4 ms·

Apple might have gotten very lucky here ... the money might be in finding uses, and selling physical products rather than burning piles of cash training models

by blitzar 9mo ago

Apple might have gotten very lucky here ... the money might be in finding uses, and selling physical products rather than burning piles of cash training models that are SOTA for 5 minutes before being yet another model in a crowded field. My money is still on Apple and Google to be the winners from LLMs.

lamontcg 9mo ago
And when the cost of training LLMs starts to come down to under $1B/yr, Apple can jump on board, having saved >$100B in not trying to chase after everyone else to try to get there first.
Melatonic 9mo ago
Apple has also never been big on the server side equation of both software and hardware - don't they already outsource most of their cloud stack to Google via GCP ? I can see them eventually training their own models (especially smaller and more targeted / niche ones) but at their scale they can probably negotiate a pretty damn good deal renting Google TPUs and expertise.
- ghaff 9mo ago
  Xserve was always kind of a loss. Wrote a piece about it a number of years back. It became pretty much a commodity business--which isn't Apple.
  - no_wizard 9mo ago
    I always wondered what they were hoping for with their server products back when they had them. Consumers and end users benefit greatly from the vertical integration that Apple is good at. This doesn't translate with servers. Commodity hardware + linux is not only cheaper, its often easier, and was definitely less proprietary. Its also a race to the bottom type scenario. Apple would have never been able to keep up with server release schedules. Was an interesting but ultimately odd moment of history for servers.
    - ghaff 9mo ago
      Companies were still figuring out Linux with servers at the time. Xserve seemed like it might be something of interest to at least academia but Apple never really had their heart in it as I wrote at the time.
    - ghaff 9mo ago
      Pre-iPhone and pre-Intel Mac, Apple was experimenting with a lot of things. The iPod wasn't a clear initial win--and the iPhone wasn't either. A lot of the success happened in retrospect.
  - pstuart 9mo ago
    With Thunderbolt 5 and M5 Ultras, Apple could be building lower cost clusters that could possibly scale enough while keeping a lower power budget. Obviously that can't compete with NVIDIA racks, but for mobile consumer inference maybe that would be enough?
    - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
      Apple just announced it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46248644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46248644
  - simondotau 9mo ago
    How is server hardware more "commodity" than MacBook laptops? Both are quite sophisticated and tailored to their audience in nuanced ways; both are manufactured at scale and face fierce competition. I don't think Xserve was a uniquely commodity business, it was a B2B service business--which isn't Apple.
    - JSR_FDED 9mo ago
      It’s absolutely a commodity. The exact reason IBM sold their server division to Lenovo in 2014.
      - mschuster91 9mo ago
        I'd rather say IBM got cannibalized by "financial engineers", this wasn't a decision made because of "it's a commodity". There used to be a time when IBM actually meant quality (that's where "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" came from, after all), but nowadays? A loooot of stuff is either sold (Thinkpad went to Lenovo, Lotus Notes to HCL), faded into irrelevancy outside of extremely few niche markets (anything mainframe), got left for dead (the PC - it used to be called "IBM compatible personal computer"!) or got spun off (Kyndryl). According to Wikipedia, IBM has 282.000 employees worldwide. What the fuck are all of these people doing?
        ghaff 9mo ago
        Making a lot of money for the company.
        raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
        The no one ever got fired for buying IBM wasn’t about quality. It’s always safe to buy the default choice that everyone else uses. Especially when things go wrong. Many want to be founders here on HN don’t get that. Even if your product is better and cheaper, there is too much of a reputational risk signing a contract for a B2B SaaS product with an unknown vendor. On a completely unrelated note, for the love of all that is holy don’t try to do B2B SaaS without SSO support.
- jnaina 9mo ago
  Mostly AWS actually. Apple uses Amazon’s Trainium and Graviton chips to serve search services. "Fruit Stand" is the internal name for Apple at AWS.
DrewADesign 9mo ago
Yeah… there’s this “bro— do you even business?” vibe in the tech world right now pointed at any tech firm not burning oil tankers full of cash (and oil, for that matter,) training a giant model. That money isn’t free — the economic consequences of burning billions to make a product that will be several steps behind, at best, are giant. There’s a very real chance these companies won’t recoup that money if their product isn’t attractive to hoards of users willing to pay more money for AI than anyone currently is. It doesn’t even make them look cool to regular people — their customers hate hearing about AI. Since there are viable third party options available, I think Apple would have to be out of their goddamned minds to try and jump in that race right now. They’re a product company. Nobody is going to not buy an iPhone because they’re using a third-party model.
- 46493168 9mo ago
  >Nobody is going to not buy an iPhone because they’re using a third-party model. You're right, and this is proven. Apple has fumbled a whole release cycle on AI and severely curbed expectations, and they still sell 200m iPhones a year and lead the market [0] [0] https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/apple-leads-global-smartphone-market-with-20-share-2025-says-counterpoint-2026-01-12/ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/apple-leads-g...
  - mschuster91 9mo ago
    Easy enough. Most people abhor AI and want nothing to do with it. The only ones who actually love AI (or what's being sold to them under that banner) are clueless and/or greedy executives, propagandists, and a select few legitimate AI artists doing pretty nice remixes of Star Wars, Harry Potter and the likes in a quality not seen before.
- jhee3 9mo ago
  Something weird has gone wrong in the psyche of humans. Why are we even talking about 'AI'? When I heat up food in a microwave, I dont care about the technology - I care about whether it heats up the food or not. For some bizarre reason people keep talking about the technology (LLMs) - the consumers/buyers in the market for the most part dont give a hoot about it. They want to know how the thing fits in their life and most importantly what are the benefits. Ive unfortunately been exposed to some Google Ads re. Gemini and let me tell you - their marketing capabilities are god awful.
illiac786 9mo ago
I agree. That’s why I think EU‘s DMA is visionary, even if not perfect. LLM wars will prove EU regulators right I anticipate.

by blitzar 9mo ago

lamontcg 9mo ago

And when the cost of training LLMs starts to come down to under $1B/yr, Apple can jump on board, having saved >$100B in not trying to chase after everyone else to try to get there first.

Melatonic 9mo ago

Apple has also never been big on the server side equation of both software and hardware - don't they already outsource most of their cloud stack to Google via GCP ? I can see them eventually training their own models (especially smaller and more targeted / niche ones) but at their scale they can probably negotiate a pretty damn good deal renting Google TPUs and expertise.

ghaff 9mo ago
Xserve was always kind of a loss. Wrote a piece about it a number of years back. It became pretty much a commodity business--which isn't Apple.
- no_wizard 9mo ago
  I always wondered what they were hoping for with their server products back when they had them. Consumers and end users benefit greatly from the vertical integration that Apple is good at. This doesn't translate with servers. Commodity hardware + linux is not only cheaper, its often easier, and was definitely less proprietary. Its also a race to the bottom type scenario. Apple would have never been able to keep up with server release schedules. Was an interesting but ultimately odd moment of history for servers.
  - ghaff 9mo ago
    Companies were still figuring out Linux with servers at the time. Xserve seemed like it might be something of interest to at least academia but Apple never really had their heart in it as I wrote at the time.
  - ghaff 9mo ago
    Pre-iPhone and pre-Intel Mac, Apple was experimenting with a lot of things. The iPod wasn't a clear initial win--and the iPhone wasn't either. A lot of the success happened in retrospect.
- pstuart 9mo ago
  With Thunderbolt 5 and M5 Ultras, Apple could be building lower cost clusters that could possibly scale enough while keeping a lower power budget. Obviously that can't compete with NVIDIA racks, but for mobile consumer inference maybe that would be enough?
  - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
    Apple just announced it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46248644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46248644
- simondotau 9mo ago
  How is server hardware more "commodity" than MacBook laptops? Both are quite sophisticated and tailored to their audience in nuanced ways; both are manufactured at scale and face fierce competition. I don't think Xserve was a uniquely commodity business, it was a B2B service business--which isn't Apple.
  - JSR_FDED 9mo ago
    It’s absolutely a commodity. The exact reason IBM sold their server division to Lenovo in 2014.
    - mschuster91 9mo ago
      I'd rather say IBM got cannibalized by "financial engineers", this wasn't a decision made because of "it's a commodity". There used to be a time when IBM actually meant quality (that's where "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" came from, after all), but nowadays? A loooot of stuff is either sold (Thinkpad went to Lenovo, Lotus Notes to HCL), faded into irrelevancy outside of extremely few niche markets (anything mainframe), got left for dead (the PC - it used to be called "IBM compatible personal computer"!) or got spun off (Kyndryl). According to Wikipedia, IBM has 282.000 employees worldwide. What the fuck are all of these people doing?
      - ghaff 9mo ago
        Making a lot of money for the company.
      - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
        The no one ever got fired for buying IBM wasn’t about quality. It’s always safe to buy the default choice that everyone else uses. Especially when things go wrong. Many want to be founders here on HN don’t get that. Even if your product is better and cheaper, there is too much of a reputational risk signing a contract for a B2B SaaS product with an unknown vendor. On a completely unrelated note, for the love of all that is holy don’t try to do B2B SaaS without SSO support.
jnaina 9mo ago
Mostly AWS actually. Apple uses Amazon’s Trainium and Graviton chips to serve search services. "Fruit Stand" is the internal name for Apple at AWS.

DrewADesign 9mo ago

Yeah… there’s this “bro— do you even business?” vibe in the tech world right now pointed at any tech firm not burning oil tankers full of cash (and oil, for that matter,) training a giant model. That money isn’t free — the economic consequences of burning billions to make a product that will be several steps behind, at best, are giant. There’s a very real chance these companies won’t recoup that money if their product isn’t attractive to hoards of users willing to pay more money for AI than anyone currently is. It doesn’t even make them look cool to regular people — their customers hate hearing about AI. Since there are viable third party options available, I think Apple would have to be out of their goddamned minds to try and jump in that race right now. They’re a product company. Nobody is going to not buy an iPhone because they’re using a third-party model.

46493168 9mo ago
>Nobody is going to not buy an iPhone because they’re using a third-party model. You're right, and this is proven. Apple has fumbled a whole release cycle on AI and severely curbed expectations, and they still sell 200m iPhones a year and lead the market [0] [0] https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/apple-leads-global-smartphone-market-with-20-share-2025-says-counterpoint-2026-01-12/ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/apple-leads-g...
- mschuster91 9mo ago
  Easy enough. Most people abhor AI and want nothing to do with it. The only ones who actually love AI (or what's being sold to them under that banner) are clueless and/or greedy executives, propagandists, and a select few legitimate AI artists doing pretty nice remixes of Star Wars, Harry Potter and the likes in a quality not seen before.
jhee3 9mo ago
Something weird has gone wrong in the psyche of humans. Why are we even talking about 'AI'? When I heat up food in a microwave, I dont care about the technology - I care about whether it heats up the food or not. For some bizarre reason people keep talking about the technology (LLMs) - the consumers/buyers in the market for the most part dont give a hoot about it. They want to know how the thing fits in their life and most importantly what are the benefits. Ive unfortunately been exposed to some Google Ads re. Gemini and let me tell you - their marketing capabilities are god awful.

illiac786 9mo ago

I agree. That’s why I think EU‘s DMA is visionary, even if not perfect. LLM wars will prove EU regulators right I anticipate.