brianus

iPad Arr!! 

twolf2919 said:

If this really existed - not an assured thing in this rumor driven world - then it's the dumbest idea ever.  Thanks god it was canceled!  I could understand AR glasses tethered than iPhone - at least you could still experience AR's promise of augmenting the world with useful information as you moved through it.  But what's the use of augmenting anything while you're sitting somewhere with your MacBook???  Add a virtual calculator or calendar to your office walls?  Who'd walk around with a laptop in hand?  Makes no sense at all.

Are you kidding me? As the article rightly notes, Mac Virtual Display is considered by many to be the most compelling feature of the Vision Pro. This would be like that, but with normal glasses that are comfortable and not too weird looking (well, one hopes). The very large number of VIsion Pro customers who use it primarily for Virtual Display would ditch their clunky, heavy goggles in a second if something like this was available. I don't own a VP, but glasses with that feature would be a day one purchase for me.

To be clear, it's not so you can have a floating calculator. It's so you can extend your Mac's display without needing an external monitor - extremely useful while traveling or in confined spaces, when the tiny laptop display just isn't enough for your workflow. I currently use the XReal Air USB-C glasses for this purpose, and they're... ok. But it's a 1080p display with no spatial awareness (it moves as your head moves). Apple could make something much, much slicker. 

Anyway, very disappointed to hear they cancelled it. I tend to agree it would require iPhone tethering for mass appeal, so I get that if they couldn't make that work, it wasn't worth it to make something just for Mac users. Still, huge bummer.

Can anyone with the beta confirm that this supports slideover? Would be pretty lame if we had to run it as a fullscreen app. I was hoping they'd make this a "utility" app invoked from a corner, like Quick Notes

80025 said:

Wages and salaries are a private issue. Even in this tell-all-society, it's nobodys' business what another employee makes or does not make. Using company connectivity/hardware, and/or a company-specific app, for non-work related activities, is generally considered to be unacceptable, no matter where one is employed

lol it just wouldn’t be the AppleInsider forum without the same old takes from management lickspittles. Can’t really imagine what could be more work-related than pay…. the entire reason anyone works there.

tiredskills said:

Why on earth would I want to run an AI model?  Locally or otherwise?

I’m sure this was meant to be snarky, but for me it’s a genuine question: what are the envisioned real world use cases? What might a business (even a home one) use a local LLM for?

The article mentions a hospital in the context of patient privacy, but what would that model actually be *doing*?

timmillea said:

I have an original M1 MacBook Air, 16GB/2TB, with its perfect wedge shape. I see no reason to renew it until the design of the MBA is improved. From an aesthetics point of view, I would regard the current design a downgrade, regardless of chip. 

Although aesthetically I think the newer design is more pleasing when used next to other Apple devices (thin bezels, flat sides, colors that match recent phones and iPads, notch matching my phone), the M1 was the pinnacle of functional design. Hard to improve on the wedge shape and for a device that was marketed for its thinness/portability, it’s odd that the new ones are slightly deeper in one dimension. Unfortunately “bigger overall, but slightly thinner” seems to be the direction all their products are taking now (except the Mac mini, which is thicker, but overall smaller)

Mike Wuerthele said:

brianus said:

Another weird take from the editors... don't get me wrong, this article is a public service and I'll be following its advice if and when I'm ever forced to update to iOS 18 or the latest macOS. But why focus on storage as the issue? I thought the majority of resource consumption an on-device LLM would be responsible for would be in RAM, not storage. The fact that any device that runs Apple Intelligence must have 8GB minimum is a clue to just how much you're losing when you turn this thing on. Even if it's only taking up say 3GB, that's 3GB I cannot spare on my 16GB MacBook, or even less so on an iPad, where for most models that would almost halve the available memory. Do I want webpages and apps reloading more frequently, background uploads failing and everything feeling more sluggish just so I can have an LLM of so far very questionable utility running at all times?

The bulk of the complaints on it online and on social are about the storage it takes.

Lol there’s the problem with modern journalism, letting “online and social” lead reporting. Objectively, 9GB or whatever is a much smaller chunk of storage (are there any Apple Intelligence capable devices with less than 256GB of storage standard⁇) than the RAM overhead is of memory. Folks whose devices are so larded up they couldn’t even install a moderately large app can complain all they like but they can also just delete stuff or buy a device with more storage if AI is important to them. There is literally no recourse if it’s eating up memory though, at least for iOS/iPadOS.

Another weird take from the editors... don't get me wrong, this article is a public service and I'll be following its advice if and when I'm ever forced to update to iOS 18 or the latest macOS. But why focus on storage as the issue? I thought the majority of resource consumption an on-device LLM would be responsible for would be in RAM, not storage. The fact that any device that runs Apple Intelligence must have 8GB minimum is a clue to just how much you're losing when you turn this thing on. Even if it's only taking up say 3GB, that's 3GB I cannot spare on my 16GB MacBook, or even less so on an iPad, where for most models that would almost halve the available memory. Do I want webpages and apps reloading more frequently, background uploads failing and everything feeling more sluggish just so I can have an LLM of so far very questionable utility running at all times?