There were a number of exciting announcements from Apple at WWDC 2024, from macOS Sequoia to Apple Intelligence. However, a subtle addition to Xcode 16 — the development environment for Apple platforms, like iOS and macOS — is a feature called Predictive Code Completion. Unfortunately, if you bought into Apple's claim that...
Yes, there are massive advantages. It’s basically what makes unified memory possible on modern Macs. Especially with all the interest in AI nowadays, you really don’t want a machine with a discrete GPU/VRAM, a discrete NPU, etc.
Take for example a modern high-end PC with an RTX 4090. Those only have 24GB VRAM and that VRAM is only accessible through the (relatively slow) PCIe bus. AI models can get really big, and 24GB can be too little for the bigger models. You can spec an M2 Ultra with 192GB RAM and almost all of it is accessible by the GPU directly. Even better, the GPU can access that without any need for copying data back and forth over the PCIe bus, so literally 0 overhead.
The advantages of this multiply when you have more dedicated silicon. For example: if you have an NPU, that can use the same memory pool and access the same shared data as the CPU and GPU with no overhead. The M series also have dedicated video encoder/decoder hardware, which again can access the unified memory with zero overhead.
For example: you could have an application that replaces the background on a video using AI. It takes a video, decompresses it using the video decoder , the decompressed video frames are immediately available to all other components. The GPU can then be used to pre-process the frames, the NPU can use the processed frames as input to some AI model and generate a new frame and the video encoder can immediately access that result and compress it into a new video file.
The overhead of just copying data for such an operation on a system with non-unified memory would be huge. That’s why I think that the AI revolution is going to be one of the driving factors in killing systems with non-unified memory architectures, at least for end-user devices.
Disclaimer: I am not trolling, I am an autistic person who doesn’t understand so many social nuances. Also I am from New Hampshire (97% white), so I just don’t have any close African-American friends that I am willing to risk asking such a loaded question.
To add to this: Apple is actively working with Google and the GSMA to add E2EE to the RCS standard. Apple can no do this on their own, as RCS is a standard set by the GSMA. They need to go through the entire slow and bureaucratic process to add a feature to RCS, so while this will appear eventually I wouldn’t hold my breath.
This also shows exactly why something like RCS cannot ever offer anything other than the bare basic messaging functionality. You cannot innovate on RCS because every change needs to go through a committee who’s all want to have a say in it and before you know it you’re spending years in committee meetings to add a single feature.
Meanwhile, Apple decides they want to add a feature to iMessage, they roll it out in the next iOS update and it’s available to billions of users pretty much overnight.
Apple has announced that its Messages app will support the RCS messaging standard in iOS 18. RCS offers more advanced features compared to traditional SMS, including higher-quality media, typing indicators, and end-to-end encryption. This move will improve messaging between iOS and Android devices, which currently rely on the...
Apple and Google are working together as part of the GMSA committee on RCS to add encryption to the standard, instead of using Google’s proprietary incompatible extension for e2ee.
It’s probably going to take a while due to the whole process needed to add it to the standard, which is also why RCS in general is a terrible idea: you can’t really innovate if everything you want to improve has to go through this whole layer of bureaucracy.
The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18. The move comes after years of taunting, cajoling, and finally, some regulatory scrutiny from the EU....
Encryption is supposed to come when the working group has aligned.
I wouldn’t hold my breath.
The whole RCS thing is a Bad Idea™ . It’s a standard by the GSM Association, which consists of over 1150 members (750 operators and 400 other companies). Getting all these companies to align will take forever.
To illustrate: the RCS initiative was started in 2007 and the steering committee was formed in early 2008. The first version of the Universal Profile, that would enable interoperability between different operators and networks was released in 2016. It took 8 f-ing years to come up with an interoperable messaging standard to replace SMS. It was intended to be implemented by operators, but since hardly any operator did Google had to run their own service, bypassing the network operators, just to get it off the ground. Operators are now slowly beginning to support it.
If Apple decides to add a feature to iMessage, they implement the feature, roll out an update to their servers and release it to a billion users in the next iOS update. If they want to add a feature to RCS, they first have to discuss it in the committee until they agree on a solution, this alone takes forever. Then every player needs to update their software to add support. This means potentially 750 operators who need to update their shit, and that is after their software suppliers add support for it. In the mean time, the new feature will work for some users when they communicate with some other users, depending on which phone and operator each party has. Rinse and repeat for every new feature you want to add.
This means RCS will at best only ever be a very basic messaging service. It’ll be an improvement over SMS and MMS, but that’s not saying much. It will be in no way a threat to Apple’s dominance in messaging.
Another thing they did is add hardware support for the x86 strong memory model to their ARM chips, allowing for efficient emulation. Without this, translated code takes a big performance hit.
Did Qualcomm add something similar to their ARM CPUs ?
Sound is at least as important to the experience as the picture. Go watch a scary movie with the sound muted and you’ll notice it’s not scary at all.
Playing a game or watching a movie with just 2.0 audio, or worse: using the TV’s built-in speakers, is such a diminished experience that you might as well not bother.
Imagine not being able to feel explosions in your gut because you have a pair of tiny speakers strapped to your head instead of a big long-throw woofer moving air.
You are confusing ‘costs a lot of money’ with overpriced.
Yes, Apple hardware costs a lot of money, but you do get what you pay for.
My current MacBook Pro (M1 Max, 64GB RAM) is simply the best machine I’ve ever used. It’s a no-compromise laptop. It’s fast, chews through everything I throw at it (which is a lot, I use it as a development machine). It never slow down, it never gets hot, I haven’t heard the fan run ever (not sure if it is just that silent or it simply never needs to turn on). The screen is amazing. The trackpad is amazing. The sound is amazing. The build quality is rock solid. The battery life is insane. I plug in a single thunderbolt cable and it charges my machine, connects to gbit ethernet, my audio system and drives 2 high-res monitors (5k2k and 4k).
Every time PC people claim they can get a ‘better computer’ for less it’s always some compromise. “This one has a much faster GPU and is cheaper”, sure, it also weights 8 kilos and runs for 20 minute on a full charge, is made of cheap plastic, has a screen with terrible viewing angles a crappy trackpad and sounds like a fighter jet with full afterburners on every time you put a little load on the system.
Simple economies of scale. They are expensive to produce because they don’t make a lot of them. The intended audience for the monitor it goes with doesn’t need a stand, and that monitor is a niche product to begin with. Neither is meant for the consumer market to begin with and the monitor, even with stand, is cheaper than many of the alternatives.
And how do you consider that a comparable machine? Slow/hot Intel CPU, slow GPU, low-res screen, the ‘upgradable’ RAM can only be upgraded to 32GB (so pretty much useless), slow SSD, weighs more than a MacBook even with the smallest battery option, despite the fact it’s made of plastic. No thunderbolt. It can’t even drive my monitor at 60Hz.
A product you were just talking about pops up in an online ad. How? Advertising algorithms are so good that they may know what you want even before you do. C...
There is also the practicality angle. If apps were listening in on all the random bullshit conversations people have, that would be such an unbelievable crapton of data to sift through, it would simply be uneconomical even if possible, just to show you an ad for cat food that will pay out like one cent IF someone clicked on it?
As for the lab grown diamonds thing, there is a real possibility that it went exactly the other way around. The ads didn’t get shown because they talked about it, but they talked about is because of the ads. We see ads all the time to the point we’re no longer consciously aware of them. Obviously, they still influence our behavior or companies wouldn’t spend a fortune on them. So a lab grown diamond company is running an ad campaign on FB. Someone sees that ad and it doesn’t consciously register, but it plants the idea of lab grown diamonds in their head. Then this causes them to bring it up in a conversation later. Now consciously aware of the concept, you suddenly notice the ad you ignored earlier.
IMO, this is a much more realistic and even scarier scenario than apps listening in. It’s apps manipulating your unconscious thoughts.
This is a genuine question, so please don't do me like Vlad the Impaler. What is your opinion about the benefits of upgrading to displays beyond 1080p?...
I have a 4k TV and don't get it either. Watched the odd video in 4k and the colors are maybe a bit crisper, but that's about it. I'd have to compare movies side by side to actually spot the difference.
The point of 4k is that you can have a TV twice as large as your 1080p TV before it without losing sharpness.
I can definitely tell the difference on my 77” OLED.
You should see a clear difference at that distance. You may want to get your eyes checked, your eyes get worse as you get older and it can really creep up on you without noticing.
If you sell individual games, you have basically two ways of making more money: make more games or make better games so more people buy them.
The economies for a subscription service are completely different. People don’t subscribe to GamePass for a specific game, they subscribe for the entire collection. More games or better games don’t really drive up the number of subscribers. The only way to make more money is to drive down costs. You don’t make expensive, awesome games. Instead you drip-feed a steady stream of low-budget titles. You just have to make sure that the value of access to the entire collection is just about worth the subscription price.
Microsoft doesn’t care about games, they care about making money. They didn’t get into gaming because of a love for games, they realized it’s a market they didn’t dominate yet.
They lured people into GamePass with day-1 drops of AAA titles and now that the subscribers are there it’s time to squeeze as much money out of the service as possible.
And it’s not just GamePass. It’s all subscription services. Netflix is a good example: quality has been going down there for years.
The only real exception seems to be music streaming, but that’s mainly because there are so many artists and practically no exclusivity. In other words: there is healthy competition in the music streaming business.
Hiya, just quickly wondering how people store their coffee? Mine is in a tin box I got second hand, cos I thought it looked nice. Any rules regarding storing grounded coffee? I don't store much at the time, it's just if I grind a little too much and what not. I'm assuming the general thumb rule for this is to store it in a...
LOLWUT, I only buy cars that old or older. Why would I spend an absolute fortune on a new-ish car that I barely use anyway when I can get a perfectly reliable older car fir a fraction of the price?
My current car doesn’t have an infotainment system or any kind of connectivity. It has a 6 slot CD changer.
(…) the entire purpose and selling point of VPNs, which is to encapsulate incoming and outgoing Internet traffic in an encrypted tunnel and to cloak the user’s IP address.
No. That is not the entire point of a VPN. That’s just what a few shady companies are claiming to scam uninformed users into paying for a useless service. The entire point of a VPN is to join a private network (i.e. a network that is not part of the Internet) over the public internet, such as connecting to your company network from home. Hence the name ‘virtual private network’.
There are very little, if any, benefits to using a VPN service to browse the public internet.
As a kid I imagined the future as being able to hold a TV in your pocket, and flying skateboards. For the latter I guess electric scooters will have to do
We have more OTA channels, you just have to pay for them. The free channels are in shitty SD quality (you have to pay for HD) and they are only unencrypted because the government requires it (as they are used for emergency broadcasts).
My goldendoodle puppy doesn't ever want to come back inside. I told my beagle "go get your sister" as I tried rounding up the puppy. Now when I say "go get your sister" the beagle runs to the puppy and baits her into chasing him into the house.
One of our cats somehow has learned to distinguish between someone cutting chicken vs. anything else from anywhere in the house.
I’m in the kitchen, cutting veggies, cat nowhere in sight. The second I start cutting up some chicken, she instantly materializes at my feet out of thin air. Not sure how she even does it, sound or smell or whatever. She could be anywhere in the house, she just instantly knows.
Which is why it’s such a mess. The RCS standard is defined by the GSM association, an organization with well over a thousand members. Want to add a feature to RCS? Prepare for years of bureaucracy trying to get the standard amended. Then 750+ mobile operators worldwide need to upgrade their systems, adding at least another few years.
Meanwhile when Apple wants to add a feature they can just roll it out in the next iOS release.
Series: What are your tried-and-proven tricks for relaxing/relieving anxiety
**Preferably non-substance/drug...
Windows 11 is now automatically enabling OneDrive folder backup without asking permission ( www.neowin.net )
Even Apple finally admits that 8GB RAM isn't enough ( www.xda-developers.com )
There were a number of exciting announcements from Apple at WWDC 2024, from macOS Sequoia to Apple Intelligence. However, a subtle addition to Xcode 16 — the development environment for Apple platforms, like iOS and macOS — is a feature called Predictive Code Completion. Unfortunately, if you bought into Apple's claim that...
Why not serve fried chicken on Juneteenth? How is it different from serving corned beef on St. Patrick’s day? ( old.lemmy.world )
Disclaimer: I am not trolling, I am an autistic person who doesn’t understand so many social nuances. Also I am from New Hampshire (97% white), so I just don’t have any close African-American friends that I am willing to risk asking such a loaded question.
It's the talk of the town ( lemmy.world )
This is our best look yet at RCS working on an iPhone ( www.androidauthority.com )
Apple is bringing RCS to the iPhone in iOS 18 ( www.theverge.com )
Apple has announced that its Messages app will support the RCS messaging standard in iOS 18. RCS offers more advanced features compared to traditional SMS, including higher-quality media, typing indicators, and end-to-end encryption. This move will improve messaging between iOS and Android devices, which currently rely on the...
Apple is bringing RCS to the iPhone in iOS 18 | The new standard will replace SMS as the default communication protocol between Android and iOS devices ( www.theverge.com )
The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18. The move comes after years of taunting, cajoling, and finally, some regulatory scrutiny from the EU....
Have you got any weird questions FROM the opposite gender?
Misread the title of the other post which made me think of this question....
What are you currently excited for?
The birth (or death) of a relative, the release of a new program, game, series, movie, the date you were dreaming about, could be anything
Microsoft says “Prism” translation layer does for Arm PCs what Rosetta did for Macs ( arstechnica.com )
Masahiro Sakurai refused to add Dolby Surround to a Kirby game because players had to sit through the logo ( www.videogameschronicle.com )
The Mac vs. PC war is back on? ( www.theverge.com )
I find it hard to believe that, outside of work computers, many people would be choosing Windows over Mac or Linux, especially is AI is their goal....
“ARE YOU ALL SEEING THIS” ( sh.itjust.works )
E-Bikes Should Not Require Pedaling, Proposes U.K. Government, Diverging From E.U. ( www.forbes.com )
E-bikes could get faster, more powerful and not require pedaling, in a move announced today by UKGOV. Cycling organizations are opposed to the plans.
Benefits of resolutions beyond 1080p
This is a genuine question, so please don't do me like Vlad the Impaler. What is your opinion about the benefits of upgrading to displays beyond 1080p?...
Microsoft says it needs games like Hi-Fi Rush the day after killing its studio ( www.theverge.com )
How do you store your grounded coffee? ( slrpnk.net )
Hiya, just quickly wondering how people store their coffee? Mine is in a tin box I got second hand, cos I thought it looked nice. Any rules regarding storing grounded coffee? I don't store much at the time, it's just if I grind a little too much and what not. I'm assuming the general thumb rule for this is to store it in a...
How to opt out of the privacy nightmare that comes with new Hondas ( sherwood.news )
Novel attack against virtually all VPN apps neuters their entire purpose ( arstechnica.com )
Dating apps are as if someone turned the job application experience into a pastime
What looks easy peasy lemon squeezy but is actually difficult difficult lemon difficult?
Because of smartphones, pocket TVs were never a thing.
As a kid I imagined the future as being able to hold a TV in your pocket, and flying skateboards. For the latter I guess electric scooters will have to do
What is a command you accidentally taught your pet?
My goldendoodle puppy doesn't ever want to come back inside. I told my beagle "go get your sister" as I tried rounding up the puppy. Now when I say "go get your sister" the beagle runs to the puppy and baits her into chasing him into the house.
Google is silently blocking RCS messages on rooted Android phones and custom ROMs ( www.androidauthority.com )
TL;DR...