Apple M5 Chip's Dual-Use Design Will Power Future Macs and AI Servers
macrumors.com
macrumors.com
The stacked logic setup is far more interesting in terms of what it means for die density and efficiency.
But in this specific case it’s utter clickbait.
Dual use: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dual-use
It would be of interest because normally you'd be optimizing for very different characteristics.
Servers normally have a lot of memory slots, e.g. Epyc servers have more memory bandwidth than the top end Apple Silicon entirely because the servers have tons of memory channels.
It’s super nice that they overengineer everything and that’s why I buy Apple products to be honest, but they should roll out their chips in a sensible way and not leave their most expenses products at the tail end to upgrade right before their release their next chip.
Plus I think that it makes sense to wait for the M4, because it will have enough TOPs to support their future AI endeavors and will have a much longer useful life than purchasing and M2 studio today.
I have a Bluetooth keyboard and somehow all f-keys (F1-F12) just won’t register. The same happens in remote desktop from the ipad to a real computer.
So yeah… it works as long as you stay within the limits apple has randomly chosen for you.
>>> Ability to ssh and use the iPad like a netbook
Note the order of the words and the comparison to a netbook. They did not ask about "ssh TO an iPad" (also, no need to shout, you can always use *to* to get to). In the comparison to a netbook, the use-case is ssh'ing from the device to other devices. Netbooks being a category of laptops that were small, generally underpowered, but typically with good battery life, great for mobile access to remote servers and workstations.
I had netbook in ~2009 or something, it was with the Linux preinstalled (Ubuntu as I remember) and definitely had ability to log in into it. I absolutely associate netbook as a device to which I can log to.
I know some will say "well that's not what an iPad is for" and I just have to ask "why not?" I think there are a lot of people that want some machine where there's a detachable keyboard, can work mostly like a computer, but also can work like a tablet. When tablets were first made, they had to make compromises because of the computation and architecture limits. But those limitations don't really exist anymore.
Also that tablet functionality shouldn't be weirdly hindered. Like why can't I draw on the screen? I can do that on my computer with my mouse but not the device where they sell a $100 pencil? Shouldn't that be the "magic" where I can present anything and communicate better? What if I want to pull up a webpage and then we need to highlight or talk about things? Why do I need a ton of apps to do what one of the key points the iPad is literally marketed for? Taking notes? Who doesn't have GoodNotes or Notability? (both of which strangely lack features) That's a low fucking bar and even the new OS doesn't do a great job. But this should have been there on day 1. Seriously: give me a way to make folders and organize (mine does not let me have subfolders! If you want to go all out, allow me to connect notes to PDFs! Even better if I can link note sections to PDF sections!), and just give me a few modifiable templates (blank, lines, grids. Then let me change the two colors and spacing. You can't tell me this isn't trivial to expose to the user. We're programmers, this shit doesn't need to be hard coded, though presets are good to have). And give me an infinite scrolling sheet too. That's all I need. Other things are nice, but this core functionality is missing in the Apple native Notes and Pages (but more exists if I simply open up a PDF directly, though what do I do when I can't write in the margins?!). I don't get where the disconnect is. I often hear these same complaints from other academics and from students. It just feels like the people in charge of making decisions aren't actually using the product.
And the worst part of it all is, why isn't anyone making a different better product? It seems like Microsoft, Google, and Samsung are stuck in the same similar feedback loops.
I don't know about you all, but the reason I started programming and the main reason I still program is because I need to make things that don't yet exist. Sometimes it can be a small specific task. Maybe it is that I need something to function differently than it does because I have unique situations or tastes. It used to be that companies couldn't keep us out from modifying things. But it begs the question as to why keep us out in the first place? Especially Apple. To market themselves as the brand of creativity, yet there is only "The Apple Way." You'd think that those that grew up hacking machines and seeing the power and utility in modifiability would take those lessons and build them into the core of products. I understand protecting dumb users, but you can have advanced menus. But it is that exploration and adaption that is at the core of humanity and creativity. That's why I'm passionate here. Because tech can do so much more.
this becomes immediately obvious as soon as consoles get brought up. Not only do people not care about a mandatory 30% cut of revenue and no sideloading (except a limited capability for self-signing that isn’t allowed to utilize the standard APIs or the full performance of the chips) but they actively argue that the console is just a games appliance. And in fact that idea has been enshrined into law, game consoles get a specific carve out within the DMA just so they don’t have to!
it’s always been about spite, the things you’re saying sound nice but they’re just a convenient and temporary port-of-call for people with other objectives, and the things you outline here will be forgotten as soon as it’s convenient.
Just like RCS and whatever: like not only is Google’s proprietary encryption extensions a poison pill, but google itself doesn’t even care enough to implement rcs in its own services. Google voice has less RCS support than apple does in tyool 2024.
This becomes immediately obvious as soon as John-Deere gets brought up. Not only do people realize that outlawing repairs should be illegal, but they actively admit that the world would be a better place if spiteful conduct was made illegal.
Which I still dislike Apple for and think it is hypocritical that they market themselves so much around recycled electronics and parts. We've all seen those open fires in third world countries. Making their products out of recycled materials is great, but preventing them from being upgradable and repairable undermines that entire message. The problem is that there's no good choices and creating a new competitor is exceptionally difficult. The market is cornered by two players and they have similar incentives. That's not good for consumers, that's not good for innovation, it's not good for the economy, and it isn't even good for those two players (in short term, yes, but not in the long run. But being short sighted is quite frankly what led us here in the first place).
They have been severely mismanaged for a decade by forcing mandatory yearly upgrades across all of their stacks.
In the past several years the cracks have started to show in their software (bugs lingering for years, features being delayed for months after yearly OS upgrades etc.). Hardware teams seemed to be mostly immune from it, and delivered insane results.
Now it's "omg must have AI don't matter if you're ready for it or no. Upper management saw LLM demos and are now forcing it everywhere. What do you mean you had other plans for M5? It's AI now damn it"
I'm still on M1 and I know that M2 and M3 would not change my experience for my web development work.
But yeah, if you're just going off the maker's marketing materials, then yeah, you'd always feel behind.
Granted, no gaming or number-crunching (that goes on a server!), just coding, browsers, and Excel.
M4 is tempting and a decent time to upgrade if you’ve had an M1 since 2020 or 2021, but its exact specifications aren’t know for all lines yet.
So a plain M3 is better than a plain M2. The top end M3 Max is better than the M2 Max. For the rest, you have to do a comparison and determine based on your intended use-cases, but for most people the M3 {Pro,Max} will be better than the M2 equivalent.
See tables here
I mean, sure, it’s similar to what you’d surely get running Terminal.app, but I mean I doubt Apple engineers are doing some internal equivalent of apt when they need something.
There’s brew, but it would be… awkward if that’s what they used in their private cloud fleet.
> First, we intentionally did not include remote shell or interactive debugging mechanisms on the PCC node. Our Code Signing machinery prevents such mechanisms from loading additional code, but this sort of open-ended access would provide a broad attack surface to subvert the system’s security or privacy. Beyond simply not including a shell, remote or otherwise, PCC nodes cannot enable Developer Mode and do not include the tools needed by debugging workflows.