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It's plausible but is the Apple Tax for a 1TB memory machine on top of current memory prices really worth it? I paid around $4000 for 4090m laptop with 16GB VRA

It's plausible but is the Apple Tax for a 1TB memory machine on top of current memory prices really worth it? I paid around $4000 for 4090m laptop with 16GB VRAM back in 2023, it's great but DoA for even quantized LLMs. I can run SLMs and fine tune it but that's it. We need one of those specialized inference chip startups to succeed and a PC manufacturer willing to bet on them against Nvidia for the local AI to find mass market appeal.

lowkeyokay 4mo ago
I recently bought a Mac mini M4 16 GB - mostly to run Immich. I assumed I needed a Linux box. After a lot of researched I was quite surprised that the mac was the cheapest option. So not always an Apple tax.
- ramesh31 4mo ago
  >" After a lot of researched I was quite surprised that the mac was the cheapest option. So not always an Apple tax." Apple has always been the most cost effective choice for the value you get going all the way back to the Apple II, it's just that the floor of that cost has always been high. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a just a fanboy one way or the other.
  - Abishek_Muthian 4mo ago
    That's true only for the entry level macs. My M4 Mac Mini has the best Performance/value. But my workstation laptop with 32 cores, 96GB DDR5, Nvidia GPU costs lesser than Macs with lesser performance; not to mention I upgraded the RAM post purchase.
    - nok22kon 4mo ago
      RAM upgrade possibility has a downside though - very low RAM bandwidth, which is highly relevant today if you want to run local LLMs
    - nottorp 4mo ago
      It really depends what you factor in as value, because wintel laptops like you described tend to require noise canceling headphones when working on them.
      - Abishek_Muthian 4mo ago
        True, can't beat current Apple chips on power efficiency.
  - oblio 4mo ago
    Hmmm, not always. Between at least 1998 and 2005, PCs were just better. Better CPUs.
  - ProZsolt 4mo ago
    If you're happy with the base model, then Apple has a great value/price ratio, but there's nothing below it and any upgrade is really bad value for the money.
- realusername 4mo ago
  > After a lot of researched I was quite surprised that the mac was the cheapest option For Immich, the cheapest option will either be a NAS or a used laptop depending on the amount of data you need, I wouldn't buy a mac for that.
  - Mashimo 4mo ago
    Maybe he wants really fast or large AI models inside immich? (I just run the defaults on my CPU, works for me)
    - realusername 4mo ago
      I'm not sure why you would need large AI models for Immich, the face detection is pretty cheap and will run on 10 year old hardware without a blip. I think the decision comes primarily on how much data you would like to store for Immich, if you want to go cheaply, a 100 bucks used laptop will do the job, if you have too much data, a NAS will be more suitable (and you are certainly not going to get a mac where you can plug multiple internal hard drives for the price of a NAS)
      - Mashimo 4mo ago
        Not for faces, but the CLIP model for the context search https://docs.immich.app/features/searching/ https://docs.immich.app/features/searching/ That needs to be in (v)ram for searches.
        realusername 4mo ago
        That can be yeah but personally I wouldn't pay 3 times the amount you would pay normally just for that feature in particular.
        Mashimo 4mo ago
        Yeah, me neither. Fast enough for me on CPU.
seanmcdirmid 4mo ago
If you think the apple tax is high you should see the nvidia tax.
9dev 4mo ago
> I paid around $4000 for 4090m laptop That's how much many developers currently spend on tokens - every day. Whatever "Apple Tax" applies to a device that can run a capable model offline will amortise itself in a blink.
- Abishek_Muthian 4mo ago
  >Whatever "Apple Tax" applies to a device that can run a capable model offline will amortise itself in a blink. Current high-end Mac Studio with 32-core M3 Ultra chip and 96 GB of memory is $6800, 96GB is not enough to run GLM 5.2 without extreme quantization or stacking HW; but for the sake of discussion let's run quantized version on a single high end Mac Studio. GLM 5.2 Max plan costs $ 112/m, so it would take ~60 months to recover the costs assuming the machine was bought just for AI. By then the current AI landscape would have changed drastically. I use local AI on both Linux and Mac every single day, there's freedom, privacy and peace of mind in running the model locally. But I feel cost/value of local AI is overblown.
- oblio 4mo ago
  In what sustainable world outside of Bay Area jobs do devs spend 120k on tokens monthly?
  - 9dev 4mo ago
    Nobody said anything about sustainable, or outside of the Bay Area really
    - oblio 4mo ago
      Apple can't make devices they sell to 1000 people once, so yes, you did say that, implicitly.
jmyeet 4mo ago
"Apple tax" is such a lazy and inaccurate accusation to level. Sure we've had expensive wheels on the cheese grater (ie Mac Pro) but we've also had: 1. When Apple came out with the real Macbook Air in 2010/2011 (not the silly 2008 one), nobody could compete with it with those specs at that price and they couldn't for years. And every competitor usually sucked in some major way, most often the trackpad; 2. The Mac Mini is an outstanding piece of hardware for $600. Or was; 3. I've generally found that "Apple tax" complaints levelled against the iPhone to be nothing more than Android cope; 4. The M-series silicon has been an absolute game-changer. I honestly thought the first-generation M1s would be not great but they came out swinging. And the price points for these Macbooks have all been great, much better than the last-gasp-of-Johnny-Ive touch bar butterfly keyboard series, which were objectively awful.

lowkeyokay 4mo ago

I recently bought a Mac mini M4 16 GB - mostly to run Immich. I assumed I needed a Linux box. After a lot of researched I was quite surprised that the mac was the cheapest option. So not always an Apple tax.

ramesh31 4mo ago
>" After a lot of researched I was quite surprised that the mac was the cheapest option. So not always an Apple tax." Apple has always been the most cost effective choice for the value you get going all the way back to the Apple II, it's just that the floor of that cost has always been high. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a just a fanboy one way or the other.
- Abishek_Muthian 4mo ago
  That's true only for the entry level macs. My M4 Mac Mini has the best Performance/value. But my workstation laptop with 32 cores, 96GB DDR5, Nvidia GPU costs lesser than Macs with lesser performance; not to mention I upgraded the RAM post purchase.
  - nok22kon 4mo ago
    RAM upgrade possibility has a downside though - very low RAM bandwidth, which is highly relevant today if you want to run local LLMs
  - nottorp 4mo ago
    It really depends what you factor in as value, because wintel laptops like you described tend to require noise canceling headphones when working on them.
    - Abishek_Muthian 4mo ago
      True, can't beat current Apple chips on power efficiency.
- oblio 4mo ago
  Hmmm, not always. Between at least 1998 and 2005, PCs were just better. Better CPUs.
- ProZsolt 4mo ago
  If you're happy with the base model, then Apple has a great value/price ratio, but there's nothing below it and any upgrade is really bad value for the money.
realusername 4mo ago
> After a lot of researched I was quite surprised that the mac was the cheapest option For Immich, the cheapest option will either be a NAS or a used laptop depending on the amount of data you need, I wouldn't buy a mac for that.
- Mashimo 4mo ago
  Maybe he wants really fast or large AI models inside immich? (I just run the defaults on my CPU, works for me)
  - realusername 4mo ago
    I'm not sure why you would need large AI models for Immich, the face detection is pretty cheap and will run on 10 year old hardware without a blip. I think the decision comes primarily on how much data you would like to store for Immich, if you want to go cheaply, a 100 bucks used laptop will do the job, if you have too much data, a NAS will be more suitable (and you are certainly not going to get a mac where you can plug multiple internal hard drives for the price of a NAS)
    - Mashimo 4mo ago
      Not for faces, but the CLIP model for the context search https://docs.immich.app/features/searching/ https://docs.immich.app/features/searching/ That needs to be in (v)ram for searches.
      - realusername 4mo ago
        That can be yeah but personally I wouldn't pay 3 times the amount you would pay normally just for that feature in particular.
        Mashimo 4mo ago
        Yeah, me neither. Fast enough for me on CPU.

seanmcdirmid 4mo ago

If you think the apple tax is high you should see the nvidia tax.

9dev 4mo ago

> I paid around $4000 for 4090m laptop That's how much many developers currently spend on tokens - every day. Whatever "Apple Tax" applies to a device that can run a capable model offline will amortise itself in a blink.

Abishek_Muthian 4mo ago
>Whatever "Apple Tax" applies to a device that can run a capable model offline will amortise itself in a blink. Current high-end Mac Studio with 32-core M3 Ultra chip and 96 GB of memory is $6800, 96GB is not enough to run GLM 5.2 without extreme quantization or stacking HW; but for the sake of discussion let's run quantized version on a single high end Mac Studio. GLM 5.2 Max plan costs $ 112/m, so it would take ~60 months to recover the costs assuming the machine was bought just for AI. By then the current AI landscape would have changed drastically. I use local AI on both Linux and Mac every single day, there's freedom, privacy and peace of mind in running the model locally. But I feel cost/value of local AI is overblown.
oblio 4mo ago
In what sustainable world outside of Bay Area jobs do devs spend 120k on tokens monthly?
- 9dev 4mo ago
  Nobody said anything about sustainable, or outside of the Bay Area really
  - oblio 4mo ago
    Apple can't make devices they sell to 1000 people once, so yes, you did say that, implicitly.

jmyeet 4mo ago

"Apple tax" is such a lazy and inaccurate accusation to level. Sure we've had expensive wheels on the cheese grater (ie Mac Pro) but we've also had: 1. When Apple came out with the real Macbook Air in 2010/2011 (not the silly 2008 one), nobody could compete with it with those specs at that price and they couldn't for years. And every competitor usually sucked in some major way, most often the trackpad; 2. The Mac Mini is an outstanding piece of hardware for $600. Or was; 3. I've generally found that "Apple tax" complaints levelled against the iPhone to be nothing more than Android cope; 4. The M-series silicon has been an absolute game-changer. I honestly thought the first-generation M1s would be not great but they came out swinging. And the price points for these Macbooks have all been great, much better than the last-gasp-of-Johnny-Ive touch bar butterfly keyboard series, which were objectively awful.