Just a typo. AI has an odd habit of writing in-depth articles but creating low-rent graphs filled with typos they don't readily fix. I don't get it. I wish AI would devote some time to creating quality infographs to complement their other content.
It is a hopeless situation. There is little value place on this info outside of the crowd that reads the site regularly. Plus any thing published is quickly forgotten as it scrolls of the bottom of the page. Finally the graphics are there to support speculation and are thus a figment.
Quote:
I think they'll have to go with an A6 with a much upgraded GPU, at least, for that resolution display but they may be able to save money by keeping the current 16, 32 and 64GB capacities at the same price points for another year but use denser NAND.
It will be interesting to see what happens. For example they could double the clock rate of the GPU. This might be feasible at the smaller process geometries. In general I think you are right though such a screen would require a much improved A6. In part the chip will need to be vastly improved at data handling. That might imply a new memory and cache subsystem.
As to flash I think Apple is in a pickle here. Flash in the smaller geometries just isn't that reliable this would lead to the need for a far more advanced controller. In a way this could be a good thing if they invested in a blade like flash module. Right now iOS devices take a fairly simple approach to flash because the failure rate is manageable and generally you can get ten years of safe storage of data. You loose that with the extremely dense flash.
Quote:
That alone could offset the costs even though I'd love to see 128GB in the next model but that's because I'm finally using the crap out of my iPad 2 and wish I didn't get the 16GB model.
Yeah the sad fact is the more you use your iOS devices the more you need a larger secondary store. Flash is really cheap compared to downloads from the cloud. Not to mention flash is orders of magnitude faster.
In any event what bothers me about this report is the idea that pilot production has already begun. It just seems a little early for that if the device is to debut in March.
Having created a user interface that works well on a 9.7 inch display from the tablet's inception, Apple freed itself to dramatically boost the iPad's resolution independently of its screen size in order to deliver a very realistic depiction of photos, ebooks, documents, videos, and dynamic content that users navigate via touch while holding the display at distance where pixel density is readily noticeable.
Noticeable as hell. Recently I was doing some reasearch and I couldn't read text on the iPad cause the letters are small and when I try to read them all I see is pixels. I guess I expect too much because of iPhone display, but at times I'm frustrated that I can't read text I can read on an iPhone on a device that is much larger.
I did not notice it much before but now I kinda see the artifacts more and more.
I think retina is a must for the next version, as well as RAM bump (so that apps remain running and safari can keep all its tabs without having to reload them). I think a slightly faster A5 would even be all right, without the need for A6 yet, if that helps bring retina to the market at same price points.
In any event what bothers me about this report is the idea that pilot production has already begun. It just seems a little early for that if the device is to debut in March.
The 960x640 display rumours for the iPhone 4 were around a solid 3 months before the device launched. Sure, this rumour has been going on for more than 6 months but there is 1) precedence with Apple stepping the pixel count with a .quadrupling, and 2) the iPhone 4 still has less pixels than the current iPad. To me that means a 6 month lead time for testing and production isn't unrealistic for this degree of change.
Their is the rumor about Apple investing $1 Billion into the Sharp LCD plant to help raise the yield of screens for the iPad.
With $80 Billion cash on hand they have a lot of room to leverage special treatment from suppliers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TBell
Blasphemy. Losing profit? Apple has a big fancy new spaceship to built. It needs the profit. If Apple can't get the product out for the same price while making about the same profit, it will take the same approach it always has taken. Namely, offer that product as the top of the line model for a higher price, while offering the other models at a lower price point. Eventually the manufacturing process will be perfected and the cost will come down.
That's a good point about the denser NAND. I'm not sure they will *necessarily* need a better GPU, because there is no way games will run at native res anyway. e.g.
Actually I don't buy that as I suspect games will be the first to leverage the new screens. That being said there is the question of Apple being able to maintain performance parity with the iPad2s screen.
Remember however that A6 is rumored to be 28nm which is like a drop of two process sizes. So some performance benefits will come for free. I'm talking here higher clock rates in the GPU while maintaining the power (watts) performance profile. Even with an upgraded GPU integrated that gives the machine more GPU cores I don't see this as the big challenge.
The big challenge will be moving the data around. It will be interesting to see what sort of RAM and cacheing system they come up with. A screen of this size would require at a minimum a screen buffer size of 75MB which is a lot really. However I often think that it would be a huge benefit to put a dedicated screen buffer right on the chip next to the GPU. This would greatly reduce pressure on the cache and transfers to and from general purpose RAM. It would seem to be more useful than adding yet another core. Apple could easily double that so that the GPU has even more fast RAM to enjoy.
This idea of building RAM onto the SoC may seem far out there but think about modern processors and the large caches contained there in. A 150-200MB of on chip RAM, for the GPU, would be very doable.
Quote:
on a PC, to run games at that res, you need a big fat dual-GPU video card with fans up the wazoo.
Yes but on a PC people running at those resolutions are expecting top of the line performance. IPad is very very far from dedicated graphics performance on the iPad. At the minimal Apple can't loose performance which I think everybody agrees with. However it might very well be possible to actually nudge the performance of the machine a bit.
Designing chips is all about trade offs. I'm certain Apples engineers have more info to work with than I do but consider a few things. They will likely be able to bump clock rate to the CPUs without impacting power. They will have vastly more real-estate for functionality on the chip. A new GPU is already in the wings, that GPU could support OpenCL and far more cores. I really don't think Apple will fail here.
Quote:
So I suspect games will stay at 1024, even on iPad 3. (heh, I just typed ipad with a small "P" and Lion auto-corrected it!)
Actually I think the opposite, I expect games to be the first to exploit the display. That is as long as they don't significantly loose frame rates. The question becomes then can they actually do that. I suspect it is possible, we might even see a slight increase in performance. The 2X drop in feature size means there is the potential for a lot of extra transistors to be put into play here. It really comes down to where Apples assigns priorities.
Quote:
The only apps that will run at full res are productivity apps. But you are right, there are probably 3D productivity apps too, that will need a better GPU. The main benefit I see to a higher res screen is beautiful fonts and HD movies. The fonts is an important one, because I think people really notice text quality. After using HD text on an iPad 3, the competitors will look really cheap in comparison.
I had real hopes for a strong iPad competitor by now. Sadly they are dropping like flies. The thing is competition would put pressure on Apple to deliver a good experience here. Without that pressure I suspect we are at risk of a modest update in the A6. It is actually a bit frustrating because Apple has a history of becoming complacent when it has a successful product on it's hands.
I guess the sad part here is that it looks like we will be waiting months for iPad 3.
It is completely possible that terms are being confused here. Generally I would call production runs this far out to be prototype runs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism
The 960x640 display rumours for the iPhone 4 were around a solid 3 months before the device launched. Sure, this rumour has been going on for more than 6 months but there is 1) precedence with Apple stepping the pixel count with a .quadrupling, and 2) the iPhone 4 still has less pixels than the current iPad. To me that means a 6 month lead time for testing and production isn't unrealistic for this degree of change.
Well it isn't really that big of a change, basically a new screen being hooked up to a motherboard. The hardware is likely running off the same production lines now setup for iPad production.
If this was December and the speculation was still around a March debut I might be more inclined to agree. On the otherhand maybe Apple has learned something from it's other problems where they rushed to fast. Still I'm thinking the volume rumored here is still higher than I would expect and thus makes one wonder what is up.
It will be interesting to see what happens. For example they could double the clock rate of the GPU. This might be feasible at the smaller process geometries. In general I think you are right though such a screen would require a much improved A6. In part the chip will need to be vastly improved at data handling. That might imply a new memory and cache subsystem.
With vector graphics the real issue is fill rate, not geometry processing. And fill rate is relatively easy to optimize because it is completely parallelizable by adding additional fill units in the fixed pipeline. The VAST majority of iPad software will take advantage of relatively static fill-rate limited vector graphics so the iPad GPU does not need a complete doubling of GPU power and because vector graphics do not have a fixed size to primary memory requirement ratio like scaled bitmaps do, a doubling of resolution does not automatically eat quadruple the RAM requirement to support the GUI.
Yes a hi-res ipad will require more CPU, GPU and memory to handle the job, but nowhere near the quadrupling many folks naively think. Games will probably be recommended to stay at 1024x768 max because they would need a quadrupling plus of performance to handle the resolution, a task most desktops and laptops are not even up to with aftermarket cards. It takes a dedicated gaming/simulation rig to drive full screen graphic at resolutions of 2048x1536 and >60fps minimum, with lots of heat handling, so I think game devs won't have a problem with maintaining the 1024x768 resolution target and let hardware pixel-double on the back end of the pipeline, something which is already built into the A5 and iOS.
Quote:
Yeah the sad fact is the more you use your iOS devices the more you need a larger secondary store. Flash is really cheap compared to downloads from the cloud. Not to mention flash is orders of magnitude faster.
In any event what bothers me about this report is the idea that pilot production has already begun. It just seems a little early for that if the device is to debut in March.
Yeah, 1.5 million units now is awfully hard to do and sit on that long, stretches believability. I also wouldn't be the least bit surprised to hear of an arrest in a couple months related to leaks and stock manipulations/insider information and that some of these reports were crafted plants with canaries in them.
According to that report, the chip is destined to be unveiled in the iPad 3 no earlier than the second quarter of 2012, suggesting that device could arrive roughly one year after the launch of the iPad 2.
So basically, the iPad 3 is going to be announced roughly 1 year after the iPad 2, which is right in line with Apple's normal release schedule, so everything seems to be on track.
Those retina display iPad 3 and iPad 2.5 in 2011 people piss me off. That has got to be one of the dumbest and most ignorant Apple rumors ever. Those people should be buying HP TouchPads instead if they want a product with a really quick release cycle.
A report from the Taiwan Economic News earlier this month singled out Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. as the new manufacturer of the chip, reportedly snagging a role formally filled by Samsung.
I skipped the iPad 2 so will be looking at getting the 3. I suspect it will be more expensive though, with such a screen. But an impressive device and probably irresistible.
Yup, me too. Really, really looking forward to the new display. It's my only complaint about my iPad 1. Other than that it's really quite awesome!
Noticeable as hell. Recently I was doing some reasearch and I couldn't read text on the iPad cause the letters are small and when I try to read them all I see is pixels. I guess I expect too much because of iPhone display, but at times I'm frustrated that I can't read text I can read on an iPhone on a device that is much larger.
I did not notice it much before but now I kinda see the artifacts more and more.
I think retina is a must for the next version, as well as RAM bump (so that apps remain running and safari can keep all its tabs without having to reload them). I think a slightly faster A5 would even be all right, without the need for A6 yet, if that helps bring retina to the market at same price points.
Actually I don't buy that as I suspect games will be the first to leverage the new screens. That being said there is the question of Apple being able to maintain performance parity with the iPad2s screen.
Remember however that A6 is rumored to be 28nm which is like a drop of two process sizes. So some performance benefits will come for free. I'm talking here higher clock rates in the GPU while maintaining the power (watts) performance profile. Even with an upgraded GPU integrated that gives the machine more GPU cores I don't see this as the big challenge.
The big challenge will be moving the data around. It will be interesting to see what sort of RAM and cacheing system they come up with. A screen of this size would require at a minimum a screen buffer size of 75MB which is a lot really. However I often think that it would be a huge benefit to put a dedicated screen buffer right on the chip next to the GPU. This would greatly reduce pressure on the cache and transfers to and from general purpose RAM. It would seem to be more useful than adding yet another core. Apple could easily double that so that the GPU has even more fast RAM to enjoy.
This idea of building RAM onto the SoC may seem far out there but think about modern processors and the large caches contained there in. A 150-200MB of on chip RAM, for the GPU, would be very doable.
Yes but on a PC people running at those resolutions are expecting top of the line performance. IPad is very very far from dedicated graphics performance on the iPad. At the minimal Apple can't loose performance which I think everybody agrees with. However it might very well be possible to actually nudge the performance of the machine a bit.
Designing chips is all about trade offs. I'm certain Apples engineers have more info to work with than I do but consider a few things. They will likely be able to bump clock rate to the CPUs without impacting power. They will have vastly more real-estate for functionality on the chip. A new GPU is already in the wings, that GPU could support OpenCL and far more cores. I really don't think Apple will fail here.
Actually I think the opposite, I expect games to be the first to exploit the display. That is as long as they don't significantly loose frame rates. The question becomes then can they actually do that. I suspect it is possible, we might even see a slight increase in performance. The 2X drop in feature size means there is the potential for a lot of extra transistors to be put into play here. It really comes down to where Apples assigns priorities.
I had real hopes for a strong iPad competitor by now. Sadly they are dropping like flies. The thing is competition would put pressure on Apple to deliver a good experience here. Without that pressure I suspect we are at risk of a modest update in the A6. It is actually a bit frustrating because Apple has a history of becoming complacent when it has a successful product on it's hands.
I guess the sad part here is that it looks like we will be waiting months for iPad 3.
You mean like that awful iPod line of products?
Competition has little impact on Apple. The company thrives on innovating, improving and delivering a better user experience with each new release.
It's certainly not looking like Apple has to release the next iPad with a 2048x1536 resolution display, but it's Game, Set, Match if they do.
I wonder if an even larger iPad is feasible down the line. I refer to physical dimensions not resolution here. If they have a higher resolutions a larger iPad at the current resolution or even higher is possible.
I wonder if an even larger iPad is feasible down the line. I refer to physical dimensions not resolution here. If they have a higher resolutions a larger iPad at the current resolution or even higher is possible.
I would expect a larger iPhone before a larger iPad.
I would expect a larger iPhone before a larger iPad.
mmm ... ok. I have a suspicion though that as iOS advances and gains more cross over with OS X a larger format may emerge, even if it seems less portable. New designs may save a lot more weight in a year or two and as software for creation grows a larger screen may be nice, as in an iPadPro 17" perhaps.
I suspect a lot of these slip ups are Apple's new auto correction... a tiny typo and you get a whole new wombat these dogs.
I KNOW. I mean, I love Lion's autocorrect; it's a great new tool? it just sometimes acts like a complete tool and gives me the wrong words.
I have only one complaint with it: I want to be able to define my own corrections. You know, like how the applications of the iWork suite let you define autocorrections. I want that SYSTEM-WIDE.
I KNOW. I mean, I love Lion's autocorrect; it's a great new tool? it just sometimes acts like a complete tool and gives me the wrong words.
I have only one complaint with it: I want to be able to define my own corrections. You know, like how the applications of the iWork suite let you define autocorrections. I want that SYSTEM-WIDE.
I'm not sure of the priority but you might be define some manually in System Preferences? » Language & Text » Text tab.
Comments
Just a typo. AI has an odd habit of writing in-depth articles but creating low-rent graphs filled with typos they don't readily fix. I don't get it. I wish AI would devote some time to creating quality infographs to complement their other content.
It is a hopeless situation. There is little value place on this info outside of the crowd that reads the site regularly. Plus any thing published is quickly forgotten as it scrolls of the bottom of the page. Finally the graphics are there to support speculation and are thus a figment.
I think they'll have to go with an A6 with a much upgraded GPU, at least, for that resolution display but they may be able to save money by keeping the current 16, 32 and 64GB capacities at the same price points for another year but use denser NAND.
It will be interesting to see what happens. For example they could double the clock rate of the GPU. This might be feasible at the smaller process geometries. In general I think you are right though such a screen would require a much improved A6. In part the chip will need to be vastly improved at data handling. That might imply a new memory and cache subsystem.
As to flash I think Apple is in a pickle here. Flash in the smaller geometries just isn't that reliable this would lead to the need for a far more advanced controller. In a way this could be a good thing if they invested in a blade like flash module. Right now iOS devices take a fairly simple approach to flash because the failure rate is manageable and generally you can get ten years of safe storage of data. You loose that with the extremely dense flash.
That alone could offset the costs even though I'd love to see 128GB in the next model but that's because I'm finally using the crap out of my iPad 2 and wish I didn't get the 16GB model.
Yeah the sad fact is the more you use your iOS devices the more you need a larger secondary store. Flash is really cheap compared to downloads from the cloud. Not to mention flash is orders of magnitude faster.
In any event what bothers me about this report is the idea that pilot production has already begun. It just seems a little early for that if the device is to debut in March.
Having created a user interface that works well on a 9.7 inch display from the tablet's inception, Apple freed itself to dramatically boost the iPad's resolution independently of its screen size in order to deliver a very realistic depiction of photos, ebooks, documents, videos, and dynamic content that users navigate via touch while holding the display at distance where pixel density is readily noticeable.
[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
Noticeable as hell. Recently I was doing some reasearch and I couldn't read text on the iPad cause the letters are small and when I try to read them all I see is pixels. I guess I expect too much because of iPhone display, but at times I'm frustrated that I can't read text I can read on an iPhone on a device that is much larger.
I did not notice it much before but now I kinda see the artifacts more and more.
I think retina is a must for the next version, as well as RAM bump (so that apps remain running and safari can keep all its tabs without having to reload them). I think a slightly faster A5 would even be all right, without the need for A6 yet, if that helps bring retina to the market at same price points.
In any event what bothers me about this report is the idea that pilot production has already begun. It just seems a little early for that if the device is to debut in March.
The 960x640 display rumours for the iPhone 4 were around a solid 3 months before the device launched. Sure, this rumour has been going on for more than 6 months but there is 1) precedence with Apple stepping the pixel count with a .quadrupling, and 2) the iPhone 4 still has less pixels than the current iPad. To me that means a 6 month lead time for testing and production isn't unrealistic for this degree of change.
With $80 Billion cash on hand they have a lot of room to leverage special treatment from suppliers.
Blasphemy. Losing profit? Apple has a big fancy new spaceship to built. It needs the profit. If Apple can't get the product out for the same price while making about the same profit, it will take the same approach it always has taken. Namely, offer that product as the top of the line model for a higher price, while offering the other models at a lower price point. Eventually the manufacturing process will be perfected and the cost will come down.
That's a good point about the denser NAND. I'm not sure they will *necessarily* need a better GPU, because there is no way games will run at native res anyway. e.g.
Actually I don't buy that as I suspect games will be the first to leverage the new screens. That being said there is the question of Apple being able to maintain performance parity with the iPad2s screen.
Remember however that A6 is rumored to be 28nm which is like a drop of two process sizes. So some performance benefits will come for free. I'm talking here higher clock rates in the GPU while maintaining the power (watts) performance profile. Even with an upgraded GPU integrated that gives the machine more GPU cores I don't see this as the big challenge.
The big challenge will be moving the data around. It will be interesting to see what sort of RAM and cacheing system they come up with. A screen of this size would require at a minimum a screen buffer size of 75MB which is a lot really. However I often think that it would be a huge benefit to put a dedicated screen buffer right on the chip next to the GPU. This would greatly reduce pressure on the cache and transfers to and from general purpose RAM. It would seem to be more useful than adding yet another core. Apple could easily double that so that the GPU has even more fast RAM to enjoy.
This idea of building RAM onto the SoC may seem far out there but think about modern processors and the large caches contained there in. A 150-200MB of on chip RAM, for the GPU, would be very doable.
on a PC, to run games at that res, you need a big fat dual-GPU video card with fans up the wazoo.
Yes but on a PC people running at those resolutions are expecting top of the line performance. IPad is very very far from dedicated graphics performance on the iPad. At the minimal Apple can't loose performance which I think everybody agrees with. However it might very well be possible to actually nudge the performance of the machine a bit.
Designing chips is all about trade offs. I'm certain Apples engineers have more info to work with than I do but consider a few things. They will likely be able to bump clock rate to the CPUs without impacting power. They will have vastly more real-estate for functionality on the chip. A new GPU is already in the wings, that GPU could support OpenCL and far more cores. I really don't think Apple will fail here.
So I suspect games will stay at 1024, even on iPad 3. (heh, I just typed ipad with a small "P" and Lion auto-corrected it!)
Actually I think the opposite, I expect games to be the first to exploit the display. That is as long as they don't significantly loose frame rates. The question becomes then can they actually do that. I suspect it is possible, we might even see a slight increase in performance. The 2X drop in feature size means there is the potential for a lot of extra transistors to be put into play here. It really comes down to where Apples assigns priorities.
The only apps that will run at full res are productivity apps. But you are right, there are probably 3D productivity apps too, that will need a better GPU. The main benefit I see to a higher res screen is beautiful fonts and HD movies. The fonts is an important one, because I think people really notice text quality. After using HD text on an iPad 3, the competitors will look really cheap in comparison.
I had real hopes for a strong iPad competitor by now. Sadly they are dropping like flies. The thing is competition would put pressure on Apple to deliver a good experience here. Without that pressure I suspect we are at risk of a modest update in the A6. It is actually a bit frustrating because Apple has a history of becoming complacent when it has a successful product on it's hands.
I guess the sad part here is that it looks like we will be waiting months for iPad 3.
AI has an odd habit of writing in-depth articles but creating low-rent graphs filled with typos they don't readily fix.
I haven't laughed so hard in a while, thanks.
The 960x640 display rumours for the iPhone 4 were around a solid 3 months before the device launched. Sure, this rumour has been going on for more than 6 months but there is 1) precedence with Apple stepping the pixel count with a .quadrupling, and 2) the iPhone 4 still has less pixels than the current iPad. To me that means a 6 month lead time for testing and production isn't unrealistic for this degree of change.
Well it isn't really that big of a change, basically a new screen being hooked up to a motherboard. The hardware is likely running off the same production lines now setup for iPad production.
If this was December and the speculation was still around a March debut I might be more inclined to agree. On the otherhand maybe Apple has learned something from it's other problems where they rushed to fast. Still I'm thinking the volume rumored here is still higher than I would expect and thus makes one wonder what is up.
It will be interesting to see what happens. For example they could double the clock rate of the GPU. This might be feasible at the smaller process geometries. In general I think you are right though such a screen would require a much improved A6. In part the chip will need to be vastly improved at data handling. That might imply a new memory and cache subsystem.
With vector graphics the real issue is fill rate, not geometry processing. And fill rate is relatively easy to optimize because it is completely parallelizable by adding additional fill units in the fixed pipeline. The VAST majority of iPad software will take advantage of relatively static fill-rate limited vector graphics so the iPad GPU does not need a complete doubling of GPU power and because vector graphics do not have a fixed size to primary memory requirement ratio like scaled bitmaps do, a doubling of resolution does not automatically eat quadruple the RAM requirement to support the GUI.
Yes a hi-res ipad will require more CPU, GPU and memory to handle the job, but nowhere near the quadrupling many folks naively think. Games will probably be recommended to stay at 1024x768 max because they would need a quadrupling plus of performance to handle the resolution, a task most desktops and laptops are not even up to with aftermarket cards. It takes a dedicated gaming/simulation rig to drive full screen graphic at resolutions of 2048x1536 and >60fps minimum, with lots of heat handling, so I think game devs won't have a problem with maintaining the 1024x768 resolution target and let hardware pixel-double on the back end of the pipeline, something which is already built into the A5 and iOS.
Yeah the sad fact is the more you use your iOS devices the more you need a larger secondary store. Flash is really cheap compared to downloads from the cloud. Not to mention flash is orders of magnitude faster.
In any event what bothers me about this report is the idea that pilot production has already begun. It just seems a little early for that if the device is to debut in March.
Yeah, 1.5 million units now is awfully hard to do and sit on that long, stretches believability. I also wouldn't be the least bit surprised to hear of an arrest in a couple months related to leaks and stock manipulations/insider information and that some of these reports were crafted plants with canaries in them.
According to that report, the chip is destined to be unveiled in the iPad 3 no earlier than the second quarter of 2012, suggesting that device could arrive roughly one year after the launch of the iPad 2.
So basically, the iPad 3 is going to be announced roughly 1 year after the iPad 2, which is right in line with Apple's normal release schedule, so everything seems to be on track.
Those retina display iPad 3 and iPad 2.5 in 2011 people piss me off. That has got to be one of the dumbest and most ignorant Apple rumors ever. Those people should be buying HP TouchPads instead if they want a product with a really quick release cycle.
A report from the Taiwan Economic News earlier this month singled out Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. as the new manufacturer of the chip, reportedly snagging a role formally filled by Samsung.
Formerly. Formerly. Not formally.
I skipped the iPad 2 so will be looking at getting the 3. I suspect it will be more expensive though, with such a screen. But an impressive device and probably irresistible.
Yup, me too. Really, really looking forward to the new display. It's my only complaint about my iPad 1. Other than that it's really quite awesome!
Noticeable as hell. Recently I was doing some reasearch and I couldn't read text on the iPad cause the letters are small and when I try to read them all I see is pixels. I guess I expect too much because of iPhone display, but at times I'm frustrated that I can't read text I can read on an iPhone on a device that is much larger.
I did not notice it much before but now I kinda see the artifacts more and more.
I think retina is a must for the next version, as well as RAM bump (so that apps remain running and safari can keep all its tabs without having to reload them). I think a slightly faster A5 would even be all right, without the need for A6 yet, if that helps bring retina to the market at same price points.
As long as your line isn't, "I see dead pixels."
Actually I don't buy that as I suspect games will be the first to leverage the new screens. That being said there is the question of Apple being able to maintain performance parity with the iPad2s screen.
Remember however that A6 is rumored to be 28nm which is like a drop of two process sizes. So some performance benefits will come for free. I'm talking here higher clock rates in the GPU while maintaining the power (watts) performance profile. Even with an upgraded GPU integrated that gives the machine more GPU cores I don't see this as the big challenge.
The big challenge will be moving the data around. It will be interesting to see what sort of RAM and cacheing system they come up with. A screen of this size would require at a minimum a screen buffer size of 75MB which is a lot really. However I often think that it would be a huge benefit to put a dedicated screen buffer right on the chip next to the GPU. This would greatly reduce pressure on the cache and transfers to and from general purpose RAM. It would seem to be more useful than adding yet another core. Apple could easily double that so that the GPU has even more fast RAM to enjoy.
This idea of building RAM onto the SoC may seem far out there but think about modern processors and the large caches contained there in. A 150-200MB of on chip RAM, for the GPU, would be very doable.
Yes but on a PC people running at those resolutions are expecting top of the line performance. IPad is very very far from dedicated graphics performance on the iPad. At the minimal Apple can't loose performance which I think everybody agrees with. However it might very well be possible to actually nudge the performance of the machine a bit.
Designing chips is all about trade offs. I'm certain Apples engineers have more info to work with than I do but consider a few things. They will likely be able to bump clock rate to the CPUs without impacting power. They will have vastly more real-estate for functionality on the chip. A new GPU is already in the wings, that GPU could support OpenCL and far more cores. I really don't think Apple will fail here.
Actually I think the opposite, I expect games to be the first to exploit the display. That is as long as they don't significantly loose frame rates. The question becomes then can they actually do that. I suspect it is possible, we might even see a slight increase in performance. The 2X drop in feature size means there is the potential for a lot of extra transistors to be put into play here. It really comes down to where Apples assigns priorities.
I had real hopes for a strong iPad competitor by now. Sadly they are dropping like flies. The thing is competition would put pressure on Apple to deliver a good experience here. Without that pressure I suspect we are at risk of a modest update in the A6. It is actually a bit frustrating because Apple has a history of becoming complacent when it has a successful product on it's hands.
I guess the sad part here is that it looks like we will be waiting months for iPad 3.
You mean like that awful iPod line of products?
Competition has little impact on Apple. The company thrives on innovating, improving and delivering a better user experience with each new release.
It's certainly not looking like Apple has to release the next iPad with a 2048x1536 resolution display, but it's Game, Set, Match if they do.
I wonder if an even larger iPad is feasible down the line. I refer to physical dimensions not resolution here. If they have a higher resolutions a larger iPad at the current resolution or even higher is possible.
Formerly. Formerly. Not formally.
I suspect a lot of these slip ups are Apple's new auto correction... a tiny typo and you get a whole new wombat these dogs.
I wonder if an even larger iPad is feasible down the line. I refer to physical dimensions not resolution here. If they have a higher resolutions a larger iPad at the current resolution or even higher is possible.
I would expect a larger iPhone before a larger iPad.
I would expect a larger iPhone before a larger iPad.
mmm ... ok. I have a suspicion though that as iOS advances and gains more cross over with OS X a larger format may emerge, even if it seems less portable. New designs may save a lot more weight in a year or two and as software for creation grows a larger screen may be nice, as in an iPadPro 17" perhaps.
I suspect a lot of these slip ups are Apple's new auto correction... a tiny typo and you get a whole new wombat these dogs.
I KNOW. I mean, I love Lion's autocorrect; it's a great new tool? it just sometimes acts like a complete tool and gives me the wrong words.
I have only one complaint with it: I want to be able to define my own corrections. You know, like how the applications of the iWork suite let you define autocorrections. I want that SYSTEM-WIDE.
I KNOW. I mean, I love Lion's autocorrect; it's a great new tool? it just sometimes acts like a complete tool and gives me the wrong words.
I have only one complaint with it: I want to be able to define my own corrections. You know, like how the applications of the iWork suite let you define autocorrections. I want that SYSTEM-WIDE.
I'm not sure of the priority but you might be define some manually in System Preferences? » Language & Text » Text tab.