Alex Heath

While most developers have to physically go into one of Apple’s labs to try the Vision Pro, a select group has been able to take headsets home to spend more time building for the device. After talking with one such developer, I’ve confirmed the suspicion I had after my own Vision Pro demo back at WWDC: key aspects of the device don’t work yet, namely the front-facing display that is supposed to show the wearer’s eyes as they move.

That explains why no Apple execs have been photographed wearing the Vision Pro yet, and why even the accompanying photo for the company’s post this week on early developer reactions only shows the headset being worn from the side. Siri also doesn’t work on the devices that have been loaned to developers, I’m told. Has Apple ever let people from the outside world use, much less take home, a device that is this unfinished?

According to people familiar with the moves, Saudi Arabia has bought at least 3,000 of Nvidia’s H100 chips — a $40,000 processor described by Nvidia chief Jensen Huang as “the world’s first computer [chip] designed for generative AI” — via the public research institution King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Kaust).

Meanwhile, the UAE has also secured access to thousands of Nvidia chips and has already developed its own open-source large language model, known as Falcon, at the state-owned Technology Innovation Institute in Masdar City, Abu Dhabi.

‘Open Source’ means software under a license with specific characteristics, defined by the Open Source Definition (OSD). Among other requirements, for a license to be Open Source, it may not discriminate against persons or groups or fields of endeavor (OSD points 5 and 6). Meta’s license for the LLaMa models and code does not meet this standard; specifically, it puts restrictions on commercial use for some users (paragraph 2) and also restricts the use of the model and software for certain purposes (the Acceptable Use Policy).