Apple's On-Device and Server Foundation Models • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's On-Device and Server Foundation Models

#501

Post by josephg » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 8:06 PM UTC

blihp wrote: post #443

bildung wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was that really the case? I remember they were mocked for e.g. offering wifi only , firewire only etc., while the respective removed alternatives were way more common.

In the consumer space at least, WiFi was nowhere to be seen on a typical PC when Apple adopted it. Same with USB. So while it technically originated and existed elsewhere, there was no serious traction on it prior to Apple adoption. What you say is also true: many people weren't ready to ditch the old when Apple decide to deprecate it.

This has been true for ages. They were the first to ditch the floppy disk drive and later cd drive in their computers. Both choices were very controversial at the time.

Re: Apple's On-Device and Server Foundation Models

#502

Post by josephg » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 8:08 PM UTC

talldayo wrote: post #460

monooso wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the problems with Apple is the industry seems to mindlessly ape their good and bad decisions... That's not a problem with Apple.

It's more of a regulatory problem, under a certain light.

Regulation that stops companies copying ideas from one another would be a disaster.

Re: Apple's On-Device and Server Foundation Models

#503

Post by talldayo » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 8:15 PM UTC

josephg wrote: post #502

talldayo wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more of a regulatory problem, under a certain light.

Regulation that stops companies copying ideas from one another would be a disaster.

I'm more suggesting that bad decisions should be litigated against fast-and-early, so other companies aren't encouraged to follow in Apple's footsteps. If every company had their own Lightning connector, there would be no choice but to force them all to converge. The original sin is letting it happen at all, in the first place.

Re: Apple's On-Device and Server Foundation Models

#504

Post by idiotsecant » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 8:16 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #150

idiotsecant wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

" Don't be snarky. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You caught me, I was weak in the face of ridiculousness. Keep on keeping on, you do a great job keeping this place halfway civil.

Re: Apple's On-Device and Server Foundation Models

#505

Post by paulmd » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 8:38 PM UTC

josephg wrote: post #501

blihp wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the consumer space at least, WiFi was nowhere to be seen on a typical PC when Apple adopted it. Same with USB. So while it technically originated and existed elsewhere, there was no serious traction on it prior to Apple adoption. What you say is also true: many people weren't ready to ditch the old when Apple decide to deprecate it.

This has been true for ages. They were the first to ditch the floppy disk drive and later cd drive in their computers. Both choices were very controversial at the time.

They were also the first to usb-c nirvana - they were shipping laptops with thunderbolt in 2011, and moved to usb-c in 2016, giving you four full-capability outputs at a time when most laptops had one, sometimes, and it took another 5 years before most laptops adopted at least one as standard and premium laptops sometimes had two.

(People look down on the move to usb-c which I don’t quite get, everyone seems to fawn over usb-c in other contexts but macbooks, amirite!?!?. Yes it’s nice to have a hdmi port but fundamentally if you buy into this vision that usb-c does everything but you also want to use a bunch of legacy ports (vs thunderbolt video, thunderbolt networking, etc) then obviously you’re going to have to have dongles, and people supposedly buy into that vision in other contexts. Apples implementation of that vision was fundamentally at least a decade ahead of the curve there, if you’re going to do that you want lots of ports and you want every port to do everything, not “this one is the only one that can charge fast”, “that one doesn’t have video output”, “if you run both ports they drop to some weird lower capability because you’re dividing the controller”. Those complaints are the things people don’t like about the base-tier M-series processors today, and apple’s previous models solved that problem long before anyone else did.)

Hell until very very recently a lot of the time the competition didn’t even have thunderbolt/Pcie tunnelling… you got 10gbps usb-c and a grab-bag of charging and display features, and you’re gonna like it. That’s still the case with motherboards and it’s literally only with this years’ release that we’re finally getting usb4/thunderbolt as standard on high-end boards. Literally more than a decade from when apple started putting thunderbolt on laptops, almost a decade from the era of 4x tb3 full-spec ports.

… and reminder that in classic usb fashion, usb4 still doesn’t even guarantee Pcie tunneling support. So really it can still be just a normal usb-c 10gbps connection in a silly mustache and trench coat. Even on the next-gen stuff. What’s the term for doing an ok, moderately competent but not even exceptionally good job while your competition repeatedly shoots themselves in the face, again? But it’s by design - the intent is deceiving and manipulating the customer into buying last year’s junk, it’s working as intended for USB-IF’s real customers and stakeholders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB4#cite_ref-auto2_15-0

Re: Apple's On-Device and Server Foundation Models

#506

Post by manmal » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 8:39 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #445

manmal wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some companies give their employees only base models.

Some companies are stupid, news at 6. It's not Apple's (or any computer manufacturer's) responsibility to put out products that can solve every problem with the base model. I'll never understand why companies pay high salaries then give employees sub-optimal computers to do their job.

I understand your frustration, but I don’t appreciate the sarcasm in your response.

Re: Apple's On-Device and Server Foundation Models

#507

Post by bigstrat2003 » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 8:41 PM UTC

astrange wrote: post #482

joshstrange wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a tired talking point. Use a (lightning|USB-C)->3.5mm adapter or use bluetooth.

And your experience for phone use cases will be better, because walking with wired headphones in gives you nasty telephonic effects (sound transmission along the cable) and they get tangled up.

The two aren't mutually exclusive. Those who wish to use Bluetooth headphones can happily use them, while those who prefer wired can continue to use them. There's no reason smartphone manufacturers shouldn't support both.

Re: Apple's On-Device and Server Foundation Models

#508

Post by hajile » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 8:45 PM UTC

talldayo wrote: post #490

hajile wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they can get 5 4070s for the price and power of one 4090, that's a win for them as they'll get more performance per dollar and per watt.

> and per watt Part of the advantage of using "one 4090" is that the max TDP is only 450w, as opposed to 5 M2 Ultras running at ~150w each. When you scale up to Nvidia's latest Blackwell architecture, I genuinely don't know how Apple could beat them on performance-per-watt. Buying M2 Ultras wholesale is probably cheaper than an NVL72 cluster, but certainly not what you'd want to use for Linux or maximizing AI-based p…

You are missing the point. We're discussing if Apple can use their own chips more cheaply than buying Nvidia's chips.

The Max TDP is not actual peak power consumption. Gamer's nexus recorded 500w peak and almost 670w overclocked. Most reviews I've looked at seem to put peak power consumption around 550w.

M2 Ultra wasn't even mentioned and it uses more than 150w. The correct question would be about M3 Max as we have solid numbers on it. M3 Max uses around 100w when both the GPU and CPU are heavily utilized and less than that when only the GPU is used.

This means that Apple could run 5 of their M3 Max chips in the same peak power as the 4090. But wait, there's more. 4090 doesn't run in a vacuum. It requires a separate CPU setup and a couple hundred more watts.

That means we could power 7 or so M3 Max chips with that same amount of power.

Of course, this isn't the whole story. 4090 isn't a professional chip either (while Apple can bin and certify their own CPUs and know they're getting a server-grade chip) and the 4090 also doesn't have nearly enough RAM. H100 starts at $25,000 and goes up. Apple could buy 75-100 M3 Max chips for that kind of money. That's certainly a load more compute than H100 would offer. Blackwell will be even more expensive in comparison.

Re: Apple's On-Device and Server Foundation Models

#509

Post by monooso » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 8:52 PM UTC

talldayo wrote: post #503

josephg wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation that stops companies copying ideas from one another would be a disaster.

I'm more suggesting that bad decisions should be litigated against fast-and-early, so other companies aren't encouraged to follow in Apple's footsteps. If every company had their own Lightning connector, there would be no choice but to force them all to converge. The original sin is letting it happen at all, in the first place.

I don't really see how you could litigate against dropping the headphone jack from the iPhone, which is the context of this thread.

Re: Apple's On-Device and Server Foundation Models

#510

Post by hbn » Tue, Jun 11, 2024, 9:19 PM UTC

Blackstrat wrote: post #386

I haven't seen anything indicating whether these features can be disabled. I'm not interested in adding a further invasion of privacy to my phone. I don't want some elaborate parlor trick helping me write. I've spent some time with ChatGPT and while it was somewhat novel, I wasn't overly impressed. Much of it was rudimentary and often wrong. And I wasn't overly impressed with some of the code that it generated. Relia…

I'd certainly expect you'd to be able to at the very least disable the stuff that does outgoing network requests.

As for the stuff that's local to your device, how is your privacy being invaded? It's your device's OS looking at data on the device it's running on, as it's always done.