851–860 of 1001 posts
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…
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…
Everyone seems to have forgotten about the Celebrity iCloud photo leak.
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+
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”
Meanwhile the mac mini is still on M2
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Hey could i get a source on the BP stuff please. Just curious as I couldn't find anything on the interwebs
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> but it is about selling luxury hardware. Somewhat true but things are changing. While there are plenty of “luxury” Apple devices like Vision Pro or fully decked out MacBooks for web browsing we no longer live in a world where tech are just lifestyle gadgets. People spend hours a day on their phones, and often run their life and businesses through it. Even with the $1000+/2-3y price tag, it’s simply not that much gi…
Most CS professionals who write code have no idea what it takes to build a desktop, so the hardware that they chose is pretty much irrelevant because they aren't specifically choosing for hardware. The reason Apple gets bought is mostly by anyone, including tech people, is because of ecosystem. The truth is, nobody really care that much about actual specs as long as its good enough to do basic stuff, and when you are indifferent to the actual difference but all your friends are in the ecosystem, the choice is obvious.
You can easily see this yourself: ask these "professionals" about the details of the Apple Neural engine, and its a very high chance that they will repeat some marketing material, while failing to mention that Apple does not publish any real docs for ANE, you have to sign your code to run on ANE, and you have to basically use Core ML to utilize the ANE. I.e if they really cared about inference, all of them would be buying laptops with discrete 4090s for almost the same price.
Meanwhile, if you look at people who came from EE/ECE (who btw on the average are far better coders than people with CS background, based on my 500+ interviews in the industry across several sectors), you see a way larger skew towards Android/custom built desktops/windows laptops running Linux. If you lived and breathed Linux and low level OS, you tend appreciate all the power and customization that it gives you because you don't have to go learn how to do things.
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…
Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) on edge devices...only for Apple stuff.
There is a big difference. ANE right now is next to useless for anything not Apple.
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…
I put a spare 120 GB SSD, a cheap no-name brand that was just lying around for some testing purposes. Found the similar off-the-shelf DDR3 2 GB RAM stick. I thought the RAM was faulty, turned out it’s in a working condition, so I put it there.
I need the computer for basic so-called office work (a browser, some messengers, email client and a couple of other utilities). I thought I’d buy at least two 4GB RAM sticks after I test it, so you know, 8 GB is just the bare imaginable minimum! I have my 16 GBs everywhere since, idk, maybe 2012 or something.
And you know what?! It works very well with 4 GB of RAM and default Fedora (it’s 40 now, but I started with 38, iirc). It has the default Gnome (also, 46 now, started with 44, iirc). And it works very well!
It doesn’t allow me to open a gazillion of browser tabs, but my workflow is designed to avoid it, so I have like 5 to 10 open simultaneously.
Before throwing Fedora at the PC, I thought I would just install a minimal Arch Linux with swaywm and be good. But I decided I don’t want to bother, and I’ll just buy 8 GB later on, and be done with it.
And here I am, having full-blown Gnome and just 4 GB of RAM. I don’t restrict myself too much, the only time I notice it’s not my main PC is when I want to do some heavy web-browsing (e.g. shopping on some different heavy websites with many tabs opened). Then it slows down significantly, till I close the unnecessary tabs or apps. All the software is updated and current, so it’s not like it’s some ancient PC from 00’s.
Also, I have my iPad Pro 12,9 1st Gen with just 4 GB of RAM too, and I never feel it’s slow for me.
I understand that some tasks would require a lot of RAM, and it’s not for everyone. Having a lot of RAM everywhere, I’m quite used to not thinking of it at all for a significant part of my career (for over a decade now), so I may have something opened for weeks that I don’t have any need for.
So, it’s 2024, and I’m surprised to say that 4 GB of RAM is plenty when you’re focused on some tasks and don’t multitask heavily. Which never productive for me at least. I even noticed that I enjoy my low-memory PC even more, as it reminds me with its slowdowns that I’m entering the multitasking state.
I use swaywm on my Arch Linux laptop, and most of the time it’s less than 3–4 Gb (I have 16 Gb).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> but it is about selling luxury hardware. Somewhat true but things are changing. While there are plenty of “luxury” Apple devices like Vision Pro or fully decked out MacBooks for web browsing we no longer live in a world where tech are just lifestyle gadgets. People spend hours a day on their phones, and often run their life and businesses through it. Even with the $1000+/2-3y price tag, it’s simply not that much gi…
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”
To be honest, I wish my iPad's chip was slower! I can't do anything other than watch videos and use drawing programs on an iPad, why does it need a big expensive power hungry and environmentally impactful CPU when one 1/10 the speed would do? If I could actually do something with an iPad there would be a different discussion, but the operating system is so incredibly gimped that the most demanding task it's really su…