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dwaite

2,797 karma · joined February 27, 2011

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dwaite··on Shinjuku Station in 3D
The problem I would typically have (not just in Shinjuku) was with directions that did not repeat/update as you continued on through junction points. It made navigation more stressful.
dwaite··on Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future
How much internal storage do you use for your full feature video editing, vs attached/network attached storage?
dwaite··on Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future
Apple has plenty of enterprise-specific features.

From a historic standpoint though Apple came back from near-death because they differentiated by focusing on the consumer first.

While other companies were recycling the same beige boxes meant to be tucked under desks for home use, Apple came out with products in candy colors.

While Microsoft was rolling out new business process tool SKUs, Apple came out with GarageBand and bundled it in for free.

Apple is not the company prioritizing going after a Fortune 500 company to replace their fleet with Macs. So their focus isn't going to be to design products and features to try to get that deal closed.

dwaite··on Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future
> Apple seriously thought the iPad would replace computers

...for some users. See their "Mac is a truck" analogy.

And it has. My parents haven't owned a Windows or Mac machine in six years, since they got rid of the one I gifted to them a decade ago. Its all iPad and iPhone.

dwaite··on The unbearable cheapness of open weight models
Where's a few good places to go to learn more about open weight models, both running hosted and running locally?
dwaite··on Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
I suspect this is because the next models are more imminent. Not imminent per se, but Apple doesn't want to be left holding the bag on most of a factory run of 512GB Studios.
dwaite··on Apple increases MacBook and iPad prices by 20%
Sure, quite often. They usually have a price target in mind, but their costs and margins mean they can't always hit it.

What's rare is that this is a price adjustment on existing shipping models, without a corresponding new model. I remember them doing price drops with a few Intel Macs in 2023, but otherwise the only example that comes to mind is the original iPhone.

dwaite··on Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
> What's the over/under on apple spinning up their own fabs for their own needs in the consumer market?

Darn close to 0%. They generally go after multiple manufacturers for a part rather than trying to become a manufacturer themselves.

They are trying their decades-old playbook of funding creation of new factories. The problem is the manufacturers are already neck deep in trying to expand out capacity, and the demand/price increases likely weakens both of Apple's negotiating factors (guaranteed sales and a source of capital to build out the facility).

dwaite··on Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
Third party retail may very well have not reflected the price increase yet. If not BTO, you could order today possibly for store pickup tomorrow.
dwaite··on Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users
It can also be nice to switch climate control on a few minutes before you enter the car.
dwaite··on Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users
The electronic key fob is typically not copyable, so you need OBD-II access to provision a new one even if you have proper equipment.

I do not know the VW app, but other electronic key systems do not require you to have physical access to the car in order to make copies. The keys are meant to be device bound and to have policy (such as I'm giving out access for a week), but that can only be assured via a chain-of-custody attestation system from the boot loader to the app and a hardware attestation that the secure element is proper.

dwaite··on Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers
This is not the cause though - other third-party browsers on iOS can do ad-blocking, and also can use system-installed extensions.

They could also launch an alternative browser engine for iOS and iPadOS in the EU.

dwaite··on Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers
That was with a lot of technical innovation against a static competitor. Firefox isn't in nearly as good of a position when it comes to either technology or resources now.

It would be possible for a surge in contributors to bring it back up to a double digit percentage, but I don't think manifest v3 is going to be the catalyst for that.

dwaite··on macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux
This wasn't a hardware issue
dwaite··on macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux
What fundamentally makes a box which has a web browser, allows for third party app installs, and can drive them by connecting to a 4k monitor in addition to a keyboard and mouse different than a PC - other than the vendor setting policy such that their store only allows game and media streaming apps?
dwaite··on macOS 27 Beta breaks the ability to boot Asahi Linux
> it doesn't qualify without the temporary waiver

The nature of temporary waivers makes this untrue per the post you cited - The Open Group only grants them for 12 months, and the post is over a year old.

IMO, the only significant call-out is APFS case insensitivity by default, which makes the default volume a non-conforming filesystem. However, UNIX certification does not forbid you from mounting non-conforming filesystems (such as FAT32). Instead, this means the majority of software which makes certain assumptions about being used with UNIX conforming filesystems in addition to running on a UNIX conforming operating system are at risk of breaking.

Let's just say I have my doubts the author would have written a similar post if the final HP-UX release had "lied" about their certification by shipping with root login disabled by default and ulimit -c defaulting to zero.

dwaite··on AI is slowing down
It does not look nearly as good when you compare paying customers.
dwaite··on AI is slowing down
> Apple themselves have said there is usage limits, with a subscription upgrade for more usage.

Specifically for image generation. They haven't indicated you have limits for Siri interactions.

dwaite··on AI is slowing down
Part of the pitch of AI companies is that they mediate and provide a new surface for ads, for taking an affiliate cut of sales, etc.

But it isn't like this hasn't been the long-running strategy for Google as well - provide more results on search so that people don't go to the site with ads, provide paid product results for shopping, to offer more services to keep people providing personal/behavioral queues to Google and more opportunities for ad placement.

If anything, AI turned up the heat such that the frog noticed what temperature the pot was. But that doesn't really put them in a better position to execute than Google.

dwaite··on Siri AI
> Force you to use email or SMS as a "second factor" to unlock changing password even if you know the old password

Apple has detectors for codes sent via email or SMS, if your email account is one that is configured with the OS mail client.

> A stupid idea of password complexity usually requiring one of a finite set of 5-8 "special characters" which is often only revealed after you've chosen a password that doesn't have them. Or in some cases even banning characters other than the ones they check for. There's a standard for this where you put a regex on the password field, which a good password manager will always use, but the kind of idiots who think limiting the entropy of passwords to increase security is the correct way to do things almost NEVER implement this.

An AI agent can read the failure message and craft a new password

> A maximum password length, even as short as 16 characters in many cases

Same deal

> CAPTCHA etc.

While there's always the complex solution of scanning the image and trying to detect what is going on or slide the puzzle with enough of a curve to act like the motion of a human limb, there's also Private Access Tokens, supported by both Cloudflare and Google-provided captcha systems now IIRC. The OS uses an anonymous system to assert a single bit that there's proper browser chain-of-custody.

> Any effort spent on this would be better spent elsewhere, including even educating other companies on how passkeys should be used.

There are proposals as well to provide API to do upgrades from passwords to passkeys as well automatically. Nobody said the feature has to always use AI - but it may help the feature be robust enough for people to seek it out and try it.

dwaite··on Siri AI
At least on 26, the passwords app saves a history with previous passwords.
dwaite··on Siri AI
Apple splits processing between an on-device and cloud-hosted model. As time goes on, devices will be more capable of doing more processing locally, and it would be expected that the cloud-hosted model gets more sophisticated.

Your 15 Pro Max supports Apple Intelligence. Newer phones can answer more questions without going to cloud infrastructure.

dwaite··on Siri AI
The design is that there is always a local model capable of forming a remote query with just the subset of local data on your phone needed to answer that query.

They may have decided that local processing was a MVP feature either for faster responsiveness or to reduce cloud cost. It may have been additional memory pressure or a limitation in processing on the previous A-series chip. Or they may have simply decided it wasn't worth creating and validating Yet Another model.

dwaite··on Siri AI
> Apple allowing third party access doesn't automatically mean user data gets hoovered up by OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. It just means users now get the choice, if they want to make that choice.

Apple is also restricted in the sort of consent prompts they give the user. That could matter when a non-technical users is prompted by a third party app to effectively allow unfettered access to all user personal data on the device.

Sometimes when you look at the functional requirements for a feature it turns out to be a bad idea. In the EU, functional requirements can come after-the-fact from regulator interpretation of the DMA. Until Apple determines what those requirements actually are going to be, releasing a potentially harmful feature is irresponsible.

dwaite··on Siri AI
My limited understanding is that it would be a local model that exists only to determine a limited set of local information necessary to answer the user's request. This request and information would then be shared with the third party. Third parties would otherwise not have access into the local semantic model based on user personal data.
dwaite··on Siri AI
> This feels like it could be solved with a list of permissions that the user has to turn on when using 3rd party AI.

The device won't be able to ask for significantly more permissions than Apple asks for their own model for regulatory reasons, nor will it be able to convey the seriousness of granting the permission (e.g. immediately give unrestricted access to the vast majority of personal information/documents stored on the device).

But Apple also architected their system to justify not having constant permission prompts for access to sensitive data. And for regulatory reasons they also can't mandate that competing models have the same architecture.

The regulators and Apple (along with hopefully other AI companies) will need to work together to determine longer-term stable path forward.

dwaite··on Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models
> My naive assumption is that they're going to do what everyone is doing: make tooling that lets you swap in any model.

They are a ways away from that for Siri, as they can't guarantee third party tooling meets their security and privacy requirements. Meeting those security and privacy requirements also makes it harder for a third party to monetize their investment or ongoing use of infrastructure.

But I suspect you will see integration in other areas, such as image generation.

dwaite··on Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models
We don't really know, we just saw a leak when the deal fell through. I suspect Apple wouldn't reach out to just one AI company at a time.
dwaite··on Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models
> Is it really all that difference from Apple defaulting to Google's search engine?

Not really, because the business model isn't there (at least not in this iteration.

1. The models are Apple models, co-developed with Google. They are not white-label Gemini.

2. There's not currently a Google failover or UX

3. Because of that, there's no user monetization to share.

Apple does have a ChatGPT integration, with failover UX, and with a suspected revenue share deal. However, one could see this deal in a precarious situation, since at the time it started it was expected Apple would not focus much at all on a model capable with world knowledge.

dwaite··on Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models
A large portion of Apple's screens come from Samsung. Once a company is large enough, growing your business through supporting a competitor of another group at the company could be seen as a win-win.
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