931–940 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And here it is in an OS that can't even max out an M1! That said, the function keys make me think "and it runs macOS" is coming, and THAT would be extremely compelling.
What function keys?
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…
part of me wonders if the reason apple went with an unusual double jump in processor generation is that they are fearing or at least trying to delay comparison with other desktop class arm processors. wonder if mac lineup will get m4 at all or start with m4 pro or something. we'll see.
> M4 has Apple’s fastest Neural Engine ever, capable of up to 38 trillion operations per second, which is faster than the neural processing unit of any AI PC today. How useful this is for free libraries? Can you invoke it from your Python or C++ code in a straightforward manner? Does it not rely on proprietary drivers only available for their own OS?
> M4 has Apple’s fastest Neural Engine ever, capable of up to 38 trillion operations per second, which is faster than the neural processing unit of any AI PC today. I didn't even realize there is other PC-level hardware with AI-specific compute. What's the AMD and Intel equivalent of Neural Engine? (not that it matters since it seems the GPU where most of the AI workload is handled anyway)
“M4 has Apple’s fastest Neural Engine ever, capable of up to 38 trillion operations per second” Let that sink in.
And it's really not that great even though it's a welcomed improvement - Microsoft is pushing 45 TOPs as the baseline, you just can't get that in an APU yet (well, at least for the next couple months).
> M4 has Apple’s fastest Neural Engine ever, capable of up to 38 trillion operations per second, which is faster than the neural processing unit of any AI PC today. I didn't even realize there is other PC-level hardware with AI-specific compute. What's the AMD and Intel equivalent of Neural Engine? (not that it matters since it seems the GPU where most of the AI workload is handled anyway)
GPUs can also have AI-specific compute (e.g., Nvidia’s tensor cores.)
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…
Curious what steps they will take, or if they shouldn't just continue returning large amounts of cash to shareholders.