auxio

tht said:

DAalseth said:

The thing is that iPads have gotten so good at what they do that they don’t need to be replaced every couple of years. I’m running an M1 iPP. Do I want to upgrade to the latest model? No, there’s no reason to. It runs and does everything I want. I got it planning on 5 years of use. Honestly right now I wouldn’t be surprised to get 10 out of it. It’s that solid. IPad sales trends may be more a reflection of them being exceedingly solid devices, market saturation, and Apple’s inability to position it as a laptop replacement. 

Heh, I'm still on my iPP10.5. Getting a little frustrating though as the last OS update is a bit too much for the hardware, it doesn't get any new spiffy features, and it's basically time to upgrade. Stage Manager is, what, 4 years old now? Haven't used it all. 

There is still a lot of room to go forward with and iterate upon imo, for all the iPads. It's basically a permanent platform like a PC or Mac now. 

I'm still on a 1st gen iPP, though the latest major release of iPadOS finally dropped support for it. Still a fantastic portable media consumption device.

DAalseth said:

hmlongco said:

DAalseth said:

Apple's 2024 Mac mini stashes the power button underneath, a bold stupid move that executives say aligns with user habits

access the button by tucking a finger underneath to press it as long as you’re a six year old child. Otherwise you have to pick the unit up. 

They are trying to put a shine on a turd. This was a stupid design choice that goes against best practices and will waste electricity. So much for Apple trying to act like they keep the environment in focus.

I'd almost be willing to bet that turning the thing off and then doing a full-power reboot off the OS and running applications uses more power than simply leaving the thing on overnight in low power mode. And prevents it from downloading photos, software updates, mail, and other things it needs to do periodically when not busy.

Uses Less Power is one of the many myths that hasn’t been true for decades. 

Agreed. I'd go further and say that it's never been true that having a computer in sleep/low power mode uses less power than having it off. Perhaps if you're turning it off and on a dozen or more times a day.

As far as photos, patches, etc, you forgot malware, DDOS attacks, not to mention damage from power ripples in the night. 

I've been leaving at least one computer either on or in low power mode 24/7 for 25 years and never had any of those problems. Then again, I started with Linux-based machines and switched to Macs, both of which have far better security than Windows PCs thanks to their UNIX heritage. As long as you keep them up-to-date and are smart about what you install on them, you should be perfectly fine.

avon b7 said:

AppleZulu said:

Federighi and Apple are the only ones being honest that none of this is anywhere near becoming ‘sentient’ AGI. 

That's not really relevant right now from a consumer perspective. 

Consumers will use what they have at their disposal just like always. 

And as long as companies continue to hide from consumers the fact that their devices are monitoring  everything they do in order to be able to build up knowledge, people will blissfully accept the marketing fodder that they "need" this.

I often pose the question to people whether they'd be ok if the government put cameras and microphones all over their homes. The answer is universally no. Yet they're quite happy to let tech companies do it via their phones/smart speakers/etc because they really don't understand that it's EXACTLY the same thing. And that's because it was done underhandedly.

Apple is the only company with the integrity to explain, in detail, how their system works and how it protects privacy. And Apple wouldn't even have built it in the first place if all the tech investors and marketing hype hadn't convinced consumers that they "need" it. Yes, we all need tech companies monitoring everything we do just so that we can win bar room bets faster. Biggest eye roll ever.

I absolutely understand that there are some great things about PRACTICAL applications of AI to advance areas like health care. But I'm very cautious about its use in people's personal lives. For example, the way it's being used to manipulate people on social media (e.g. large numbers of bots convincing people of a certain opinion which benefits private interests). And even the kind of information it gives back on topics for which there are different viewpoints, all of which may have merit, but some of which may go against the personal views of the investors behind the technology providing that information.

avon b7 said:

auxio said:

avon b7 said:

Tim has to talk it up. It's his job but sometimes he does go overboard.

We think it's the best. Yeah! I can't imagine him going on record as saying anything else, so long as 'think' is in there somewhere.

At least he is admitting that they are behind. 

Yes, they have done ML for a long time but so has everybody else, and arguably better and more far reaching but I'm sure he'd still say he thinks it's the best. 

I can't blame him for that but Apple made a strategic goof here and that's why it is behind and only the very latest hardware will be able to run it. If this were some kind of long term, well thought out strategic plan, at the very least, iPhones would have shipped with more RAM for the last few generations.

The reality looks more like' Yikes! We need to get rolling on this fast!'

That's why we got the initial response of not even uttering the letters 'AI' and doubling down on ML instead. In hindsight that was foolish but Apple literally had nothing to offer up back then so at least it is understandable. 

One year on, AI was at least utterable and even became the star of WWDC but still there was nothing to show for it until 'later'. The new iPhones came and still AI was the star and STILL there was nothing to show for it and now the complete feature roll out isn't expected until 2025.

From the moment that the generative models became news and quickly stormed to over 100 million users, Apple has been on the back foot. 

You know why Apple was hesitant about AI, but you'd rather dance around it with investor hype. To do AI properly you need to collect data about everything people do on your platforms. And to get people to agree to that, you need to hide the fact that you're doing it in convoluted terms of service agreements. Or what I call, sleazy business tactics. Something which Apple doesn't have the stomach for. Having business ethics is something which should be applauded in my books.

It was not 'hesitancy' IMO but 'impossibility'. Apple goofed strategically. Nobody expects Tim Cook to actually come out and say so of course and that's fine.

Yes, it all takes humongous amounts of data to create viable solutions. There are ethical issues surrounding both the foundational data and the use of resulting AI solutions but they have been known for decades. From theory to reality and beyond

You speak about data like someone who is truly disconnected and simply sees everything as a game to be won. The amount of information which has, and continues to be, collected about people's lives without their knowledge is absolutely unethical. And sure, it has been studied, but still continues on in the face of all that research because investors, politicians, and corporate leaders choose not to care. If it's a "strategic goof" to actually care about what you put out into the world and how it will affect people, then I'm happy to support such "goofs".

Obviously, hesitancy is not a valid explanation here and let's not forget all the ML talk from Apple a couple of years back and everyone trying to claim Apple wasn't 'behind' because they've been 'doing ML since 2017'.

ML requires huge amounts of data too! Yet Apple wasn't 'hesitant'

The kind of data being gathered for ML is very different. Problem spaces like handwriting recognition, for which the data couldn't possibly be used to build a profile about someone's life for nefarious purposes.

The problem is that Apple was caught wrong footed - strategically.

Huawei launched an entire AI platform back in 2018 with absolutely everything needed to get moving on AI. From cluster systems with thousands of cores to software frameworks (CANN/Mindspore) to chipsets for cluster systems (Ascend Max) right down to earbuds (Ascend Mini/Nano) and everything else in between.

Or Nvidia. Or Google. Or Meta.

Aside from Nvidia, which is just for hardware, those are all companies which have deliberately hid their data collection behaviour from customers in their attempts to "win" the data gathering/AI race. Something which I refuse to support.

avon b7 said:

Tim has to talk it up. It's his job but sometimes he does go overboard.

We think it's the best. Yeah! I can't imagine him going on record as saying anything else, so long as 'think' is in there somewhere.

At least he is admitting that they are behind. 

Yes, they have done ML for a long time but so has everybody else, and arguably better and more far reaching but I'm sure he'd still say he thinks it's the best. 

I can't blame him for that but Apple made a strategic goof here and that's why it is behind and only the very latest hardware will be able to run it. If this were some kind of long term, well thought out strategic plan, at the very least, iPhones would have shipped with more RAM for the last few generations.

The reality looks more like' Yikes! We need to get rolling on this fast!'

That's why we got the initial response of not even uttering the letters 'AI' and doubling down on ML instead. In hindsight that was foolish but Apple literally had nothing to offer up back then so at least it is understandable. 

One year on, AI was at least utterable and even became the star of WWDC but still there was nothing to show for it until 'later'. The new iPhones came and still AI was the star and STILL there was nothing to show for it and now the complete feature roll out isn't expected until 2025.

From the moment that the generative models became news and quickly stormed to over 100 million users, Apple has been on the back foot. 

You know why Apple was hesitant about AI, but you'd rather dance around it with investor hype. To do AI properly you need to collect data about everything people do on your platforms. And to get people to agree to that, you need to hide the fact that you're doing it in convoluted terms of service agreements. Or what I call, sleazy business tactics. Something which Apple doesn't have the stomach for. Having business ethics is something which should be applauded in my books.