Macs to Get AI-Focused M4 Chips Starting in Late 2024

[svish]

Looks like it will be a yearly update to all the Macs with a new M series chip every year going forward.

 

[MuppetGate]

Apple is so behind on AI. It's even looking like they are getting more behind and not even catching up. People keep saying Apple is often late but better, as if that some sort of vindication. But that's not even true -- Apple does not always come up with something better. But what I want is for Apple to be consistently earlier and better.

Yup, this old chestnut 🙄

Interesting though, in the light of the thread running on ArsTechnica:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/amazon-virtually-kills-efforts-to-develop-alexa-skills-disappointing-dozens/

which doesn’t prove that Apple is ahead, but it certainly indicates that they’re not as far behind as folk like to make out. What it does prove is that if you buy into Alexa or Siri, at some point you will go online to whine how crappy it is and how much farther ahead “the other guy” is.

But what is interesting is some of the opinions we see now that Amazon is pulling the plug on third-party Alexa skills:

I agree in practice, but I distinctly remember both the tech media and tech community at large roasting Siri over things like lack of integration, lack of certain features competitors were racing to bolt in, and the lack of remembered context. At the time it didn't matter that a lot of these features would turn out to be useless, or buggy, or later dropped/removed, it gave the impression that Apple was "behind". Some of that turned out to be Apple waiting to do certain things with on device processing or waiting until low power modes were available, the "Hey Siri" wake work originally only worked while on wall power for instance, but only in hindsight can we see a more deliberate approach to features now that the gold rush feature list race has ended

And this:

I feel like this is one of the most underrated aspects of Apple’s typical approach: Not chasing novelties, instead focusing on genuine advances. The haptics in their devices, display quality over resolution, energy efficiency over battery capacity, focusing their silicon on things like decoders and caches instead of clock speed and core count, etc. Siri is better than most people give it credit for, especially when all they want to do with other assistants is play Trivial Pursuit.

And of course, many believed (weirdly) that Apple has just started working on AI (hence the “scrambling to catch up” meme).

 

[theorist9]

Well. RAM fans will be happy they're getting 512GB. The 1.5 TB+ fans will still cry it's not enough.

Funny thing is, a top spec'd consumer grade PC [Non-Workstation] tops at 256GB of DDR5 RAM support.

And often less. For instance, the max RAM for the Dell XPS tower is 64 GB. Even if you consider the max possible RAM supported by the chipsets themselves, the limits for any consumer PC made with a Ryzen 9 or i9-14900K are 128 GB and 192 GB, respectively. Indeed, I'm curious what consumer chipset you found that could support 256 GB.

Thus Apple's top consumer-grade chip, the M3 Max, which allows up to 128 GB RAM, is certainly in the running.

But then again, the Mac Pro isn't a consumer-grade PC. It's a workstation. And PC versions of those currently support 1 TB – 2 TB RAM (depending on the chip).

 

[whateverest]

Because my M1 Max has the ugly notch which to this day I hate and the webcam isn’t even that good so they can change it

TopNotch

 

[chmania]

For technology companies to stay afloat, they need you to come back at regular intervals to buy the newest version of their products. But, do you really need to buy the their newest product out of the barn?

 

[SoldOnApple]

I hope we still get the full fat AI experience on M2 Max era chips. This was a big purchase for me, I don't want to upgrade again for as long as possible.

 

[SRemington]

Great, does that mean you can‘t buy the upcoming iPad Pro because the M3 chip will not have the features needed to utilise the new AI functions of iPadOS 18?

 

[Torty]

I hope we still get the full fat AI experience on M2 Max era chips. This was a big purchase for me, I don't want to upgrade again for as long as possible.

It will still work but I would not be surprised to see a lot of M4 only AI features in next MacOS.

 

[chmania]

All Apple has to do is put AI in Safari. And, keep allowing all "older" Macs get the "newer" macOS, without artificially obsoleting them.
MS Edge has it for a long time.

 

[Realityck]

All Apple has to do is put AI in Safari. And, keep allowing all "older" Macs get the "newer" macOS, without artificially obsoleting them.
MS Edge has it for a long time.

Hmmm. Most of us are use to framing a question in the URL field that finds us articles that might match what we wish to compare or know about.

Copilot just perform searches and answers in relation to the page you’re viewing. They list these examples as what it can do.

• What wine should I pair with this recipe?
• Are these roller skates good for roller derby?
• Compare this coffee maker to {other brand} and put it in a table
• Would this plant thrive in an east-facing window?
• Key takeaways of this report

This opens the consumer to be directed to specific advertisers and products rather then true spontaneity of possible matches. This could be true of presenting multiple pages all designed to favor specific brands.

Does Safari need this, or would Safari be better served by Siri being greatly improved to allow voice interpretations of what full phrases you want to search on the web. Instead of this limited general topic matches it offers currently.

IMHO AI in the form of digital assistants could be more useful than generative AI where the way you ask a question is interpreted with some % of accuracy.

We are less then 2 months now from WWDC 2024.

 

[wanha]

Now it's going to be AI everything because they don't know what else to market :/

yeah let's just pretend AI is not the most revolutionary tech we've seen in at least 10 years and complain that this is all a marketing gimmick to justify your preconceived narrative that Apple has lost the plot

 

[wanha]

Apple is so behind on AI. It's even looking like they are getting more behind and not even catching up. People keep saying Apple is often late but better, as if that some sort of vindication. But that's not even true -- Apple does not always come up with something better. But what I want is for Apple to be consistently earlier and better.

I admire how you don't let the fact that we have zero way of knowing how far behind or not Apple is in AI because they haven't announced anything get in the way of your "Apple is so behind on AI" narrative

you may well be right, but the fact that you don't even consider you might be wrong is just amazing

 

[jamess109]

What does this mean for M3 could they be dead in the water for AI. Apple said MB Air will be an AI MacBook, so if the M3 Pro or iMac have what should be same or better chips, thus should all be capable of running AI too. Also has AI only been in the works for less than a year so far at Apple or have they been working on it longer then say Google before they rushed theirs out and others?

 

[antonrg]

Looks like it will be a yearly update to all the Macs with a new M series chip every year going forward.

And more opportunities for Apple to limit features for Macs depending on the chips installed. They will start to really mess around with the OS 😹

 

[nottorp]

but the iMac and Mac mini will still start with 8GB memory

Nah, the "AI" will improve memory usage so they'll go back to 4 Gb...

 

[Torty]

And more opportunities for Apple to limit features for Macs depending on the chips installed. They will start to really mess around with the OS 😹

So if you continuously want to enjoy all the available features it would be a good idea to get the cheapest base device and update regularly.

 

[chmania]

Does Safari need this, or would Safari be better served by Siri being greatly improved to allow voice interpretations of what full phrases you want to search on the web. Instead of this limited general topic matches it offers currently.

Personally, I don't need AI, as it takes the fun in searching for something. I'd be quite happy, if Apple won't artificially obsolete its own products by taking of parts of the base macOS, when a newer variant is released. The problem I notice is that Apple had learnt how to dictate to users what to buy and when to buy against common sense, at least in the US. It should be the other way, the users should dictate what they want to manufacturers, which will make them to compete with each other -- the amount of Android devices and Windows laptops/computers available in the market, in the EU and the rest of the world proves that. The EU parliament/commission is with the users rather than with the manufacturer.

 

[Torty]

Nah, the "AI" will improve memory usage so they'll go back to 4 Gb...

Indeed the OS could learn which and when apps are used and therefore memory management could be optimized. But only for M4 chips and newer 😊

 

[atonaldenim]

Please tell me “Hidra” is the fabled monster SoC Srouji supposedly designed for the canceled Apple car…

9to5Mac:

Apple Car would have a chip equivalent to four M2 Ultras​

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said in a Q&A on Monday that the Apple Silicon team was “heavily involved” in the Apple Car project before it was shut down. According to the journalist, the company was putting a lot of effort into the “AI brain” of the car, which would be powered by a custom Apple Silicon chip.

This new chip would have the equivalent power of four M2 Ultras chips (the most powerful Apple has to date) combined. A single M2 Ultra chip consists of 134 billion transistors and features a 24-core CPU, a GPU with up to 76 cores, and a dedicated 32-core Neural Engine. M2 Ultra powers the current generation of Mac Studio and Mac Pro.

Interestingly, Gurman says that the development of this new chip for the car was “nearly finished” before the project was discontinued. As some of the engineers working on the car project were reassigned to other teams at Apple, the company could reuse the engineering of this new chip for future projects.

 

[macinfo]

Nah, the "AI" will improve memory usage so they'll go back to 4 Gb...

We are happy to introduce Ram Doubler Ai. We can’t wait to see what you’ll do with it…

 

[Star Brood]

Now it's going to be AI everything because they don't know what else to market :/

On-hardware FUNCTIONAL AI that can understand you and reply to you in a way that you can also understand, would be an absolute game changer, and yes is an absolutely marketable thing that would actually make me go out and buy one.

For the prices they've been asking for hardware, especially on their phones (which used to cost 400 for a flagship), I would expect something that can almost read someone's mind, in a way that GPT can make sense of the nonsense I spit out.

 

[zombierunner]

It's only a name though - you only think it's "almost too late" because you're thinking about the number in the name.

In terms of performance it's by far the lead processor until the next Ultra comes out...which will be 18 months later, the name is irrelevant.

That's true for the Ultra. I was planning to get the M3 Max version but if they launch the m4 max chip 3-4 months later, I am going to have buyer's regret.

 

[nickf]

We are happy to introduce Ram Doubler Ai. We can’t wait to see what you’ll do with it…

That was an essential purchase for my 68k machines back in the day. And it worked well too, more or less.

 

[richard harris podolsky]

It’s a concern that Apple was not part of the early AI deals. They look like the proverbial deer in the headlights. They will eventually rally but right now they aren’t at the table or even in the room. It’s an embarrassment. While I’m griping - Apple Silicon is not or appears to not be able to compete in the GPU space. NVIDEA is eating Apples lunch. As proof, good luck trying to take full advantage of Metal Performance Shaders. No can do - it’s a swamp and when you finally do - it is like ho hum at best or slower than CPU! So, all those GPU cores are hard or near impossible to access/activate.

 

[johnediii]

"M4 versions of the Mac desktops could support as much as 512GB Unified Memory, which would be a marked jump over the current 192GB limit."
This upgrade will cost