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Apple introduces M4 chip

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Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#481

Post by vrick »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #437
EduardoBautista wrote: post #13

The 256gb and 512gb models have 8gb of ram. The 1tb and 2tb models have 16gb. Not a fan of tying ram to storage. https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

The iPod classic had 160 GB of storage fifteen years ago. No device should be measuring storage in the gigabytes in 2024. Let alone starting at $1000 offering only 256GB. What ridiculousness.

To be fair the ipod classic used a platter drive and ipads are high speed SSD storage. That being said, it's been years of the same storage options and at those prices it should be much higher, along with their iCloud storage offerings.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#482

Post by nightski »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #473
joelthelion wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>n case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) I'm curious: is anyone seriously using apple hardware to train Ai models at the moment? Obviously not the big players, but I imagine it might be a viable option for Ai engineers in smaller, less ambitious companies.

Yes, it can be more cost effective for smaller businesses to do all their work on Mac Studios, versus having a dedicated Nvidia rig plus Apple or Linux hardware for your workstation. Honestly, you can train basic models just fine on M-Series Max MacBook Pros.

A decked out Mac Studio is like $7k for far less GPU power. I find that highly unlikely.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#483

Post by dheera »

rsp1984 wrote: post #457

Together with next-generation ML accelerators in the CPU, the high-performance GPU, and higher-bandwidth unified memory, the Neural Engine makes M4 an outrageously powerful chip for AI. In case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) on edge devices. This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy (which would be at odds with sending dat…

> This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy

Apple has never been privacy-first in practice. They give you the illusion of privacy but in reality it's a closed-source system and you are forced to trust Apple with your data.

They also make it a LOT harder than Android to execute your own MITM proxies to inspect what exact data is being sent about you by all of your apps including the OS itself.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#484

Post by astrange »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #260
paulpan wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's strictly for price gouging/segmentation purposes. On the Macbooks (running MacOS), RAM has been used as data cache to speed up data read/write performance until the actual SSD storage operation completes. It makes sense for Apple to account for with higher RAM spec for the 1TB/2TB configurations.

That is called a buffer/page cache and has existed in operating systems since the 1980s.

It's unified memory which means the SSD controller is also using the system memory. So more flash needs more memory.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#485

Post by seec »

legitster wrote: post #475
rsp1984 wrote: post #457

Together with next-generation ML accelerators in the CPU, the high-performance GPU, and higher-bandwidth unified memory, the Neural Engine makes M4 an outrageously powerful chip for AI. In case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) on edge devices. This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy (which would be at odds with sending dat…

> This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy (which would be at odds with sending data up to the cloud for processing). I feel like people are being a bit naïve here. Apple's "Privacy First" strategy was a marketing spin developed in response to being dead-last in web-development/cloud computing/smart features. Apple has had no problem changing their standards by 180 degrees and being blatantly ant…

Don't bother the fanboys have an Apple can't do anything wrong/malicious. At this point it's closer to a religion than ever.

You would be amazed at the response of some of them when I point out some shit Apple does that make their products clearly lacking for the price, the cognitive dissonance is so strong they don't know how to react in any other way than lying or pretending it doesn't matter.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#486

Post by LeoPanthera »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #437
EduardoBautista wrote: post #13

The 256gb and 512gb models have 8gb of ram. The 1tb and 2tb models have 16gb. Not a fan of tying ram to storage. https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

The iPod classic had 160 GB of storage fifteen years ago. No device should be measuring storage in the gigabytes in 2024. Let alone starting at $1000 offering only 256GB. What ridiculousness.

The iPod Classic had spinning rust. Don't pretend it's comparable with a modern SSD.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#487

Post by kmeisthax »

michaelt wrote: post #239
Laaas wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economic reasoning behind this doesn't make sense to me. What do they lose by allowing slightly more freedom in configurations?

Because before you know it you're Dell and you're stocking 18 different variants of "Laptop, 15 inch screen, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD" and users are scratching their heads trying to figure out WTF the difference is between a "Latitude 3540" a "Latitude 5540" and a "New Latitude 3550"

Apple already fixed this with the Mac: they stock a handful of configurations most likely to sell, and then everything else is a custom order shipped direct from China. The reason why Apple has to sell specific RAM/storage pairs for iPads is that they don't have a custom order program for their other devices, so everything has to be an SKU, and has to sell in enough quantity to justify being an SKU.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#488

Post by Q6T46nT668w6i3m »

joelthelion wrote: post #461
rsp1984 wrote: post #457

Together with next-generation ML accelerators in the CPU, the high-performance GPU, and higher-bandwidth unified memory, the Neural Engine makes M4 an outrageously powerful chip for AI. In case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) on edge devices. This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy (which would be at odds with sending dat…

>n case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) I'm curious: is anyone seriously using apple hardware to train Ai models at the moment? Obviously not the big players, but I imagine it might be a viable option for Ai engineers in smaller, less ambitious companies.

Yes, there’re a handful of apps that use the neural engine to fine tune models to their data.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#489

Post by IggleSniggle »

legitster wrote: post #475
rsp1984 wrote: post #457

Together with next-generation ML accelerators in the CPU, the high-performance GPU, and higher-bandwidth unified memory, the Neural Engine makes M4 an outrageously powerful chip for AI. In case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) on edge devices. This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy (which would be at odds with sending dat…

> This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy (which would be at odds with sending data up to the cloud for processing). I feel like people are being a bit naïve here. Apple's "Privacy First" strategy was a marketing spin developed in response to being dead-last in web-development/cloud computing/smart features. Apple has had no problem changing their standards by 180 degrees and being blatantly ant…

Of course! The difference is that, for the time being, my incentives are aligned with theirs in regards to preserving my privacy.

The future is always fungible. Anyone can break whatever trust they've built very quickly. But, like the post you are replying to, I have no qualms about supporting companies that are currently doing things in my interest and don't have any clear strategic incentive to violate that trust.

Edit: that same incentive structure would apply to NVIDIA, afaik

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#490

Post by astrange »

sudosysgen wrote: post #448
smith7018 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re calling $3,600 worth of GPUs “quite common for hobbyist use” and then comparing an iPad to a $40,000 AI-centric GPU.

It's almost 70x more powerful. A 4 year old 3070 laptop was cheaper when it came out and has about 200 TOPS, 7 times as much. It's just factually incorrect to call it "faster than any AI PC", it's far slower than a cheaper laptop from 4 years ago.

"Powerful" isn't the thing that matters for a battery-powered device. Power/perf is.
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