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Apple announces Foundation Models and Containerization frameworks, etc

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Re: Apple announces Foundation Models and Containerization frameworks, etc

#481

Post by edude03 »

jjcob wrote: post #434
pzo wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might we wrong but I guess this will only works on iphone 16 devices and iphone 15 pro - thus drastically limits your user base and you would still have to use online API for most apps. I was hoping they provide free ai api on their private cloud for other devices even if also running small models

If you start writing an app now, by the time it's polished enough to release it, the iPhone 16 will already be a year old phone, and there will be plenty potential customers. If your app is worthwhile, and gets popular in a few years, by that time iPhone 16 will be an old phone and a reasonable minimum target. Skate to where the puck is going...

Basically this - network effects are huge. People will definitely by hardware if it solves a problem for them - so many people bought blackberries just for BBM.

Re: Apple announces Foundation Models and Containerization frameworks, etc

#482

Post by SlowTao »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #305
SlowTao wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I couldnt be happier to see it back. I have not been a fan of the flattening of UI design over the last 15 years.

But the opposite of "flat" is not "transparent". This was posted in another HN thread about Liquid Glass: https://imgur.com/a/6ZTCStC . I'm sure Apple will tweak the opacity before it goes live, but this looks horribly insane to me.

Yeah it definetly needs work. But I hope they do tone it down like Microsoft did with Aero glass effects between Vista and win 7.

They are heading in a good direction, it just needs to be toned down. But like any new graphics technology the first year is the "WOW WE CAN DO X!!!!" then the more tame stuff comes along.

Re: Apple announces Foundation Models and Containerization frameworks, etc

#483

Post by dwaite »

charliebwrites wrote: post #450
gdubs wrote: post #238

There's a different thread if you want to wax about Fluid Glass etc [1], but there's some really interesting new improvements here for Apple Developers in Xcode 26. The new foundation frameworks around generative language model stuff looks very swift-y and nice for Apple developers. And it's local and on device. In the Platforms State of the Union they showed some really interesting sample apps using it to generate d…

If the new foundation models are on device, does that mean they’re limited to information they were trained on up to that point? Or do have the ability to reach out to the internet for up to the moment information?

In addition to context you provide, the API lets you programmatically declare tools

Re: Apple announces Foundation Models and Containerization frameworks, etc

#484

Post by dwaite »

runjake wrote: post #442

In case others are confused about the term "Foundation Models": "Foundation Models" is an Apple product name for a framework that taps into a bunch of Apple's on-device AI models.

No, the model itself is one of the two Apple foundation language models (the AFM-on-device, specifically)

https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/introducing-apple...

https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/apple-intelligenc...

The architecture is such that the model can be specialized by plugging in more task-specific fine-tuning models as adapters, for instance one made for handling email tasks.

At least in this version, it looks like they have only enabled use of one fine-tuning model (content tagging)

Re: Apple announces Foundation Models and Containerization frameworks, etc

#485

Post by msgodel »

tansan wrote: post #459
rubicon33 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The direction the software engineering is going in with this whole "vibe coding" thing is so depressing to me. I went into this industry because I grew up fascinated by computers. When I learned how to code, it was about learning how to control these incredible machines. The joy of figuring something out by experimenting is quickly being replaced by just slamming it into some "generative" tool. I have no idea where t…

This sounds like a boomer trying to resist using Google in favor of encyclopedias. Vibe coding can be whatever you want to make of it. If you want to be prescriptive about your instructions and use it as a glorified autocomplete, then do it. You can also go at it from a high-level point of view. Either way, you still need to code review the AI code as if it was a PR.

Karpathy's definition of vibe coding as I understood it was just verbally directing an agent based on vibes you got from the running app without actually seeing the code.

Re: Apple announces Foundation Models and Containerization frameworks, etc

#486

Post by lqstuart »

refulgentis wrote: post #449
lqstuart wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really see a need for token IDs alone, but you absolutely need per-token logprob vectors if you’re trying to do constrained decoding

Interesting point, my first reaction was "why do you need logprobs? We use constrained decoding for tool calls and don't need them"...which is actually false! Because we need to throw out those log probs then find the highest log prob of a token meeting the constraints .

Haha yeah. I’ve seen you mention the llama cpp wrapper elsewhere, it sounds cool! I’ve worked enough with vLLM and sglang to get angry at xgrammar, which I believe has some common ancestry with the GGML stack (GBNF if I’m not mistaken, which I may be). The constrained decoding part is as simple as you’d expect, just applies a bitmask to the logprobs during the “logit processing” and continuing as normal.

Re: Apple announces Foundation Models and Containerization frameworks, etc

#487

Post by my123 »

koito17 wrote: post #204
vips7L wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the syscalls a constant moving target? Didn't even Microsoft fail at keeping up with them in WSL?

Linux is exceptional in that it has stable syscall numbers and guarantees stability. This is largely why statically linked binaries (and containers) "just work" on Linux, meanwhile Windows and Mac OS inevitably break things with an OS update. Microsoft frequently tweaks syscall numbers, and they make it clear that developers must access functions through e.g. NTDLL. Mac OS at least has public source files used to gen…

arm64 macOS doesn't even allow statically linked binaries at all.

on the windows side, syscall ABI became stable since Server 2022 to run mismatched container releases

Re: Apple announces Foundation Models and Containerization frameworks, etc

#488

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

leoh wrote: post #383
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it probably would be feasible to dust off the FreeBSD Linux compatibility layer[1] and turn that into native support for Linux apps on Mac. I think Apple’s main hesitation would be that the Linux userland is all GPL. [1]: https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/linuxemu/

If they built as a kernel extension it would probably be okay with gpl. There’s a huge opportunity for Apple to make kernel development for xnu way better. Tooling right now is a disaster — very difficult to build a kernel and test it (eg in UTM, etc.). If they made this better and took more of an OSS openness posture like Microsoft, a lot of incredible things could be built for macOS. I’ll bet a lot of folks would e…

My impression is they’re basically trying to end third party kernel development; macOS has been making it progressively more difficult to use kexts and has been providing alternate toolkits for doing things that used to require drivers.

Re: Apple announces Foundation Models and Containerization frameworks, etc

#489

Post by syspec »

SlowTao wrote: post #225
bearjaws wrote: post #213

All this focus on low power gaming makes me think Apple wants to get in on the Steam Deck hype.

Apple is in a reasonably good place to make gaming work for them. Their hardware across the board is fairly powerful (definetly not top end), they have a good API stack especially with Metal. And they have systems at all levels including TV. If they were to just make a standard controller or just say "PS5 dualshock is our choice" they could have a nice little slice for themselves.

You can use DualShocks on Apple TV or iPad games - it's supported. Of course on Mac as well

Re: Apple announces Foundation Models and Containerization frameworks, etc

#490

Post by taskforcegemini »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #406
torginus wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kinda ignorant about the current state of Linux VMs, but my biggest gripe with VMs is that OS kernels kind of assume they have access to all the RAM the hardware has - unlike the reserve/commit scheme processes use for memory. Is there a VM technology that can make Linux aware that it's running in a VM, and be able to hand back the memory it uses to the host OS? Or maybe could Apple patch the kernel to do exactly…

That's called memory balooning and is supported by KVM on Linux. Proxmox for example can do that. It does need support on both the host and the guest.

it's not as straightforward a solution as it sounds, though
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