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Apple would punish him severely unless they cleared it in advance, it might be to their advantage for some reason (negotiating with Google for Gemma rights? idk

Apple would punish him severely unless they cleared it in advance, it might be to their advantage for some reason (negotiating with Google for Gemma rights? idk).

segmondy 2mo ago
Apple is too desperate to be making demands. You confuse the Apple of yesterday and of today. Things change fast and things have changed.
- conception 2mo ago
  You’re right, Apple only has 68 billion dollars in cash, up 40% since last year. Definitely on their last legs.
  - mgambati 2mo ago
    Free cash? Crazy. I think I can live with the interest of that in the bank.
    - nxtfari 2mo ago
      you could live (100k a year) with the interest of 0.004% of that in the bank.
  - brcmthrowaway 2mo ago
    I remember the infographics of 5-10 years ago. They had 200 billion. What happened? Sinking ship?
    - malshe 2mo ago
      They never had $200 billion in cash in any quarter. Not at least since 2014. Besides, how much cash to hold is an executive decision. If the cash balance went down, it doesn't mean their business is not doing well. Cash can be used for Capex, like what the hyperscalers are doing right now. It can be used for buying back equity.
    - mandeepj 2mo ago
      They spent close to $100 billion in stock buybacks during the last 10ish years :-)
      - brcmthrowaway 2mo ago
        How does that compare to other companies?
        mandeepj 2mo ago
        What do you think?
- mandeepj 2mo ago
  > Apple is too desperate to be making demands They don't give a F about AI or any new AI model that was announced this morning. Wasn't there news a while ago about them buying Perplexity?
  - segmondy 2mo ago
    They do, they are low key panicking.
    - trollbridge 2mo ago
      And if they aren't, they should be. They ship some of the cheapest, most capable, and easiest to buy/set up AI hardware out there, and then don't ship any AI software worth speaking of. Apple needs to fix this.
      - literalAardvark 2mo ago
        "Apple needs to get into gold prospecting, this funny business of selling the best shovels just can't work out"
    - dofm 2mo ago
      I do not believe they are panicking, not least because I don't think they've finished adjusting Apple Silicon for the task; it will be very interesting to see what happens in the M6 and M7. I think their strategy is broadly correct, actually; I think there's still a bit of scope for "sit and wait and do it right" here. But acquiring more edge AI tech and edge AI people would potentially be in their interest.
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
  - dofm 2mo ago
    They didn't buy Perplexity and it indeed rather seems like Perplexity may have damaged the deal by blurting. Whether things are different now I don't know, but Prism would potentially be a good acquisition. This is not the first Bonsai model from Prism using this technology, and they've also applied this technology to an image model. The model aspect isn't that significant (even in this news), because it is Qwen, under the hood. The encoding efficiency is. Prism's technology might be valuable, and their team could well be. And they very evidently do care a lot about efficient on-device AI; they just don't care about developing frontier cloud models.
dofm 2mo ago
I would be slightly surprised if anything Apple wanted to do with Gemma they couldn't do with Gemini, which they have the right to make various derivatives of. They could more or less redistribute Gemma as-is in the developer program; they are unlikely to be troubled by any of the licence terms.

Apple would punish him severely unless they cleared it in advance, it might be to their advantage for some reason (negotiating with Google for Gemma rights? idk).

segmondy 2mo ago

Apple is too desperate to be making demands. You confuse the Apple of yesterday and of today. Things change fast and things have changed.

conception 2mo ago
You’re right, Apple only has 68 billion dollars in cash, up 40% since last year. Definitely on their last legs.
- mgambati 2mo ago
  Free cash? Crazy. I think I can live with the interest of that in the bank.
  - nxtfari 2mo ago
    you could live (100k a year) with the interest of 0.004% of that in the bank.
- brcmthrowaway 2mo ago
  I remember the infographics of 5-10 years ago. They had 200 billion. What happened? Sinking ship?
  - malshe 2mo ago
    They never had $200 billion in cash in any quarter. Not at least since 2014. Besides, how much cash to hold is an executive decision. If the cash balance went down, it doesn't mean their business is not doing well. Cash can be used for Capex, like what the hyperscalers are doing right now. It can be used for buying back equity.
  - mandeepj 2mo ago
    They spent close to $100 billion in stock buybacks during the last 10ish years :-)
    - brcmthrowaway 2mo ago
      How does that compare to other companies?
      - mandeepj 2mo ago
        What do you think?
mandeepj 2mo ago
> Apple is too desperate to be making demands They don't give a F about AI or any new AI model that was announced this morning. Wasn't there news a while ago about them buying Perplexity?
- segmondy 2mo ago
  They do, they are low key panicking.
  - trollbridge 2mo ago
    And if they aren't, they should be. They ship some of the cheapest, most capable, and easiest to buy/set up AI hardware out there, and then don't ship any AI software worth speaking of. Apple needs to fix this.
    - literalAardvark 2mo ago
      "Apple needs to get into gold prospecting, this funny business of selling the best shovels just can't work out"
  - dofm 2mo ago
    I do not believe they are panicking, not least because I don't think they've finished adjusting Apple Silicon for the task; it will be very interesting to see what happens in the M6 and M7. I think their strategy is broadly correct, actually; I think there's still a bit of scope for "sit and wait and do it right" here. But acquiring more edge AI tech and edge AI people would potentially be in their interest.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
- dofm 2mo ago
  They didn't buy Perplexity and it indeed rather seems like Perplexity may have damaged the deal by blurting. Whether things are different now I don't know, but Prism would potentially be a good acquisition. This is not the first Bonsai model from Prism using this technology, and they've also applied this technology to an image model. The model aspect isn't that significant (even in this news), because it is Qwen, under the hood. The encoding efficiency is. Prism's technology might be valuable, and their team could well be. And they very evidently do care a lot about efficient on-device AI; they just don't care about developing frontier cloud models.

dofm 2mo ago

I would be slightly surprised if anything Apple wanted to do with Gemma they couldn't do with Gemini, which they have the right to make various derivatives of. They could more or less redistribute Gemma as-is in the developer program; they are unlikely to be troubled by any of the licence terms.