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Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

macworld.com

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Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#101

Post by Someone »

kevin_b_er wrote: post #23
roryisok wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its only a matter of time before apple unveils what's basically high spec clamshell iPad pro and stops making new macbooks.

Apple forces developers to use MacOS to develop for iOS on. Compiling code on iOS is banned (except WebKit). You'd ban all developers from having a portable development platform.

I don’t see how that could be a problem. If Apple the hardware manufacturer asked Apple the App Store owner to change that rule, I don’t see why they would not do so.

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#102

Post by MBCook »

guelo wrote: post #19

7nm is not going to be unique to Apple. TSMC has said that they have 50 customers using their new 7nm tech this year. That most likely includes Qualcomm whose Snapdragon chips power most Android phones.

It only seems to be unique in that apple may be the first there.

Obviously everyone is going to move to it as it’s availability increases.

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#103

Post by technofiend »

jandrese wrote: post #17

I wish Apple would make a sort of Raspberry Pi like board with an A series chip, ethernet, HDMI, GPIO, SD Card, etc... for $50-$100 that runs Linux. I would also like a flying unicorn. Seriously, a high power SBC at a reasonable price point would be insanely useful for projects like portable MAME cabinets, video transcoders, scene displays, etc... I love the Pi but it's so old tech, especially the video cores, that i…

I'm right there with you. There are some pilikes like Espresso Bin that are much more powerful, but they just don't have the community support that Pi does. http://espressobin.net/

Still at $49 it's cheap enough I'm going to see if it'll work as a wall-of-ceph appliance. Would love to have an SBC designed to be an OSD node but Western Digital never put theirs in the channel and there's not much else comparable AFAIK.

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#104

Post by MBCook »

ratsimihah wrote: post #65

Have chips ever been critical features? I mean the ones that add features like NFC ok, but doesn't every chip make phones "faster"?

Yes. Apple’s chips have enabled amazing performance (far above Android on a single core) and very low power draw, letting them get buy with less battery/heat output for equivalent performance.

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#105

Post by tambourine_man »

jandrese wrote: post #17

I wish Apple would make a sort of Raspberry Pi like board with an A series chip, ethernet, HDMI, GPIO, SD Card, etc... for $50-$100 that runs Linux. I would also like a flying unicorn. Seriously, a high power SBC at a reasonable price point would be insanely useful for projects like portable MAME cabinets, video transcoders, scene displays, etc... I love the Pi but it's so old tech, especially the video cores, that i…

Not a flying unicorn, but still a winged equine: the Mac Nano.

A tiny white puck with a single usb-c plug for power and data. Inside, an A12 running OS X.

Education and “enthusiast” market. GPIO as a dongle, of course.

They can release the A13 version in colors the next year :)

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#106

Post by MBCook »

BryantD wrote: post #34
ianamartin wrote: post #28

The dearth of WWDC rumors this year is really amazing to me. Apple really is taking leaks very seriously. We're 10 days away from the keynote, and absolutely nothing is getting out. This speculation is the best that Macworld can do? No offense to them, but I mean, the rumors are slim pickings. I really hope that Apple fixes its laptop lineup at WWDC. It's a complete and total shitshow right now. And that's coming fro…

You're right -- this has been a very rumorless year. Interesting given how many leaks we've seen over the last couple of years; I guess someone got serious about tightening up. Or, of course, there's nothing much coming. You're dead right on the laptop lineup. Touchbar, whatever, I don't think that's an enormous issue one way or the other -- but the incoherency of the tech specs matters a bunch.

It could be a big software year. Most leaks we get tend to be supply chain, where as software may only be known about a handful of people until the day it’s unveiled.

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#107

Post by Finch2192 »

Can someone explain to me why this matters?

It feels like CPU advancements in recent memory have brought nothing at all. It used to be, in the early days of smartphones, every generation brought something very new, something that can truly be considered an improvement. I remember the first dual core phone, the first quad core, etc. Nowadays, there is no noticeable difference at all.

Even now, where phones have indeed caught up to computer CPUs in speed, we have yet to see a phone really do anything more with that speed. The one thing I want to see, but nobody seems to be doing it, is a phone that converts into a desktop. Your laptop doesn't have to be separate from your phone. Your laptop could be a dock for your super-fast phone that converts to a desktop operating system. Of course, there have been a few products on the market that have attempted this, but none that lasted.

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#108

Post by mullingitover »

ianamartin wrote: post #28

The dearth of WWDC rumors this year is really amazing to me. Apple really is taking leaks very seriously. We're 10 days away from the keynote, and absolutely nothing is getting out. This speculation is the best that Macworld can do? No offense to them, but I mean, the rumors are slim pickings. I really hope that Apple fixes its laptop lineup at WWDC. It's a complete and total shitshow right now. And that's coming fro…

> Apple really needs to fix the laptops and give up the goods on the Mac Pro machine.

Apple just needs to give up on Macs. They obviously don't care about the product much anymore. License the OS and let OEMs and regular people build machines that can deliver the value that Apple can't or won't.

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#109

Post by mirekrusin »

jandrese wrote: post #17

I wish Apple would make a sort of Raspberry Pi like board with an A series chip, ethernet, HDMI, GPIO, SD Card, etc... for $50-$100 that runs Linux. I would also like a flying unicorn. Seriously, a high power SBC at a reasonable price point would be insanely useful for projects like portable MAME cabinets, video transcoders, scene displays, etc... I love the Pi but it's so old tech, especially the video cores, that i…

Like Apple TV?

Re: Apple's 7nm A12 chip could be the best feature in the 2018 iPhones

#110

Post by TylerE »

jwcooper wrote: post #79
ratsimihah wrote: post #65

Have chips ever been critical features? I mean the ones that add features like NFC ok, but doesn't every chip make phones "faster"?

They used to be critical features, but I just don't think the incremental improvements are as noticeable anymore. My iPhone 6s feels quite snappy yet. The iPhone 3G to the 3Gs was an amazing leap in usability though. Everything just worked so much better, mostly just due to faster chips as far as I'm aware.

It's very noticeable on an iPad, where it has a lot more pixels to draw.
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