It’s not for the AI inference, it’s for the tool calls and desktop GUI app workloads and browser. There aren’t any on-device models capable enough of real work that can run on lower end Mac Minis. But for running a few browsers and GUI apps, you’re much better off buying a Mac Mini than paying for a more expensive and worse-performing container in the cloud. Browsers were not designed to run in Linux containers but they run optimally on baremetal desktop OSes. An M4 Mac Mini beats the single core performance of any VM you might rent in the cloud, in terms of raw compute per dollar (Geekbench scores).
This is a paraphrase of <a href="https://www.thedeepview.com/articles/how-apple-s-decade-long-bet-on-chips-won-ai" rel="nofollow">https://www.thedeepview.com/articles/how-apple-s-decade-long...</a>
Ok, I didn’t want to take the bait but this one’s just too much.<p>> “He also described a shift toward running AI locally rather than in the cloud – a move motivated by privacy, security, and the rising cost of inference as agents consume more tokens.”<p>Classic Apple. No more just beating the “security and privacy” drum, now its “tokens are expensive!”<p><neanderthal voice/> Cloud scary. Cloud expensive. Mac good. Buy Mac!<p>> “He also singled out what he calls ‘transparent AI’ on iPhone and iPad, referring to features scattered throughout the operating system and third-party apps that work quietly without announcing themselves as AI.”<p><neanderthal voice/> Apple use AI, Apple just not say it. Apple smart, not lagging behind industry! Buy iPhone!<p>How about you invest in developing your own models, correctly? And provide a secure and private inference cloud service on your fancy Apple silicon? And integrate that into your platform so Siri gets smarter without you farming queries out to Google Gemini? Bill me for it in iCloud+ I’ll probably pay for those tokens.<p>Was that so hard?
Running models on-device on a Mac is immensely <i>annoying</i> though. Figuring out what will work out of BF16, FP8, BF16+FP8, NVFP4, INT8, GGUF ... the list goes on ... is 'non-obvious' at best. Apple do little to support with tooling. There's MLX, but unless you're happy to transform a model to that format yourself you'll be lagging a long way behind.<p>Apps like LMStudio, Ollama, Draw Things, etc do a great job of simplifying it but it's still a pain.
> "The speed of AI development right now is just crazy," Brooks said. <i>"I can't imagine where we're going to be a year from now, three months from now, or even a month from now,"</i> he added.<p>I don't think I'm taking this out of context when I say this is unintentionally correct. Apple still doesn't know what to do about AI.<p>Luckily, it doesn't matter because it's a solution in search of a problem. Most consumers aren't using AI apart from google search.<p>Everyone else is using it as a content scraper and praying nobody will step in to end the piracy/fraud.
> Luckily, it doesn't matter because it's a solution in search of a problem. Most consumers aren't using AI apart from google search.<p>This is... a view.<p>Maybe I live in a strange sphere of strange ("normie"-ish) people, but the people around me are for sure using AI. Mostly chatgpt to be fair. They use it to compare products that they intend to buy, identify plants in nature, create travel plans, find interesting places to visit nearby, give movie suggestions based on what they have previously enjoyed and so on and so forth. AI is becoming a very integrated part of their reality. To "google" something and digging through the search results manually is very rapidly being replaced by asking chatgpt, for better or worse.
The new Siri isnt that exciting at least on my iPhone 15 Pro Max. I know it's beta but it's sluggish and often says try again. I watched many videos on Youtube saying its amazing but maybe not so much on older phones? Also, I need a Siri I can talk in an unfettered manner from my lock screen while Im driving without having to unlock the screen. Probably a big ask for Siri to know my voice via voice fingerprint allowing unfettered access from my lock screen.<p>Others running the beta now on newer iPhones and enjoying it more so?
> The new Siri isnt that exciting at least on my iPhone 15 Pro Max<p>On my Pro 16 it has its ups and downs - I still can't get it to "play my running playlist on shuffle" whilst running (this is the only thing I used Siri for before the beta and it would improve my life immeasurably if it worked). But it responds to things like "how long will it take to drive to the AirBnb booking in my inbox", and "when is X playing a concert in Y - add a calendar entry with details" perfectly.<p>This is a beta and I have hopes, but I can imagine it will run better on a 17 and later
I use it on my 15 pro max. It's a major improvement, but I still don't use siri much. It's gone from murderously infuriating to passably usable. I still use gpt for any sort of exploratory conversations. I haven't bothered trying to use siri for that because to me that's not what siri is for.<p>Although given how effed up the voice for chatgpt is now with the latest updates I might talk with siri more.<p>Because I use carplay in tandem with my phone where the map is on the carplay screen and turn by turn directions are on my phone, it's always unlocked so I haven't run into whatever lock screen issue you brought up.
The best models for new Siri, on device, requires the iPhone 17 Pro, so your experience on a 15 is going to be degraded.