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I feel like Apple needs a new CEO, I've felt this way for a long time. If I had been in charge of Apple I would have embraced local LLMs and built an inference
by giancarlostoro 1y ago
I feel like Apple needs a new CEO, I've felt this way for a long time. If I had been in charge of Apple I would have embraced local LLMs and built an inference engine that optimizes models that are designed for Nvidia, I also would have probably toyed around with the idea of selling server-grade Apple Silicon processors and opening up the GPU spec so people can build against it. Seems like Apple tries to play it too safe. While Tim Cook is good as a COO, he's still running Apple as a COO. They need a man of vision, not a COO at the helm.
- jbs789 1y agoSounds like you’ve got a solid handle on things - go do it!
- giancarlostoro 1y agoGive me a majority share in AAPL if that's what you want ;)
- jbs789 1y agoThere are a things we can all do in our own lives, not necessarily running Apple. I for one am grateful not to be in the public spotlight running Apple! Everyone has opinions. It’s what you do with them that counts.
- ako 1y agoThey have local LLMs, apple foundation models: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/FoundationModels https://developer.apple.com/documentation/FoundationModels
- bigyabai 1y agoSoftware-wise, it makes sense: Nvidia has the IP lead, industry buy-in and supports the OSes everyone wants to use. Hardware-wise though, I actually agree - Apple has dropped the ball so hard here that it's dumbfounding. They're the only TSMC customer that could realistically ship a comparable volume of chips as Nvidia, even without really impacting their smartphone business. They have hardware designers who can design GPUs from scratch, write proprietary graphics APIs and fine-tune for power efficiency. The only organizational roadblock that I can see is the executive vision, which has been pretty wishy-washy on AI for a while now. Apple wants to build a CoreML silo in a world where better products exist everywhere, it's a dead-end approach that should have died back in 2018. Contextually it's weird too, I've seen tons of people defend Cook's relationship with Trump as "his duty to shareholders" and the like. But whenever you mention crypto mining or AI datacenter markets, people act like Apple is above selling products that people want. Future MBAs will be taught about this hubris once the shape of the total damages come into view.
- jen20 1y ago> But whenever you mention crypto mining or AI datacenter markets, people act like Apple is above selling products that people want. People also want comfortable mattresses and high quality coffee machines. Should Apple make them too? Apple not being in a particular industry is a perfectly valid choice, which is not remotely comparable to protecting their interests in the industries they are currently in. Selling datacenter-bound products is something Apple is not _remotely_ equipped for, and staffing up to do so at reasonable scale would not be a trivial task. As for crypto mining... JFC.
- bigyabai 1y agoApple is perfectly well equipped to sell datacenter products. They've done it in the past, even supporting Nvidia's compute drivers along the way. If they have the staff to design consumer-facing and developer-facing experiences, why wouldn't they address the datacenter? Money is money. 10 years ago people would have laughed at the notion of Nvidia abandoning the gaming market, now it's their most lucrative option. Apple can and should be looking at other avenues of profit while the App Store comes under scrutiny and the Mac market share refuses to budge. It should be especially urgent if unit margins are going down as suppliers leave China.
- aurareturn 1y agoI think if Cook had vision, he could have started something called Apple Enterprise and sold Apple Silicon as a server and made AI chips. I agree he’s too conservative and has no product vision. Great manager though.
- mrexroad 1y agoThey did have Xserve back in the day. As great as Apple silicon is for running local llms along with being a general-purpose computing device, it’s not clear that Apple silicon have enough of a differentiating advantage over a rack of nvidia gpus to make it worthwhile in enterprise…
- seanmcdirmid 1y agoI was pleasantly surprised Apple Silicon came out at all. Someone has their eye on long term vision at Apple at least, they just didn't do this on a whim.
- flutas 1y agoOr someone told Tim "we can save $XYZ per phone if we switch to custom designed silicon, and potentially expand it to Mac as well so we no longer have Intel overheating our Macbooks." He was after-all more of an operations guy than a product guy before moving into the CEO role.
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- jbverschoor 1y agoLocal llm.. everybody is scared of privacy.. many people don’t want to buy subscriptions (still). Just sell a proper HomePod with 64GB-128GB ram, which handles everything including your personal LLM, Time Machine if needed, back to Mac (Tailscale/zerotier) + they can compete efficiently with the other. Cloud providers.
- bigyabai 1y ago> Just sell a proper HomePod with 64GB-128GB ram The same Homepod that almost sold as poorly as Vision Pro despite a $349.99 MSRP? Apple charges $400 to upgrade an M4 to 64GB and a whopping $1,200 for the 128GB upgrade. The consumer demand for a $800+ device like this is probably zilch, I can't imagine it's worth Apple's time to gussy up a nice UX or support it long-term. What you are describing is a Mac with extra steps, you could probably hack together a similar experience with Shortcuts if you had enough money and a use-case. An AI Homepod-server would only be efficient at wasting money.
- redundantly 1y ago> The same Homepod that almost sold as poorly as Vision Pro despite a $349.99 MSRP? The HomePod did poorly because competitor offerings with similar and better performing features were priced under $100. The difference in sound quality was not worth the >3x markup.
- VagabundoP 1y agoHave a team pushing out opitmised open source models. Over time this thing could become the house AI. Basically Star Treks computer.
- brookst 1y agoIt’s a mistake to generalize from the HN population. Most people don’t care about privacy (see: success of Facebook and TikTok). Most people don’t care about subscriptions (see: cable TV, Netflix). There may be a niche market for a local inference device that costs $1000 and has to be replaced every year or two during the early days of AI, but it’s not a market with decent ROI for Apple.
- elAhmo 1y agoI think shareholders are fine with Tim Cook as a CEO.
- utyop22 1y agoI sometimes read posts on here and just laugh. Its easy to sit in the armchair and say "just be a visionary bro" when they forget Tim worked under Steve for awhile before his death - he has some sense and understanding of what it takes to get a great product out of the door. Nvidia is generating a lot of revenue, sure - but what is the downstream impact on its customers with the hardware? All they have right now is negative returns to show for their spending. Could this change? Maybe. Is it likely? Not in my view. As it stands, Apple has made the absolute right choice in not wasting its cash and is demonstrating discipline. Which when all this LLM mania quietens, shareholders will respect.
- moduspol 1y agoThis. I wouldn’t exactly give them bonus points for the handling of Apple Intelligence, but beyond that, they’ve taken a much more measured and evidence-based approach to LLMs than the rest of big tech. If it ends up that we are in a bubble and it pops, Apple may be among the least impacted in big tech.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoFriend of mine, used to work for Apple. He told me that a popular Apple saying is "We're late to the party, but always best-dressed." I understand this. I'm not sure their choice of outfit has always been the best, but they have had enough success to continue making money.
- billbrown 1y agoToyota did this with the EV mania until they lost their nerve and got rid of Toyoda as CEO. I hope Apple doesn't fall into the same trap. (I never thought Toyota would give in either.)
- nxobject 1y ago
- saagarjha 1y agoOne does not simply put a 5090 into an existing chip.
- giancarlostoro 1y agoNot what I am suggesting. However, having trained a few different things on a modest M4 Pro chip (so not even their absolute most powerful chips mind you), and using it for local-first AI inference, I can see the value. A single server could serve an LLM for a small business and cost a lot less than running the same inference through a 5090 in terms of power usage. I could also see universities giving this type of compute access to students for cheaper to work on more basic less resource intensive models.
- saagarjha 1y agoI think a 5090 will handily beat it on power usage.
- woooooo 1y agoNot to mention, build a car with all that cash they have. Xiaomi makes awesome cars, Apple branded electric could scoop all the brand equity that Elon passed away.
- brookst 1y agoUnder Cook, Apple’s market cap has increased 10x, at a CAGR of 18%. Do you really think that they need something different? As a shareholder would you bet on your vision of focusing on server parts?
- __loam 1y agoI'm glad Tim is the CEO instead of you.
- jasonvorhe 1y agoWhy? This is something that plays into all of Apple's supposed strengths: Privacy/no strict cloud dependency/on-device compute, hardware/software optimization while owning the stack and combine that with good UI/UX for a broad target audience without sacrificing too much for the power users. OP never said that local AI would be the only topic a new CEO should focus on.