Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 173 posts

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#131

Post by skh »

Arn_Thor wrote: post #116
skh wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminded me of Seve Jobs mocking the idea of a pen for iPads. You can’t trust that such statements are true or that even if true today that they will be true in a few years. Ideas, tech, beliefs change and sometimes companies publicly proclaim things that are just plain false.

This is a pet peeve of mine.. Steve didn't mock the idea of styluses in abstract, he didn't want it to be the default and only way people interact with their devices. So Apple made the operation of iPad be all about the touch experience. Now, later on Apple released a much improved stylus as an optional, secondary and not at all necessary input method. That has nothing to do with the truth or untruth of Job's stateme…

My recollection is different. The only thing I could find on Youtube substantiates your claim. I was wrong. Thank you for pointing this out. I think my overall point still stands though.

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#132

Post by AlphaSite »

camillomiller wrote: post #37
Svexav wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Look up what Tim Cook thinks about convergence. That is not what an iPhone is for. Period. This gimmick is just a pipedream of us nerds. It won't have the slightest chance in the market and it would be a subpar product. Both Huawei and Samsung have implemented such a solution on their flagship smartphones since at least two years. They work as advertised, but nobody could give half a shit about them.

Actually we don't know that. Apple and Microsoft are the only companies which can really deliver on this promise and I can't see Microsoft being in the position to move their dev base to a convertible future, but Apple... If they try they can deliver (its not a given, but if they execute and the strs align, it could happen).

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#133

Post by outworlder »

camillomiller wrote: post #37
Svexav wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Look up what Tim Cook thinks about convergence. That is not what an iPhone is for. Period. This gimmick is just a pipedream of us nerds. It won't have the slightest chance in the market and it would be a subpar product. Both Huawei and Samsung have implemented such a solution on their flagship smartphones since at least two years. They work as advertised, but nobody could give half a shit about them.

They don't give 'half a shit' because they are crappy. And that's not necessarily their fault.

Given the current performance numbers and the fact that we are switching to USB-C, which allows high speed connections to multiple types of devices, and we may be reaching a point where this is actually feasible.

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#134

Post by kllrnohj »

m_mueller wrote: post #103
theluketaylor wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 announcem…

I think one thing you’re missing is how good Apple’s GPU have become (and will be in 1-2 years). I’m thinking you’re going to have a hybrid architecture for MBP. The T2 will expand to support all of Apple’s own software plus all upgraded one sold through a revamped Mac Appstore (plus hopefully your own compiled stuff when security settings are off). This can power down (all but ~2 cores) and instead power up an x86 c…

> I think one thing you’re missing is how good Apple’s GPU have become (and will be in 1-2 years).

Not compared to other discreet GPUs they haven't. They are still 5 years behind consoles. The only time mobile ever "catches up" and achieves "console-class" is near the end of a consoles ~5-8 year lifetime.

The performance is superb for mobile, and certainly good enough for integrated (it'd be perfect in something like a macbook air), but it's still getting destroyed by the relatively crappy Radeon Pro 560X in the 2018 MBP.

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#135

Post by scarface74 »

Svexav wrote: post #92
philwelch wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be right, but I'd like to unpack that a little. Why would that be the case? Obviously, the laptop form factor is missing, but it would be...interesting if the iPad, iPhone, and MacBook were all pretty much the same compute device with different form factors and different battery sizes and possibly different storage sizes. Honestly, the form factor and user experience are going to be the biggest user-visible…

> why would you want a single physical device anyway? All my files and apps setup they way I want them on a single device that's with me 24/7. Complete privacy and security because my data never leaves my device (except for backups to a time machine or iCloud). I don't have to own multiple computers. I own one computer: my iPhone. There's only one device to setup, update, and maintain. If I want to have a larger scre…

All my files and apps setup they way I want them on a single device that's with me 24/7. Complete privacy and security because my data never leaves my device (except for backups to a time machine or iCloud).

So you don’t want your data to leave your device for privacy reason but you back it up to iCloud?

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#136

Post by ozmbie »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #34

I found Rob Beschizza's thought [1] about the new iPad Pro insightful: "a very powerful machine, handicapped by iOS having no workflow". Because of the sandboxed nature of iOS, and the current immaturity of the Files app/feature, it's hard and inconsistent how you can exchange files between apps on the iPad. As a result, you're still mostly stuck to using one app to do things in iOS. The workflow is still fragmented.…

It doesn't matter if Apple's goal here is to get "desktop class" A-series CPUs manufactured and shipped at scale...as a precursor to an A-series Macbook.

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#137

Post by scarface74 »

chongli wrote: post #88
briandear wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides compiling code, what can’t an iPad do in terms of “creation” that a similarly priced laptop can do? You can edit movies on it, heck, you can even film movies with it, you can write, edit photos, do drafting and drawing (something that laptops can’t easily do,) you can make music on it, use it as a Logic Pro controller. The only think you can’t easily “create” on iPad is code. You can do spreadsheets, work pro…

It's more than just code. A "real" computer lets you do so much by piecing together work from different applications. For example, you can use a text editor like vim to transform a CSV file with powerful tools like regular expressions and shell commands, then load the CSV into your spreadsheet to work on. Yes, you can use the files application on iOS to manage your files but all of the other applications tend to stic…

It could probably be done with the Workflow app introduced in iOS 12 if you were so inclined that can stitch together different apps.

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#138

Post by scarface74 »

ubercow13 wrote: post #94
ryacko wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, ackshually, you can run a server from your phone. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8417321/run-a-webserver-... https://github.com/robbiehanson/CocoaHTTPServer

It might be randomly killed if the app isn't in the foreground with the screen unlocked, though.

Just play a silent audio stream and it will keep running.

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#139

Post by scarface74 »

X-Istence wrote: post #98

I really wish Apple to stick an A-series chip in a MacBook Pro with an Intel co-processor. Best of both worlds. Don't need x86? Don't spin up the Intel chip, doing something that requires x86, spin it on up. This way you get software compatibility with the power sipping of the ARM CPU.

Been there done that.

I had a PowerMac 6100/60 with the DOS Compatibility card that had its own sound chip, video controller and optionally RAM.

My 6100/60 had 24MB of RAM and the card had 32MB of RAM.

Before that, I had an LCII with a ‘//e card.

I doubt that modern Apple would ship a hybrid x86/Arm laptop though.

Re: Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip

#140

Post by coder543 »

ianai wrote: post #91
djrogers wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-benchmar...

My figure is per the 6th benchmark here https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/apple-macbook-air-...

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.

Post reply on HN