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Apple are paving the way to A-chip laptops, not only by building excellent tech, but also PR-wise. Their last keynote was clearly a gymnastics exercise to igno

Apple are paving the way to A-chip laptops, not only by building excellent tech, but also PR-wise. Their last keynote was clearly a gymnastics exercise to ignore Intel CPUs and dismiss laptop performance while later praising their own chips which power a tablet that has no software ready to use that much speed. The fact that one of the most secretive companies executes a PR-stunt by providing an exclusive interview to one of the most respected tech outlets only confirms this strategy. Expect similar movements in the following months. Now, it is only a matter of "when", not "if", Apple will start selling laptops with their chips. As as an aside, this strategy is extremely similar to the one they used when dropping the headphone jack on the iphone: "leak" the news to a respected outlet, perform damage control before the keynote, and test the reaction of the market. When they introduced the headphoneless iphone, that topic was so beaten up that it got much less attention compared to a surprise revelation.

ianai 8y ago
That sounds like a truthful explanation of their motives. On the one hand, I definitely welcome challengers to the chip industry. On the other, I remember the Power days. Having non Mac users “talk down” to me about using a different processor was beyond annoying. It adds a quill to the Mac haters. Here’s hoping Apple produces cpus that outperform their competitors like their 2 G/s ssds do. Also makes me not really happy to buy any current hardware of theirs.
- mattlondon 8y ago
  Got any data on the SSD? I believe that consumer NVMe SSDs are all 2-3,000MB/s or more these days (for sequential reads which I believe is the "standard" benchmark people use for speed (ignoring iops))? E.g. this from 2015 (!): https://www.anandtech.com/show/9396/samsung-sm951-nvme-256gb-pcie-ssd-review https://www.anandtech.com/show/9396/samsung-sm951-nvme-256gb... This from this year: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13438/the-corsair-force-mp510-ssd-review https://www.anandtech.com/show/13438/the-corsair-force-mp510...
  - djrogers 8y ago
    The speed of SSDs is vastly overstated, as they are generally rated at the speed of the fastest component and the real world slows them down. For a comparison of SSDs in actual devices check this out: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/2018-macbook-pro-benchmarks https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/2018-macbook-pro-benchmar...
    - ianai 8y ago
      My figure is per the 6th benchmark here https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/apple-macbook-air-2018 https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/apple-macbook-air-...
      - coder543 8y ago
        That's a comparison between macOS and Windows, not the SSDs themselves. I would not have believed how terrible Windows is at small file I/O unless I had seen it myself dozens of times over the years. If they had put Linux on one of those laptops for comparison, I would consider a chart like that fair. If you actually read technical deep dives like AnandTech posts on SSDs and MacBooks alike, you would see that they really do perform identically to what Apple ships... because Apple is shipping industry-standard SSDs. Apple chooses expensive SSD chips, sure, but it's the same NAND everyone else has. Only the most recent generation of MacBooks (since the T2) has actually integrated their own SSD controller, inside the T2, but it's still the same physical industry-standard NAND chips underneath.
        djrogers 8y ago
        And that's exactly my point - the SSDs spec sheet numbers are based on the NAND chips, but the controllers slow them down in real world performance. I've still yet to see a benchmark that shows Macbook Air/Pro/iMac Pro level SSD permormance from any other SSD equipped computer.
        coder543 8y ago
- flazzarino 8y ago
  This is all hidden tech, you and OP have very valid points, but who is the intended audience of this message? In the Jobs' days they'd promote the practical value of a product. For example they might say how the new iPod can have 50k songs, not how big the storage is, let alone the storage type. They'd mention a smaller form factor or improved battery life, not about HDD to SSD. So when they talk about SoCs, cores, GPUs, intel or anything else hidden, are they signaling to customers? Maybe its signaling to investors that apple is innovating and that ought translate to profits; maybe the inner geek in all of us? The dirty trick with hidden tech's performance figures is that they don't directly translate to customer value. As you mentioned, you're dissuaded from buying because the new stuff will be so much better. Maybe it will but the old apple would tell you that the new macs can process video in final cut 10x faster, or you don't have to buy a separate gaming rig, i.e. you can do more stuff better. The good part about focusing on what the products can do is that you can't fake it. You can't fake it to [geeks] like me, [non-geeks like] my mom, my kids, investors, etc.
- icanhackit 8y ago
  > On the other, I remember the Power days. Having non Mac users “talk down” to me about using a different processor was beyond annoying. Sample size of one and all that - but for me it was a selling point. The PowerPC G5 (PPC 970) was intriguing when it first came out. Having been with Intel, Cyrix and AMD systems since the 286 and used them since XT (Intel 8088) days, it was nice to muck around with something new and paired with OSX Tiger it was such a fun world to explore. The move to Intel felt like a bit of a letdown, but by that time I loved OSX and Snow Leopard cemented it as my OS of choice. Apple desktops/laptops moving to custom silicon would excite the nerd in me. I want competition.
- philwelch 8y ago
  Moving to Intel chips did two or three things for Apple: 1. It helped them jump from a failing CPU platform to a non-failing CPU platform. PPC was not keeping up with x86 anymore and Apple's two PPC vendors were going in opposite directions because there wasn't enough of a market for CPU's for Macs. (There were even rumors of future Power Macs migrating to a full POWER CPU rather than PPC.) 2. It meant you could run Windows, and hence Windows apps, on your Mac if you wanted to, without CPU emulation. This is still a fairly important use case. 3. It may have also simplified matters even for Mac application development, since you didn't have to switch ISA's in addition to switching operating systems. Making matters worse, PowerPC defaults to big-endian and x86 is little-endian. How does this apply to a potential ARM switch? 1. You can't really say x86 is "failing" if it's still the industry standard, but Apple might believe (rightly so, given the market size of iOS) that they finally have the ability to sustainably outperform the performance of x86 on their A-series chips. Most of the PowerPC bet was that a newer and more elegant architecture would outperform x86 and provide Apple a competitive advantage, and while that may have occasionally been true sometimes, it was never a huge deciding factor. Intel and ARM kept up because they were able to make investments in keeping x86 afloat. Ironically, Intel themselves also bet that a newer, more elegant architecture would make x86 obsolete, namely Itanium, only for AMD to invent x86-64. Not even Intel themselves could stop the x86 train. With the rise of mobile devices, ARM now has the same market power as x86, if not more, simply because there are many more ARM-based devices manufactured and sold than PC's. Apple in particular has been able to invest heavily in their A-series chips and has full control of their CPU roadmap and destiny. Perhaps this time, x86 may finally be rendered obsolete. Don't count on it, though. 2. This is really mostly dependent on Apple's strategic priorities. With more and more application functionality moving to mobile and the web, being able to run Windows is less and less important. At the same time, being able to run Linux is more important; for many developers, running a Linux VM in Vagrant or Docker lets us develop in a similar environment to the servers our code will eventually run on. Sure, you can run Linux itself on ARM, and perhaps there will be more Linux distros that support ARM when and if Apple switches the Mac, but it won't actually be the same as the server unless ARM makes serious inroads in the server market. Maybe they're betting they can surpass x86 enough that they could emulate x86 at respectable speeds. Since they would be migrating CPUs again, they will probably provide a CPU emulation layer again, like they did when migrating from 68k to PowerPC and then from PowerPC to x86. Keeping this emulation layer around would have more of a benefit because, after awhile, nobody needed to run 68k or PowerPC code anymore. This has never been true for x86 code, and it won't be for a long time, so look for Macs to continue to run x86 even if Apple switches. 3. I think A-series is also little-endian by default, and for x86, see above. Maybe Apple is banking on getting more value by running cross-platform iOS/Mac apps than cross-platform Windows/Mac apps. This will probably impact Mac gaming the most, but that's never been a priority for Apple.
baybal2 8y ago
Man, do you do PR as your job? A very nuanced understanding of the matter you have there.
- dep_b 8y ago
  He's an Apple employee massaging our brains to be ready for the big message in 2019. It's all part of their master plan, the post you replied to has been crafted and trimmed to perfection by Jony Ive, Tim Cook and 26 lawyers.
theluketaylor 8y ago
The near total lack of the word "intel" at the keynote was certainly quite noticeable. The question is how much was that a negotiating ploy for better pricing/stock with intel and how much was positioning for arm macs. I think a bit of both. I went back to remind myself of the details of the switch from powerpc to intel. It was announced at wwdc 2005 (june) when they released a developer transition kit. The announcement included a commitment to ship computers running x86 by wwdc 2006, so there was pretty much 12 months lead time even for outside developers. Apple also committed to moving to intel fully by the end of 2007, a 30 month total process. I think Apple is further ahead of the game this time around for how quickly they can go from announcement to shipping product. OS X had been running internally on x86 for years, but this time tons of apple software has been publicly running aarch64 for many years. I do think they need more than 30 months to complete a transition this time around as the user base is much larger and apple may never want to invest the serious dollars it will take to build the giant chips they get from intel. It's one thing to swap out the macbook processor. It's a whole other world to do 130 watt dies. I'm expecting either wwdc 2019 or 2020 we get an announcement, with products shipping after the OS release in the fall of that year. Apple's laptop naming has been getting steadily worse since the introduction of the retina macbook pro. The macbook modifying words have lost all meaning when systems labeled pro have major expansion and repair limitations, the device named air isn't the smallest or lightest and the model without a modifier isn't the cheapest. They missed an opportunity to restore some naming sanity this year, but a switch to arm could present it again. As great as A12X is, it's not touching discrete GPUs and CPUs allowed to burn wattage approaching triple digits. If I was apple I'd lean into this and restore "pro" as a designation that means something. Pro devices would stay x86 and be marketed as supporting more software. Non pro devices would make the jump to arm on their regular update cadence. It would give Apple tons of time to get their custom chips to xeon level scale for core count and interconnects. Even gives apple the option to continue using x86 indefinitely as investing in 100+ watt chips may not have the returns to make it worthwhile. Then the ipad pro becomes poorly named, but I can't solve all of apple's self created problems. If I was apple this is the mac product matrix I'd have when the dust settles: macbook: First to move as it's perfect for A12X since it already only has one usb-c and due for a refresh. Drop the intel tax and now it's around $1099. Apple could even use the exact panel from the 12.9 inch ipad minus the touch gear. macbook air: would need the next generation A chip to support more usb-c and more ram. New sub-$1000 price for the 128 gb model and outrageously long battery life for web browsing or note taking. No need to make it any thinner or lighter. macbook pro: Kill the weird non-touchbar model that was clearly supposed to be the new air but priced way, way too high. spec bump the 13 and 15 inch, especially discrete GPUs imac: switch to arm or kill and replace with giant beautiful screen that ipad and iphone docks with. imac pro: spec bump, but this is as close to a perfect device apple has released in a long time. mac mini: Use the apple tv case to build an arm mac with A12X or higher that can be sold quite cheap. Use as great PR to give away xcode development systems to schools and developing nations and get swift into the hands of people learning to develop applications mac mini: relabel as mac mini pro and pretty much keep as is mac pro: Make it unbelievably expensive but also user repairable, multi GPU on their own standard cards, tons of ram and big xeon chips.
Svexav 8y ago
Why does it have to be a laptop? What not an iPhone with a desktop mode you can pair with a monitor, keyboard, and trackpad? I’d love the ability to carry all my software and data around in a phone without lugging around a laptop or having to buy a desktop computer. And I’d love to never concern myself with transferring or syncing data again. And why not let us connect an iPhone to an eGPU for desktop gaming?
- gambiting 8y ago
  >>What not an iPhone with a desktop mode you can pair with a monitor, keyboard, and trackpad? That sounds like the most un-apple thing I can possibly imagine. Their ethos was always to build a device that does something incredibly well - a phone that can be a phone but also a desktop computer is everything but this.
  - aaronblohowiak 8y ago
    The iPad is already this but with a bigger screen.
    - gambiting 8y ago
      No, I'd argue it isn't. Even if you connect an external keyboard an display to the iPad, you are just getting the ipad experience on a larger screen. There is never any transformation of interface when used this way. Apple has never allowed mouse/trackpad on iOS(with some very very narrow exceptions) so it's not transformative - you are still getting the same experience essentialy. For it to work on the iPhone, they would have to add support for some kind of mouse/trackpad, because the iphone itself is sitting in the dock - and I don't see apple doing that in a million years.
      - solarkraft 8y ago
        iOS still has a long, long way to go. It seems like they're preparing all the hardware, though.
  - 8y ago
macintux 8y ago
> ...which power a tablet that has no software ready to use that much speed. I guess it depends on what you mean by "ready" how long the list is, but I'd suggest that Photoshop, console-quality games, AutoCAD, video editing tools like iMovie, all can take advantage of the speed.
- pohl 8y ago
  Yeah, Civilization VI is well known to respond well to having additional cores, so I expect the lags I see in late-stage games on large maps to not be as bad as they are on my 1st generation iPad Pro.
- kllrnohj 8y ago
  > console-quality games What console-quality games actually ship on the iPad? The problem with games is that to actually match an Xbox One S's graphics you don't just need to match its 5 year old hardware in performance. You also need to have the capacity to actually fit the game & its textures. All 40-80GB of it. Who is going to ship an actual console-quality game at console-quality sizes on a device whose base model can't even hold it? And Apple is notoriously stingy with RAM. This new one bumps it up to 6GB, which is nice, but still less than the 8GB in an Xbox One S. How much does iOS reserve of that, and how much do the games actually get?
mediocrejoker 8y ago
Kind of ironic that, had Apple not hired Anand away from running Anandtech, they would probably still be the most respected tech outlet.
abalone 8y ago
> chips which power a tablet that has no software ready to use that much speed I think this comment underestimates the importance of performance to the iPad and Apple's long term vision for it. While "real Photoshop" won't be ready until next year, it's clearly aiming to make the iPad a real solution for compute heavy graphics tasks. More will undoubtably follow. Why not edit video on a film set on the iPad? I can see it happening. Your comment sort of makes it sound like Apple just threw these into the iPad as a PR strategy and the "real plan" is to transition the Mac. But Apple's plan is to make both of these pro product lines as beefy and power efficient as possible and target real professional creative workflows.
- whywhywhywhy 8y ago
  So for the past few years we've been hearing time and time again how amazing these Apple chips are yet were is the software that actually pushes them? Wheres the example of software that truly shines on these chips? Wheres the software like After Effects, Houdini, Octane Render that you can truly see the power of the machine rev up when on the right hardware. They're wheeling Photoshop out as proof of this devices power yet as a designer I certainly don't consider Photoshop a heavy piece of software anymore and the only reason it ever chugs is it doesn't use the machines power effectively, mostly single core and disk speed constrained. This power has been available to iPad developers for a few years now so shouldn't we be seeing truly powerful pro apps that take advantage of it emerging? Are these chips actually powerful for real world pro tasks or are they just talented at providing Geekbench scores.

ianai 8y ago

That sounds like a truthful explanation of their motives. On the one hand, I definitely welcome challengers to the chip industry. On the other, I remember the Power days. Having non Mac users “talk down” to me about using a different processor was beyond annoying. It adds a quill to the Mac haters. Here’s hoping Apple produces cpus that outperform their competitors like their 2 G/s ssds do. Also makes me not really happy to buy any current hardware of theirs.

mattlondon 8y ago
Got any data on the SSD? I believe that consumer NVMe SSDs are all 2-3,000MB/s or more these days (for sequential reads which I believe is the "standard" benchmark people use for speed (ignoring iops))? E.g. this from 2015 (!): https://www.anandtech.com/show/9396/samsung-sm951-nvme-256gb-pcie-ssd-review https://www.anandtech.com/show/9396/samsung-sm951-nvme-256gb... This from this year: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13438/the-corsair-force-mp510-ssd-review https://www.anandtech.com/show/13438/the-corsair-force-mp510...
- djrogers 8y ago
  The speed of SSDs is vastly overstated, as they are generally rated at the speed of the fastest component and the real world slows them down. For a comparison of SSDs in actual devices check this out: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/2018-macbook-pro-benchmarks https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/2018-macbook-pro-benchmar...
  - ianai 8y ago
    My figure is per the 6th benchmark here https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/apple-macbook-air-2018 https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/apple-macbook-air-...
    - coder543 8y ago
      That's a comparison between macOS and Windows, not the SSDs themselves. I would not have believed how terrible Windows is at small file I/O unless I had seen it myself dozens of times over the years. If they had put Linux on one of those laptops for comparison, I would consider a chart like that fair. If you actually read technical deep dives like AnandTech posts on SSDs and MacBooks alike, you would see that they really do perform identically to what Apple ships... because Apple is shipping industry-standard SSDs. Apple chooses expensive SSD chips, sure, but it's the same NAND everyone else has. Only the most recent generation of MacBooks (since the T2) has actually integrated their own SSD controller, inside the T2, but it's still the same physical industry-standard NAND chips underneath.
      - djrogers 8y ago
        And that's exactly my point - the SSDs spec sheet numbers are based on the NAND chips, but the controllers slow them down in real world performance. I've still yet to see a benchmark that shows Macbook Air/Pro/iMac Pro level SSD permormance from any other SSD equipped computer.
        coder543 8y ago
flazzarino 8y ago
This is all hidden tech, you and OP have very valid points, but who is the intended audience of this message? In the Jobs' days they'd promote the practical value of a product. For example they might say how the new iPod can have 50k songs, not how big the storage is, let alone the storage type. They'd mention a smaller form factor or improved battery life, not about HDD to SSD. So when they talk about SoCs, cores, GPUs, intel or anything else hidden, are they signaling to customers? Maybe its signaling to investors that apple is innovating and that ought translate to profits; maybe the inner geek in all of us? The dirty trick with hidden tech's performance figures is that they don't directly translate to customer value. As you mentioned, you're dissuaded from buying because the new stuff will be so much better. Maybe it will but the old apple would tell you that the new macs can process video in final cut 10x faster, or you don't have to buy a separate gaming rig, i.e. you can do more stuff better. The good part about focusing on what the products can do is that you can't fake it. You can't fake it to [geeks] like me, [non-geeks like] my mom, my kids, investors, etc.
icanhackit 8y ago
> On the other, I remember the Power days. Having non Mac users “talk down” to me about using a different processor was beyond annoying. Sample size of one and all that - but for me it was a selling point. The PowerPC G5 (PPC 970) was intriguing when it first came out. Having been with Intel, Cyrix and AMD systems since the 286 and used them since XT (Intel 8088) days, it was nice to muck around with something new and paired with OSX Tiger it was such a fun world to explore. The move to Intel felt like a bit of a letdown, but by that time I loved OSX and Snow Leopard cemented it as my OS of choice. Apple desktops/laptops moving to custom silicon would excite the nerd in me. I want competition.
philwelch 8y ago
Moving to Intel chips did two or three things for Apple: 1. It helped them jump from a failing CPU platform to a non-failing CPU platform. PPC was not keeping up with x86 anymore and Apple's two PPC vendors were going in opposite directions because there wasn't enough of a market for CPU's for Macs. (There were even rumors of future Power Macs migrating to a full POWER CPU rather than PPC.) 2. It meant you could run Windows, and hence Windows apps, on your Mac if you wanted to, without CPU emulation. This is still a fairly important use case. 3. It may have also simplified matters even for Mac application development, since you didn't have to switch ISA's in addition to switching operating systems. Making matters worse, PowerPC defaults to big-endian and x86 is little-endian. How does this apply to a potential ARM switch? 1. You can't really say x86 is "failing" if it's still the industry standard, but Apple might believe (rightly so, given the market size of iOS) that they finally have the ability to sustainably outperform the performance of x86 on their A-series chips. Most of the PowerPC bet was that a newer and more elegant architecture would outperform x86 and provide Apple a competitive advantage, and while that may have occasionally been true sometimes, it was never a huge deciding factor. Intel and ARM kept up because they were able to make investments in keeping x86 afloat. Ironically, Intel themselves also bet that a newer, more elegant architecture would make x86 obsolete, namely Itanium, only for AMD to invent x86-64. Not even Intel themselves could stop the x86 train. With the rise of mobile devices, ARM now has the same market power as x86, if not more, simply because there are many more ARM-based devices manufactured and sold than PC's. Apple in particular has been able to invest heavily in their A-series chips and has full control of their CPU roadmap and destiny. Perhaps this time, x86 may finally be rendered obsolete. Don't count on it, though. 2. This is really mostly dependent on Apple's strategic priorities. With more and more application functionality moving to mobile and the web, being able to run Windows is less and less important. At the same time, being able to run Linux is more important; for many developers, running a Linux VM in Vagrant or Docker lets us develop in a similar environment to the servers our code will eventually run on. Sure, you can run Linux itself on ARM, and perhaps there will be more Linux distros that support ARM when and if Apple switches the Mac, but it won't actually be the same as the server unless ARM makes serious inroads in the server market. Maybe they're betting they can surpass x86 enough that they could emulate x86 at respectable speeds. Since they would be migrating CPUs again, they will probably provide a CPU emulation layer again, like they did when migrating from 68k to PowerPC and then from PowerPC to x86. Keeping this emulation layer around would have more of a benefit because, after awhile, nobody needed to run 68k or PowerPC code anymore. This has never been true for x86 code, and it won't be for a long time, so look for Macs to continue to run x86 even if Apple switches. 3. I think A-series is also little-endian by default, and for x86, see above. Maybe Apple is banking on getting more value by running cross-platform iOS/Mac apps than cross-platform Windows/Mac apps. This will probably impact Mac gaming the most, but that's never been a priority for Apple.

baybal2 8y ago

Man, do you do PR as your job? A very nuanced understanding of the matter you have there.

dep_b 8y ago
He's an Apple employee massaging our brains to be ready for the big message in 2019. It's all part of their master plan, the post you replied to has been crafted and trimmed to perfection by Jony Ive, Tim Cook and 26 lawyers.

theluketaylor 8y ago

The near total lack of the word "intel" at the keynote was certainly quite noticeable. The question is how much was that a negotiating ploy for better pricing/stock with intel and how much was positioning for arm macs. I think a bit of both. I went back to remind myself of the details of the switch from powerpc to intel. It was announced at wwdc 2005 (june) when they released a developer transition kit. The announcement included a commitment to ship computers running x86 by wwdc 2006, so there was pretty much 12 months lead time even for outside developers. Apple also committed to moving to intel fully by the end of 2007, a 30 month total process. I think Apple is further ahead of the game this time around for how quickly they can go from announcement to shipping product. OS X had been running internally on x86 for years, but this time tons of apple software has been publicly running aarch64 for many years. I do think they need more than 30 months to complete a transition this time around as the user base is much larger and apple may never want to invest the serious dollars it will take to build the giant chips they get from intel. It's one thing to swap out the macbook processor. It's a whole other world to do 130 watt dies. I'm expecting either wwdc 2019 or 2020 we get an announcement, with products shipping after the OS release in the fall of that year. Apple's laptop naming has been getting steadily worse since the introduction of the retina macbook pro. The macbook modifying words have lost all meaning when systems labeled pro have major expansion and repair limitations, the device named air isn't the smallest or lightest and the model without a modifier isn't the cheapest. They missed an opportunity to restore some naming sanity this year, but a switch to arm could present it again. As great as A12X is, it's not touching discrete GPUs and CPUs allowed to burn wattage approaching triple digits. If I was apple I'd lean into this and restore "pro" as a designation that means something. Pro devices would stay x86 and be marketed as supporting more software. Non pro devices would make the jump to arm on their regular update cadence. It would give Apple tons of time to get their custom chips to xeon level scale for core count and interconnects. Even gives apple the option to continue using x86 indefinitely as investing in 100+ watt chips may not have the returns to make it worthwhile. Then the ipad pro becomes poorly named, but I can't solve all of apple's self created problems. If I was apple this is the mac product matrix I'd have when the dust settles: macbook: First to move as it's perfect for A12X since it already only has one usb-c and due for a refresh. Drop the intel tax and now it's around $1099. Apple could even use the exact panel from the 12.9 inch ipad minus the touch gear. macbook air: would need the next generation A chip to support more usb-c and more ram. New sub-$1000 price for the 128 gb model and outrageously long battery life for web browsing or note taking. No need to make it any thinner or lighter. macbook pro: Kill the weird non-touchbar model that was clearly supposed to be the new air but priced way, way too high. spec bump the 13 and 15 inch, especially discrete GPUs imac: switch to arm or kill and replace with giant beautiful screen that ipad and iphone docks with. imac pro: spec bump, but this is as close to a perfect device apple has released in a long time. mac mini: Use the apple tv case to build an arm mac with A12X or higher that can be sold quite cheap. Use as great PR to give away xcode development systems to schools and developing nations and get swift into the hands of people learning to develop applications mac mini: relabel as mac mini pro and pretty much keep as is mac pro: Make it unbelievably expensive but also user repairable, multi GPU on their own standard cards, tons of ram and big xeon chips.

Svexav 8y ago

Why does it have to be a laptop? What not an iPhone with a desktop mode you can pair with a monitor, keyboard, and trackpad? I’d love the ability to carry all my software and data around in a phone without lugging around a laptop or having to buy a desktop computer. And I’d love to never concern myself with transferring or syncing data again. And why not let us connect an iPhone to an eGPU for desktop gaming?

gambiting 8y ago
>>What not an iPhone with a desktop mode you can pair with a monitor, keyboard, and trackpad? That sounds like the most un-apple thing I can possibly imagine. Their ethos was always to build a device that does something incredibly well - a phone that can be a phone but also a desktop computer is everything but this.
- aaronblohowiak 8y ago
  The iPad is already this but with a bigger screen.
  - gambiting 8y ago
    No, I'd argue it isn't. Even if you connect an external keyboard an display to the iPad, you are just getting the ipad experience on a larger screen. There is never any transformation of interface when used this way. Apple has never allowed mouse/trackpad on iOS(with some very very narrow exceptions) so it's not transformative - you are still getting the same experience essentialy. For it to work on the iPhone, they would have to add support for some kind of mouse/trackpad, because the iphone itself is sitting in the dock - and I don't see apple doing that in a million years.
    - solarkraft 8y ago
      iOS still has a long, long way to go. It seems like they're preparing all the hardware, though.
- 8y ago

macintux 8y ago

> ...which power a tablet that has no software ready to use that much speed. I guess it depends on what you mean by "ready" how long the list is, but I'd suggest that Photoshop, console-quality games, AutoCAD, video editing tools like iMovie, all can take advantage of the speed.

pohl 8y ago
Yeah, Civilization VI is well known to respond well to having additional cores, so I expect the lags I see in late-stage games on large maps to not be as bad as they are on my 1st generation iPad Pro.
kllrnohj 8y ago
> console-quality games What console-quality games actually ship on the iPad? The problem with games is that to actually match an Xbox One S's graphics you don't just need to match its 5 year old hardware in performance. You also need to have the capacity to actually fit the game & its textures. All 40-80GB of it. Who is going to ship an actual console-quality game at console-quality sizes on a device whose base model can't even hold it? And Apple is notoriously stingy with RAM. This new one bumps it up to 6GB, which is nice, but still less than the 8GB in an Xbox One S. How much does iOS reserve of that, and how much do the games actually get?

mediocrejoker 8y ago

Kind of ironic that, had Apple not hired Anand away from running Anandtech, they would probably still be the most respected tech outlet.

abalone 8y ago

> chips which power a tablet that has no software ready to use that much speed I think this comment underestimates the importance of performance to the iPad and Apple's long term vision for it. While "real Photoshop" won't be ready until next year, it's clearly aiming to make the iPad a real solution for compute heavy graphics tasks. More will undoubtably follow. Why not edit video on a film set on the iPad? I can see it happening. Your comment sort of makes it sound like Apple just threw these into the iPad as a PR strategy and the "real plan" is to transition the Mac. But Apple's plan is to make both of these pro product lines as beefy and power efficient as possible and target real professional creative workflows.

whywhywhywhy 8y ago
So for the past few years we've been hearing time and time again how amazing these Apple chips are yet were is the software that actually pushes them? Wheres the example of software that truly shines on these chips? Wheres the software like After Effects, Houdini, Octane Render that you can truly see the power of the machine rev up when on the right hardware. They're wheeling Photoshop out as proof of this devices power yet as a designer I certainly don't consider Photoshop a heavy piece of software anymore and the only reason it ever chugs is it doesn't use the machines power effectively, mostly single core and disk speed constrained. This power has been available to iPad developers for a few years now so shouldn't we be seeing truly powerful pro apps that take advantage of it emerging? Are these chips actually powerful for real world pro tasks or are they just talented at providing Geekbench scores.