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Apple introduces M4 chip

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Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#621

The heck do I do with an M4 in an iPad? Scroll hacker news really really fast? Apple needs to reinvest in software innovation on the iPad. I don't think my use case for it has evolved in 5 years.

I was hoping they would come out and say "and now developers can develop apps directly on their iPads with our new release of Xcode" but yeah, no. Don't know if the M4 with just 16GB of memory would be very comfortable for any pro workload.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#622
post #227
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple usually massively exaggerates their tech spec comparison - is it REALLY half the power use of all times (so we'll get double the battery life) or is it half the power use in some scenarios (so we'll get like... 15% more battery life total) ?

IME Apple has always been the most honest when it makes performance claims. LIke when they said an Macbook Air would last 10+ hours and third-party reviewers would get 8-9+ hours. All the while, Dell or HP would claim 19 hours and you'd be lucky to get 2 eg [1]. As for CPU power use, of course that doesn't translate into doubling battery life because there are other components. And yes, it seems the OLED display uses…

Apple is always honest but they know how to make you believe something that isn’t true.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#623

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…

Edge inference and cloud inference are not mutually exclusive and chances are any serious player would be dipping their toes in both.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#624

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…

>I personally really really welcome as I don't want the AI future to be centralised in the hands of a few powerful cloud providers.

Watch out for being able to using ai on your local machine and those ai services using telemetry to send your data (recorded conversations, for instance) to their motherships.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#625

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…

Also they don't have to pay either the capex or opex costs for training a model if they get user's devices to train the models

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#626
post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want to bring both an iPad and Macbook on trips, but I need ______ Why not just make the iPad run MacOS and throw iPadOS into the garbage?

I like some UX aspects of iPadOS, but need the functionality of macOS for work.

iPadOS is still mainly a fork of iOS, a glorified mobile interface. They should really switch to a proper macOS system, now that the specs allow for it.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#627

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…

I think these days everyone links their products with AI. Today even BP CEO linked his business with AI. Edge inference and cloud inference are not mutually exclusive choices. Any serious provider will provide both and the improvement in quality of services come from you giving more of your data to the service provider. Most people are totally fine with that and that will not change any time sooner. Privacy paranoia is mostly a fringe thing in consumer tech.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#628
post #143

"The M4 is so fast, it'll probably finish your Final Cut export before you accidentally switch apps and remember that that cancels the export entirely. That's the amazing power performance lead that Apple Silicon provides." #AppleEvent https://mastodon.social/@tolmasky/112400245162436195

This is a straight-up lie, yes? Switching apps doesn't cancel the export.

Can neither confirm nor deny :) I've seen people complain about this on Twitter and Mastodon though.

It's possible people are running into iOS limitations: it will kill apps when it thinks there's not enough memory.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately, does it matter? Michelin-starred restaurants not only have top-tier chefs. They have buyers who negotiate with food suppliers to get the best ingredients they can at the lowest prices they can. Having a preferential relationship with a good supplier is as important to the food quality and the health of the business as having a good chef to prepare the dishes. Apple has top-tier engineering talent but they…

Qualcomm is also with TSMC and their newer 4nm processor is expected to stay competitive with the M series. If the magic comes mostly from TSMC, there's a good chance for these claims to be true and to have a series of better chips coming on the other platforms as well.

“Stay” competitive implies they’ve been competitive. Which they haven’t.

I’m filing this into the bin with all the other “This next Qualcomm chip will close the performance gap” claims made over the past decade. Maybe this time it’ll be true. I wouldn’t bet on it.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#630

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…

> 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 data up to the cloud for processing). Their primary business goal is to sell hardware. Yes, they’ve diversified into services and being a shopping mall for all, but it is about selling lu…

As a privacy professional for many, many years this is 100% correct. Apple wouldn’t be taking billions from Google for driving users to their ad tracking system, they wouldn’t give the CCP access to all Chinese user data (and maybe beyond), and they wouldn’t be on-again-off-again flirting with tailored ads in Apple News if privacy was a “human right”.

(FWIW my opinion is it is a human right, I just think Tim Cook is full of shit.)

What Apple calls privacy more often than not is just putting lipstick on the pig that is their anticompetitive walled garden.

Pretty much everybody in SV who works in privacy rolls their eyes at Apple. They talk a big game but they are as full of shit as Meta and Google - and there’s receipts to prove it thanks to this DoJ case.

Apple want to sell high end hardware. On-device computation is a better user experience, hands down.

That said, Siri is utter dogshit so on-device dogshit is just faster dogshit.

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