Comment by Juvination
3 days ago
Exactly why does Apple need to do any model training/development? They are out here selling the shovels.
3 days ago
Exactly why does Apple need to do any model training/development? They are out here selling the shovels.
Apple’s Photos ecosystem is privacy oriented and as a result some (now) baseline features require the use of local models.
The Foundation models keep a surprisingly decent set of data available for fast filtering by a local LLM.
I’ve found a slower, second pass, is needed by Qwen to clean it up. (I am running on the new Mac Mini m5 pro 64gb.)
I’ve run my own tests using a date range, a short description of a red cedar planter box build I did last year, and a set of known correct photos.
There is some cool stuff you can do without sending your family’s pics up to any of the frontier model providers.
I've found some strange guardrails with the Foundation models. Like blocking describing of any photo with a single woman in it. It does this relatively consistently but with a different subset every time. Like out of 10 photos in the set, it's skips 6 then the next run, it skips 3. Have you seen guardrail issues like this?
I switched to Gemma 4 instead.
same i am using new embeddinggemma. seems far more capable than foundation models.
I am going to assume that means "a women by herself" and not that it can magically detect her marital status before refusing to continue (I suppose it could be laser-focused on wedding rings...)
No. Apple’s Photos ecosystem uploads all Photos effectively unencrypted to Apple in a way that is readable by Apple, allowing Apple to do server-side analysis of all content. This content is also provided to US or Chinese federal authorities without due process or warrants.
Nothing about iCloud Photos is private.
With Advanced Data Protection enabled (it's not available globally but it is in the US), Photos is E2EE.
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I don't want any of these features and yet they've been forced upon me and are now getting in the way of me actually using my computer how I want. Games and heavy applications slow down and stutter because of "AI" background processes, even with App Tamer, my machine runs too hot to even touch when just idling. Compared to when I got my M2 in '23 and thought, "This is the fastest and snappiest machine I've ever used", my experience with an M5 and the latest macOS version is nothing short of an anti-consumer hellscape.
Interesting, this has not been my experience at all. I have an M5 machine and I'm not even aware of what AI features have been added, and it's streets ahead of my old M1 Pro in speed.
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My Macs run cool and silently. I've never observed a background "AI" process consuming resources.
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Huh, I hadn't seen App Tamer before, that's quite a neat bit of kit. St. Clair does serious work...
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I’m on an M1 workout these issues. How are you isolating them to be AI related?
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Exactly my thought as I read it.
They make and sell the hardware that will actually make AI something everyone can used without needing to rely on OpenAI/Anthropic et al.
Apple has never had a moat, anyone else could have built this sort of hardware but they haven't.
So they don't care which model wins, because it will always move out to the edge of the network, and they own a large chunk of that edge.
> Apple has never had a moat, anyone else could have built this sort of hardware but they haven't.
I think both points are very incorrect. Apple has a massive moat. And Apple is making hardware (specifically, CPUs) that are two years ahead.
Well, the moat is that cpu/npu development is very hard, requires talented engineers, and requires access to cutting edge fab process, all of which in turn costs a lot of $$$. So, sure, “anyone” who has all that can definitely breach Apple’s moat.
Ok.. and why specifically do people work at Apple?
Hint: money is not the only reason.
Jeez.
3 replies →
Ermmm what?
Apples largest competitive advantage has always been and always will be - trust combined with epic marketing to make the vast majority of people aware of it.
Trust of quality, privacy w.r.t data etc.
I’m sorry but I’ve seen so many bad takes re. Apple over the years. Many of you think you are so smart on topics outside of your domain - but you’re not.
Don’t underestimate how much of their success is due to unusual internal advantages over competitors.
They spent decades learning to eliminate a 1000 headaches for themselves, and many for their customers, by accumulating vertical integration:
The co-design of their own comms, processors, devices and OS variants. Their own integrated supply chain and sales channels.
The better the results, the more invisible or clock-like their delivery.
Very easy to overlook. But nobody can match them on their terms.
(Nintendo also applied a unique set of internal advantages to generations of successful devices: vertically integrating humble components, highly scoped software, a strong theory of fun, and deep branding with novel polished interfaces.)
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??? Apple’s advantage over their competition is the fact that they do hardware, Apple Silicon and they do operating systems Apple OS very very well, in comparison to the present competition in the marketplace.
They are the last company that’s vertical from the 1980s. Unfortunately, all the other companies (SGI, Sun, Digital etc..) died in the face of the Wintel colossus.
Marketing is irrelevant. If you don’t have something to sell that is actually any good see the Microsoft Surface fiasco and its lack of an impact in the marketplace.
What exactly about the parent comment is wrong? Apple has always been good at making hardware that people are willing to pay a premium to use. I can easily imagine them playing a similar role in local LLMs to the role they played in personal computing in the 1980s or smartphones in the 2010s.
> Apples largest competitive advantage has always been and always will be - trust.
Lmao
> Many of you think you are so smart on topics outside of your domain
Turn the mirror around
Nvidia is also selling the shovle but they train their own LLM and by doing so they can fine tune their CUDA/Chip to have a better shovel than others.
Nvidia's own model does not have to beat OpenAI or any SOTA model. Nvidia just need to build up the in house expert and knowledge to make a better chip since hyperscalers and none hyperscaler like Meta is building their own AI chip now.
Apple can chose not to train their own model to learn how to sell a better shovel.
> They are out here selling the shovels
just wish their containerization / linux compat wasn't so nerfed. Just moved my homelab's inference engine over to a GB10 from a Mac MTP setup to have first class k8s support, as well as open up access to the broader CUDA ecosystem (cuOpt etc.).
They’re not really. They make the things useful for two classes of users: Mac Studio for people running models locally and Siri backed by Gemini for voice interaction.
They’ll likely embed text models more deeply in the future, but the history of “Apple Intelligence” doesn’t give a lot of hope that they’ll nail it.
So they’re not selling shovels (a precursor to making the thing) but products and services to use it.
apple is pretty well set up for this because they do all their hardware in house. if they wanted to, they could pivot in this direction. Ternus is also a hardware guy.
That's just BS cope. They tried and miserably failed - and still are failing badly. Remember, they were the ones to push for AI with "Siri". Many firings later and 2 CEOs later we are still exactly in square one. The fucking thing can't even get who I want to call, let alone set an alarm without touching my phone FFS.
What is there to cope about? Apple is the last vertical computer company left from the 1980s. Apple Silicon just gets better every year. They have also managed to replace several companies that well gave them problems over the years or said no to doing anything that involved moving into the future. i.e, Motorola of Schaumburg, Illinois, IBM and Intel one company’s out of business. and the other two are trying to hang on to past glories.
By the way, the new Apple folding phone appears to be a hit. a real hit the last test left is whether or not it is as good as it appeared to have been in the demonstrations. only time will tell when it gets into the hands of the general public.
Lets not overlook the fact that Apple is only around due to sheer luck with NeXT reverse acquisition, and having Steve Jobs back on the steering wheel.
Nowadays they are basically the iDevices company, if macOS wasn't required for XCode, the worldwide sales would be much less.
None of what you said is relevant to my comment about Apple's failed AI strategy nor Siri.
I have no interest in Siri or always-on AI assistants. I turn as much of that off as I can.
I do have an interest in local, private inference though and I am willing to pay for that.
Apple segmenting the market is actually a good strategy. Horses for courses, as they say.
> local, private inference
Yeah, sure, inside a closed-source OS communicating constantly to private servers on the internet. Sounds very private to me.