7 ms·

While the wording is hyperbole, going from a A12 to an A15 is quite the performance bump.

tmccrary55 5y ago
whoa a performance bump!
blowski 5y ago
And what will I be able to do with that performance bump? I use a tablet mostly for taking notes, email and looking at websites. I can’t see how the former can get any quicker. The latter is slow mostly because of the websites themselves. Will games or office apps get faster or have new possibilities?
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  Things will be faster for a little bit then will bloat up to be just as slow as soon as the new hardware is standard
  - peakaboo 5y ago
    Yep. Not much inventive to keep their software fast - if it gets slow, people buy more hardware from them!
  - jsight 5y ago
    People who say this obviously don't remember watching the screen slowly draw itself on old text terminals when you hit page down. Now, we complain when it drops from 60fps to 40fps while rapidly slinging high resolution text + images with our fingers, and also that this is somehow "slower". Its amazing how much our expectations have changed.
- _jal 5y ago
  Of course not. We all know that there have been no functional improvements to software enabled by processor speed increases since the 8081. Everything since then has been programmers slowly using up their "wait()" calls placed in code in the 70s to fake it.
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    "The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry." — Henry Petroski
  - moftz 5y ago
    We need to bring back the Turbo button.
- turtlebits 5y ago
  It's down to personal preference, but my wife went from an iPhone 8 to 12 (A11 to A14) and it was a night and day difference in speed.
  - johncalvinyoung 5y ago
    About to go from a 7 to a 13 Pro, and expecting a nice bump in speed...
- jrockway 5y ago
  Apple has kind of disappointed me with the software situation on iPads. I have an iPad Pro that I use as a laptop, but the reality is that the processing power available is underused. It has a 120Hz screen, but websites can't render to the canvas at 120Hz. There is no CAD software (which is nice when you design something and head to your makerspace to actually manufacture it -- I just print plans out on paper, but it's annoying if you need to change something while you're working). There is no software development software. (iSH is neat, but TestFlight-only, and probably something Apple doesn't like. I assume it will be removed from my device at any moment.) I can kind of download pictures from my digital camera and edit them, but the experience isn't great. I think Apple's problem here is that they don't want to cannibalize OS X sales with tablets, and they don't want to cannibalize App Store revenue by letting people type in code to solve their problems. Anyway, I've been relatively happy with the crippled mobile device model for a while, but it doesn't seem sustainable. I'm waiting for someone, anyone, to produce a 5nm ARM chip that anyone can buy, and then just having a Linux laptop like a normal person. As it stands, nobody other than Apple seems to be able to produce a decent mobile chip. This is very bad for the field of computing in general.
  - pram 5y ago
    I agree in general, but it really depends. The iPad port of Clip Studio for example is literally, 100% the desktop version. I mean exactly, it has the top bar menu (file/edit etc) and everything. Most of the other painting applications like Procreate have no real desktop equivalent either. From an art perspective, the iPad is at or ahead of the desktop experience. There are digital artists right now who have had 100% of their career on an iPad.
  - handrous 5y ago
    > they don't want to cannibalize App Store revenue by letting people type in code to solve their problems. This seems implausible as a reason for keeping dev tools off iDevices, because 1) what percentage of their users would do that in the first place, beyond using spreadsheets, which are already available? Would it even be 1%? 0.1%?, and 2) they've made moves to add features like Shortcuts that enable that sort of thing, but which productivity-nerd non-programmer project managers and such are able and willing (and eager) to use, unlike dev tools—and those aren't just toys, they can absolutely replace certain kinds of what might could have been paid apps, before. I think it's more likely that it's hard to add them without opening up security holes and making it easy to bypass the App Store and/or offer a 3rd party store, without making the tools so crippled that they're insufficient for actually developing & deploying serious software for oneself (in fact they've already released something so-crippled, in Playgrounds), coupled with their expecting extra sales of iDevices from adding dev tools to be tiny (so, not worth the cost & risk).
- simonh 5y ago
  Then buy a lower end device. Some of us rely on these things to do productive work, or play resource hungry games.
- anm89 5y ago
  It can monitor for 3rd party payments in the app store three times as fast.
- jsight 5y ago
  I wouldn't say that slow websites are because of slow network traffic in most cases now, though. I think this will make the web much quicker on this new edition, and that's a useful thing in itself.
- beached_whale 5y ago
  Generally better battery life. Mobile devices are generally get task done, go to sleep or wind down whatever cores/systems possible. So by doing it faster, it’s generally using less power for the same task. This is often spent in areas like smaller systems, lighter, brighter screens or radio’s though as they work towards a battery life as the budget.
- nojito 5y ago
  The performance is to help you add more work types into your current workflow.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Gaming performance and capabilities should be very much improved. Whether you will use or notice the improvements is an entirely different question, of course.
Moduke 5y ago
Do you have a source for the claim that they use the A15 in the iPad mini? It stood out to me that they left the details of the SoC out of the announcement.
- gruez 5y ago
  lede of the linked post: >iPad mini features [...] the A15 Bionic chip
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

whoa a performance bump!

And what will I be able to do with that performance bump? I use a tablet mostly for taking notes, email and looking at websites. I can’t see how the former can get any quicker. The latter is slow mostly because of the websites themselves. Will games or office apps get faster or have new possibilities?

thatguy0900 5y ago
Things will be faster for a little bit then will bloat up to be just as slow as soon as the new hardware is standard
- peakaboo 5y ago
  Yep. Not much inventive to keep their software fast - if it gets slow, people buy more hardware from them!
- jsight 5y ago
  People who say this obviously don't remember watching the screen slowly draw itself on old text terminals when you hit page down. Now, we complain when it drops from 60fps to 40fps while rapidly slinging high resolution text + images with our fingers, and also that this is somehow "slower". Its amazing how much our expectations have changed.
_jal 5y ago
Of course not. We all know that there have been no functional improvements to software enabled by processor speed increases since the 8081. Everything since then has been programmers slowly using up their "wait()" calls placed in code in the 70s to fake it.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  "The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry." — Henry Petroski
- moftz 5y ago
  We need to bring back the Turbo button.
turtlebits 5y ago
It's down to personal preference, but my wife went from an iPhone 8 to 12 (A11 to A14) and it was a night and day difference in speed.
- johncalvinyoung 5y ago
  About to go from a 7 to a 13 Pro, and expecting a nice bump in speed...
jrockway 5y ago
Apple has kind of disappointed me with the software situation on iPads. I have an iPad Pro that I use as a laptop, but the reality is that the processing power available is underused. It has a 120Hz screen, but websites can't render to the canvas at 120Hz. There is no CAD software (which is nice when you design something and head to your makerspace to actually manufacture it -- I just print plans out on paper, but it's annoying if you need to change something while you're working). There is no software development software. (iSH is neat, but TestFlight-only, and probably something Apple doesn't like. I assume it will be removed from my device at any moment.) I can kind of download pictures from my digital camera and edit them, but the experience isn't great. I think Apple's problem here is that they don't want to cannibalize OS X sales with tablets, and they don't want to cannibalize App Store revenue by letting people type in code to solve their problems. Anyway, I've been relatively happy with the crippled mobile device model for a while, but it doesn't seem sustainable. I'm waiting for someone, anyone, to produce a 5nm ARM chip that anyone can buy, and then just having a Linux laptop like a normal person. As it stands, nobody other than Apple seems to be able to produce a decent mobile chip. This is very bad for the field of computing in general.
- pram 5y ago
  I agree in general, but it really depends. The iPad port of Clip Studio for example is literally, 100% the desktop version. I mean exactly, it has the top bar menu (file/edit etc) and everything. Most of the other painting applications like Procreate have no real desktop equivalent either. From an art perspective, the iPad is at or ahead of the desktop experience. There are digital artists right now who have had 100% of their career on an iPad.
- handrous 5y ago
  > they don't want to cannibalize App Store revenue by letting people type in code to solve their problems. This seems implausible as a reason for keeping dev tools off iDevices, because 1) what percentage of their users would do that in the first place, beyond using spreadsheets, which are already available? Would it even be 1%? 0.1%?, and 2) they've made moves to add features like Shortcuts that enable that sort of thing, but which productivity-nerd non-programmer project managers and such are able and willing (and eager) to use, unlike dev tools—and those aren't just toys, they can absolutely replace certain kinds of what might could have been paid apps, before. I think it's more likely that it's hard to add them without opening up security holes and making it easy to bypass the App Store and/or offer a 3rd party store, without making the tools so crippled that they're insufficient for actually developing & deploying serious software for oneself (in fact they've already released something so-crippled, in Playgrounds), coupled with their expecting extra sales of iDevices from adding dev tools to be tiny (so, not worth the cost & risk).
simonh 5y ago
Then buy a lower end device. Some of us rely on these things to do productive work, or play resource hungry games.
anm89 5y ago
It can monitor for 3rd party payments in the app store three times as fast.
jsight 5y ago
I wouldn't say that slow websites are because of slow network traffic in most cases now, though. I think this will make the web much quicker on this new edition, and that's a useful thing in itself.
beached_whale 5y ago
Generally better battery life. Mobile devices are generally get task done, go to sleep or wind down whatever cores/systems possible. So by doing it faster, it’s generally using less power for the same task. This is often spent in areas like smaller systems, lighter, brighter screens or radio’s though as they work towards a battery life as the budget.
nojito 5y ago
The performance is to help you add more work types into your current workflow.
tshaddox 5y ago
Gaming performance and capabilities should be very much improved. Whether you will use or notice the improvements is an entirely different question, of course.

Moduke 5y ago

Do you have a source for the claim that they use the A15 in the iPad mini? It stood out to me that they left the details of the SoC out of the announcement.

gruez 5y ago
lede of the linked post: >iPad mini features [...] the A15 Bionic chip
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]