Back in 2019, the family of Apple engineer Wei Lun Huang (aka Walter Huang) sued Tesla a year after he was killed when his Model X crashed while Autopilot was engaged. The automaker has settled the lawsuit — on the very day jury selection was supposed to take place. Tesla’s lawyers asked the court to seal the settlement agreement so the payout amount wouldn’t be made public.
Tesla confirmed shortly after the accident that Autopilot was on at the time of the crash, but it also insisted Huang had time to react and had an unobstructed view of the divider. In a statement to the press, the company insisted the driver was at fault, and the only way for the accident to have occurred was if Huang “was not paying attention to the road.”
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation found Huang running a mobile game but couldn’t confirm if he was holding the phone during impact.
— Mat Smith
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They lived their life like two candles in the wind.
Engadget
Both the Wii U and 3DS’ online servers have been switched off. This means the end of online multiplayer gaming for both consoles, turning Mario Kart 7 for 3DS and the original Splatoon for the Wii U into single-player or couch co-op experiences — AKA the best Mario Kart experience. The first Super Mario Maker is also effectively dead.
The Chipotle Challenger Series featuring Tekken 8 will kick off on PS5 Tournaments with a qualifier round from April 15 to 26, open to anyone who wants to test their fighting-game skills — or just score some free snacks. All qualifier participants will receive a code for free chips and guacamole from Chipotle. If you’re actually good (at Tekken, not eating Chipotle), there’s a $5,000 prize and a trip for two to Evo 2024 in Las Vegas, plus free Chipotle for a year. Adobo chicken for Asuka, Barbacoa for Bryan Fury, Carnitas for King. I could go on.
Spotify is dipping its toe into the world of AI prompts. It announced AI Playlist, a new beta feature for creating playlists with a few words to get into the music vibe you want, such as “an indie folk playlist to give my brain a big warm hug.” Ugh.
The beta is available to Premium subscribers on Android and iOS devices in the United Kingdom and Australia. You can access it through the + button at the top right of your library. Click AI Playlist and let your imagination run wild.
The big problem with the boom in true wireless earbuds is they’re pretty much never repairable. Once the batteries wear out, they’re done. Fairphone, however, has built a pair of buds with not only replaceable batteries but easily replaceable ones. The Fairbuds are made of 70 percent recycled and fair materials, while 100 percent of the rare earth elements and tin are recycled. They are €149, and it’s likely we’ll see them in the US at some point, just like its phones.
Apple’s upcoming iPhone 16 lineup will feature bigger battery capacities compared to previous-generation models with the exception of the iPhone 16 Plus, which will have a smaller battery than its predecessor.
That’s according to the Chinese Weibo-based leaker OvO Baby Sauce OvO, a relatively new source of supply chain leaks with an as-yet unproven track record for accuracy.
The iPhone 16 battery capacity details posted by the Weibo leaker match figures previously shared on X by “Majin Bu,” with the notable addition of a figure for the iPhone 16 Pro model, which Majin Bu omitted. That makes this leak the first time we have been provided with alleged iPhone 16 battery capacity changes across the board.
The figures show that the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max will feature larger batteries than their predecessors, but the iPhone 16 Plus is allegedly facing a reduction in terms of battery capacity compared to the iPhone 15 Plus.
Why that would be the case isn’t clear, since apart from the size difference, both the iPhone 16 and the iPhone 16 Plus are expected to have an identical feature set. One possibility is that the capacity reduction turns out to be negligible in real terms thanks to efficiency improvements in other areas. On the other hand, by reducing capacity, Apple could be trying to maximize differentiation between the iPhone 16 Plus and the iPhone 16 Pro Max in an attempt to nudge customers toward the premium features (and prices) of its top tier model.
iPhone 15 Lineup (2023)
iPhone 16 Lineup (2024)
% Change
[Standard]
3,349 mAh
3,561 mAh
+6%
Plus
4,383 mAh
4,006 mAh
-9%
Pro
3,274 mAh
3,355 mAh
+2.5
Pro Max
4,422 mAh
4,676 mAh
+5%
When the iPhone 14 Plus was introduced into Apple’s smartphone lineup to replace the iPhone 13 mini, it gave customers the opportunity to own a device with the same 6.7-inch display as the iPhone 14 Pro Max without paying a premium. In addition, the iPhone 14 Plus also had the advantage of a larger capacity battery than the iPhone 14 Pro Max, allowing Apple to market the device as featuring “our longest battery life.“
However, with the advent of the iPhone 15 series, Apple increased the battery capacity of the iPhone 15 Pro Max to make it the largest battery ever used in an iPhone.
According to another rumor, this year’s iPhone 16 Pro Max will boast an even bigger 30-hour-plus battery life (compared to 29 hours for the iPhone 15 Pro Max). Not only that, both the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max are expected to have slightly larger displays. If Apple does intend to reduce the battery in the iPhone 16 Plus, it would widen the gap further between the two tiers. The iPhone 16 lineup is expected to be announced in the fall.
One new iPad model has appeared in Indian regulatory filings ahead of its expected announcement next month.
The listing, spotted by 91Mobiles, appeared in the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) database with the model number A2386. This does not correlate with any existing Apple device.
91Mobiles and several other sites have erroneously suggested that A2387 is also a new iPad model, but it actually relates to the battery for the current- and previous-generation 12.9-inch iPad Pro. A2386, on the other hand, is a new listing likely for a battery in one of the new iPads.
It is not clear whether this device is a new iPad Air or iPad Pro, but both product lines are expected to be refreshed in May. New iPad models have been thought to be on the brink of launch for several weeks, and the latest regulatory filing seems to cement expectations that they will appear relatively soon.
While the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max are still months away from launching, there are already over a dozen rumors about the devices. Below, we have recapped new features and changes expected for the devices so far. These are some of the key changes rumored for the iPhone 16 Pro models as of April 2024:Larger displays: The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max will be equipped with large…
A first look at iOS 18’s rumored visionOS-style redesign may have been revealed by a new image of the Camera app. Alleged iOS 18 design resource. MacRumors received the above iPhone frame template from an anonymous source who claims they obtained it from an iOS engineer. It will allegedly be included as part of the Apple Design Resources for iOS 18, which helps developers visually design apps …
Nearly one year after it launched in the U.S., the Apple Card’s high-yield savings account will be receiving its first-ever interest rate decrease. Starting on April 3, the Apple Card savings account’s annual percentage yield (APY) will be lowered to 4.4%, according to data on Apple’s backend discovered by MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris. The account currently has a 4.5% APY. 4.4% will …
Apple is exploring various “personal robotics” projects in an effort to create its “next big thing,” according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Amazon’s Astro robot One of these projects is described as a “mobile robot” that would “follow users around their homes,” while another is said to be an “advanced table-top home device that uses robotics to move a display around”:Engineers at Apple have…
Apple has yet to release the first beta of iOS 17.5 for the iPhone, but two changes are already expected with the upcoming software update. iOS 17.5 will likely allow iPhone users in the EU to download apps directly from the websites of eligible developers, and the update might include some changes to how Apple ID recovery contacts work. More details about these potential changes follow. W…
Apple today added a handful of devices to its public-facing vintage and obsolete products list, including some older iPhone and iPad models. Apple now considers the iPhone 6 Plus to be “obsolete” worldwide, meaning that Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers no longer offer repairs or other hardware service for the device. Apple says it considers a product “obsolete” once seven…
Best Buy is discounting a large collection of M3 MacBook Pro computers today, including both the 14-inch and 16-inch versions of the laptop. Every deal in this sale requires you to have a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership, although non-members can still get solid second-best prices on these MacBook Pro models. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and…
Apple researchers have developed an artificial intelligence system named ReALM (Reference Resolution as Language Modeling) that aims to radically enhance how voice assistants understand and respond to commands. In a research paper (via VentureBeat), Apple outlines a new system for how large language models tackle reference resolution, which involves deciphering ambiguous references to…
This past Monday, about a dozen engineers and executives at data science and AI company Databricks gathered in conference rooms connected via Zoom to learn if they had succeeded in building a top artificial intelligence language model. The team had spent months, and about $10 million, training DBRX, a large language model similar in design to the one behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But they wouldn’t know how powerful their creation was until results came back from the final tests of its abilities.
“We’ve surpassed everything,” Jonathan Frankle, chief neural network architect at Databricks and leader of the team that built DBRX, eventually told the team, which responded with whoops, cheers, and applause emojis. Frankle usually steers clear of caffeine but was taking sips of iced latte after pulling an all-nighter to write up the results.
Databricks will release DBRX under an open source license, allowing others to build on top of its work. Frankle shared data showing that across about a dozen or so benchmarks measuring the AI model’s ability to answer general knowledge questions, perform reading comprehension, solve vexing logical puzzles, and generate high-quality code, DBRX was better than every other open source model available.
AI decision makers: Jonathan Frankle, Naveen Rao, Ali Ghodsi, and Hanlin Tang.Photograph: Gabriela Hasbun
It outshined Meta’s Llama 2 and Mistral’s Mixtral, two of the most popular open source AI models available today. “Yes!” shouted Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks, when the scores appeared. “Wait, did we beat Elon’s thing?” Frankle replied that they had indeed surpassed the Grok AI model recently open-sourced by Musk’s xAI, adding, “I will consider it a success if we get a mean tweet from him.”
To the team’s surprise, on several scores DBRX was also shockingly close to GPT-4, OpenAI’s closed model that powers ChatGPT and is widely considered the pinnacle of machine intelligence. “We’ve set a new state of the art for open source LLMs,” Frankle said with a super-sized grin.
Building Blocks
By open-sourcing, DBRX Databricks is adding further momentum to a movement that is challenging the secretive approach of the most prominent companies in the current generative AI boom. OpenAI and Google keep the code for their GPT-4 and Gemini large language models closely held, but some rivals, notably Meta, have released their models for others to use, arguing that it will spur innovation by putting the technology in the hands of more researchers, entrepreneurs, startups, and established businesses.
Databricks says it also wants to open up about the work involved in creating its open source model, something that Meta has not done for some key details about the creation of its Llama 2 model. The company will release a blog post detailing the work involved to create the model, and also invited WIRED to spend time with Databricks engineers as they made key decisions during the final stages of the multimillion-dollar process of training DBRX. That provided a glimpse of how complex and challenging it is to build a leading AI model—but also how recent innovations in the field promise to bring down costs. That, combined with the availability of open source models like DBRX, suggests that AI development isn’t about to slow down any time soon.
Ali Farhadi, CEO of the Allen Institute for AI, says greater transparency around the building and training of AI models is badly needed. The field has become increasingly secretive in recent years as companies have sought an edge over competitors. Opacity is especially important when there is concern about the risks that advanced AI models could pose, he says. “I’m very happy to see any effort in openness,” Farhadi says. “I do believe a significant portion of the market will move towards open models. We need more of this.”
It has felt like a very long wait for new iPads, with the most recent ones having landed back in 2022. But that wait might almost be over, as two separate sources suggest that the iPad Pro 2024 and the iPad Air 6 might be announced on March 26.
Chinese leaker Instant Digital and Chinese website ITHome have both put this date forward, as spotted by MacRumors, though the latter mentions that cases for these tablets will apparently start being sold on that date, and seems to use this as evidence for March 26 being the launch date.
In any case, even if these tablets are announced on March 26, they might not ship until a while later, as according to Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter, these tablets will ship with iPadOS 17.4, and that probably won’t be finished until at least the end of March, after which it will need installing on these slates. So that might mean they don’t ship until the second half of April.
But that doesn’t rule out an announcement on March 26, with pre-orders perhaps opening soon after. Indeed, leaker Ross Young (via MacRumors) has recently said that the iPad Pro 2024 will be announced in late March or early April, and will ship in April.
The iPad Pro 2024 in particular should be worth the wait too, with leaks suggesting it will be the first of Apple‘s tablets to boast an OLED screen, along with a powerful M3 chipset, a landscape-oriented front camera, and maybe even wireless charging via MagSafe.
A missing model
However, the iPad Air 6 might be slightly more disappointing, as the main rumored change there was the addition of a larger 12.9-inch model, but according to leaker ShrimpApplePro, there will probably only be a 10.9-inch version, as we currently have.
That said, they’re basing this on the absence of activity surrounding a 12.9-inch model being assembled in Vietnam, and they note that it’s still possible this larger model is instead being manufactured in China. So while we wouldn’t rule it out just yet – especially as this larger variant has been extensively leaked – they don’t seem very convinced that it’s happening.
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Beyond that, this source claims that the iPad Air 6 will have a landscape-oriented selfie camera but otherwise won’t be in for any major design changes. They also claim that of the five colors the iPad Air (2022) is available in (namely Space Gray, Starlight, Pink, Purple, and Blue), either Pink or Blue will probably not be offered with the new model – though presumably a new shade will take its place.
As ever, we’d take all of these leaks with a pinch of salt, but one way or another it’s sounding like we’ll probably see the iPad Pro 2024 and the iPad Air 6 fairly soon.
Logitech is expanding its Mevo lineup of live-streaming cameras for creators. The company’s new Mevo Core shoots in 4K, meaning, unlike the 1080p Mevo Start we reviewed two years ago, cropping and digital zooms won’t lead to overly grainy video. However, the tradeoff is pricing, as the new model will set you back three times as much for a three-camera setup.
The Mevo Core continues the lineup’s trajectory of wireless multicam live-streaming directly to platforms like YouTube, Twitch and Facebook. (Of course, you can also record content to upload later.) The $999 package ships as a body only, although Logitech says it will sell lens bundle kits through Amazon and B&H Photo Video. Either way, you’ll need at least one Micro Four Thirds (MFT) lens to get started, and the company says any powered or manual MFT lens will work on day one.
The camera has a large 4/3 CMOS sensor, which Logitech says diminishes noise and improves low-light performance and depth of field compared to the 1080p model. The Core shoots in 4K at 30fps for recording content to upload later; if you’re live-streaming, you can instead use 1080p at 30fps. This model supports WiFi 6E, which could help with network latency and stability if your router also supports it.
Logitech
The camera’s body is noticeably bigger than that of the Mevo Start. At 3.5 x 3.5 x 3.25 inches, it has a similar depth and height but is about twice the width. With its battery installed (and no lenses mounted), it weighs 1.5 lbs.
Logitech says its audio is upgraded, too. It has a built-in three-microphone array with noise cancellation. You can also connect an external mic (or other audio source), which we found essential in the Mevo Start. We’ll have to wait and see if the Core’s built-in mics fare much better.
The Mevo Core’s battery life is estimated at six hours. If you need more time, you can plug an external power source into its USB-C port. It also includes an HDMI port, a 3.5mm one (for analog audio), and a microSD card slot. Logitech says it can double as an (incredibly expensive) wired or wireless HD webcam.
Like previous models, the Mevo Core works with Logitech’s Mevo app (where you can adjust things like focus, zoom, and aperture) and Multicam app to set up multi-viewpoint recording or streaming.
The Logitech Mevo Core is available for $999 for a single (body-only) camera starting today. It’s available from Logitech, Amazon, and B&H Photo Video.
Apple researchers have developed a new method for training large language models (LLMs) that seamlessly integrates both text and visual information.
The company’s findings, detailed in a research paper titled “MM1: Methods, Analysis & Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-training,” showcase a new approach to creating more intelligent and flexible AI systems. By utilizing a diverse dataset comprising image-caption pairs, interleaved image-text documents, and text-only data, Apple’s claims that the MM1 model sets a new standard in AI’s ability to perform tasks such as image captioning, visual question answering, and natural language inference with a high level of accuracy.
Apple’s research focuses on the combination of different types of training data and model architectures, which enables the AI to understand and generate language based on a mix of visual and linguistic cues. This capability is vital for tasks that require a nuanced comprehension of the world, such as interpreting complex images or answering questions that involve visual elements.
The paper also highlights the MM1 model’s exceptional in-context learning abilities, particularly in the largest 30 billion parameter configuration of the model. This version apparently exhibits remarkable capabilities for multi-step reasoning over multiple images using few-shot “chain-of-thought” prompting, a technique that allows the AI to perform complex, open-ended problem solving based on minimal examples.
This research emerges as part of Apple’s broader initiative to enhance its AI capabilities amid growing competition. Earlier today, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurmanreported that Apple is in discussions with Google to license Google’s Gemini generative large-language models to power new features coming to the iPhone as part of iOS 18.
The iPhone is Apple’s top-selling product, and it gets an update every year. In 2024, we’re expecting the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro lineup, with an arguably more interesting feature set than we got with the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. Capture Button All four iPhone 16 models are set to get a whole new button, which will be…
Resale value trends suggest the iPhone SE 4 may not hold its value as well as Apple’s flagship models, according to SellCell. According to the report, Apple’s iPhone SE models have historically depreciated much more rapidly than the company’s more premium offerings. The third-generation iPhone SE, which launched in March 2022, experienced a significant drop in resale value, losing 42.6%…
In just four U.S. states, residents can add their driver’s license or ID to the Apple Wallet app on the iPhone and Apple Watch, providing a convenient and contactless way to display proof of identity or age at select airports, businesses, and venues. Adoption of the feature has been slow since Apple first announced it in September 2021, with IDs in the Wallet app only available in Arizona,…
Apple suppliers will begin production of two new fourth-generation AirPods models in May, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Based on this production timeframe, he expects the headphones to be released in September or October. Gurman expects both fourth-generation AirPods models to feature a new design with better fit, improved sound quality, and an updated charging case with a USB-C…
The iPad Air will be the next Apple tablet to adopt OLED display panel technology following its upcoming OLED iPad Pro models, according to an updated forecast from research firm Omdia (via The Elec). “In 2028, we expect the iPad Air to go OLED as well, with the iPad Air using single-stack and the iPad Pro using two-stack tandem OLEDs,” said Omdia researcher Kang Min-soo, speaking on…
Walmart today announced that it has started selling the MacBook Air with the M1 chip in the U.S., with pricing set at a very reasonable $699. The laptop can be ordered now on Walmart.com, and it will be available soon at select Walmart stores. This is the first time that customers can purchase a Mac that is sold directly by Walmart, the company said in a press release. Some other retailers…
Apple registers many patents most of which never see the light of day as consumer products – officially, that is. One burgeoning knock-off merchant in China has apparently taken cues from an idea Apple had in 2021 for AirPods featuring a case with a built-in touchscreen display. Pictures and video shared on X (Twitter) by occasional leaker @lipilipsi show production units of counterfeit…
An independent team could replicate select experiments in a paper before publication, to help catch errors and poor methodology.Credit: SolStock/Getty
Could the replication crisis in scientific literature be addressed by having scientists independently attempt to reproduce their peers’ key experiments during the publication process? And would teams be incentivized to do so by having the opportunity to report their findings in a citable paper, to be published alongside the original study?
These are questions being asked by two researchers who say that a formal peer-replication model could greatly benefit the scientific community.
Anders Rehfeld, a researcher in human sperm physiology at Copenhagen University Hospital, began considering alternatives to standard peer review after encountering a published study that could not be replicated in his laboratory. Rehfeld’s experiments1 revealed that the original paper was flawed, but he found it very difficult to publish the findings and correct the scientific record.
“I sent my data to the original journal, and they didn’t care at all,” Rehfeld says. “It was very hard to get it published somewhere where you thought the reader of the original paper would find it.”
The issues that Rehfeld encountered could have been avoided if the original work had been replicated by others before publication, he argues. “If a reviewer had tried one simple experiment in their own lab, they could have seen that the core hypothesis of the paper was wrong.”
Rehfeld collaborated with Samuel Lord, a fluorescence-microscopy specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, to devise a new peer-replication model.
The replication crisis won’t be solved with broad brushstrokes
In a white paper detailing the process2, Rehfeld, Lord and their colleagues describe how journal editors could invite peers to attempt to replicate select experiments of submitted or accepted papers by authors who have opted in. In the field of cell biology, for example, that might involve replicating a western blot, a technique used to detect proteins, or an RNA-interference experiment that tests the function of a certain gene. “Things that would take days or weeks, but not months, to do” would be replicated, Lord says.
The model is designed to incentivize all parties to participate. Peer replicators — unlike peer reviewers — would gain a citable publication, and the authors of the original paper would benefit from having their findings confirmed. Early-career faculty members at mainly undergraduate universities could be a good source of replicators: in addition to gaining citable replication reports to list on their CVs, they would get experience in performing new techniques in consultation with the original research team.
Rehfeld and Lord are discussing their idea with potential funders and journal editors, with the goal of running a pilot programme this year.
“I think most scientists would agree that some sort of certification process to indicate that a paper’s results are reproducible would benefit the scientific literature,” says Eric Sawey, executive editor of the journal LifeScienceAlliance, who plans to bring the idea to the publisher of his journal. “I think it would be a good look for any journal that would participate.”
Who pays?
Sawey says there are two key questions about the peer-replication model: who will pay for it, and who will find the labs to do the reproducibility tests? “It’s hard enough to find referees for peer review, so I can’t imagine cold e-mailing people, asking them to repeat the paper,” he says. Independent peer-review organizations, such as ASAPbio and Review Commons, might curate a list of interested labs, and could even decide which experiments will be replicated.
Lord says that having a third party organize the replication efforts would be great, and adds that funding “is a huge challenge”. According to the model, funding agencies and research foundations would ideally establish a new category of small grants devoted to peer replication. “It could also be covered by scientific societies, or publication fees,” Rehfeld says.
A controlled trial for reproducibility
It’s also important for journals to consider what happens when findings can’t be replicated. “If authors opt in, you’d like to think they’re quite confident that the work is reproducible,” says Sawey. “Ideally, what would come out of the process is an improved methods or protocols section, which ultimately allows the replicating lab to reproduce the work.”
Most important, says Rehfeld, is ensuring that the peer-replication reports are published, irrespective of the outcome. If replication fails, then the journal and original authors would choose what to do with the paper. If an editor were to decide that the original manuscript was seriously undermined, for example, they could stop it from being published, or retract it. Alternatively, they could publish the two reports together, and leave the readers to judge. “I could imagine peer replication not necessarily as an additional ‘gatekeeper’ used to reject manuscripts, but as additional context for readers alongside the original paper,” says Lord.
A difficult but worthwhile pursuit
Attempting to replicate others’ work can be a challenging, contentious undertaking, says Rick Danheiser, editor-in-chief of OrganicSyntheses, an open-access chemistry journal in which all papers are checked for replicability by a member of the editorial board before publication. Even for research from a well-resourced, highly esteemed lab, serious problems can be uncovered during reproducibility checks, Danheiser says.
Replicability in a field such as synthetic organic chemistry — in which the identity and purity of every component in a reaction flask should already be known — is already challenging enough, so the variables at play in some areas of biology and other fields could pose a whole new level of difficulty, says Richard Sever, assistant director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press in New York, and co-founder of the bioRxiv and medRxiv preprint servers. “But just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean there might not be cases where peer replication would be helpful.”
How to make your research reproducible
The growing use of preprints, which decouple research dissemination from evaluation, allows some freedom to rethink peer evaluation, Sever adds. “I don’t think it could be universal, but the idea of replication being a formal part of evaluating at least some work seems like a good idea to me.”
An experiment to test a different peer-replication model in the social sciences is currently under way, says Anna Dreber Almenberg, who studies behavioural and experimental economics at the Stockholm School of Economics. Dreber is a board member of the Institute for Replication (I4R), an organization led by Abel Brodeur at University of Ottawa, which works to systematically reproduce and replicate research findings published in leading journals. In January, I4R entered an ongoing partnership with Nature Human Behaviour to attempt computational reproduction of data and findings of as many studies published from 2023 onwards as possible. Replication attempts from the first 18 months of the project will be gathered into a ‘meta-paper’ that will go through peer review and be considered for publication in the journal.
“It’s exciting to see how people from completely different research fields are working on related things, testing different policies to find out what works,” says Dreber. “That’s how I think we will solve this problem.”
The base model 13-inch MacBook Air with the M3 chip, 256GB of storage, and 8GB of RAM has significantly faster SSD speeds compared to the equivalent model with the M2 chip, according to benchmark results shared today by YouTube channel Max Tech.
Max Tech’s teardown video confirms that Apple has returned to using two 128GB storage chips for the new 13-inch MacBook Air with 256GB of storage, compared to a single 256GB chip in the equivalent model with the M2 chip. This change results in faster SSD read and write speeds in tests, as the two chips can process requests in parallel.
Max Tech ran Blackmagic’s Disk Speed Test tool with a 5GB file size test on both the M2 and M3 models of the 13-inch MacBook Air with 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM, and they found the SSD in the M3 model achieved up to 33% faster write speeds and up to 82% faster read speeds compared to the SSD in the M2 model.
The change very likely extends to the base model 15-inch MacBook Air with the M3 chip, although Max Tech has yet to tear down that model.
Apple’s decision to switch to a single 256GB chip for the base model MacBook Air in 2022 was controversial, even though the slower SSD speeds are unlikely to be noticed by the average MacBook Air user working on common day-to-day tasks. Nevertheless, customers who purchase an M3 model no longer need to worry about configuring the laptop with at least 512GB of storage in order to avoid the slower speeds.
Two 128GB storage chips in the new base model 13-inch MacBook Air (via Max Tech)
The new MacBook Air models with the M3 chip launched Friday. Apple continues to sell a 13-inch MacBook Air with the M2 chip and 256GB of storage for $999, so customers who want maximum SSD performance should avoid that model.
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IBM has taken a bold step by incorporating an advanced AI model known as Mixtral-8x7B, which comes from the innovative minds at Mistral AI. This is a big deal because it means you now have access to a broader range of AI models to choose from, allowing you to tailor your AI solutions to fit your unique business needs perfectly.
The Mixtral-8x7B model is a powerhouse in the realm of large language models (LLMs). It’s designed to process data at lightning speeds, boasting a 50% increase in data throughput. This is a significant advantage for any business that relies on quick and efficient data analysis. Imagine reducing potential latency by up to 75%—that’s the kind of speed we’re talking about.
But speed isn’t the only thing this model has going for it. The Mixtral-8x7B is also incredibly efficient, thanks to a process called quantization. This technique shrinks the model’s size and reduces its memory requirements, which can lead to cost savings and lower energy consumption. And the best part? It does all this without compromising on its ability to handle complex data sets.
Mistral AI Model on watsonx
IBM’s strategy is all about giving you options. With a diverse range of AI models on the Watsonx platform, you can pick and choose the tools that best fit your business operations. The Mixtral-8x7B model is a testament to this approach, offering versatility for a variety of business applications. Collaboration is at the heart of IBM’s model development. By working with other AI industry leaders like Meta and Hugging Face, IBM ensures that its Watsonx.ai model catalog is stocked with the latest and greatest in AI technology. This means you’re always getting access to cutting-edge tools.
The Mixtral-8x7B model isn’t just fast and efficient; it’s also smart. It uses advanced techniques like Sparse modeling and Mixture-of-Experts to optimize data processing and analysis. These methods help the model manage vast amounts of information with precision, making it an invaluable asset for businesses drowning in data. IBM’s global perspective is evident in its recent addition of ELYZA-japanese-Llama-2-7b, a Japanese LLM, to the Watsonx platform. This move shows IBM’s dedication to catering to a wide range of business needs and use cases across different languages and regions.
Looking ahead, IBM isn’t stopping here. The company plans to keep integrating third-party models into Watsonx, constantly enhancing the platform’s capabilities. This means you’ll have an ever-expanding toolkit of AI resources at your disposal. So, what does IBM’s integration of the Mixtral-8x7B model into Watsonx mean for you? It signifies a major leap forward in the company’s AI offerings. With a focus on increased efficiency, a robust multi-model strategy, and a commitment to collaboration, IBM is well-equipped to help you leverage AI for a competitive edge in your industry. Whether you’re looking to innovate, scale, or simply stay ahead of the curve, IBM’s Watsonx platform is becoming an increasingly valuable ally in the fast-paced world of enterprise AI. Here are some other articles you may find of interest on the subject of Mixtral and IBM watsonx :
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