dewme

programmer said:

keithw said:

While it's nice that the M3 Ultra is now finally out, why did it take them over a year to release it?  (The M3 line came out on October 30, 2023!) Why didn't they release the M4 Max Studio at the same time as the M4 Max MBP?  If they had, I may have saved a few thousand $$$ since I got tired of waiting and bought the MBP.   And is the single core performance of the M3 Ultra the same as the M4 Max? Enquiring minds want to know...  But I guess with the 512MB memory capacity and the 80 graphics cores on top of the 32 CPU cores, the M3 Ultra should be killer LLM machine.

The thing people don’t seem to understand when whining about not getting this or that is that these products take a huge development effort to create.  And then when they have been designed, there is a complicated balancing act about fab capacities and yields.  This isn’t some blokes with a drill press pumping out aluminum parts from their garage.  This is light years beyond that in terms of complexity.  Apple (and the rest of the industry) are pulling off miracles, and forum trolls pour hate on them because doing that takes no brain cells and you don’t even have to get off the couch.

If I were to speculate wildly, I would suppose that the process node (N3B) used for the M3 series had some issues, and pretty much only Apple used it.  So to address the issues, Apple moved faster on the M4 using the newer process (N3E), and eschewed the ultra connector to get that line out faster.  This may have freed up M3-capable capacity, which they can now use for the M3 Ultra… and IIRC (and this is even more speculative) the first process did have some advantages over the later one (they removed features from N3E to make it work better), which may play better to what high end chips like the ultra need.  So rather than spending the time to make the ultra connector work using N3E, they are probably focused on N3P, which is apparently what comes next.

Thank you x 10 for injecting some sanity into the conversation. First of all, none of the so-called Apple soothsayers who claim to know what Apple’s plans really are are privy to what Apple is actually planning that’s not been externally announced. 

In my opinion the base iPad has always been an incredible bargain for what it delivers at its price point. The new model does not change my opinion at all. If Apple Intelligence was fully baked and transformational I would say its omission is a big deal. But in 2025, not really. If Apple really starts to deliver significant improvements with a clear purpose with Apple Intelligence, delivering things that no third party AI can deliver because they are too far from Apple’s core, next years base iPad lacking Apple Intelligence will be a serious oversight.

It's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Equity and equality are significantly different.

If you were building a deck on the back of your house and the ground under the deck was not level:

- Equity means you have to cut some of the deck posts to different lengths to compensate for the unequal ground.
- Equality means you cut all of the deck posts to the same length, resulting in a deck that is not level.

It's sad that some of the arguments that are being used to rescind DEI initiatives are based on the assumption that equity and equality are interchangeable. 

pulseimages said:

Tim Cook looks thrilled in that photo. 

Someone farted and Tim is trying not to gag ... while the perpetrator nonchalantly acts like nothing happened.

AmberNeely said:

AppleZulu said:

but if "Send Amber that article I read this morning about glow in the dark petunias" actually drops an article about glow in the dark petunias in your inbox, I'd say he (and others) would embrace that pretty quickly.

 If Apple can actually make it do that sort of thing reliably, I'd be on board. I think I'd be waaaay more on board 10 years from now, when the primary users of technology are at least somewhat more familiar with technology. It feels like the Xers and younger would handle this much better than the boomers will. I dunno. I can be pretty critical, but I'm also extremely happy when I'm proven wrong. It's just this whole ... thing [vague gesture at the internet] isn't terribly kind to a lot of people who haven't been trained to interface with it. Hell, the internet isn't kind to me, and I've been basically living on it since 1998.

(I should note: this isn't directed at anyone on the forums, it's more directed at the general caustic nature of the internet at large. I don't mind if people read my stuff and want to comment on it, obviously I would have picked a different career if that were the case.)

I did want to commend you, though, for somehow managing to pick something I am and have been wildly interested in since I heard about them several years back. I would absolutely love Firefly Petunias but I am not confident in my ability to keep them alive inside of my house, and at $40 a pop, they are a bit... pricey 

For those who subscribe to the theory that everyone must be classified and placed into a schema that neglects human individuality and life experiences, I would be classified as a boomer, a late-boomer to be more precise. I prefer to say that individuals born at any point in time and place are shaped by their need to survive in the environment and during the period of time and the environment in which they live. The hard skills and soft skills individuals need to develop to get by, make a living, and be productive contributors to their family, their community, and society at large are always changing. It’s a very individual thing, not something that fits the “slot everyone into predefined classification buckets” model. I can rebuild a carburetor and operate and maintain an iPhone. Why? Because I had to learn those things and many more things to get by.  

When you really think about it, many of the things that are most corrosive to past and present human societies is rooted in the propensity to strip individuals of their uniqueness and individuality. The wild card of course is that some individuals are always curious, highly adaptable, and continue to seek out and acquire knowledge and learn new skill throughout their lives and through personal life experiences and necessity. The wild card factor is independent of when or where you were born or what broad category or classification bucket you’re slotted into when your individuality is stripped away. 

How does this relate in any way to the products that Apple creates? It’s all about me as an individual flipping the script and viewing purchase decisions through a “pull” model rather than the conventional marketing “push” model. Even though product marketing is heavily focused on “pushing” certain products into certain categories and demographics of consumers, i.e., targeted marketing, I believe it is much more productive and satisfying for me as an individual to view Apple’s (and all other manufacturers’) portfolio of products from a “pull” perspective and ignore the marketing hype. Apple presents a variety of choices from which to choose and I “pull” out the one that best fits my individual needs when all of my factors for selection are considered. 

It’s perfectly fine and probably very smart that Apple puts a ton of effort into understanding their customers and putting together bundles of features in product variations at price points that they believe will appeal to certain categories of buyers they’ve created. If they are very good at this, they will get a lot of “pulls” and sell a lot of products. As an individual I don’t want to lose my “pull power,” i.e., choice, and I’m concerned that Apple’s (and others) desire to “push” things that they’ve invested millions and possibly billions into creating, like Apple Intelligence, is going to limit my ability to choose what I need rather than what Apple wants me to have. So no, I don’t see the iPhone 16e as a boomer phone or a phone targeted to cash strapped individuals. I see it only as another buying option in Apple’s portfolio of iPhones. It stands on its own and it will sink or swim depending solely on what it has to offer to prospective buyers looking to “pull” the trigger on a purchase decision.