7 ms·

From the keynote, Cook claimed the new A12X Bionic[1] is faster than 92% of portable PCs[2] (in English, laptops, Surfaces) sold in the past year, including som

• Redoubts 8y ago
  This was either a sharp prod for intel, or some serious signaling.
  • theshrike79 8y ago
    MacBooks _will_ transition to Apple's own chips at some point. My guess is that the A14 or A15 generation will be fast and powerful enough to make the leap. This will be big especially if they can get major price or power usage advantages.
    • lwkl 8y ago
      Microsoft is preparing the move to ARM too. I'd be really interested how the performance will be. The Intel Mobile Processor (i7 + M7) felt really slow before the eight generation and still used a lot of power (at least in the Lenovo and HP Business notebooks).
      • olyjohn 8y ago
        Is Microsoft preparing an x86 emulation layer for their ARM-based OS? Because as the past has proven, nobody wants to buy a Windows PC that can't run Windows software. Unfortunately, it's almost all been compiled to run on x86. Or are they still betting on moving everything to UWP?
        • detaro 8y ago
          Microsoft is shipping an x86 emulation layer on the ARM based Windows laptops right now. (although with some limitations, e.g. as far as I know no 64-bit support yet, and of course it's slower than native on already not-so-fast laptops) Benchmarks from the first device generation: https://www.techspot.com/review/1599-windows-on-arm-performance/ https://www.techspot.com/review/1599-windows-on-arm-performa...
        • OkGoDoIt 8y ago
          Yes, it was launched earlier this year: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on-arm-x86-emulation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on...
    • SllX 8y ago
      Arguably they are already powerful enough to make the leap in at least some cases, that said Apple does not push Macs in the same quantities as iOS devices as to justify wholly new silicon for the line. I have been in an argument with a friend for the past year or so about precisely when (or if) Apple will rip Intel out and use their own silicon. I think they will, but I'm going to try to present his argument to the best of my abilities, with my own observations and guesses as context. Presently the T series is generally gimped variations of the A series. My understanding is that the T2 is essentially an A10 with the high performance cores disabled, and the low performance cores repurposed to manage the myriad of functions that were previously handled by dedicated controllers. They're also necessary for certain features like TouchID, and for Apple to use its own HEVC encoder/decoder. Presumably the T3 will be keyed off of a later part like the A12 or a later generation, which will make it the first T series chip to also include the neural engine. Assuming they don't disable that part, it will potentially make the NE available to Mac application software. So what's the real problem with ripping out Intel right now? Given a higher TDP, Apple could hypothetically design a much more performant chip that would replace both the CPU and GPU in their current Mac lineup, but they simply don't push enough Macs to justify the expenditure on custom silicon, right now at least. Probably doesn't help that they have been making existing customers less happy, but it also doesn't help that Intel has simply been re-releasing Skylake in different variations for a good few years now. If you have a Macintosh able to run Mojave, an SSD, and at least 16GB of RAM, you are probably set. The important thing about Mojave isn't so much any one feature of Mojave, it is the continued support including bug fixes and security updates. Given all of that, most people simply won't need a new system any time soon. There's essentially no reason a laptop from 2012 can't take you all the way to 2022 all other things being equal, so we're starting to see sales stagnate across the entire PC market including the Macintosh, so while Apple is selling phones about as fast as they can stamp them out, the same is not true of Macbooks or iMacs. Silicon is much more of a volume business. Apple can re-purpose older versions of their A series chips because those are an R&D and capital investment that has already paid off, it isn't a new design, and they just need someone to continue fabbing them. New generations of the A series chips will generally pay off, because they will be selling hundreds of millions of the same iPhone, and usually for greater than one calendar year. This past year, for the first time since the A7 was released, they skipped releasing an -X variant of their A series chips which are generally released to support new iPads (there was no A11X for those who may have forgotten). It is possible that iPads have not been selling in the quantities necessary for even a variant design, and rather than an annual refresh cycle, we could reasonably expect them to move to a biennial refresh cycle, hence why they have skipped the A11X and jumped straight to the A12X. Intel and Qualcomm have customers, but for Apple's own silicon, Apple's only customer is itself, by design. That also imposes a limitation on themselves that it just might not make financial sense to fabricate a series of chips exclusive to their Mac lineup, appropriate to the TDP of a Mac. By all means, tear this apart if you disagree.
    • cs02rm0 8y ago
      I'm worried they won't transition MacBooks to these CPUs, but they'll just let the entire Mac lineup gradually fade to black with intermittent refresh cycles and dead end features like touch bar. I can well imagine Apple expecting people to plug in a keyboard and monitor to their iPad Pro, while it gets thinner and thinner.
      • chipotle_coyote 8y ago
        While "intermittent refresh cycles" are certainly a thing for the Mac line recently, I think it's important to distinguish "new features that seem to be flops" from both "no new features" and "not caring about the Mac line." The Touch Bar may or may not be a dead end (I don't hate it the way many other people do, but if it went away I wouldn't shed a tear, either), but it represents a significant amount of engineering work put into a Mac-only feature. So does the love-it-or-hate-it† "Butterfly" keyboard. And the new ARM-based T2 chip, which handles tasks from encryption to signal processing to being the SSD controller, is also obviously significant engineering -- and again, Mac-only. I don't doubt that Macs will eventually fade into the sunset, but I don't think it's coming nearly as quickly as either pundits or pessimists seem to believe. "Marzipan" may indeed be a first step, but I think it's going to be a Carbon vs. Cocoa situation, taking many years to fully transition. For iOS to supplant macOS, it has to essentially do everything macOS does. It doesn't have to do everything the same way, but if it's going to be a full replacement for a general purpose computing platform, it has to be, well, a general purpose computing platform. †Technically, "grudgingly-tolerate-it" should be in there, but it doesn't flow well.
        • SllX 8y ago
          Just a note on the T2: it's a variant of the A10, more specifically, it's basically an A10 running a custom operating system (BridgeOS) and with the high performance cores disabled. There might be other modifications, but it isn't the kind of thing I would hold up as a triumphant piece of Mac-specific engineering. Not that it is a bad piece of silicon, just repurposed silicon isn't the sort of thing I would put stock in when it comes to the importance of the Mac to Apple. The TouchBar was a good example though, even if it didn't receive the warmest reception on the market, it is still a good piece of Mac-specific engineering.
    • hbosch 8y ago
      I think by the time MBPs are using A chips, iOS will have morphed into the new macOS — launching these together as a new MBP.
  • lern_too_spel 8y ago
    Or pure marketing. Look for the asterisk that explains the workload.
• guardian5x 8y ago
  I wish they had a different keyboard cover though. I had a lot of problems with the iPad Pro 12.9 on my lap, because it isn't very stable.
• georgeecollins 8y ago
  Yet 90% of the apps that people will use on it are optimized for a phone with lower specs. If I use a laptop with GPU I know I am going to use games or productivity apps (Photoshop, modeling software) that uses the available computing power. With an iPad I am not so sure.
  • SllX 8y ago
    Checkout the Photoshop on iPad Pro demo from the Keynote then. Apparently AutoCAD is also being ported to iOS. The difference in available computing power is greatly diminished to the point that the real advantages Macs have nowadays is in access to vaster stores of RAM, Dev Tools, and Darwin.
  • jaegerpicker 8y ago
    This is changing, Photoshop(coming), AutoCad(coming), Civ 6, Procreate, the next MS Office mobile version, Bias Amp 2 are all examples of apps targeting iPads. I think this will continue and even go faster
  • bunnycorn 8y ago
    What's the difference? iPad apps use the full potential of the machine, like in any computer. Yes, most iPads in existence are much slower than this iPad Pro, and yes, most people will be buying the inferior sub $400 one. But also, most people have PCs with an Intel GPU, or a really low end discrete GPU... that doesn't stop game makers to make games that can't run on most machines, or Adobe to stop making photoshop. Let's see what happens with the iPad.
• sergiotapia 8y ago
  The more hardware support for HVEC the faster the scene will move to x265, the smaller files everywhere. I'm excited!
• _ph_ 8y ago
  The hardware specs of the new iPad Pro read like the dream mobile machine. If only there were not too many software limitations in iOS which would prevent it to replace a laptop for many tasks, it could take over the laptop space in no time. - Files is way too limited. It should be possible to exchange the system supported data types between all apps via files. You can't even add a audio track to Music or a video file to the TV app as it is right now. - The split screen feature is a good one, but so far I rarely found it useful. Not all apps support it, many apps differ in their behavior. The 50:50 split is nice, but the other split ratios I fould less useful. For some tasks you need overlapping windows. - On the same page, one of my favorite features is the picture in picture for playing video - unfortunately again, apps differ in behavior and I don't understand the size limit. I would like to be able to put the video to any size. - And of course, coding and running plain Unix utilities. While I am happy about the security the app model with sandboxing brings, for a "Pro" machine, this is too restrictive. Apple should allow something like Termux on the iPad, even if it were limited to a sandboxed file system, it would make the iPad soo much more useful as a computer. Apple might even release a lightweight Linux-VM as an app. If Apple could remove these pure software-restrictions of the iPad, they could attract a lot of "Pro" users, I think. Disclaimer: I am an iPad Pro owner, fully in the Apple universe :). iCloud sync already makes it a much more useful device, but I keep hitting my head against the limitations. Running "Blink" to connect to my Linux server makes it almost a laptop, but is very limited.
  • dddddaviddddd 8y ago
    Sounds like you just want an A-Series MacBook (with decent keyboard?)
    • _ph_ 8y ago
      Overall the iPad has a very attractive hardware as a laptop competitor. It has a touch screen, the pen support, is fanless, can be used without the keyboard attached. The more "Pro" it gets, the thought of replacing a laptop with an iPad comes up, but ends at the software limitations.
  • lostapathy 8y ago
• partiallypro 8y ago
  Faster at -what-? People make tons of speed claims, but what is it faster at? I'll be interested to see real world bench marks. I highly doubt the new iPad Pro can outperform the newly released Surface Pro with the base i7. I mean...he did say -in the past year- and the new Surface has been available for...a few weeks. Also mind you that the new Surface line doesn't even used Intel's latest chips, the latest are 9th gen, but the new Surface is only packing the 8th. Honestly, when you think about it, their claims weren't overly impressive given they were comparing their hardware to the 7th gen Intel chips. That's not to say what they've done isn't impressive and that they don't plan to kick Intel to the curb...but it is entirely possible this will be another PowerPC thing, where PowerPC outperforms for a while, Apple switches and then Intel gets their shit together and others are no longer able to compete. If Intel were to merely get a good integrated GPU that could compete with Nvidia's, there is no chance Apple could compete.
  • SllX 8y ago
    That is the question, now isn’t it? I too look forward to the benchmarks. Something to keep in mind too, iPad Pros have a much more constrained TDP than your average laptop, so it isn’t merely just a matter of performance but performance per watt and sustained performance. There is also this question: given a higher TDP, what could Apple’s silicon team really do? Although I’m not convinced it makes financial sense for them to replace Intel with custom silicon, I’m happy to be proven wrong.
  • Arn_Thor 8y ago
    This is entirely anecdotal, but my iPad pro from last year handles photo edits (lightroom, affinity) much easier than my i5-powered desktop with a 1060 GPU. Anything from opening the file, doing edits and exporting the file in various formats is just a lot snappier on the iPad. I don't know about the surface pro
    • partiallypro 8y ago
      I'm not denying that the Pro is a beast of a machine, but I also think the Lightroom on iPad is a slimmed down version, no? One advantage that the iPad really has is that the code the companies like Adobe use don't have to be backward compatible with various GPUs and hardware. I'm sure there is a ton of bloat in Photoshop etc that are just there because of older machines. I am happy that the iPad Pro is pushing the limits, it is about time that the Surface Pro line had true competition, it will push both to be better.