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Apple introduces M4 chip

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Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#181

Post by kiba »

philistine wrote: post #141
izacus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple usually massively exaggerates their tech spec comparison - is it REALLY half the power use of all times (so we'll get double the battery life) or is it half the power use in some scenarios (so we'll get like... 15% more battery life total) ?

Quickly looking at the press release, it seems to have the same comparisons as in the video. None of Apple's comparisons today are between the M3 and M4. They are ALL comparing the M2 and M4. Why? It's frustrating, but today Apple replaced a product with an M2 with a product with an M4. Apple always compares product to product, never component to component when it comes to processors. So those specs are far more impr…

I like the comparison between much older hardware with brand new to highlight how far we came.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#183

Post by paulpan »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #13

The 256gb and 512gb models have 8gb of ram. The 1tb and 2tb models have 16gb. Not a fan of tying ram to storage. https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

I don't think it's strictly for price gouging/segmentation purposes.

On the Macbooks (running MacOS), RAM has been used as data cache to speed up data read/write performance until the actual SSD storage operation completes. It makes sense for Apple to account for with higher RAM spec for the 1TB/2TB configurations.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#184

Post by naikrovek »

eqvinox wrote: post #41
cs702 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potentially > 2x greater battery life for the same amount of compute! That is pretty crazy. Or am I missing something?

Sadly, this is only processor power consumption, you need to put power into a whole lot of other things to make an useful computer… a display backlight and the system's RAM come to mind as particular offenders.

that's still amazing, to me.

I don't expect an M4 macbook to last any longer than an M2 macbook of otherwise similar specs; they will spend that extra power budget on things other than the battery life specification.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#185

Post by alexpc201 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #42

Call me crazy, but I want all that power in a 7" tablet. I like 7" tablets most because they feel less clunky to carry around and take with you. Same with 13" laptops, I'm willing to sacrifice on screen real estate for saving myself from the back pain of carrying a 15" or larger laptop. Some of this is insanely impressive. I wonder how big the OS ROM (or whatever) is with all these models. For context, even if the en…

You can’t have all that power in a 7” tablet because the battery will last half hour.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#186

Post by KeplerBoy »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #13

The 256gb and 512gb models have 8gb of ram. The 1tb and 2tb models have 16gb. Not a fan of tying ram to storage. https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

If these things will ever get MacOS support it will be useless with 8 GB of Ram.

Such a waste of nice components.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#188

Post by shepherdjerred »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #54

I always wonder how constraining it is to design these chips subject to thermal and energy limitations. I paid a lot of money for my hardware and I want it to go as fast as possible. I don't want my fans to be quiet, and I don't want my battery life to be 30 minutes longer, if it means I get more raw performance in return. But instead, Apple's engineers have unilaterally decided to handicap their own processors for n…

You're in the minority

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#189

Post by aeyes »

izacus wrote: post #86
Laaas wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economic reasoning behind this doesn't make sense to me. What do they lose by allowing slightly more freedom in configurations?

They push you to buy the more expensive model with higher margins. This is what they did when I was buying iPad Air - it starts with actually problematically low 64GB of Storage... and the 256GB model is the next one with massive price jump. It's the same kind of "anchoring" (marketing term) that car dealers use to lure you into deciding for their car based on the cheapest 29.999$ model which with "useful" equipment…

Honest question: What data do you store on an iPad Air? On a phone you might have some photos and videos but isn't a tablet just a media consumption device? Especially on iOS where they try to hide the filesystem as much as possible.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#190

Post by PreInternet01 »

SushiHippie wrote: post #80
PreInternet01 wrote: post #18

> M4 makes the new iPad Pro an outrageously powerful device for artificial intelligence Yeah, well, I'm an enthusiastic M3 user, and I'm sure the new AI capabilities are nice , but hyperbole like this is just asking for snark like "my RTX4090 would like a word". Other than that: looking forward to when/how this chipset will be available in Macbooks!

Disclosure: I personally don't own any apple devices, except a work laptop with an M2 chip I think a comparison to the 4090 is unfair, as there is no laptop/tablet with an rtx 4090 and the power consumption of a 4090 is at ~450W on average

> I think a comparison to the 4090 is unfair

No, when using wording like "outrageously powerful", that's exactly the comparison you elicit.

I'd be fine with "best in class" or even "unbeatable performance per Watt", but I can absolutely guarantee you that an iPad does not outperform any current popular-with-the-ML-crowd GPUs...

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