I do not feel as though Apple is exposed as others though their investment is far less than other and their products tend to be profitable. Companies who are AI first and have spent many many billions are never going to get that money back. You can’t have a business that users peoples data to train their AI. Then tell them their jobs will be gone because of it and then ask the newly unemployed to pay for those services. The bubble will break then it will just pave a normal part of everyday life. And enhancement. Not a replacement. My thoughts anyway.
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Apple Caught Off Guard by AI Demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio
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Right, only Apple is raising prices.
Absurd. You have absolutely no idea what a Mac Pro was, particularly not the M2 Ultra Mac Pro and what it had over the M2 Ultra Mac Studio in terms of AI. Spoiler: Absolutely nothing. No reasonable enterprise would buy the Mac Pro's architecture over that of the Mac Studio for AI purposes.
Profound.
Neither. It was a way to eliminate customer-installed third-party RAM upgrades, charge the Apple price for RAM via configuration option, and make people buy new Macs sooner instead of letting them extending its life by a few more years.
JohannesO
macrumors 6502
keksikuningas
macrumors 6502
Wake me up when they have a good enterprise support. Read too many horror stories about Mac Pro / Xserve owners struggling with repairs and troubleshooting
I prefer AI adapting to us. We just need it as a tool, not as surrogate for humans.
I don't know why you're buying the products of such an evil company or posting on a forum where people discuss these products.
In any event, I've had lots of wonderful computers and other products with those options. Most interesting anecdote: I had a 2009 27" iMac. Nearly every single part of that eventually broke down before the whole thing went down after about 8 years. I had to have the display exchanged several times, the internal spinning HDD failed and was exchanged once via an Apple program, and sometime later it failed again. The CD drive also failed. Remember that in those days, AppleCare couldn't be extended forever.
After that, I've had several more additional 27" iMacs over the years with evil non-user-upgradeable (*) SSDs, no more CD drives. no more displays that were separate from the glass etc. etc.
Nothing ever failed on a single one of those. I still have a 2020 27" iMac. Never had a problem with any of those evil non-upgradeable components. What has been a problem is sometimes getting defective RAM from OWC. They were great about exchanging it, but that's still annoying. Has never happened to me with builtin evil soldered RAM.
I remember from decades ago when tinkering with cars was a thing and cars lasted 10 years. Nowadays they last at least twice that long with their evil non-tinker engines. Or TVs had to be repaired. I haven't had any displays break since LCDs became a thing. All that is to say that this may all be very evil, but also takes away a lot problems.
(*) = I know they could be exchanged by some people, but not regular users.
I have some news about the Mac Pro and Xserve, but I don't know how to break it to you. I suggest sitting down.
When companies serve a billion or more people, there will always be horror stories.
Profound. I would like to add that money can't buy happiness and everything happens for a reason. Let me close with the fact that love means never having to say you're sorry.
But a considerable number of agent tasks I do colleagues and friends when socializing! Ok, I get it, I’ll give it a try. Next time, I’ll ask my AI agent if they want to go bowling after work. I wonder if they prefer non-alcoholic beer.
So it is not the data centers per se taxing the grid, it is the agents of the slop creating and brain-work outsourcing humans! My bid to protect the grid: get rid of the agents, replace them with humans. 😊
Piggie
macrumors G3
It's cute and funny seeing people hoping that the AI enthusiasm will come to an end soon.
You you understand that those who have the best AI in the world that could in time do everything, will in effect rule and control the world.
Vastly more power than a nuclear bomb.
A few nukes will damage a few cities and few 100 miles.
My AI taking over your country would bring your whole way of life to it's knees within a few days and your whole society would break down into chaos.
No country can be in a position to allow that to happen to them, so they all have to 'play the game' and stay in the race.
There may come a time when we simply hit an AI brick wall and it cannot advance any more, but that's not going to happen for a long long time.
Remember... It's still less than 4 years since ChatGPT was launched to the public, and the 1st real time normal people knew anything about AI in an real term apart from the movies.
The Will smith eating spaghetti video was just over 3 years ago.
And humanoid robots could barely walk without falling over.
Imagine what another 10 years or advancement will be like.
AI is going to be put into anything and everything.
This is one of the major changes in human life that's ever come along.
We invented the machine in the industrial revolution which meant a machine could replace the muscles of a human.
And then we de-valued the 'Working Man' as we now had machines.
But we valued and paid well for the brains of people.
Now we are potentially going to be doing the same for Brains and we did for Muscles, so the brains of humans won't hold the power of the muscles of humans.
Times are changing, and if anyone thinks this will all just fizzle out and things will go back to how they were, perhaps 5 or 10 years ago, I'm sorry but you are going to be very disappointed.
Those in power have zero reason to want to stop this, and quite the opposite and going to race to keep as near to the front as possible.
You you understand that those who have the best AI in the world that could in time do everything, will in effect rule and control the world.
Vastly more power than a nuclear bomb.
A few nukes will damage a few cities and few 100 miles.
My AI taking over your country would bring your whole way of life to it's knees within a few days and your whole society would break down into chaos.
No country can be in a position to allow that to happen to them, so they all have to 'play the game' and stay in the race.
There may come a time when we simply hit an AI brick wall and it cannot advance any more, but that's not going to happen for a long long time.
Remember... It's still less than 4 years since ChatGPT was launched to the public, and the 1st real time normal people knew anything about AI in an real term apart from the movies.
The Will smith eating spaghetti video was just over 3 years ago.
And humanoid robots could barely walk without falling over.
Imagine what another 10 years or advancement will be like.
AI is going to be put into anything and everything.
This is one of the major changes in human life that's ever come along.
We invented the machine in the industrial revolution which meant a machine could replace the muscles of a human.
And then we de-valued the 'Working Man' as we now had machines.
But we valued and paid well for the brains of people.
Now we are potentially going to be doing the same for Brains and we did for Muscles, so the brains of humans won't hold the power of the muscles of humans.
Times are changing, and if anyone thinks this will all just fizzle out and things will go back to how they were, perhaps 5 or 10 years ago, I'm sorry but you are going to be very disappointed.
Those in power have zero reason to want to stop this, and quite the opposite and going to race to keep as near to the front as possible.
“The Information makes up why they didn’t have the information about the new systems.”
We’ll see if analysts report an increase in Mac unit sales based on these two lines OR if they remain a low single digit percentage of hardware sales. If they sell the same “less than 30 million”, then no, they weren’t taken by surprise, they’re doing what they ALWAYS do when it’s time to refresh hardware, clearing the deck of the less important products so full attention can be focused on their more desired lines. To be sure, a laptop more performant than the Mac mini is on the way.
Remember, making up news about Apple isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. 🙂
We’ll see if analysts report an increase in Mac unit sales based on these two lines OR if they remain a low single digit percentage of hardware sales. If they sell the same “less than 30 million”, then no, they weren’t taken by surprise, they’re doing what they ALWAYS do when it’s time to refresh hardware, clearing the deck of the less important products so full attention can be focused on their more desired lines. To be sure, a laptop more performant than the Mac mini is on the way.
Remember, making up news about Apple isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. 🙂
Which laptop would that be? M5 Max already exists in MacBook Pros and there wont be non-base variants of the M6. The MB Ultra will have an M5 Max at best.
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Abazigal
Contributor
For a company supposed caught flat footed, Apple doesn’t seem to have been disadvantaged in any way.
They are not flushing billions down the toilet maintaining an expensive LLM. Apple is responding to limited supply of chips and ram by raising prices of their hardware, and my guess is that customers will continue to buy them, and any decrease in demand will be offset by the higher prices. The solution to hardware with insufficient ram to run Siri AI is to … buy their latest hardware.
Seems like Apple is winning by not having a leg in the AI race.
They are not flushing billions down the toilet maintaining an expensive LLM. Apple is responding to limited supply of chips and ram by raising prices of their hardware, and my guess is that customers will continue to buy them, and any decrease in demand will be offset by the higher prices. The solution to hardware with insufficient ram to run Siri AI is to … buy their latest hardware.
Seems like Apple is winning by not having a leg in the AI race.
tobiastimpe
macrumors regular
It's interesting to see people still wanting the AI bubble to pop. Sure, it may pop soon, but LLMs as coding assistants won't go away.
AI models finally give us/the industry a reason to need more compute.
AI models finally give us/the industry a reason to need more compute.
aknabi
macrumors 6502a
Indeed I think the original post-Jobs plan was that Tim would continue to be the ops guy and "make line go up" every quarter using the traditional methods and Ive (along with Scott Forstall) would be the folks that could see what's happening, figure out where the puck was heading and skate to it with the Apple Magic.
Instead Tim got left looking at what the teams (who by the year are getting bozonified) were doing to respond to trends and green light incrementally better designed products, but not answering the core questions with their products in those segments (which is a core part of the "Apple Magic").
spazzcat
macrumors 601
AI isn't going to go away, when it pops there will be just less money being tossed around.
zombierunner
macrumors 68000
wanha
macrumors 68030
how, exactly, was Apple "caught off guard" by releasing these models earlier than originally planned?
Apple would equally be caught off-guard by the demand for an updated Mac Pro, had they not EOL-ed it.