A14 is only hexacore. Strange. Was certain that it was going to be octa-core. Hexacore is good enough to replace the i3 and i5 in the Mac Mini and MacBook Air, but for MacBook Pro and iMac they are going to need an octacore design at minimum.
So, I just bout a 11” iPad Pro a few days ago (still unopened). What distinguishes the product lines now? Makes no sense.
iPad Pro advantages...
1. ProMotion 2. Larger storage options 3. (Probably) more RAM, for better performance 4. A12Z
Don't let the last one perplex you... the A12Z is still a beast of an SoC. I don't think the A14 is going to be nearly as performant in two of the most important metrics CPU and GPU.
We'll have to wait and see what the A14X brings to the table. However, I don't expect to be as big of a jump as some others think. The performance of the A-series SoCs is already getting a bit ridiculous. Just look at the A12Z, after 2 years on the market there is still nothing that can touch it. It has another 3 years before it starts showing any kind of "age". Anandtech seems to think rather than continuing to up the boosted peak performance, Apple has decided level out that "peak" performance with these new chips, meaning that they will be able to run at those levels for much longer. Which makes a lot of sense for the X-variant as those would be used for more production type work.
There's a really good shot that it will be fastest single core CPU machine, desktop or laptop, available anywhere, at least until the Apple Silicon Macs come out. Maybe Tiger Lake has a shot at it. This machine would have been fine with an A13. Putting in an A14 put its value way way up there.
Agreed. Though to be honest, the increase in single core performance seems rather modest this year. Comparisons were made based on the A12 chip, not the A13 chip. The performance bump seems very incremental to the point that it's almost entirely due to the manufacturing process rather than due to an architecture improvement. I'll look forward to Anandtech's review. That said, I get that most of the additional transistors were allocated to neural engine and machine learning performance.
Whatever. Nothing compels me to give up my iPad Air 2. Faster processor for reading websites? Nope. Slightly larger screen for reading websites? Nope. Same screen resolution. Nope. Weighs 20 grams more. Nope.
I want higher resolution!
Funny. My 89-year-old granny also uses her older gen iPad just for website browsing like you, and she doesn't find the new iPad Air compelling either!
There's a really good shot that it will be fastest single core CPU machine, desktop or laptop, available anywhere, at least until the Apple Silicon Macs come out. Maybe Tiger Lake has a shot at it. This machine would have been fine with an A13. Putting in an A14 put its value way way up there.
Agreed. Though to be honest, the increase in single core performance seems rather modest this year. Comparisons were made based on the A12 chip, not the A13 chip. The performance bump seems very incremental to the point that it's almost entirely due to the manufacturing process rather than due to an architecture improvement. I'll look forward to Anandtech's review. That said, I get that most of the additional transistors were allocated to neural engine and machine learning performance.
Who knows what’s going and why they chose to use the A14 over the A13. It would have made little difference to the product’s success if they used the A13 instead.
The A14 SoC should be cheaper than the A13 SoC, so, there is a cheaper BOM argument. It should be lower overall Watts. But for this product, it shouldn’t matter too much. It’s a product with not much competition. It could have just came down to timing. The A14 is available.
Now, the regression in GPU performance versus the A13 is mysterious. Really, don’t understand why this would be so, unless they are downclocking to provide segmentation.
I need to update my iPad Mini! Hoping Apple does not do a budget Mini routine but give it the current A14 and does a Mini Air for March 2021!
iPad mini will be updated in 2023 next (i.e. if at all it gets updated). Apple doesn't seem to like the iPad Mini for whatever reasons - may be too much of an overhead with design/sourcing the components for manufacturing for too little additional profit. Don't hold your hopes high for 2021 refresh.
Why the F* this company do no wrong ? I am waiting it to mess up so I can buy lots of AAPL with both hands. Well, that may not happen so I will settle with upgrading from my old Air 2 to this 4th Gen iPad.
Well Apple was up 5 cents after the announcements... Seriously, investors don't see the benefit of Fitness+, Apple Watch and how Apple pretty much put the nail in the coffin for knockoff iPads?
The market is lucky they didn't announce a $199 education version, like an SE for schools. Chromebooks and knockoff iPads would have been a thing of the past.
Apple has already put the nail in coffin for Android tablets 2.5 years ago when they launched the budget iPad for $329 back in Mar-2018. Apple should be having 80%+ market share in tablets with cost > $300, can be nearly called a monopoly in the tablet market. There are NO Android tablets (not even one) worth their price tag in the >$300 segment (in fact >$200 since the justification for spending additional $130 for an entry level iPad is more than justified) when compared against iPads with similar price tags. And I am saying this as a fan of Android.
I’d guess my only pause is the Touch ID implementation. Those edge ID system identifiers haven’t got a very good history. It leaves the Pro in the mix for me (along with the higher storage options as I’m a photographer who’d like the backup and my full frame dSLR, currently a d850, generates huge image files I shoot thousands of on road trips).
Well the tech details will be interesting. They are close, Apple usually doesn’t make that mistake, an iPad Pro update on the horizon?
If this IPA has the same connectivity capabilities as the iPad Pro, then storage is a matter of a sufficiently large external hard drive. It's an additional expense, but it seems like the per gigabyte cost is less when you're talking about truly large capacities. I don't know if your cameral allows for direct transfer to an external drive; if not then backup isn't as simple as backup to just the iPad, but still doable.
I thought I read somewhere in my D5500's documentation that if I connect my phone via the camera's network, it could mirror the photos I take. I can't imagine that would be a very fast transfer rate, but it might be an alternative.
I've been debating on getting a Pro for simple field editing of photos I take while away from my PC. I'm wondering if this will fit the bill. But I'm also going to get an Apple Watch 6, so it might be best to wait to see if the Pros get an update in a couple of months.
Do we know if the new iPad Air can use an external hard drive? I kind of assume it can because of the USB C port, but I haven't seen it anywhere.
What would that do for you? Give you peace of mind that the number of pixels is higher? 99% of people can't see a difference. I wanna say 100% but there has to be a mutant with super-vision out there.
I’d guess my only pause is the Touch ID implementation. Those edge ID system identifiers haven’t got a very good history. It leaves the Pro in the mix for me (along with the higher storage options as I’m a photographer who’d like the backup and my full frame dSLR, currently a d850, generates huge image files I shoot thousands of on road trips).
Well the tech details will be interesting. They are close, Apple usually doesn’t make that mistake, an iPad Pro update on the horizon?
If this IPA has the same connectivity capabilities as the iPad Pro, then storage is a matter of a sufficiently large external hard drive. It's an additional expense, but it seems like the per gigabyte cost is less when you're talking about truly large capacities. I don't know if your cameral allows for direct transfer to an external drive; if not then backup isn't as simple as backup to just the iPad, but still doable.
I thought I read somewhere in my D5500's documentation that if I connect my phone via the camera's network, it could mirror the photos I take. I can't imagine that would be a very fast transfer rate, but it might be an alternative.
I've been debating on getting a Pro for simple field editing of photos I take while away from my PC. I'm wondering if this will fit the bill. But I'm also going to get an Apple Watch 6, so it might be best to wait to see if the Pros get an update in a couple of months.
Do we know if the new iPad Air can use an external hard drive? I kind of assume it can because of the USB C port, but I haven't seen it anywhere.
Yes, it can.
Don't all iPads support hard drives now? The issue for spinning hard drives and high power SSDs is that Lightning ports don't provide enough power to run them, so you'll need a Lightning adaptor to USB and Lightning to provide the necessary power. Same with the USBC ports, if the drive needs more power than the iPad can provide, it needs to have power input elsewhere.
A14 is only hexacore. Strange. Was certain that it was going to be octa-core. Hexacore is good enough to replace the i3 and i5 in the Mac Mini and MacBook Air, but for MacBook Pro and iMac they are going to need an octacore design at minimum.
CloudDude, the A series SOC isn't going to be used in any production Mac, so you can stop clutching your pearls.
Not very well-informed about Apple Silicon, are you? Might want to catch up before insulting others...
I’d guess my only pause is the Touch ID implementation. Those edge ID system identifiers haven’t got a very good history. It leaves the Pro in the mix for me (along with the higher storage options as I’m a photographer who’d like the backup and my full frame dSLR, currently a d850, generates huge image files I shoot thousands of on road trips).
Well the tech details will be interesting. They are close, Apple usually doesn’t make that mistake, an iPad Pro update on the horizon?
If this IPA has the same connectivity capabilities as the iPad Pro, then storage is a matter of a sufficiently large external hard drive. It's an additional expense, but it seems like the per gigabyte cost is less when you're talking about truly large capacities. I don't know if your cameral allows for direct transfer to an external drive; if not then backup isn't as simple as backup to just the iPad, but still doable.
I thought I read somewhere in my D5500's documentation that if I connect my phone via the camera's network, it could mirror the photos I take. I can't imagine that would be a very fast transfer rate, but it might be an alternative.
I've been debating on getting a Pro for simple field editing of photos I take while away from my PC. I'm wondering if this will fit the bill. But I'm also going to get an Apple Watch 6, so it might be best to wait to see if the Pros get an update in a couple of months.
There are Apple camera adapters that at first glance will allow uploading image files off the camera card inserted into a card reader into the iPad. If that turns out to be correct (a trip to B&H video is in order) I’d get backup and editing with a smaller and cheaper alternative to my MB Pro for the aforesaid road trips.
Yah, the mirroring might be Nikon’s SnapBridge: but iirc, it doesn’t transfer raw and for me my iPhone isn’t large enough for bulk storage in any case. But it’s an option. Iirc it transfers them on the fly so speed is less of an issue.
The inability to transfer RAW files isn't really an issue for the simple kinds of edits I'd be doing away from my PC. Mostly color, red eye, haze, etc types of edits so that I can immediately share them with someone.
If iPadOS allows directly editing on external media via the Files app or whatever, that would probably be the simplest. Transfer the files from the camera to the external drive and edit. If if it doesn't allow it, copying a few from the external drive to internal storage and editing them isn't the worst experience for simple edits for immediate use or transferring to another person. Serious edits can wait for the full power of whatever image editor one has one one's PC.
A14 is only hexacore. Strange. Was certain that it was going to be octa-core. Hexacore is good enough to replace the i3 and i5 in the Mac Mini and MacBook Air, but for MacBook Pro and iMac they are going to need an octacore design at minimum.
CloudDude, the A series SOC isn't going to be used in any production Mac, so you can stop clutching your pearls.
Not very well-informed about Apple Silicon, are you? Might want to catch up before insulting others...
Apple said, and I provided a quote from their website, that Macs will have their own line of chips developed just for them. You don’t know anything, and you shouldn’t criticized others who do.
will the name start with an “A”? It might, after all, the A just stands for Apple. But it won’t be the same chip. Apple has made that very clear.
Comments
iPad Pro advantages...
1. ProMotion
2. Larger storage options
3. (Probably) more RAM, for better performance
4. A12Z
Don't let the last one perplex you... the A12Z is still a beast of an SoC. I don't think the A14 is going to be nearly as performant in two of the most important metrics CPU and GPU.
We'll have to wait and see what the A14X brings to the table. However, I don't expect to be as big of a jump as some others think. The performance of the A-series SoCs is already getting a bit ridiculous. Just look at the A12Z, after 2 years on the market there is still nothing that can touch it. It has another 3 years before it starts showing any kind of "age". Anandtech seems to think rather than continuing to up the boosted peak performance, Apple has decided level out that "peak" performance with these new chips, meaning that they will be able to run at those levels for much longer. Which makes a lot of sense for the X-variant as those would be used for more production type work.
The A14 SoC should be cheaper than the A13 SoC, so, there is a cheaper BOM argument. It should be lower overall Watts. But for this product, it shouldn’t matter too much. It’s a product with not much competition. It could have just came down to timing. The A14 is available.
iPad mini will be updated in 2023 next (i.e. if at all it gets updated). Apple doesn't seem to like the iPad Mini for whatever reasons - may be too much of an overhead with design/sourcing the components for manufacturing for too little additional profit. Don't hold your hopes high for 2021 refresh.
Apple has already put the nail in coffin for Android tablets 2.5 years ago when they launched the budget iPad for $329 back in Mar-2018. Apple should be having 80%+ market share in tablets with cost > $300, can be nearly called a monopoly in the tablet market. There are NO Android tablets (not even one) worth their price tag in the >$300 segment (in fact >$200 since the justification for spending additional $130 for an entry level iPad is more than justified) when compared against iPads with similar price tags. And I am saying this as a fan of Android.
Sure they are. Any sentient being is a person.
If iPadOS allows directly editing on external media via the Files app or whatever, that would probably be the simplest. Transfer the files from the camera to the external drive and edit. If if it doesn't allow it, copying a few from the external drive to internal storage and editing them isn't the worst experience for simple edits for immediate use or transferring to another person. Serious edits can wait for the full power of whatever image editor one has one one's PC.
will the name start with an “A”? It might, after all, the A just stands for Apple. But it won’t be the same chip. Apple has made that very clear.