mpantone

king editor the grate said:

mpantone said:

king editor the grate said:

In-person?!? Awesome! Hopefully, it will be interesting to watch again.

I'm afraid you have misunderstood this event.

The actual presentation will be the pre-recorded video as Apple has done since the pandemic. This will be projected in the Steve Jobs Theater and streamed worldwide (Apple TV, YouTube, etc.).

After the video is over, event guests will be given the opportunity to try the newly-announced products in-person in a demo zone outside the theater. Likely some Apple executives and PR types will be available to field questions from the attendees (mostly media). This portion of the event is not broadcasted.

Aw, crapola. 

Apple is more or less done with live presentations with rare minor exceptions that are very situationally specific.

All of their major announcements are now pre-recorded which better suits their "control freak" mentality: there is no chance of an embarrassing moment caused by balky demo hardware/software or poor audio caused by a poorly affixed lav mike. Everything goes smooth and by the numbers. Also the streaming video quality is better quality since they aren't compressing on the fly live.

Streaming live events is very commonplace in 2024. It wasn't the case back in 2007 when Steve announced the iPhone.

There should be no surprise about this.

king editor the grate said:

In-person?!? Awesome! Hopefully, it will be interesting to watch again.

I'm afraid you have misunderstood this event.

The actual presentation will be the pre-recorded video as Apple has done since the pandemic. This will be projected in the Steve Jobs Theater and streamed worldwide (Apple TV, YouTube, etc.).

After the video is over, event guests will be given the opportunity to try the newly-announced products in-person in a demo zone outside the theater. Likely some Apple executives and PR types will be available to field questions from the attendees (mostly media). This portion of the event is not broadcasted.

blastdoor said:

Scrolling through the entries so far it seems that the Neural Engine works great for the quantized version of the benchmark and so-so for half precision. But it seems Apple hardware in general is kind of lame for the single precision version (with the best hardware being the GPU in the M3 Max). 

Happy to be corrected, but I take this to mean that Apple hardware is good for on-device inference but crappy for model training. 

I wonder how much of the issue is CoreML needing more optimization versus Apple needing beefier GPUs... 

I got similar results (GPU being best for single precision, Neural Engine best for quantized benchmark) on my Mac Mini M2 Pro.

The fact that current Apple hardware (which is consumer targeted) isn't optimized for model training comes as no surprise.

This just leaves many questions and perhaps some of them will be answered in the future. My hunch is that Apple will eventually provide developers some sort of access to cloud servers that have more hardware resources for model training. There's also a small possibility that Apple could release some sort of add-in-board AI accelerator for the Mac Pro that is better suited for model training.

But for sure, Apple won't prioritize model training on their regular MacBook and mobile offerings.

I ran the benchmark on one of my Windows PCs equipped with a GeForce RTX 3060 12GB graphics card. That GPU had nearly double the performance of my M2 Pro for single precision and +50% better performance at half precision (compared to the Mac's Neural Engine). Now the 3060 is a low end card from the Ampere generation of GPUs so I'd expect even better performance from higher-end models or those from the Ada Lovelace generation.

All that said, benchmarks are a generally poor barometer of real world performance. Since iOS 18/Sequoia isn't even officially released, it will be some time until we see whether or not the Geekbench AI benchmark reflects actual performance in any sort of meaningful way. In the same way, there aren't many consumer AI applications running locally on typical PCs yet so running the Geekbench benchmark on Windows PCs.

So much of the usefulness is unleashed from the software (Apple considers itself a software company first) so just benchmarking hardware using synthetic tests might be extremely marginal in terms of usefulness or accuracy vis-a-vis real world usage.

eightzero said:

ssfe11 said:

Nice for CA! Eventually no need to carry wallet anymore. Cmon NY!

It will be a nice backup system. However, there is no chance whatsoever that I would ditch the physical version of a state DL or an insurance document when operating a motor vehicle. All you need is some...unsophisticated...individual that simply refuses to accept your "fake ID" and you're off to administrative hell. 

And before you scoff, I had a similar instance happen with the digital vaccination card approved in my state. Had all the info that was then required, and I showed it to an individual that required it for access to a specific location, and they simply said, "oh, we need to see your card." Had I not had it, I would have been refused...and that would have been problematic at the time.

Same with car and house keys. These physical items will not be replaced by digital versions by me. Ever.

YMMV. 

This is correct.

In addition, as long as credit card companies assess merchant transaction fees, some stores will be cash only. Others will offer discounts on cash purchases (many gas station chains have lower cash prices). There are many mom-and-pop stores, a few coffee shops, bars, that are cash only. Also, if you ever go to a farmers market or flea market without cash, you will be shut out by a lot of vendors who are cash only.

And even if the drivers license comes to the iPhone, it's still at the discretion of other parties to accept it as a legal document. You really need some sort of terminal to verify that the digital ID is legitimate. Anyone can fake a screenshot of a digital ID so just waving your phone in front of someone's face isn't going to do. Nightclubs, bars, concert halls will not uniformly and immediately install equipment to validate these digital IDs, so if you want to buy booze at some sports bar, you will need your physical card anyhow.

Let's say you go bar hopping with friends and unlike them, you only bring your digital ID leaving the physical cards (and plastic credit cards at home). What is only 1 in the four bars accepts digital IDs? What are going to do? Stand outside sipping water from a disposable cup while your pals quench their thirst? Nah, you have to bring your physical ID card until you are guaranteed that you won't ever need it. Hell, NFC contactless payment systems have been around for 20+ years and there are still places that are cash only. And even places that take credit cards don't always have POS terminals that accept NFC contactless payments.

Again, this is the type of thread that highlights who is naive and who isn't.

apple4thewin said:

foregoneconclusion said:

apple4thewin said:

I do wonder how the performance of fortnite on the 15 pro phones compare to something such as a switch (which you are lucky if the wall in front of you loads properly)

This review used the iPhone 15 Pro Max and mostly gushed about the performance. Zero mention of anything related to pricing differences for users of the game though. 

https://www.theverge.com/24221683/hands-on-fortnite-iphone-europe-epic-games-store

I just read that 30 minutes ago but they used an iPhone 13 Pro Max not 15. And yeah not really a review of the game more on the installing process and how it “benefits” developers. But the pricing of consumers technically is what caused the issue in the first place where they lowered it to $7.99 vs $9.99 to avoid paying Apple. Since then inflation happened and this year it went up to 8.99. Besides that The Verge failed on reviewing the actual game on the iPhone and just hyping Epic Games.

What are you talking about? Fortnite has always been free-to-play on all platforms including iOS, iPadOS, Mac, PC, and consoles (which includes Nintendo Switch). It wasn't $9.99 nor $7.99 nor $4.99 nor $0.99. It was $0. And it's still $0.

The Verge article isn't really a game review of a specific title, it's a commentary about the return of Epic Games to both iOS and Android. Both platforms get a one paragraph review of Fortnite gameplay which is really all that's necessary since both platforms previously hosted Fortnite.

They also mention the difference between the store cuts (12% for Epic Games Store versus $30 for Apple's App Store): this would be applicable for paid titles as well as in-game purchases.

The Verge article primarily focuses on the return of the Epic Games Store to both iOS and Android platforms while highlighting the region restriction (to the EU) as well as the inconvenience of installing the store app.

I don't know what more you failed to digest from The Verge article.