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New iPad Air, powered by M4

apple.com

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Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#31

Post by Aurornis »

vintagedave wrote: post #4

My current iPad is the iPad Air 3 (the one with the backlight issue that's never been acknowledged, to my understanding.) Can someone explain to me why an iPad at all, let alone an iPad Air, needs as powerful a processor as a M4? That's stronger than my laptop (a M2) where I run multiple VMs and more.

The newer CPUs are more efficient and faster. In a mobile format you want the CPU to process everything as fast as possible and then return to a low power mode for battery life.

Apple re-uses the same core across their lineup because it’s cheaper to build 100 million of the same core than to design and maintain two separate CPUs that go into 50 million devices each.

Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#33

Post by t-3 »

spudlyo wrote: post #18

I'm about to head to the gym with my 12.9-inch 2017 vintage iPad Pro, which is still going strong. I prop it up on the elliptical trainer every other day or so for entertaining me while I grind out an hour of cardio. I use it for reading, watching YouTube, listening to music, audiobooks, etc. It's been my regular gym buddy for years, and is showing no signs of needing to be replaced. It's stuck on iPadOS 17.7.10, whi…

How is the battery doing? I find sudden rechargeable battery/controller failures in the 5-10 year range to be my most common cause of upgrade or repair.

Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#34

Post by kkylin »

spudlyo wrote: post #18

I'm about to head to the gym with my 12.9-inch 2017 vintage iPad Pro, which is still going strong. I prop it up on the elliptical trainer every other day or so for entertaining me while I grind out an hour of cardio. I use it for reading, watching YouTube, listening to music, audiobooks, etc. It's been my regular gym buddy for years, and is showing no signs of needing to be replaced. It's stuck on iPadOS 17.7.10, whi…

I had an even older iPad I was happily using for similar use cases. Until one day a family member bricked it and I needed to factory reset. No big deal, I thought -- nothing important on it. Turns out it needed to phone home to do the factory reset, and since the server it wanted to talk to was no longer up (or perhaps the address changed?) I couldn't factory reset the iPad.

If someone has a work-around I'd love to hear it. Until then, or until Apple changes this design, I think I'm done with iPads. I don't want to pay that much to "own" something that Apple can simply make obsolete by reconfiguring or turning off a server somewhere.

Edit: fix typo

Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#35

Post by dylan604 »

Almondsetat wrote: post #24
spudlyo wrote: post #18

I'm about to head to the gym with my 12.9-inch 2017 vintage iPad Pro, which is still going strong. I prop it up on the elliptical trainer every other day or so for entertaining me while I grind out an hour of cardio. I use it for reading, watching YouTube, listening to music, audiobooks, etc. It's been my regular gym buddy for years, and is showing no signs of needing to be replaced. It's stuck on iPadOS 17.7.10, whi…

They can only go as far if Apple doesn't deprecate them, unfortunately

Depends on how you look at it. While the hardware might keep functioning and current software might keep running, some devs also deprecate their software. I have an old 6S+ that I keep software that I don't want to install on my actual device. Slack informed me that it will no longer function after a date set later this year. Other apps have already stopped working on it because the devs do not want to deal with it.

TL;DR sometimes it's not Apple, it's the app devs that deprecate them.

Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#37

Post by swiftcoder »

t-3 wrote: post #33
spudlyo wrote: post #18

I'm about to head to the gym with my 12.9-inch 2017 vintage iPad Pro, which is still going strong. I prop it up on the elliptical trainer every other day or so for entertaining me while I grind out an hour of cardio. I use it for reading, watching YouTube, listening to music, audiobooks, etc. It's been my regular gym buddy for years, and is showing no signs of needing to be replaced. It's stuck on iPadOS 17.7.10, whi…

How is the battery doing? I find sudden rechargeable battery/controller failures in the 5-10 year range to be my most common cause of upgrade or repair.

Kind of luck of the draw on that one, I think. I have a first-gen iPad Mini on its original battery around here somewhere. Doesn't run for more than a couple of hours on a charge, but it also hasn't exploded yet...

Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#38

Post by nothercastle »

Aurornis wrote: post #31
vintagedave wrote: post #4

My current iPad is the iPad Air 3 (the one with the backlight issue that's never been acknowledged, to my understanding.) Can someone explain to me why an iPad at all, let alone an iPad Air, needs as powerful a processor as a M4? That's stronger than my laptop (a M2) where I run multiple VMs and more.

The newer CPUs are more efficient and faster. In a mobile format you want the CPU to process everything as fast as possible and then return to a low power mode for battery life. Apple re-uses the same core across their lineup because it’s cheaper to build 100 million of the same core than to design and maintain two separate CPUs that go into 50 million devices each.

The cpu is better but the software is worse and more bloated so they fight against each other

Re: New iPad Air, powered by M4

#40

Post by xd1936 »

wpm wrote: post #20
functionmouse wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't vendors as big as Apple lock in their prices and contracts years in advance?

Rumor has it that Samsung hit them with a 100% price increase on RAM and Apple took it without even trying to negotiate

Bringing their profit margins down from ludicrous to just absurdly high.
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