Remix.run Logo
My thousand dollar iPhone can't do math(journal.rafaelcosta.me)
128 points by rafaelcosta 5 hours ago | 37 comments
csmantle an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Methodology is one thing; I can't really agree that deploying an LLM to do sums is great. Almost as hilarious as asking "What's moon plus sun?"

But phenomenon is another thing. Apple's numerical APIs are producing inconsistent results on a minority of devices. This is something worth Apple's attention.

DustinEchoes an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wish he would have tried on a different iPhone 16 Pro Max to see if the defect was specific to that individual device.

raincole 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Low level numerical operation optimizations are often not reproduceable. For example: https://www.intel.com/content/dam/develop/external/us/en/doc... (2013)

But it's still surprising that that LLM doesn't work on iPhone 16 at all. After all LLMs are known for their tolerance to quantization.

bri3d 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, "floating point accumulation doesn't commute" is a mantra everyone should have in their head, and when I first read this article, I was jumping at the bit to dismiss it out of hand for that reason.

But, what got me about this is that:

* every other Apple device delivered the same results

* Apple's own LLM silently failed on this device

to me that behavior suggests an unexpected failure rather than a fundamental issue; it seems Bad (TM) that Apple would ship devices where their own LLM didn't work.

sva_ 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> floating point accumulation doesn't commute

It is commutative (except for NaN). It isn't associative though.

danpalmer an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

FYI, the saying is "champing at the bit", it comes from horses being restrained.

johngossman an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Posting some code that reproduces the bug could help not only Apple but you and others.

Buttons840 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I clicked hoping this would be about how old graphing calculators are generally better math companions than a phone.

The best way to do math on my phone I know of is the HP Prime emulator.

VorpalWay 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I run a TI 83+ emulator on my Android phone when I don't have my physical calculator at hand. Same concept, just learned a different brand of calculators.

varun_ch an hour ago | parent [-]

built-in calculator apps are surprisingly underbaked... I'm surprised neither of the big two operating systems have elected to ship something comparable to a real calculator built in. It would be nice if we could preview the whole expression as we type it..

I use the NumWorks emulator app whenever I need something more advanced. It's pretty good https://www.numworks.com/simulator/

_kulang 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Maybe this is why my damn keyboard predictive text is so gloriously broken

sen 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Oh it's not just me?

Typing on my iPhone in the last few months (~6 months?) has been absolutely atrocious. I've tried disabling/enabling every combination of keyboard setting I can thinkj of, but the predictive text just randomly breaks or it just gives up and stops correcting anything at all.

macintux an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I haven't watched the video, but clearly there's a broad problem with the iOS keyboard recently.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46232528 ("iPhone Typos? It's Not Just You - The iOS Keyboard is Broken")

acdha 13 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s not just you, and it got bad on my work iPhone at the same time so I know it’s not failing hardware or some customization since I keep that quite vanilla.

taneq 18 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s gotten so bad that I’m half convinced it’s either (a) deliberately trolling, or (b) ‘optimising’ for speech to text adoption.

ernsheong 10 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Have you heard of the Calculator app?

bri3d 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I love to see real debugging instead of conspiracy theories!

Did you file a radar? (silently laughing while writing this, but maybe there's someone left at Apple who reads those)

refulgentis 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

.

bri3d an hour ago | parent [-]

Can you read the article a little more closely?

> - MiniMax can't fit on an iPhone.

They asked MiniMax on their computer to make an iPhone app that didn't work.

It didn't work using the Apple Intelligence API. So then:

* They asked Minimax to use MLX instead. It didn't work.

* They Googled and found a thread where Apple Intelligence also didn't work for other people, but only sometimes.

* They HAND WROTE the MLX code. It didn't work. They isolated the step where the results diverged.

> Better to dig in a bit more.

The author already did 100% of the digging and then some.

Look, I am usually an AI rage-enthusiast. But in this case the author did every single bit of homework I would expect and more, and still found a bug. They rewrote the test harness code without an LLM. I don't find the results surprising insofar as that I wouldn't expect MAC to converge across platforms, but the fact that Apple's own LLM doesn't work on their hardware and their own is an order of magnitude off is a reasonable bug report, in my book.

refulgentis an hour ago | parent [-]

Emptied out post, thanks for the insight!

Fascinating the claim is Apple Intelligence doesn't work altogether. Quite a scandal.

EDIT: If you wouldn't mind, could you edit out "AI rage enthusiast" you edited in? I understand it was in good humor, as you describe yourself that way as well. However, I don't want to eat downvotes on an empty comment that I immediately edited when you explained it wasn't minimax! People will assume I said something naughty :) I'm not sure it was possible to read rage into my comment.

LoganDark an hour ago | parent [-]

> Fascinating the claim is Apple Intelligence doesn't work altogether. Quite a scandal.

No, the claim is their particular device has a hardware defect that causes MLX not to work (which includes Apple Intelligence).

> EDIT: If you wouldn't mind, could you edit out "AI rage enthusiast" you edited in? I understand it was in good humor, as you describe yourself that way as well. However, I don't want to eat downvotes on an empty comment that I immediately edited when you explained! People will assume I said something naughty :) I'm not sure it was possible to read rage into my comment.

Your comment originally read:

> This is blinkered.

> - MiniMax can't fit on an iPhone.

> - There's no reason to expect models to share OOMs for output.

> - It is likely this is a graceful failure mode for the model being far too large.

> No fan of Apple's NIH syndrome, or it manifested as MLX.

> I'm also no fan of "I told the robot [vibecoded] to hammer a banana into an apple. [do something impossible]. The result is inedible. Let me post to HN with the title 'My thousand dollars of fruits can't be food' [the result I have has ~nothing to do with the fruits]"

> Better to dig in a bit more.

Rather than erase it, and invite exactly the kind of misreading you don't want, you can leave it... honestly, transparently... with your admission in the replies below. And it won't be downvoted as much as when you're trying to manipulate / make requests of others to try to minimize your downvotes. Weird... voting... manipulating... stuff, like that, tends to be frowned upon on HN.

You have more rep than I do, even, so why care so much about downvotes...

If you really want to disown something you consider a terrible mistake, you can email the HN mods to ask for the comment to be dissociated from your account. Then future downvotes won't affect your karma. I did this once.

tehwebguy 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Here’s one that kills me:

- Tightening some bolts, listening to something via airpods

- Spec tells me torque in Nm

- Torque wrench is in ft lbs

- “Hey Siri, what’s X newton meters in foot pounds?”

- “Here’s some fucking website: ”

PlatoIsADisease 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You don't buy Apple products because of the quality, you buy it because its more expensive than the value of it. Its a demonstration of wealth. This is called Veblen good, and a phenomena called out as early as Thomas Hobbes.

What you need to do is carry 2 phones. A phone that does the job, and a phone for style.

I didn't invent the laws of nature, I just follow them.

ohyoutravel 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is a conclusion that comes with some personal baggage you should identify and consider addressing.

PlatoIsADisease 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Admittedly, I hate companies that live off their marketing. Nintendo, Disney, Apple. I hate that these companies can weaponize psychology against humans.

Function > Form.

I think its a Hero Complex, if Jung is correct.

DJBunnies 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Macbooks and iPhones are good devices though, saying this as a primarily linux user.

There is no way a company could exist purely on marketing, Apple backs it up with tech.

anonymars 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd almost say most companies live or die off their marketing. One could argue that understanding your customer as well as or better than they understand themselves is a strength.

To wit, some people do value form over function. Some people do prefer a safe, curated walled garden.

I am not among them--I say this as someone who cannot stand using most Apple products for more than a minute. But I respect what they offer(ed) and for some people even recommended them. (Now I'm less sure because it seems like everything tech has gone to shit, but I can't tell if that's just "old man yells at cloud" or what)

Ideally there would be enough competition for us all to find what we're looking for. I think anticompetitive behavior is a worse sin

raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes because 60% of US phone buyers buy an iPhone to stand out from the average US phone buyer and they shouldn’t because it doesn’t run local llm’s well?

kulahan 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

All three of these companies are supremely dedicated to the customer experience. It’s a weird thing to be annoyed at. Ninty is the only company really experimenting with gaming hardware. Disney parks are a thesis on hiding the “behind the scenes” stuff perfectly. Apple does its best to make things just kinda work well, and if you’re in their ecosystem fully, it usually does work out.

Not everyone cares for the most capable device on the planet. Sometimes people just want a pretty familiar and easy experience. I haven’t used my phone for anything more than browsing the web and texting in ages. I absolutely don’t care about whatever function you think I’m missing due to Apple, honestly.

As a side note, the fathers of Psychology were absolutely terrible scientists. The entire field almost failed because they took it so far into pseudo-science land. Of course Jung isn’t correct.

gambiting 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, I think it's cultural. In US it seems like everyone has an iphone, it's almost kinda quirky not to have one. But in some other places, an iPhone is more than your monthly salary - having one is definitely a symbol of status. Less so than it used to be, but it still has that.

dghlsakjg an hour ago | parent | next [-]

iPhones in the US have an estimate ~55% market share depending on source. Owning an Android wasn't unusual in the least when I lived there, and appears to be pretty popular.

I don't think its unusual that a country with high median income and higher average income will tend to gravitate towards more expensive phones. Given that Apple doesn't make a cheap phone, it kind of follows that wealthier countries will buy more iPhones.

Of course the opposite is true as well, In a country where an iPhone is measured in months of salary, they won't sell well, but I'd be willing to bet that Androids in that price tier sell like shit in those countries too.

Is it a status symbol? arguably. But it also correlates pretty strongly with median income.

ohyoutravel 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Fair, but that’s a comment on a US-centric website, run by a US-centric company, in a US-centric industry, on a US-centric medium. So if they didn’t mean US, I think the onus is on them to clarify exactly where this applies.

dghlsakjg an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I severely doubt your thesis around iPhones being Veblen goods.

You are claiming that if the price of the iPhone went down, apple would sell fewer phones?

Correspondingly, you are arguing that if they increased prices they could increase sales?

You are claiming that 100s of millions of people have all made the decision that the price of an iPhone is more than it is worth to them as a device, but is made up for by being seen with one in your hand?

Not all goods that signify status are Veblen goods.

B1FF_PSUVM 4 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Its a demonstration of wealth. This is called Veblen good

Just the other day I was reminded of the poor little "I am rich" iOS app (a thousand dollar ruby icon that performed diddly squat by design), which Apple deep-sixed from the app store PDQ.

If misery loves company, Veblen goods sure don't.

jwrallie 25 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Can you prove that is still the case with the iPhone SE by showing a comparable hardware with similar long support on software updates and lower price?

vanviegen 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Perfect conclusion: my expensive and rather new phone is broken by design, so I just buy an even newer and more expensive one from the same vendor.

The heroic attempt at debugging this though makes me sympathize with all of those engineers that must be doing low-level LLM development these days and getting just noise out of their black boxes.

ohyoutravel 2 hours ago | parent [-]

This is a vibe coded slop app.