The Surface Studio looks like such an amazing design, first time I have been tempted to purchase an all-in-one desktop since my iMac debacle(s). Too bad it runs Windows. Hoping the competition will make Apple rethink what they are doing.
I'll admit that it was a bit interesting to look at, but...
It's still a weak system, it's basically the tablet with a larger surface area. The tablet systems are less than 50% as powerful as a quadcore system.
And no, Apple will never use it's own A-series CPU/GPU parts as long as Intel's parts are still 4X as powerful. AMD is putting out 8-core CPU's and 4-core/weak(but better than Intel) iGPU's. Apple needs those A-series parts for the iPhones, iPods, iPads, and AppleTV units and the ARM parts don't UP scale energy use as efficiency as Intel parts, while the Intel x86 parts don't scale down to "mobile" devices very well.
It's been calculated out several times, but in order to use the A-series parts, the CPU performance parity would have to be equal to a desktop at 1/4th the power. It's not hard to squeek out a beat of the Intel GPU parts, because Intel's GPU's have always been rubbish, but the CPU side can not. The per-thread performance is nowhere near where it needs to be.
The iPhone 7 https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/387526 Single core A10 @2.34GHz is 3360. vs Intel parts: Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.80 GHz is 6664. An i5-7600K @ 3.80 GHz is 6665.
Those are all quadcore parts. Assuming you could just straight up double the clock speed without a penalty in power usage, they are still different architectures, and clock for clock are not the same.
Apple switched from PPC to Intel, and unless Intel stops making viable parts, they have no reason to switch from it. If they ever decide to switch, there will be a directive to Apple software developers to go back to "Fat Binaries" and so far that has not been done.
Most people don't realize - that when Apple makes a minimalistic design, with lighter hardware, fewer ports, etc, it is actually dramatically boosting its profit margins. With the kind of volumes Apple handles, even small shavings in materials and specifications quickly add up to big numbers.
Just imagine, if Apple is saving $2 per iPhone by removing headphone port, and using smaller battery, that nets it about $400M extra for the 200M iPhones made. And that more than covers the profits they make from selling a million extra iPhones!
Sure, sure, they save $2 on each phone by not including the headphone port.
They also got a BOGO offer on camera lens, which is why they stuck 2 of them on the 7 Plus models.
Also, since they didn't include the headphone port and saved $2, the headphone port supplier wrote off all the shipments to Apple, so Apple used all the headphone ports that were thrown away to make an adaptor that was included with every iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.
It's amazing how the stars aligned to ensure Apple got their savings on the headphone ports!!
Comments
It's still a weak system, it's basically the tablet with a larger surface area. The tablet systems are less than 50% as powerful as a quadcore system.
And no, Apple will never use it's own A-series CPU/GPU parts as long as Intel's parts are still 4X as powerful. AMD is putting out 8-core CPU's and 4-core/weak(but better than Intel) iGPU's. Apple needs those A-series parts for the iPhones, iPods, iPads, and AppleTV units and the ARM parts don't UP scale energy use as efficiency as Intel parts, while the Intel x86 parts don't scale down to "mobile" devices very well.
It's been calculated out several times, but in order to use the A-series parts, the CPU performance parity would have to be equal to a desktop at 1/4th the power. It's not hard to squeek out a beat of the Intel GPU parts, because Intel's GPU's have always been rubbish, but the CPU side can not. The per-thread performance is nowhere near where it needs to be.
The iPhone 7 https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/387526
Single core A10 @2.34GHz is 3360.
vs Intel parts:
Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.80 GHz is 6664.
An i5-7600K @ 3.80 GHz is 6665.
Those are all quadcore parts. Assuming you could just straight up double the clock speed without a penalty in power usage, they are still different architectures, and clock for clock are not the same.
Apple switched from PPC to Intel, and unless Intel stops making viable parts, they have no reason to switch from it. If they ever decide to switch, there will be a directive to Apple software developers to go back to "Fat Binaries" and so far that has not been done.
Sure, sure, they save $2 on each phone by not including the headphone port.
They also got a BOGO offer on camera lens, which is why they stuck 2 of them on the 7 Plus models.
Also, since they didn't include the headphone port and saved $2, the headphone port supplier wrote off all the shipments to Apple, so Apple used all the headphone ports that were thrown away to make an adaptor that was included with every iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.
It's amazing how the stars aligned to ensure Apple got their savings on the headphone ports!!