Because I am buying a phone to use for the next 3 years and want to buy it based on the most important property of compute devices right now. I couldn't care less about the camera and the 13 random metrics that all look the same as every other camera announcement. I will happily take 96GB of RAM in my phone (and I know what that means) and would gladly allow you to make it 1.2mm thicker in the process.

You want a 96GB RAM phone and only plan to keep it 3 years? I cannot fathom the way some of you live. I have an iPhone SE from 2022 that I don’t expect to get rid of before at least 2-3 more years, meaning it would have been in use for 6-7y at minimum. And it’s perfectly comfortable to use, I’m not forcing myself in any way to keep it longer. And you’re talking about wanting a ridiculously expensive phone and only have it for 3 years? That sounds so wasteful and unnecessary

I couldn’t agree more. I’m typing this on an iPhone 12, bought new 6 years ago. My phone still feels snappy. And it gets me through a whole day with 60%+ battery remaining. The only real complaint I have is that I only have the 64gb model. I need to delete things every time a software update comes out because of how bloated modern software has become. But the hardware is fantastic.

I have no idea how much ram my phone has. So long as apps run well, why would I care?

It's about multitasking. RAM is the upgrade trigger for me. I'm so exhausted by developer introduced bloat in software such that almost every app fully reloads when switching. Devs ruin multitasking every few years until another RAM upgrade.

You're missing the important bit in the GP comment:

> the most important property of compute devices right now

Memory didn't matter when iPhone 12 was released, but these days it determines which local LLMs you can run on device. That's the point of that comment.

People sued apple for selling a device with no mention of ram and then apple released the next gen saying "this has more ram, you need to upgrade to it to use the features we advertised for last gen."

How about avoiding that scenario again? Is that a good enough reason? Being a diligent, informed consumer?

I’m being hyperbolic. Sharing the amount of RAM seems table stakes with the current demand and failing to disclose it seems like the answer wouldn’t be positive.

What on earth would you do with an iOS device that has 96GB of RAM? You realize the last generation (i.e, the most powerful consumer phone in the world today) had 12 GB of RAM? You feel the need for eight times that amount?

Number go up, I guess? A lot of people derive great satisfaction from ever larger (or sometimes smaller) number. But, uh, 8X is probably too much, need to spread that out over a few generations.

They obviously want to run AI models on their phone.

Very obviously you get a Mac Studio for that, not a phone. (Oh, the 96GB Studio is almost $6000, you counter? Imagine how much it would cost in a phone form factor).

You can't possibly expect Apple to take that market segment seriously.

In theory it sounds alright, although in reality, the heat and power consumption make this less than ideal.

I am not sure single digit tk/s on weak model like ChatGPT OSS 20b @ Q3_K_M is going to be worthwhile.

Not to mention this has to be <0.01% of users who "want" to do this. The iPhone tooling would make it hard to even configure and spin up a local LLM.

> the most powerful consumer phone in the world today

According to what? (I don't disagree, just curious)

This is garbage.

It’s literally not an A/B test. It’s a well known story that this vehicle sold wayyyy better under a Honda badge and it has nothing to do with CarPlay.

Which is absolutely hilarious given they spent decades "teaching" consumers about imperfections and how you can pay more to avoid them!

You could say the same thing about any military hardware during a peace-time economy. It’s not a matter if it exists, it’s a matter if the relevant knowledge exists in domestic/friendly industrial base. The U.S. is making more satellites than the rest of the world combined right now.

It is also a question of spin up time. If the demand suddenly existed to rebuild satellites en masse, the lead time on labor resources is part of the total time to rebuild. It becomes concerning if and only if either a) for strategic reasons the time is inadequate, or b) the lead time requires generational training efforts, e.g. college programs, national initiatives, etc. which can't behave predictably in response to an emergency.

Broadly speaking, sure. But you’re not trying to rebuild every single one. At this point you’re in a war, things move faster, and there are a million unknowns. Under the given scenario, it appears that satellites have lost their usefulness akin to tanks in Ukraine. It’s not a matter if you can build satellites, merely if you can stay ahead of your adversary. At present the U.S. can launch more and faster mass to orbit. I’d be more concerned about that than anything else in the provided scenario.

It's also whether it matters if you have people available to replace the things. Any conflict that gets to the point of taking out satellites will almost certainly trigger Kessler syndrome, at which point whether you can launch any more satellites becomes moot.

I presume "anti-satellite campaign" means hundreds of anti-satellite missiles launched into LEO / MEO, at which point we do have a serious problem

Kessler Syndrome is a very specific accusation. It would be a disaster for sure, but not KS.

They are small until they are blown into a million pieces.

I like recursive self improvement instead. It seems like something that is actually quantifiable and kinda “the point” of why consciousness is important to humans.

So basically, being able to set it free on some long running goal and it sort of “lives” and autonomously does its own tasks?

I wonder at what point consciousness is necessary… that is, if you can have anything like that without it.

To the point that solving consciousness (and combining it with intelligence) is what gives you the autonomous, recursive, self-improving thing otherwise it can only drive in the dark and make big mistakes.

To your point I think - it’s why we don’t see too many non-conscious advanced biology (it rarely survives against those with it).

The bigger story for me is tipping fatigue. Almost every service worker requests a tip now. It seems to be from the rise in digital payments where everyone just turns on that feature. As a consumer, I have no idea if the worker’s compensation model is tied to tips or not and it feels like the ones who aren’t have hijacked my generosity.

> Almost every service worker requests a tip now.

That it's become ubiquitous has made me able to decline tips without feeling weird about it.

I have this science fiction story in my head that consciousness can evolve from organic to mechanical and back to organic as it is perhaps the most energy efficient method to encode complexity.

I have a dedicated profile for marketplace. I managed to keep it separate from my real meta account for a long time but they eventually tricked me into linking it. We need a Wikipedia model online marketplace. Craigslist was close, but didn’t keep up.

This, and the books, and the government contracts, and the distillation… It’s like that one friend who complains how drama always finds them and they are clueless why.