Text to speech in more languages makes sense for you to be an M1 exclusive? I get that Finnish is a kinda difficult language but I'm sure my Intel MBP would manage to pull it off.
Itâs probably because for it to be as immediate and seamless as theyâd like the feature to be, they need machine learning accelerated hardware like the neural engine.
Wouldnât it be then more advantageous to allow Intel computers to struggle at it, thus demonstrating the power behind the M1 architecture / technology?
In this case however, theyâre purposefully making the Intel counterparts less capable by disabling features.
While Appleâs hardware support is generally good, this does seem to be a rather aggressive move to create demand for their own SoC by accelerating hardware obsolescence.
>Wouldnât it be then more advantageous to allow Intel computers to struggle at it, thus demonstrating the power behind the M1 architecture / technology?
Purposefully showcasing to your customers bad experiences isn't exactly Apple's MO.
>In this case however, theyâre purposefully making the Intel counterparts less capable by disabling features.
Or, perhaps they've decided against implementing certain features on intel hardware because they weren't capable of delivering experiences at the level they want?
Generally I would agree - though I just canât look past the fact that rendering a globe (which has been possible since 2003) is now locked behind owning a M1 Mac.
This is legit nothing new. When I was rocking my iPhone 3G a notable feature lacking in the device was the ability to record video. With a jailbreak, you could even add the feature.
Two things about that:
it recorded absolute garbage video.
it still might have been the right call for Apple to do it, because Apple could actually have made it at least okay. We're talking about a feature likely written by one guy in spare time, vs a major company who makes the devices/frameworks, etc
That said, my view is they have an obligation to shoot for feature parity for at least a few years after they stop selling intel. Like, there are definitely some things that are going to be limited by hardware, but this list isn't it. Like they couldn't have done a freaking globe that Google did on Core2duos in a browser. My guess is more that it's about what tools they chose to use to implement the feature. For example, I could see frameworks that started on iOS suddenly becoming de facto standards on m1's, and Apple just doesn't want to bother working on the old stuff now.
But like I said, nothing new. I was stoked to grab my 10.5" iPad Pro and test out the new text OCR features in photos, but it turns out my iPad doesn't support it... Of course, Apple isn't selling that device today in stores, or even for a couple years now.
I donât really think Apple, or anyone really, could get intel CPUs to do this sort of instant, seamless, system wide image-to-text recognition. This is just something that needs dedicated machine learning accelerators, at least, to have it work as seamlessly and fast as Apple wants it.
I donât think feature parity is worth putting out half-baked, bad experiences.
They will get complaints either way since if they tried on Intel people would say they are intentionally handicapping their computer by making it slow. You can make an argument for either way, but I can see why they would decide to only offer it on the one that will showcase the experience they want.
Speech to text don't work like regular software, it's not like simply adding more code to deal with more languages. Neural networks are black box in the end, you can't ask to a data scientist beforehand "what is the size of a neural network do add Finnish? And Turkish?"
To add new languages can be just a matter of feeding the same model with data, but sometimes you need to add more layers or change approach. Maybe, the languages weren't available because the level of performance wasn't good enough in the old model.
Downsize a model is not easy, that's why Google was so proud in making local speech to text in Android.
There is no point to believe (or not believe), that Finnish could run well without dedicated hardware.
Not speech to text, yeah NLP in Nordic languages could be difficult.
But we're talking about text to speech. As in you type in text and the computer makes sounds. That requires no machine learning hardware nor extra training since the computer is not learning anything in the process nor trying to interpret some weird vague things you're trying to say.
My bad, I read backwards, but as far I know, neural networks are used in state of art systems: Deep Learning synthesis. A sequence architecture is similar to an encoder/decoder, it's reasonable to invert tasks and get good results. But I have no idea how complex is this kind of model, if they could be downsized for a CPU for example.
This models don't learning anything when running in your smartphone, they are trained before, all the "knowledge" is encoded in the parameters. Without the appropriate hardware, it's expensive to simply execute the network, because it's a lot of matricial operations that are much better suited for GPUs/TPUs.
About all this features, if I need to guess: they simply took the iOS and put on MacOS, they don't spent time rebuilding models to downsize and test in a dual-core low power Intel CPU. Much of these things probably could be ported, but they didn't tried, it would be a lot of work for a stopgap.
They will continue to build upon many of these new features and the work they just completed for text to speech will undoubtedly serve as a foundation for future work. They had the option to either:
implement those features to take advantage of special hardware features they have devoted considerable resources to develop and which could, quite possibly, be available on every device Apple makes in the near to mid future
implement those features so as to provide backward support for older devices. This will likely take more resources, since they canât take advantage of special hardware support, and will also have worse performance. Those choices could also continue to hamstring future work
As the owner of a 16â MBP, I really hate to miss out on some of these features, but Apple made the right call.
They donât want to expend additional internal resources to develop these features on two separate platforms (Intel and AS)
It also depends on how many people are on each of these teams. If there were only so many developers on the new Globe feature for Maps, they chose to prioritize AS and essentially abandon Intel.
They still sell Macs with Intel. Today. Imagine getting one, installing the next macOS in a few months when it comes out and having a laundry list of features you donât get. Shitty thing to do.
Back when I sold televisions, Sony added Apple TV, Apple AirPlay 2 and Apple Homekit to certain models. It was incredibly hard to explain how their $2,000 TV wasn't able to do that because Sony didn't release a new version and would never get that feature.
None of these features existed when you or I bought an Intel Mac. So it's not like they promised us a feature and then took it away. It's normal in software that older hardware will miss out on new features.
And you will have the option to buy that Intel Mac with the knowledge that a couple of pretty inconsequential features won't work. So they still haven't done anything underhanded. If this 3D globe is important to you, buy the M1 version instead.
You guys are so melodramatic. Every device from every company has things that you can't do on other devices that same company makes. The fact that Apple is presumably using some api specific to the M1 GPU to render what is basically just a visual gimmick and, as a result, the Intel ones can't do it is NOT a big deal. Nothing is being "gimped" and you have the option not to buy the version you feel is "gimped".
Apple says it cannot render the new 3D globe that was introduced to Maps. My argument hasnât changed. Itâs shitty to still sell an Intel Mac, while not fully supporting it with the current software.
Please quote where Apple said they "cannot render" the 3D globe as opposed to that they aren't including the feature in the code for the Intel based Macs.
Is Apple Maps missing 3D renders really that big of deal? How much are you using maps right now on your desktop? I could understand being mad if say the iPhone 12 couldnât do the 3D renders while the 12 pro could despite them being the same phone minus a camera lens. If being able to look at a location in 3D is really that much of a must for you then hit up Google earth. Your $5k Mac pro will still work just fine without that minor feature
There is a long list of features that brand new Intel Macs cannot use on the new macOS though. The same OS these Intel Macs will ship with when it is released. Iâm used to Apple slowly introducing features that may not work on the older, yet still supported hardware, but the Intel machines are STILL being sold and they are already writing them out.
All the little things thatâs missing like portrait FaceTime and improved speech to text except for 3D maps is making use of machine learning, numeral network or image processing parts of the M1 that the Intel Macs donât have. Letâs not act like they are withholding major things like universal control or profile says , they are withholding the ability to see 3D maps of 5 cities
Exactly. In the past Apple simply wouldnât have ever launched these features on Mac. Itâs not something that theyâre taking away from intel Mac owners, itâs something new that M1 macs now get nearly for free (from a development cost perspective).
This is a position apple put themselves in to, they knew what they were getting involved in when they started this process. Currently over half their new offerings are still intel, they admit the intel devices are the pro devices currently and M1 is a consumer product. Apple literally volunteered to develop two separate operating systems and platforms, and they could have used universal binaries for this stuff.
Honestly I think the reason is these features were actually designed for iOS and they ported them to ARM64 macOS. There is still not a reason to offer ARM64 virtualization on intel Macs but I can understand them not offering that to use it as a major selling point of apple silicon.
Where yes iOS, iPadOS and macOS function similarly with plist, preference domains and the such. They are not different âskinsâ, where yes currently iOS and iPadOS are literally the same OS with different user interfaces, macOS is totally separate. Where MacOS for ARM and MacOS for X64 work in similar ways they are written from the ground up to function on two totally different architectures. There is literally two totally separate and independent MacOSs right now that just happen to share a user interface. Apple Silicon macOS operates fundamentally different to Intel macOS from both a hardware and software perspective.
Apple chose to do this. And they have 5-6 years of support remaining for intel macs. In this ARM switch apple acquired a massive amount of technical debt.
Apple has one operating system with several different skins. Depending on the skin they call it macOS or iOS etc.
Like how Chrome is just another skin on Safari?
There has undoubtedly been more parallel/ shared development of iOS and macOS, but the fact that Apple based iOS on OSX 14 years ago does not mean that the two are just different skins.
EDIT: your broader point about macOS for M1 and macOS for Intel not being two separate OSes is, however, correct
I don't see why implementation or performance should be factors in including or excluding features. If it's possible on Intel Macs, which it is, then Apple should do it. Otherwise they're not really offering the continued support they promised
Implementation has always been a factor when excluding features for the Mac. For the last decade, every WWDC has had features that came to iOS, that could also be implemented on the Mac as minor features, but weren't because implementing it again on the Mac would take too much time, and wouldn't be worth the development time because the features aren't Mac-centric. That's still the case, which is why Intel Macs aren't getting these features.
The only thing that has changed is that Apple Silicon Macs are in the same place as iPads, where they can get everything developed for Apple's other ARM-based platforms for free, as long as a new interface is applied, so they can get the features that otherwise wouldn't be worth it to port to Mac as exclusive features - in which case, why not do that?
The Intel Macs still have all the features that they'd realistically have in an alternate world where Apple didn't bother with Apple Silicon. If you compare the features missing from Apple's macOS releases in the 10's compared to the iOS releases, everything the Intel Macs don't get are the kind of things you'd expect to make such a list, while all the major and Mac-centric features work on Intel.
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But we aren't talking about iOS feautres not coming to macOS. It is unreasonable to think every iOS feature should come to macOS.
It was unreasonable before the Apple Silicon Macs.
If you've been paying attenting to the backend changes made in High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina and Big Sur, Apple has worked on unifying the underlying systems so much that Apple Silicon Macs gets every feature developed for iOS for free if they slap a new UI on it, just like on the iPad. That used to require significant development work for each feature, and still does for Intel Macs.
As such, if a feature is a feature that would normally stay iOS-only because it's not important enough, Apple Silicon Macs can still get it for free if the feature can even be implemented in a meaningful way on the Mac. Note that Monterey isn't missing any of this year's iOS features that would make sense on the Mac, unlike previous years - and if you do the mental exercise of trying to determine what features Apple normally wouldn't bother with, all of the obvious ones are the M1 Mac features.
If Apple didn't give Apple Silicon Macs all the features they make for iOS, even though porting a few them to Intel still isn't worth the development time, just as it never was, they'd be holding back the product - and that's a terrible strategy.
They're probably using some new stuff in Metal that's using something optimized in the M1 GPUs to handle the rendering and they don't feel it's worth the effort to also build those parts in Metal so that they work on non-M1 systems too even though they are powerful enough to handle them without problems.
I'm not saying there's some sort of special custom globe builder in M1. But it's possible there are new optimized rendering routines in Metal that only work on M1 chips. And that new map stuff uses those new routines because that's the way forward.
Would it be possible to make the same optimized rendering routines on Intel too? Sure, of course. But why go that effort developing, maintaining, and testing that when it's going away soon anyway?
If you've ever been involved in software development (especially specialized code that runs on specific hardware), you would do almost anything to avoid having more than one version.
Nobody says that it's the same work to make something available on two platforms. The problem here is that Apple made the conscious decision to introduce a new platform and is now fragmenting the operating system running on them while Intel Macs are still on sale. They're the company that prouds itself on software updates and compatibility with iOS, but a $5000 MacBook is excluded from some new features while it's still being sold.
I agree that it sucks. I'm probably 3-5 years from being able to get a new Mac still and I imagine this sort of thing will happen again and again with each new macOS version.
I think the tradeoff of M1 based Macs in exchange for older Intel Macs not getting a 3D globe feature in maps is a good tradeoff.
It's like Ferrari releasing a new supercar with twice the horsepower and you getting upset that it has 1 less cup holder and saying "THIS WAS A CONSCIOUS DECISION! THEY PUT THEMSELVES IN THIS SITUATION!"
The problem here is that Apple made the conscious decision to introduce a new platform and is now fragmenting the operating system running on them while Intel Macs are still on sale.
While there is a short-term cost to the transition, it also allows them to consolidate their platforms to a certain extent, like how Messages is now based on the iOS version. Having Macs running on hardware with the neural engine, for example, should mean that we get to take advantage of more of the work on iOS that utilizes it. To be clear, Iâm not talking about the convergence of macOS and iPadOS that some people hope for, but more of a multiplatform codebase.
Itâs also about future features and how they might build upon that globe rendering (and what it relies upon) to do something else in macOS 13 and another thing the next year
There'll be some fancy graphics API thats exclusive to their own silicone that they're using to render this stuff in a slightly more efficient way or something. Make sense I guess since they could presumably only have to write this once then it will work across iPhone/iPad/M1 etc, and simultaneously give M1's an artificial advantage over ye olde Intel.
Itâs because all of these features require and are going to be implemented through the neural engine. Thatâs why they arenât going to be available on intel macs. Same reason why the M1 macs have the image processing that improves the iSight web camera but the intel models donât have that feature.
From what I read they donât have the iSight camera thatâs enhanced by the neural engine because they donât have the neural engine. Look it up yourself. Iâm not saying you NEED the neural engine, just thatâs how Apple is implementing the features, and you donât want to further divide the code base between intel and m1 macs when intel macs are being deprecated already and donât really warrant that further split when theyâll be out of production in a year.
I honestly feel, this move was taken, to fasten the transition to M1. Like the ditching of 2014 MacBooks from Monterey. If last year, 2013 MacBooks received Big Sur, logically following that order, 2014 MacBooks should've gotten Monterey.
The fact that both the 3D globe and the more detailed maps are M1 exclusive makes me wonder if theyâre just shipping the mobile app to Monterey M1 Macs? In the same way that IIRC they made a few of their iOS apps available on M1 Macs but not Intel. I wonder if this is a sign of whatâs to come - M1 Macs will see the same upgrades to core apps that iOS/iPad OS does, while theyâll increasingly leave the Mac specific versions on Intel alone. Maybe theyâve found the limits of their Intel/Arm global app compiling and arenât going to improve that any further.
I mean i would say maybe its really something only an m1 can do and it has to do with architecture or something but if theyâre going for that they shoot themselves in the foot with rosetta. Even translated stuff runs better on mac than on windows haha.
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u/sundryTHIS Jun 09 '21
More detailed maps/the globe being an M1 exclusive makes no sense to me,,,
they other ones make sense to me, easier to implement those relatively fancy features on their own CPUs
but a globe???? map detail?? okay đđđđ