brianus

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.

are updated with the most appropriate hardware per marketing and component availability.

to make, I wonder if the M2 models will continue as the low cast versions when the M4 chips are installed? They could just ignore the fact of the M3 existence.

Hopefully, they waterfall the M3 MBA 16/256 model to $1000.

The emphasis should be that "the M3 was a challenge to make". It's been about 18 months since N3B has been mass producing chips. Today, costs should have been amortized and production smoothed out so that the M3 is just as cheap as the M2. This is all assuming you should believe the rumors of TSMC N3B being a problem. If it was, it was probably 24 months ago when it was ramping production. Now, it's likely not an issue other than $/mm2 inherent in its production process. After all this time, probably not an issue at all.

If Apple keeps an M2 MBA at $1000, it's going to be for segmentation or work effort reasons, not N3B.