Comment by matheusmoreira
2 months ago
Indeed. If Apple makes it feasible to run models like GLM 5.2 at home, I will become their customer.
2 months ago
Indeed. If Apple makes it feasible to run models like GLM 5.2 at home, I will become their customer.
It's plausible but is the Apple Tax for a 1TB memory machine on top of current memory prices really worth it? I paid around $4000 for 4090m laptop with 16GB VRAM back in 2023, it's great but DoA for even quantized LLMs. I can run SLMs and fine tune it but that's it.
We need one of those specialized inference chip startups to succeed and a PC manufacturer willing to bet on them against Nvidia for the local AI to find mass market appeal.
I recently bought a Mac mini M4 16 GB - mostly to run Immich. I assumed I needed a Linux box. After a lot of researched I was quite surprised that the mac was the cheapest option. So not always an Apple tax.
> After a lot of researched I was quite surprised that the mac was the cheapest option
For Immich, the cheapest option will either be a NAS or a used laptop depending on the amount of data you need, I wouldn't buy a mac for that.
5 replies →
>" After a lot of researched I was quite surprised that the mac was the cheapest option. So not always an Apple tax."
Apple has always been the most cost effective choice for the value you get going all the way back to the Apple II, it's just that the floor of that cost has always been high. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a just a fanboy one way or the other.
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If you think the apple tax is high you should see the nvidia tax.
> I paid around $4000 for 4090m laptop
That's how much many developers currently spend on tokens - every day. Whatever "Apple Tax" applies to a device that can run a capable model offline will amortise itself in a blink.
>Whatever "Apple Tax" applies to a device that can run a capable model offline will amortise itself in a blink.
Current high-end Mac Studio with 32-core M3 Ultra chip and 96 GB of memory is $6800, 96GB is not enough to run GLM 5.2 without extreme quantization or stacking HW; but for the sake of discussion let's run quantized version on a single high end Mac Studio.
GLM 5.2 Max plan costs $ 112/m, so it would take ~60 months to recover the costs assuming the machine was bought just for AI. By then the current AI landscape would have changed drastically.
I use local AI on both Linux and Mac every single day, there's freedom, privacy and peace of mind in running the model locally. But I feel cost/value of local AI is overblown.
In what sustainable world outside of Bay Area jobs do devs spend 120k on tokens monthly?
2 replies →
"Apple tax" is such a lazy and inaccurate accusation to level. Sure we've had expensive wheels on the cheese grater (ie Mac Pro) but we've also had:
1. When Apple came out with the real Macbook Air in 2010/2011 (not the silly 2008 one), nobody could compete with it with those specs at that price and they couldn't for years. And every competitor usually sucked in some major way, most often the trackpad;
2. The Mac Mini is an outstanding piece of hardware for $600. Or was;
3. I've generally found that "Apple tax" complaints levelled against the iPhone to be nothing more than Android cope;
4. The M-series silicon has been an absolute game-changer. I honestly thought the first-generation M1s would be not great but they came out swinging. And the price points for these Macbooks have all been great, much better than the last-gasp-of-Johnny-Ive touch bar butterfly keyboard series, which were objectively awful.
you're not a customer of any of their products at all already? not a single apple device in your household?
I didn't have a single Apple device in my house until a month ago when I bought a Neo. The last Apple devices I had before that were an iPod Nano and a PowerMac G5 many many years ago.
Apple has pretty good competition in every segment with the exception of maybe the iPad, but I'm not a tablet user.
Some folks like to have a computing environment free of proprietary influences and extremely strong vendor lock-in. I cannot claim to posses any apple devices.
How does the Mac have extremely strong vendor lock-in?
Sure, you can use the App Store and use all the stuff that integrates with iPhone, iCloud, etc
But you can also just treat it as Linux for Laptops (that actually works), and roll with all the standard open source tools.
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Correct. Been using Linux and Android for over ten years. My household had no Apple devices until I got married.
No, I've never owned an Apple device in my life, neither has anyone in my family to my knowledge.
None. And I have a PC, a personal laptop, a work laptop, my current and my previous Android phone.
What a bizarre bubble you live in to even be asking this question... I've never owned a single apple product, and never will.
And in the rare occasions in which I have to use someone's MacBook, I'm completely lost - like some elderly person.
there a many people who don't own Apple. Why are you so surprised? I certainly don't and never will. What's it got that I can't get on a standard PC + Linux?
Not. A. Single. One.