Founder, @DaywardAI. I help companies position and explain their AI, and I build things with it. 22 years at Apple. Not investment advice.
San Jose, California
Joined December 2006
- Tweets5.5K
- Following483
- Followers21.5K
- Likes7.4K
Pinned Tweet
Here’s an Apple secret:
Success comes from culture, not technology.
Like many at Apple, I worked for many years under John Brandon, our longtime head of sales. He had his “Top Ten Rules for Success” which I carried around and lived by.
It’s easy to spot someone from Brandon’s team by how they collaborate. I tried to be one of them. I mopped the floor (literally at times), I shared everything I knew without gatekeeping, I always assumed the customer knew their business.
I think about AI the same way. Most AI advice right now is for builders. Almost nobody is helping the marketers, sales engineers, and execs who actually have to put AI in front of customers. That’s the gap I work in.
I left Apple last month after 22 years. After some thinking and a lot of conversations, I’m now doing what I did inside Apple, but for other organizations: AI positioning, helping businesses understand AI, and creating Apple-level presentations and content.
ALT Image: JB Top 10 Rules for Success — John Brandon Let go of the old, focus on future Always tell the truth, bad news sooner than later Highest level of ethics, when in doubt ask Learn to be a good business person, not just a great sales person Everybody sweeps the floor Be professional in your style, speech, and follow through Listen to your customer, they almost always “get it” Create “win-win” relationships with our customers Look out for each other, sharing information is a good thing Don’t take yourself too seriously
Want to know how on-device AI works on Apple products, from the iPhone all the way up to a cluster of Mac Studios?
I gave a talk at the AiOS meetup in SF on Tuesday. Here’s a video of the same presentation. A lot of people asked for the deck, so it’s up too.
The page credits every source. Special thanks to @alexocheema, whose price-per-GB-of-memory idea I happily stole, to @jundotkim, whose oMLX benchmarks are behind most of the speeds, and to @ashxhart, @MiaAI_lab, @ivanfioravanti and @viticci for their benchmarks, recipes and reviews. And to everyone else listed.
Youtube, slides, PDF, and sources, all are here.
daywardai.com/deck?utm_sourc…
Todd Dailey retweeted
Linux on the M6 Mac Mini, Day 6 - GPU is up!
Many of you noticed in yesterday's screenshot it used software rendering. I'm excited to share Omarchy on the M6 now utilizes the GPU.
Almost all the drivers are done, and I'll be starting on the Apple Neural Engine bring-up soon.
Interesting, didn't realize the Duo's nano-texture is different than the regular nano-texture!
I got early access to @AnthropicAI Claude Duet. Here's a five-minute walkthrough.
TLDR: It's a very early TestFlight release, and it's still rough around the edges. Looking forward to seeing what it can do in the future, but for now it's no Grok Bot or Muse. It's basically Claude Projects in an app.
At @DaywardAI we've been operating in stealth mode for the last six months on a world-changing project, and now it's finally ready to be introduced. I'm incredibly please to introduce the Agentabulator. AI will never be the same.
It's hard to explain in words, it's best that you watch our launch video below.
New Macs predicted for Apple’s “Pro and Tell” event next week on October 28! @markgurman says touchscreen M5 MacBook Pros, a 14-inch M6 MacBook Pro, and a new iMac.
Here’s how I would play it if you're looking for a new MacBook Pro:
There’s a non-zero chance Apple uses this event to raise the price of the M5 Max MacBook Pro with 128GB. (Apple already raised prices once this year, so don’t believe people who say Apple never does this. Component prices keep rising and Apple likes to protect its margin.)
The M5 Max MBP won’t ship until November 12. If you think you might want one, pre-order now and cancel after the event if it’s no longer attractive. If the price goes up, you’ve locked in the current one.
Bonus: Gurman says the touchscreen models keep the M5 Max chip, so you’ll see the new design and its price before your order ships. You can pick the old or new design.
There’s really no downside to dropping in a pre-order if you’re unsure, except the hold on your credit card. I’d get an M5 Max 128GB MBP with nano-texture and a 4TB SSD. (For $7,849 😬😬😬) Best laptop Apple has ever made in my experience, and I was there 22 years!
I loved the @typesafeai "ANTI LANGUAGE LANGUAGE MODEL" shirt so much that I made a sticker out of it on our sticker printer. If you run into me ask for one!
Tonight I’m at AiOS SF talking AI on Apple devices, but... one more thing 😀
Years ago at Apple I set up a demo for a senior government official: real-time translation software for service members, running on an iPod touch strapped to a forearm. Before it started, I was alone in the room with Tim Cook. I don’t think he had ever said my name before. “So Todd, what are we showing today?” I WAS NOT READY FOR THAT.
I told him all about the translation software. There was a pause that felt terrifying. Then: “That’s good, but remember to always show and explain the Apple product first.”
The translation app was the cool part, but Apple sold iPod touch. That’s what I was there for. I never forgot that.
I see the same thing in AI now. Companies talk about the model they’re using, and tooling, and hardware, and the customer is left wondering what the product actually does for them.
That’s where I fit. After thousands of presentations to executives during 22 years at Apple, and after helping launch Apple Intelligence and AI messaging, I’m starting @DaywardAI to help companies show and explain their AI, and build things with it. A lot of it runs on hardware they own. Turning the technical into the understandable is my superpower.
I’m already working with a few companies, private individuals, and artists to create amazing results from unreasonable requests, and I’m having a blast doing it!
We are so so early on AI, the next few years are going to be INCREDIBLE.
Shower thought: Bezos had that line, “your margin is my opportunity.” With AI, I think you could argue the next version is “your overhead is AI's opportunity.”
There are companies with MASSIVE overhead. They overpay their executives. They have a CEO, they have SVPs, they have a giant expensive structure, and a lot of them have private equity and debt on top of that. And they are reluctant or slow to automate.
Does AI lower the barrier to entry? For an online business, I think it does. But even if you’re a local gym, maybe AI helps people find you, and makes it easier to connect with other independent gyms and offer something like a shared membership and some consistency.
So maybe all that overhead in these complicated organizations, with money getting pulled out at layer after layer by greedy executives, is what AI threatens next.
