot better, but not that much better.)

[flagged]

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

#310

Post by limewedge »

adastra22 wrote: post #113
apparent wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI subscriptions are too highly subsidized right now I've been running into annoying limits with Claude recently. It gives me like 5 questions over the course of 15 mins and then tells me to wait 5 hours. When companies can change things up to make the base subscription nearly useless (the last question always gets messed up, too), then you realize the value of owning your own infrastructure.

On the $200/mo plan I have never hit a five hour limit, and I struggle to use my full credits each week. $200/month is vastly cheaper than owning and operating comparable hardware.

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