This is all good news for me - my 128Gb Wifi Air 2 has shipped and should be delivered tomorrow :smokey: - can't wait to experience the performance increase over my current iPad 3
I wonder if I'd notice any appreciable difference in performance going from my iPad 2 to the iPad Air 2.
"under any circumstances?" Well it depends on if you leave the app or not You go out playing a few rounds of infinity blade, edit with iMovie, make a new tune with Garageband, and come back and you might still reload a tab or 2...
That would be unacceptable. When I come back to Safari those two tabs better still be there ready for me or I'll be forced to complain on an internet forum.
I have this older black Macbook which I don't use anymore, but compared to this new iPad, it's a damn joke!" src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" />
The score was about 2600 (macbook) VS 4477 (iPad).
yep. The new iPad is basically is PC zippy for casual users. my iPad 2 is still usable, compared to my 2009 White Macbook.
But the new Air 2 is not a Macbook Pro, and 2GB memory... remember every one and their mother complains of MacBooks shipping with 4GB of memory and not being field upgradable. Running a 'full' OS (real multitasking, real multi-user) means a lot of context switching, which means a lot of cache flushing, etc, etc.
Just turning up the clock speed won't solve those problems.
3 years: to build a big ass SoC with 4GB of mem, better register caching, support for a ton of drivers and stuff a laptop needs to be a laptop, and rewriting OS X to align with the iOS optimizations. That will take 2 years. BUT... every programmer hour spent doing that is an hour not spent on OS X functional improvements.... and now with Continuity, you need to keep functional linkages to keep in sync with iOS. So not only does the A series need to be as fast or faster than the current intel line, the Intel team has to show they are failing miserably, so much so that Apple will suffer another architectural static point for a year+ (feature freeze, continuity 'incontinence', etc.). Apple didn't like doing that at 10.7 (and 10.9 was the 'big win' for that), do you think you want 10.12 to be delayed a year and have no new features other than allowing it to run on Aseries chips?
In short, you spend a billion on cross developing OS X 10.11 on Aseries you're taking a billion away from better continuity, better Safari, better integration with iOS... Intel has to be on a path to lose Apple 2Billion for that decision to be actioned.
So it will take at least a year for Apple to realize that Intel is screwing the pooch and not delivering Broadwell and follow ons on time, and driving the cost benefit of all that work to move away from x86 OS X to be a net positive compared to staying with an Intel x86 chipset, and delivering great features quickly on a slower and slower high-end laptop.
3 years
1 year waiting for intel to fail again
(a bet the business decision point for the execs and board)
1.5 year of Code development and HW development to get to 'beta' and announce at WWDC
.5 year to get a 10.12.0 release candidate (november 2017)
I don't understand all of the celebration. You can't actually DO anything more with the current generation iPads that you couldn't do with the last. To make really good use of such horsepower, which you all say is tremendous, you need to allow for multitasking and more stuff in the background. Maybe let users customize their home screen with live widgets like Windows 8. Otherwise, it's just the same old iPad with the same apps as before. Bummer.
So you think that multitasking is the only thing that matters? Do you own a computer, or are you just typing on someone else's? If the latter, then you should know that many apps need as much performance as they can get. I do CAD using AutoCAD 360 on my iPad Air, and it was a big improvement on the older model. This one will be even better. Same thing with video editin, photo editing, and higher end video games.
You don'tt need to multitask to need high performance , thlught the iPad does that in the background. See? A lesson in computer use for you!
?? By playing with it I will be testing out the speed of launching Apps, editing photos, Safari loading, etc etc, etc
What else would you think I would do- sit on it to test if it bends?
That's not exactly a test. Some of those things are fast enough that you we be able to tell the difference. You actually need to use an app that requires performance. Otherwise, just sit back and wait for Anandtech's review. That will tell you more than you need to know. They will even compare it to others.
I wouldn't be surprised if you did sit on it. From the things you say, I'd think that you would believe that would be the best place for it.
I can't say I agree with everything here. However one important point I wouldn't expect the same exact A series chip in the iPads to go into an A series laptop.
yep. The new iPad is basically is PC zippy for casual users. my iPad 2 is still usable, compared to my 2009 White Macbook.
Hey I'm running a 2008 MBP, so I know all about slow!
But the new Air 2 is not a Macbook Pro, and 2GB memory... remember every one and their mother complains of MacBooks shipping with 4GB of memory and not being field upgradable. Running a 'full' OS (real multitasking, real multi-user) means a lot of context switching, which means a lot of cache flushing, etc, etc.
A point of precision, iOS does lots of context switching, it is very much a multitasking OS. It doesn't allow for a bunch of user apps but these days even user apps can run in background.
Now of course a laptop would normally be a more stressful environment for user multitasking than the IPads. That does require better hardware but in that regard it should be fairly easy for Apple to increase the cache sizes as a laptop would allow for greater thermal capacity. If Apple did make an A series laptop it is fairly certain that the SoC would be tailored for that use.
An interesting aside here, Apple has like 3 of the best tablet SoC going right now. Apple alone is most likely burying Intels ATOM shipment numbers. That is really impressive in my mind. That volume gives them plenty of incentive to push development of the A series chips.
Just turning up the clock speed won't solve those problems.
Turning up the clock speed helps single threaded apps. It will help multitasking some but as you point out excessive trashing of the cache can have a corresponding negative impact. For Apples part they could accomplish a lot by tuning the caches and the DRAM interfaces to be able to better handle multitasking. This can be done without major tweaking of the "cores".
3 years: to build a big ass SoC with 4GB of mem, better register caching, support for a ton of drivers and stuff a laptop needs to be a laptop, and rewriting OS X to align with the iOS optimizations.
You assume starting from ground zero. I'm pretty sure Apple already has Mac OS/X running on A series hardware. For one there isn't a huge difference between the core iOS operating system and the core of Mac OS. The other thing is keeping you OS portable across operating systems is good sound development practice, they probably have Mac OS running on Power based hardware too.
That will take 2 years. BUT... every programmer hour spent doing that is an hour not spent on OS X functional improvements.... and now with Continuity, you need to keep functional linkages to keep in sync with iOS.
It is very useful to keep your operating system portable across hardware platforms. Even if they never ship an ARM based Mac it is not a wasted effort.
So not only does the A series need to be as fast or faster than the current intel line, the Intel team has to show they are failing miserably, so much so that Apple will suffer another architectural static point for a year+ (feature freeze, continuity 'incontinence', etc.).
I don't buy this at all. First Apple can continue to ship Intel based Macs for as long as Intel remains viable. Second Apples ARM chips only have to be fast enough to compete in the ultra portable devices they are best suited for. As such an A series chip could easily be slotted into an iPad AiR type machine and deliver near equivalent performance. If they can knock $200 off the price of the machine that is game changing right there.
Apple didn't like doing that at 10.7 (and 10.9 was the 'big win' for that), do you think you want 10.12 to be delayed a year and have no new features other than allowing it to run on Aseries chips?
????? Apple wouldn't delay anything to bring out an ARM based Mac. Beyond that they could easily deliver an Arm based device as a new product category.
In short, you spend a billion on cross developing OS X 10.11 on Aseries you're taking a billion away from better continuity, better Safari, better integration with iOS... Intel has to be on a path to lose Apple 2Billion for that decision to be actioned.
Baloney. They are already cross developing those features. Think about it, something like Continuity has to be developed on both platforms so it would make lots of sense to keep the code bases as similar as possible. I wouldn't be surprised to find some part of the supporting code base to be indentical or at least from one source. In fact with Safari Apple has come a very long way to having a common code base between the two platforms. In the end it is actually cheaper for Apple to minimize the number of code bases they are working with.
So it will take at least a year for Apple to realize that Intel is screwing the pooch and not delivering Broadwell and follow ons on time, and driving the cost benefit of all that work to move away from x86 OS X to be a net positive compared to staying with an Intel x86 chipset, and delivering great features quickly on a slower and slower high-end laptop.
What Intel does has little to do with the importance of ARM based Macs to Apple. The big issue is that Apple needs a platform where it can innovate its designs and place features. These days the engineering of a computer, practically the whole computer, takes place on silicon not a printed circuit board. Doing its own SoC allows Apple to innovate and move forward.
To expand upon this idea of innovation, if one looks at photos of the A8 die you will see parts that people have identified as GPU, cache and CPU's. What is most impressive is the amount of structure not precisely identified and frankly remains a mystery. We are talking more than half the die area. It is certain part of that is Apples camera hardware, new video decoders and other features. The important thing to realize is that these are on the SoC chip and not attached to the SoC via an external bus.
In any event to keep moving Macs forward Apple needs to have access to that silicon to be able to implement what they desire on that silicon. So far Intel has been very reluctant to produce customer I86 chips for anybody. You would think that they (Intel) would see the writing on the wall, AMD certainly has.
3 years
1 year waiting for intel to fail again
(a bet the business decision point for the execs and board)
You make the assumption that Mac OS isn't already running on ARM. I'd be shocked if Apple didn't have Mac OS running on ARM and some rumors seem to confirm that they have had Mac OS running on ARM for years now. Mac OS on ARM isn't a techniCal one but rather more of a marketing problem. That is one reason I'd rather not see them market an ARM based device as a Mac, it really should be seen as a new line of hardware.
1.5 year of Code development and HW development to get to 'beta' and announce at WWDC
<span style="line-height:1.4em;"> .5 year to get a 10.12.0 release candidate (november 2017) </span>
At this point I suspect that they could release an ARM based "Mac" whenever they feel like it.
Indeed. It even destroys older Macbooks, Macbook Pros and Macbook Airs.
Just imagine what would happen if they only improved the performance modestly. A bit faster clock, a wider a RAM interface or support for a new RAM standard, a larger cache and so forth. We could easily see this thing doing Mac OS with exceptional results. The really big mystery though is just how fast can the current A8X actually run. It is pretty certain that Apple keeps the clock on the low side to manage power.
In addition to that, it doesn't use "standard" USB cables, a parallel port, or a 5.25" floppy. Damn those hippies in Cupertino!
The funny thing here is that the longer I own my IPads the more I mis standard ports. With PC hardware I always recycled old equipment into project machines. Sadly this is hard to do with the base IOS hardware. Think about it a bit, IPads would make great little interfaces to reprap or home CNC machines if it wasn't for the lack of standard ports and easy access to those ports.
It is funny and sad at the same time but for a company like Apple trying to look cool relative to the environment, making it hard to recycle hardware just makes them look like hypocrites.
Interesting that Apple was so conservative with their 40% CPU improvement statement, and didn't even mention that they added a core.
Actually it is pretty stupid really. They could eliminate a lot of misinformation, mistakes and out right lies if they published factual spec sheets. There would be no debates about what is in a machine as you could simply reference Apples documents.
In some ways, it almost seems like a big FU from Apple marketing to the whole speeds-and-feeds crowd. Basically, we care so little about your spec-bullsh!t that we aren't even going to tout our own superiority using your own metrics.
The problem is specs directly impact the user experience. This can be pretty much verified by the reports of every owner out there. Marketedly better performance ( revealed by specifications) leads to a better user experience.
I think Apples problem is that specs can't be used for cross platform comparisons. However in the case of the iPads there is little real competition out there. So it really shouldn't matter to Apple. It does matter to current owners of old hardware as we want to know if it is the right time to upgrade.
It is be far the best update to the IPad yet. If you don't understand that then you have a very very poor ability to deal with facts.
You can't actually DO anything more with the current generation iPads that you couldn't do with the last.
Sure you can. Simply having more RAM will do wonders for new innovative apps.
To make really good use of such horsepower, which you all say is tremendous, you need to allow for multitasking and more stuff in the background.
Mac OS does multitask. Trying to say it doesn't just makes you look foolish. The background capabilities are limited by design but that is just good design in an ultra mobile platform. Beyond that iOS 8 has added many new capabilities to make it easier to use all of that power.
Maybe let users customize their home screen with live widgets like Windows 8.
Windows 8 sucks royally. That being said I expect iOS to continue to evolve. That evolution might slow down though as iOS 8 is a massive update to iOS.
Otherwise, it's just the same old iPad with the same apps as before. Bummer.
The same old iPad - how so? Everything in that tablet was improved, in some cases the improvements are substantial. Honestly I'm more impressed with how far iPad Air has come than anything else Apple has released this year.
Not if you read what I posted carefully. My point is Apple has hardware that could go into a laptop if they really wanted. Further with some minor tweaking it would reduce the concerns the original poster had about performance.
In a nut shell A8X is more impressive than people want to admit.
Launching apps, browsing, editing photos is near instantaneous already on the 6 and 6+ (just tested it this afternoon side by side, so opening things is not going to test this beast one bit. Not much you can really do in a store to test firepower of even the phone, let alone this..... Monster.
Editing video (adding transitions real time) and layering effects for audio, video, could test it slightly more . Running a cad program, now we are starting to get somewhere ;-). Your not going to do all that in a store though. Right now, very few applications really tests the air 2. Its a real forward going machine.
I can certainly see how much faster it does things including games compared to my iPad4
Comments
I wonder if I'd notice any appreciable difference in performance going from my iPad 2 to the iPad Air 2.
I thought they were calling for 256GB of RAM.
I don't think most people would mind not being able to upgrade the RAM in their iPads.
Even in computers, most people never bother to upgrade any components.
But you may be right.
Well, that's what we're here for.
The lack of a mute switch.
I have this older black Macbook which I don't use anymore, but compared to this new iPad, it's a damn joke!
" src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" />
The score was about 2600 (macbook) VS 4477 (iPad).
yep. The new iPad is basically is PC zippy for casual users. my iPad 2 is still usable, compared to my 2009 White Macbook.
But the new Air 2 is not a Macbook Pro, and 2GB memory... remember every one and their mother complains of MacBooks shipping with 4GB of memory and not being field upgradable. Running a 'full' OS (real multitasking, real multi-user) means a lot of context switching, which means a lot of cache flushing, etc, etc.
Just turning up the clock speed won't solve those problems.
3 years: to build a big ass SoC with 4GB of mem, better register caching, support for a ton of drivers and stuff a laptop needs to be a laptop, and rewriting OS X to align with the iOS optimizations. That will take 2 years. BUT... every programmer hour spent doing that is an hour not spent on OS X functional improvements.... and now with Continuity, you need to keep functional linkages to keep in sync with iOS. So not only does the A series need to be as fast or faster than the current intel line, the Intel team has to show they are failing miserably, so much so that Apple will suffer another architectural static point for a year+ (feature freeze, continuity 'incontinence', etc.). Apple didn't like doing that at 10.7 (and 10.9 was the 'big win' for that), do you think you want 10.12 to be delayed a year and have no new features other than allowing it to run on Aseries chips?
In short, you spend a billion on cross developing OS X 10.11 on Aseries you're taking a billion away from better continuity, better Safari, better integration with iOS... Intel has to be on a path to lose Apple 2Billion for that decision to be actioned.
So it will take at least a year for Apple to realize that Intel is screwing the pooch and not delivering Broadwell and follow ons on time, and driving the cost benefit of all that work to move away from x86 OS X to be a net positive compared to staying with an Intel x86 chipset, and delivering great features quickly on a slower and slower high-end laptop.
3 years
1 year waiting for intel to fail again
(a bet the business decision point for the execs and board)
1.5 year of Code development and HW development to get to 'beta' and announce at WWDC
.5 year to get a 10.12.0 release candidate (november 2017)
I hear it will have 1TB of RAM!
So you think that multitasking is the only thing that matters? Do you own a computer, or are you just typing on someone else's? If the latter, then you should know that many apps need as much performance as they can get. I do CAD using AutoCAD 360 on my iPad Air, and it was a big improvement on the older model. This one will be even better. Same thing with video editin, photo editing, and higher end video games.
You don'tt need to multitask to need high performance , thlught the iPad does that in the background. See? A lesson in computer use for you!
No pazuzu, you just won't buy one. But that's ok, you really don't have to. Samsung needs the business.
That's not exactly a test. Some of those things are fast enough that you we be able to tell the difference. You actually need to use an app that requires performance. Otherwise, just sit back and wait for Anandtech's review. That will tell you more than you need to know. They will even compare it to others.
I wouldn't be surprised if you did sit on it. From the things you say, I'd think that you would believe that would be the best place for it.
In addition to that, it doesn't use "standard" USB cables, a parallel port, or a 5.25" floppy. Damn those hippies in Cupertino!
This is the reason why I can never use my iPad for everything I need. My enemy list just cannot be accessed on it without the 5.25" floppy drive.
Hey I'm running a 2008 MBP, so I know all about slow! A point of precision, iOS does lots of context switching, it is very much a multitasking OS. It doesn't allow for a bunch of user apps but these days even user apps can run in background.
Now of course a laptop would normally be a more stressful environment for user multitasking than the IPads. That does require better hardware but in that regard it should be fairly easy for Apple to increase the cache sizes as a laptop would allow for greater thermal capacity. If Apple did make an A series laptop it is fairly certain that the SoC would be tailored for that use.
An interesting aside here, Apple has like 3 of the best tablet SoC going right now. Apple alone is most likely burying Intels ATOM shipment numbers. That is really impressive in my mind. That volume gives them plenty of incentive to push development of the A series chips. Turning up the clock speed helps single threaded apps. It will help multitasking some but as you point out excessive trashing of the cache can have a corresponding negative impact. For Apples part they could accomplish a lot by tuning the caches and the DRAM interfaces to be able to better handle multitasking. This can be done without major tweaking of the "cores". You assume starting from ground zero. I'm pretty sure Apple already has Mac OS/X running on A series hardware. For one there isn't a huge difference between the core iOS operating system and the core of Mac OS. The other thing is keeping you OS portable across operating systems is good sound development practice, they probably have Mac OS running on Power based hardware too. It is very useful to keep your operating system portable across hardware platforms. Even if they never ship an ARM based Mac it is not a wasted effort. I don't buy this at all. First Apple can continue to ship Intel based Macs for as long as Intel remains viable. Second Apples ARM chips only have to be fast enough to compete in the ultra portable devices they are best suited for. As such an A series chip could easily be slotted into an iPad AiR type machine and deliver near equivalent performance. If they can knock $200 off the price of the machine that is game changing right there. ????? Apple wouldn't delay anything to bring out an ARM based Mac. Beyond that they could easily deliver an Arm based device as a new product category. Baloney. They are already cross developing those features. Think about it, something like Continuity has to be developed on both platforms so it would make lots of sense to keep the code bases as similar as possible. I wouldn't be surprised to find some part of the supporting code base to be indentical or at least from one source. In fact with Safari Apple has come a very long way to having a common code base between the two platforms. In the end it is actually cheaper for Apple to minimize the number of code bases they are working with. What Intel does has little to do with the importance of ARM based Macs to Apple. The big issue is that Apple needs a platform where it can innovate its designs and place features. These days the engineering of a computer, practically the whole computer, takes place on silicon not a printed circuit board. Doing its own SoC allows Apple to innovate and move forward.
To expand upon this idea of innovation, if one looks at photos of the A8 die you will see parts that people have identified as GPU, cache and CPU's. What is most impressive is the amount of structure not precisely identified and frankly remains a mystery. We are talking more than half the die area. It is certain part of that is Apples camera hardware, new video decoders and other features. The important thing to realize is that these are on the SoC chip and not attached to the SoC via an external bus.
In any event to keep moving Macs forward Apple needs to have access to that silicon to be able to implement what they desire on that silicon. So far Intel has been very reluctant to produce customer I86 chips for anybody. You would think that they (Intel) would see the writing on the wall, AMD certainly has. You make the assumption that Mac OS isn't already running on ARM. I'd be shocked if Apple didn't have Mac OS running on ARM and some rumors seem to confirm that they have had Mac OS running on ARM for years now. Mac OS on ARM isn't a techniCal one but rather more of a marketing problem. That is one reason I'd rather not see them market an ARM based device as a Mac, it really should be seen as a new line of hardware.
At this point I suspect that they could release an ARM based "Mac" whenever they feel like it.
Just imagine what would happen if they only improved the performance modestly. A bit faster clock, a wider a RAM interface or support for a new RAM standard, a larger cache and so forth. We could easily see this thing doing Mac OS with exceptional results. The really big mystery though is just how fast can the current A8X actually run. It is pretty certain that Apple keeps the clock on the low side to manage power.
It is funny and sad at the same time but for a company like Apple trying to look cool relative to the environment, making it hard to recycle hardware just makes them look like hypocrites.
Actually it is pretty stupid really. They could eliminate a lot of misinformation, mistakes and out right lies if they published factual spec sheets. There would be no debates about what is in a machine as you could simply reference Apples documents.
The problem is specs directly impact the user experience. This can be pretty much verified by the reports of every owner out there. Marketedly better performance ( revealed by specifications) leads to a better user experience.
I think Apples problem is that specs can't be used for cross platform comparisons. However in the case of the iPads there is little real competition out there. So it really shouldn't matter to Apple. It does matter to current owners of old hardware as we want to know if it is the right time to upgrade.
I can't say I agree with everything here.
You just did.
Indeed. It even destroys older Macbooks, Macbook Pros and Macbook Airs.
Just imagine what would happen if they only improved the performance modestly. A bit faster clock
I guess Apple could speed up time with a faster clock, but it would quickly become inaccurate.
I suggest that it would be in Apple's interests to keep the same time as everyone else.
It is be far the best update to the IPad yet. If you don't understand that then you have a very very poor ability to deal with facts. Sure you can. Simply having more RAM will do wonders for new innovative apps. Mac OS does multitask. Trying to say it doesn't just makes you look foolish. The background capabilities are limited by design but that is just good design in an ultra mobile platform. Beyond that iOS 8 has added many new capabilities to make it easier to use all of that power. Windows 8 sucks royally. That being said I expect iOS to continue to evolve. That evolution might slow down though as iOS 8 is a massive update to iOS. The same old iPad - how so? Everything in that tablet was improved, in some cases the improvements are substantial. Honestly I'm more impressed with how far iPad Air has come than anything else Apple has released this year.
Not if you read what I posted carefully. My point is Apple has hardware that could go into a laptop if they really wanted. Further with some minor tweaking it would reduce the concerns the original poster had about performance.
In a nut shell A8X is more impressive than people want to admit.
I can certainly see how much faster it does things including games compared to my iPad4
And the sound on these always sucks but that's another issue.