danvm

Marvin said:

MacPro said:

22july2013 said:

> "For reasons passing understanding, he points at his coffee mug as proof."

Can anyone explain the coffee mug reference? I'm a techie and I didn't get the joke.

I can't remember but did one of the original ads have him holding a mug with an Apple Logo on it?  As in; 'look, no Apple Logo now?'

Either that or he's getting himself accustomed to the taste of Crashytime Chamomile in preparation for his new computing experience:



Justin Long said there were 300 made but there were only around 67 aired plus some keynote specials:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4AAF6508BCE0D8F0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eEG5LVXdKo

I figured it was a reference to him getting older and drinking coffee from a mug. That's not common for student-age/mid-20s people to do, Justin Long was in his 20s when he did the ads.

KITA said:

debonbon said:

Slow news day,

There are plenty of more interesting things to report on at Computex than this.

For example, AMD's new mobile chips (Strix Point) shipping July 2024:

Yawn, comparable power and performance to last year's M3 Pro. Old news.

This always used to happen with PCs years ago, whenever Apple introduced new hardware, the self-described 'tech enthusiasts' would always try and push PCs having twice as fast GHz, faster GPUs etc. At least there was a raw hardware advantage back then. Now people try to hype up hardware that's catching up to Apple's old chips. It's sad to watch. It doesn't make any sense either, if people are 'tech enthusiasts', surely it would make sense to have been enthusiastic about Apple's chips for the last 3 years and their upcoming ones.

Plus people still don't get that performance on its own doesn't matter if you have to deal with the daily pain of using a bad OS. What matters is having good performance + good OS + good hardware design + good ecosystem.

What may seem like a bad operating system to you could be ideal for others. The same apply to hardware design and ecosystem. For instance, gamers might argue that Apple's OS, ecosystem, and hardware are subpar because macOS lacks gaming options, the gaming ecosystem is lacking, the hardware design offers no upgradeability, and it performs slower than devices with Nvidia and AMD GPUs. And from their perspective, they might be correct, given their specific requirements. This could extend to architects and engineers that use CAD / CAM / 3D applications, and also business and enterprises, where MS has a better ecosystem than Apple.  The experience of these group of users will improve with these new processors from AMD and Qualcomm.  Additionally, it appears they are closing the gap and, in some instances, surpassing what Apple has offered.  We'll see if it's true when devices with these processors hit the market.  

At the same time, there is another group of users that have a better experience with the Apple ecosystem, and I suppose you are one of them. I work in a daily basis with both environments and have good and bad experiences with both.  IMO, there is no good or bad OS. It all dependes in your needs and preferences.  

danox said:

danvm said:

emoeller said:

This is great news, and very Apple!

NVIDIA is getting a lot of attention today for its chips, but in reality it isn't so much its chips that make AI work it is their software platform and its ability to integrate with its chips.    Sounds like Apple doesn't it - and in fact it is.

Apple has an AI opportunity to leapfrog everyone else by utilizing its chips and an ultra-efficient software stack to process Large Language Models (LLM) on its servers.  This will also allow Apple to take the high road in terms of ensuring that only high quality and LEGAL data is used for its AI LLMs - something no other AI company currently is doing.

What you suggest of Apple utilizing its processors and software stack is already in place in Microsoft, Google and Amazon with Maia, Axion and Trainium2. A big advantage these three companies have is that already have large datacenters in place, while Apple still behind in this area.  Apple had an opportunity to be a leader in this market, but didn't took advantage of it, and now competition are ahead of them. We'll see what they announce in WWDC.

Apple isn't behind as many would like to believe and their path will be different than the rest in tech and the resulting geek howl will be hilarious as usual.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1cwdlak/notebookcheck_apple_m4_soc_analysis_amd_intel_and/ 

https://beebom.com/early-snapdragon-x-elite-benchmarks-cant-beat-apple-m3/

My comment was about processors used in datacenters, and has no relation to the M4 SoC used in a tablet device.

emoeller said:

This is great news, and very Apple!

NVIDIA is getting a lot of attention today for its chips, but in reality it isn't so much its chips that make AI work it is their software platform and its ability to integrate with its chips.    Sounds like Apple doesn't it - and in fact it is.

Apple has an AI opportunity to leapfrog everyone else by utilizing its chips and an ultra-efficient software stack to process Large Language Models (LLM) on its servers.  This will also allow Apple to take the high road in terms of ensuring that only high quality and LEGAL data is used for its AI LLMs - something no other AI company currently is doing.

What you suggest of Apple utilizing its processors and software stack is already in place in Microsoft, Google and Amazon with Maia, Axion and Trainium2. A big advantage these three companies have is that already have large datacenters in place, while Apple still behind in this area.  Apple had an opportunity to be a leader in this market, but didn't took advantage of it, and now competition are ahead of them. We'll see what they announce in WWDC.

DAalseth said:

danvm said:

DAalseth said:

The elephant in the room though is Copilot. I haven’t used it myself but I know several people who have as part of Office365. They hate it, like truly despise it. Copilot is pushy and they find it getting in the way more than ever helping. Clippy on steroids. So the hardware is only part of the story. The real test will come with Apple’s AI efforts this fall. Let’s hope they aren’t as obnoxious as Microsoft’s apparently are. 

I could be wrong, but on every demo of Copilot in MS Office that I have seen, you start it by clicking an icon in the toolbar, very different from Clippy.  I don't see it as pushy if it works in that way.  

The people I talked to said you can do it that way, but it will also pop up whenever it feels it could be of help. This is what they find most obnoxious, it’s not a little thing in the corner, but a Copilot window in the middle of the screen in front of what you’re trying to do. 

I have been watching some Copilot sessions from last week Build event, and I haven't seen what you describe.  At some point I'll activate the Copilot trial to see how it works, and I'll see if it's as intrusive as you say.

AppleZulu said:

Microsoft's strength - a large base market of third-party PCs - is also its weakness. Rolling out an on-machine artificial intelligence operating system is made orders of magnitude more difficult when their only control over the hardware is a set of somewhat optional hardware specifications. Even if this AI-based operating system is really pretty good when running on an optimally-designed PC that carefully observes all of the recommended specifications, the implementation across-the-board will trail downward from that. The hardware manufacturers will compete in both directions, with many cutting every possible corner to lower the price of the device, while others will try to push out new bells-and-whistles faster than the Windows design teams can reasonably anticipate them. Both will tend to yield suboptimal user experiences.

Closed systems like Apple have has its benefits, but also, its drawbacks.  For example, Apple have been a failure in high end / desktop gaming, and it's easy to see they are miles behind the competition AMD and Nvidia.  Another example is CAD / CAM.  Nvidia is the leader with CUDA and Optix, and is ahead compared to what we have with Apple today.  Apple unified  approach didn't help at all.  

It boggles the mind that still no other major manufacturer has sought to replicate Apple's closed-system design paradigm, with operating system and hardware conceived and implemented as a single, unified thing. This is how Apple is actually the company that repeatedly enters product categories "late," but then flips the whole category on its head by implementing something that's actually well thought out and ultimately desirable and useful to customers. I suppose the ability to start now and be competitive with any sort of new closed-system device is a nearly vertical uphill climb for a competitor, but it's how Apple has made it to where it is now. It will be unsurprising if we one day learn that Apple's shift to in-house silicon from Intel was all about implementing on-device machine-learning and AI. This would mean that for years now, while folks in places like this have heaped snark and criticism on Apple for missing the AI boat and under-powering Siri, etc., Apple has been cruising down a long runway to implement a next-big-thing that will actually fly. Meanwhile, others are alpha-testing on an unsuspecting public things like generative AI chatbots, search and audio/visual media that's of questionable utility and bereft of ethics at its best. 

Looks like Apple thought that the next big thing was the AVP and also their EV.  Maybe they were wrong, and now they found that AI is the next big thing. Apple has been alpha testing Siri for years, and suddenly a small company like OpenAI is the one the change the market. In the past years, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google and META were improving their infrastructure and services, while Apple was distracted with the AVP and EV.  Looking forward to seeing what Apple brings in the WWDC, and also how MS improves their devices and AI services.  Will be interesting how everything evolves in the next few years.  

So, you know, good luck to Microsoft. Competition can be a good thing. Still, if you only have a dollar to invest in either Microsoft or Apple and this product category is the basis for your decision, you might want to put that dollar towards Apple stock.

Right now, AI is moving the market.  If this continue to be the case, MS where you want to put your money (I would also put some money in Nvidia ).