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Apple could probably sell a machine starting at $10,000 if they architected it as the sole place one’s Private Cloud Compute [1] ran. It would need a path to a
by JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
Apple could probably sell a machine starting at $10,000 if they architected it as the sole place one’s Private Cloud Compute [1] ran.
It would need a path to a $2,500 machine, I think. But this is a niche I don’t think another consumer-facing brand could do like Apple.
[1] https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/ https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/
- mmoustafa 4mo agoThe out-of-stock $6000 M3 Ultra Mac Studios with 800GB+ memory bandwidth are going for $24,000 on eBay, so yes definitely
- JumpCrisscross 4mo agoLet me clarify, I think Apple could sell a device at the scale Apple sells at around the $10 to 25 thousand price point. Like, take out the price sheets for the Apple Car. Then sell me an AI tower at those price points.
- fy20 4mo agoIn 2010 one of the standard configurations for the Mac Pro was $4,999. Once you customised ram, storage, peripherals and software it could easily end up above $15,000, or $23k today accounting for inflation. Apple hardware is one thing that has actually got cheaper over time. https://www.macworld.com/article/209019/macguide2010.html https://www.macworld.com/article/209019/macguide2010.html
- testing22321 4mo agoI’m still disappointed they didn’t make a Mac Pro with 4 or 8 or 16 or 32 ultra M chips for something insane
- bigyabai 4mo agoOr they could use that same amount of memory to ship 64x Macbook Neos, and probably make higher margins off the hardware volume. Those Macbook Neo users would be very reliant on Apple intelligence, enough maybe to pay for a service with it. I think Apple's much happier going this path.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> Or they could use that same amount of memory to ship 64x Macbook Neos, and probably make higher margins off the hardware volume If it's an "or," absolutely. But if it's an or, they should be prioritising Macbooks over the Mac Mini Doug Brooks is discussing. When we breach the "and" of memory supply sufficient to allow for more Mac minis (and Mac Studios), I think it would make sense to consider relaunching Xserve (with new branding, of course) as a consumer/small business product.
- LastTrain 4mo agoIf we reach the and, then they can no longer demand the price
- bigyabai 4mo agoMemory supply isn't what held back XServe. We wouldn't need XServe if Apple treated the Mac like a regular computer and supported usable, first-class headless workflows and eGPUs. The writing has been on the wall since 2019. Apple doesn't like the old way of computing, their goal is to expand the ecosystem by prioritizing install-base and then pushing first-party service offerings like they did with the iPhone. And like they did with the iPhone, Apple is great at ignoring power users to focus on features that make them more money. You may be waiting a few decades for this type of product, memory supply be damned.
- jiqiren 4mo agoWhen I was at Apple we never wanted or. We wanted all. If that push to use Chinese memory works out it will be great for us and Apple.
- bigyabai 4mo agoApple sure doesn't act like it. The Mac is still a minority market share of PCs, and their entrants into spaces like AR do nothing to compete with incumbents. Now that the Mac Pro is depreciated, Apple's plan to pivot to service offerings seems set in stone. That's the "want it all" attitude they've adopted with the App Store.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- eitally 4mo agoI think so, too, and I think it'll end up being a race between Apple & NVIDIA (or NVIDIA partners) to see who realizes this first. It would probably be easier for Apple to do it because it wouldn't require a form factor adjustment [over the Mac Studio they already have]. That said, NVIDIA already offers chipsets for both the lower end (DGX Spark with Vera + GB10, at roughly the $4500 price point) and higher end (DGX Station with Vera + GB300, for $85-100k). The DGX Station is equivalent to ~5-6 RTX6000 GPUs attached to a mid-range CPU server, but far more than most individual developers would want or need. I've heard through the grapevine that NVIDIA's received consistent feedback that they need something like a "GB20" that slots above the Spark/GB10 and can simultaneously run larger models for inference while hosting a dev environment on the same box. You can daisy-chain Sparks just like you can daisy-chain Mac Minis, but you're still constrained on model performance based on what a single device can accommodate.
- bigyabai 4mo agoForm factor is the easy part - both Nvidia and Apple are experienced SOC designers. The hard part is the GPU architecture. Apple Silicon was designed with a laser focus on raster efficiency (similar to AMD's GPUs) which makes a lot of sense for highly mobile hardware, but is a crippling mistake for high-performance compute. Apple's largest Ultra chips are hamstrung with SOC-tier GPU performance, their highest-end desktops are outperformed by Nvidia's laptop offerings. Apple has to find a way to scale upwards without imposing too much architectural strain on their cheaper hardware like the iPhone and Macbook. Nvidia has already solved this issue; full CUDA compute stacks are usable on extremely cheap GPUs like the Nintendo Switch's Tegra SOC, or the Mac Mini-sized Jetson boards. In terms of "who needs to redesign more to address the market", Apple has a lot of technical debt to unearth before they catch up to Nvidia. And if they do catch up, Nvidia will still support Linux and other differentiating features that Apple refuses to implement. It definitely feels like Nvidia is closer to a winner with the Spark than Apple is with the Mini or Studio.
- thephyber 4mo agoI don’t think we should use current prices as landmarks for large scale demand. That Studio’s current prices is inflated because of a (presumably) short term supply crunch, not because the average user is willing to pay $24k for a home AI inference device. It assumes that RAM remains supply constrained and that none of the existing RAM contracts are cut short. But Meta and xAI putting A TON of AI compute onto the market. OpenAI and Anthropic are raising the costs of inference (by reducing how much inference users get via subscriptions). And we haven’t seen Oracle / CoreWeave struggle to pay their debts yet, but they will be selling assets once they get close to that point.
- uejfiweun 4mo agoWhat makes you think the supply crunch is short-term?
- msdz 4mo agoUnless the raw materials have an inherent limit on mining/production due to the amount present on the planet, why should or would companies not ramp up to eventually meet demand? Edit: Okay, this doesn’t mean that that’s actually possible in the short-term, so I think you’re right. But that means as the silver lining, in the medium term horizon there’ll be enough supply again? :’)
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> why should or would companies not ramp up to eventually meet demand? Memory is a cyclical market that has historically rewarded conservatism [1]. Counterpoint: there is enough demand from enough capital-rich customers that they may be willing to shoulder the capital risk. [1] https://www.ldeepai.com/tech-hub/dram-industry-consolidation-three-survivors-memory-scale/#:~:text=The%20DRAM%20industry,memory%20inevitably%20consolidates https://www.ldeepai.com/tech-hub/dram-industry-consolidation... Sorry for the slop link, it has a good chart from a solid source
- msdz 4mo ago
- moritzwarhier 4mo agoNot the same issue, but makes me nostalgic for these simpler times: https://www.wired.com/2011/04/amazon-flies-24-million/ https://www.wired.com/2011/04/amazon-flies-24-million/
- api 4mo agoI’m sure that hasn’t gone unnoticed.
- cactusplant7374 4mo agoHow much did Apple sell them for?
- trebligdivad 4mo agoYeh I don't know why the emphasise the 'neural engine' - it's their stonking RAM bandwidth that just blows everything else out of the water.
- arthurcolle 4mo ago100%
- kotberg 4mo ago[flagged]
- sajithdilshan 4mo agoBut that would be more for enterprise usage. I cannot imagine a personal computing usage which can justify a 10k machine.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> cannot imagine a personal computing usage which can justify a 10k machine For me, the privacy pitch wins. I have a friend visiting, however, who spends like $2,400 with Anthropic every year. That's a solid ROI even if the thing becomes obsolete after a couple years. (I'm still on my 2020 MacBook Pro. I love it and will be sad when I have to replace it.)
- sajithdilshan 4mo ago> That's a solid ROI even if the thing becomes obsolete after a couple years. How can that be a solid return on investment? There's no model you can run locally to have frontier model level performance. Also who spends 2.4k yearly for personal AI usage, like what's the usecase? If your friend is spending that money for his business then it's not personal computing.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> There's no model you can run locally to have frontier model level performance I'm betting he doesn't need a frontier model. Sonnet, today, is likely good for 80% of his tasks, which largely involve repretitive, tedious work. > Also who spends 2.4k yearly for personal AI usage, like what's the usecase? If your friend is spending that money for his business then it's not personal computing Combination of business and personal.
- lanyard-textile 4mo agoThat's the $200/mo subscription -- not uncommon :) I do the $100/mo for myself, then about ~$200/mo for startup.
- 4mo ago
- pjmlp 4mo agoVery few brands have such a distortion field. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cult_of_Mac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cult_of_Mac
- blitzar 4mo agoApples on stage use cases for their hardware and software makes me wonder if they actually use computers over there, or what a "job" at apple entails. I am unsure that apple themselves understand why their hardware (top end & bottom end) has been so successful, without this understanding leaning into these use cases isn't really going to be possible.
- petesergeant 4mo ago> I am unsure that apple themselves understand why their hardware ... has been so successful [like I do] You have a bold career as a technical journalist ahead of you!
- blitzar 4mo agoObviously they are playing 12d chess. They stopped selling high memory machines, they stopped selling pro machines. They are the king of local Ai compute, definitely not stumbling backwards into a product category they didn't know existed. With their apple finger right there on the pulse, they are going hard on the VR/AR glasses (following the lead of the visionary CEO of facebook), cars and folding phones. By the end of the year (tm) we 100% will have all the features that were showcased and demonstrated 2 releases ago.
- spacedcowboy 4mo agoHaving worked at Apple for over a couple of decades, I can attest there are some very (very) capable and intelligent people there. I trust they know more about their business model than some rando on the internet, sorry.
- blitzar 4mo agoThose of us that are less capable and less intelligent must just be holding it wrong.
- spacedcowboy 4mo agoyou don’t need to be less intelligent or less capable, but you will necessarily be less informed. How you hold it is, of course, up to you.
- ulfw 4mo agoHow many of these 'consumer' customers would they get for $10,000 and how would they reach their Apple-typical gigantic margin with that?
- egorfine 4mo agoApple is quite hostile to professional users, so no.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4mo agoSadly, that is an outdated PoV. It has probably not been valid, since last century. It's just that Apple isn't really focused on software development professionals, and it's still fashionable to throw shade on them, so we hear a lot of kvetching about it, in communities like this.
- egorfine 4mo agoCould you please point me out which current Mac model has enough storage for full feature video editing job? Thanks.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4mo agoI dunno. It's not my bailiwick. I do know lots of pro editors use Macs, but I think they use DaVinci Resolve (not Final Cut Pro). I'm interested in finding out what you use for it. I've been using Macs for all kinds of stuff, since 1986, so I can definitely state they get work done.
- egorfine 4mo agoI'm being sarcastic here. But I still strongly believe that Apple hates pro users because they don't make as much money and because they get in the way of serving laymen. The Aperture fiasco, the Final Cut Saga, the Xcode war of attrition and the never ending chain of failures with MacPro - all suggest that I'm right. (Developer of a major plugin for DaVinci here)
- ChrisMarshallNY 4mo agoGood on ya. I'm not interested in fighting about this stuff. I've had people hating on me for using Apple since the 1980s. It gets a bit old. Sort of like high school popularity contests.
- WillAdams 4mo agoAges ago, back when the Macs would come out, my co-workers and I would take a bit of time to configure the most expensive possible configuration --- time was, it was pretty easy to hit six figures, but over time, that has gradually come down.
- root_axis 4mo agoWho would be the market for such a thing?
- hyperbovine 4mo agoPeople who are good at convincing their boss.
- RajT88 4mo agoBring back xServe!
- tl 4mo agoI asked an Apple (via a sales rep who visited our company to showcase in internal iPad healthcare app) to please do this for iCloud when iCloud Drive was in-development. We would have easily paid $50,000 for a rack-able Mac Pro you could point "managed" devices at. Apple simply cannot comprehend the ask.
- runako 4mo agoThey had Xserve, it didn't sell well enough to survive.
- Danox 4mo agoHow do you design XServe being tied to IBM/Intel the way you want to make it, and why would you, when you’re having problems with Intel, why? would you go any further with Intel hardware wise? Makes no sense. The next four years will be interesting with an engineer CEO in charge.
- Aurornis 4mo ago> Apple simply cannot comprehend the ask. Apple knows the market demand for this type of device. You may have paid $50,000 for it, but you’re only one customer. At Apple scale they need to focus their finite resources on the products that serve the largest market demand. $50,000 rack mount servers are not a large demand.
- tl 4mo agoYou'd be surprised. This was the same conversation where Numbers was pitched as an Excel replacement.
- thisislife2 4mo agoApple just doesn't do "enterprise" well - they need to poach some Microsoft employees to figure it out.
- dwaite 4mo ago
- deadbabe 4mo agoOur company would buy at least 10 of those instantly.