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Applied AI·July 12, 2026·1 min read

Chinese developers are climbing the firewall to pay more for GPT-5.6, and doing the maths on why

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Mainland developers are paying VPN and proxy premiums for GPT-5.6 because token efficiency makes the total cost pencil out—performance per dollar is beating access friction. If you’re building models or tools for this market, you’re competing not just on price but on effective throughput and latency under gray-market conditions.

Applied AI

Sources: Apple is already taping out M7 with major NPU upgrades, and plans M7 Ultra with 1.5TB RAM, and M8, for 2028; new Pencils are coming with a new iPad Pro

Apple planning M7/M7 Ultra with major NPU upgrades and up to 1.5 TB RAM is a clear tell—on-device AI is being treated as a long-horizon, system-level bet, not a feature. If you build Mac software, assume a world where local models and massive context windows are standard and architect for offline, privacy-sensitive workloads now.