Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple introduces M4 chip

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

781–790 of 1001 posts

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#781

Post by steve_adams_86 »

themagician wrote: post #421
simonbarker87 wrote: post #21

Seeing an M series chip launch first in an iPad must be result of some mad supply chain and manufacturing related hangovers from COVID. If the iPad had better software and could be considered a first class productivity machine then it would be less surprising but the one thing no one says about the iPads is “I wish this chip were faster”

Welcome to being old! Watch a 20-year old creative work on an iPad and you will quickly change your mind. Watch someone who has, "never really used a desktop, [I] just use an iPad" work in Procreate or LumaFusion. The iPad has amazing software. Better, in many ways, than desktop alternatives if you know how to use it. There are some things they can't do, and the workflow can be less flexible or full featured in some…

I watched someone do some incredibly impressive modelling on an iPad Pro via shapr3D, and yeah, it was a young person.

I’m into the idea of modelling like this, or drawing, but the reality is I spend most of my time and money on a desktop work station because the software I need most is there. I’m totally open to iPads being legit work machines, but they’re still too limited (for me) to make the time and cash investment for the transition.

You’re definitely right though. People are doing awesome work on them without the help of a traditional desktop or laptop computer.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#782

Post by Der_Einzige »

themagician wrote: post #421
simonbarker87 wrote: post #21

Seeing an M series chip launch first in an iPad must be result of some mad supply chain and manufacturing related hangovers from COVID. If the iPad had better software and could be considered a first class productivity machine then it would be less surprising but the one thing no one says about the iPads is “I wish this chip were faster”

Welcome to being old! Watch a 20-year old creative work on an iPad and you will quickly change your mind. Watch someone who has, "never really used a desktop, [I] just use an iPad" work in Procreate or LumaFusion. The iPad has amazing software. Better, in many ways, than desktop alternatives if you know how to use it. There are some things they can't do, and the workflow can be less flexible or full featured in some…

The examples given are always artists, whose jobs are actively on the chopping block due to AI models and systems which checks notes don't even run that effectively on apple hardware yet!

Of course, SWE jobs are on the chopping block for the same reasons, but I claim that AI art models are ahead of AI coding models in terms of quality and flexibility.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#783

Post by whimsicalism »

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.

smaller businesses have no business having a dedicated GPU rig of any kind

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#784

Post by Der_Einzige »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #280
sulam wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your back is hurting from the ~1lb extra going from 13" to 15", I would recommend some body weight exercises. Your back will thank you, and you'll find getting older to be much less painful. Regarding a small iPad, isn't that the iPad mini? 8" vs 7" is pretty close to what you're asking for.

I highly recommend doing pull-ups for your posture and health. It was shocking to me how much the state of my spine improved after doing pull-ups as a daily exercise.

The average HN based-boy apple user has almost negative arm strength. You're asking them to start with pull ups? They need to be able to do a real push-up first!

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#785

Post by hypercube33 »

Aurornis wrote: post #342
KeplerBoy wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these things will ever get MacOS support it will be useless with 8 GB of Ram. Such a waste of nice components.

I have a minimum of 64GB on my all my main developer machines (home, work, laptop), but I have a spare laptop with only 8GB of RAM for lightweight travel. Despite the entire internet telling me it would be "unusable" and a disaster and a complete disaster, it's actually 100% perfectly fine. I can run IDEs, Slack, Discord, Chrome, and do dev work without a problem. I can't run a lot of VMs or compile giant projects wi…

Problem is yes it does run but it's probably paging to disk more than you think. I wonder if that lowers both performance and battery life.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#786

Post by mr_toad »

strangescript wrote: post #569
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…

The fundamental problem with this strategy is model size. I want all my apps to be privacy first with local models, but there is no way they can share models in any kind of coherent way. Especially when good apps are going to fine tune their models. Every app is going to be 3GB+

Gemini nano is 1.8B 4 bit parameters, so a little under a GB. And hopefully each app won’t include a full copy of their models.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#787

Post by pmayrgundter »

Am I missing it? 3x faster than an Xbox 10 from 2020 sounds "just" like Moore's law growth

Cool! Thanks Apple!

I guess this is to be expected given your market position and billions in the bank?

Thanks so much for doing it. We'll definitely buy all your

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#788

Post by smj-edison »

jameshart wrote: post #579
SpaceManNabs wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is odd. I wouldn't say it is misleading, but it is odd because it borders on such definition. > Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) on edge devices This is pretty much everyone's strategy. Model distillation is huge because of this. This goes in line with federated learning. This goes in line with model pruning too. And parameter efficient tuning and fine tuning and pr…

Everyone’s strategy? The biggest players in commercial AI models at the moment - OpenAI and Google - have made absolutely no noise about pushing inference to end user devices at all. Microsoft, Adobe, other players who are going big on embedding ML models into their products, are not pushing those models to the edge, they’re investing in cloud GPU. Where are you picking up that this is everyone’s strategy?

I believe at least Google is starting to do edge inference—take a look at the pixel 8 line-up they just announced. It doesn't seem to be emphasized as much, but the tensor G3 chip certainly has builtin inference.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#790

Post by lll-o-lll »

deergomoo wrote: post #678
asow92 wrote: post #332

Why are we running these high end CPUs on tablets without the ability to run pro apps like Xcode? Until I can run Xcode on an iPad (not Swift Playgrounds), it's a pass for me. Hear me out: I don't want to bring both an iPad and Macbook on trips, but I need Xcode. Because of this, I have to pick the Macbook every time. I want an iPad, but the iPad doesn't want me.

I've been saying this for years, I would love to get a desktop Mac and use an iPad for the occasional bit of portable development I do away from a desk, like when I want to noodle on an idea in front of the TV. I'm very happy with my MacBook, but I don't like that the mega expensive machine I want to keep for 5+ years needs to be tied to a limited-life lithium battery that's costly and labour intensive to replace, ju…

Is there no RDP equivalent for mac? Just RDP into your main workstation?
Post reply on HN