I always recall that Steve had a secret team running Mac OS on Intel in parallel to the Power PC years before it was known. I can't help wonder if there might be a skunk works team deep underground already running OS X on an secret new Apple chip as we speak.
sigh.
You know that Mac OS was ported FROM Intel (White NeXTSTEP) to the G3. It wasn't that secret.
2GB of Ram would have allwoed proper multi-tasking and even 2 or more tabs to be actually running in the web browser.
Heavens forbid, we could have even had a desktop mode setting in Safari.
1gb of ram only???? for a phone that costs between $700 and 1000?? what do we need to wait 3 years and beg again for more ram as we did for larger screens?
It's all about user experience. Apps, if written well and efficiently, do not need more memory. Just throwing more RAM into a device does not solve anything, it only changes the spec. However, more RAM would mean potentially an app not needing to reload with app switching; i.e. reloading a web site when switching from another app.
It is kind of pointless to get hung up on 'amount of RAM.' What matters are the primary factors.
Primary factors:
Performance
Price
Battery Life
Screen quality
Screen size
Phone size
Secondaries that don't really matter:
Amount of RAM
Number of Cores
Clock Speed
Number of bits
Battery efficiency
Somebody could build a 1 kb, single core, 8 bit phone with a 1maH battery.
If it is faster, battery lasts longer, has a beautiful screen that works well with no bezel, and costs $2.... it is going to do well
I'm sure Apple tested more memory, and evaluated the price/performance gain and decided on 1 GB using their own process. My guess is the iPhone 6 is going to be a performance beast any way you slice it.
Curious to see how the Note 4 and iPhone 6 will stack up against each other in the 'primary factors.' The iPhone 6 could pull substantially ahead.
Some have said that third parties could always recompile their software for OS X over ARM, but as usual, that's just a pipe dream, and XCode would need to support that. Small, simple, apps can often be run through, and will work with little work afterwards. But major apps will take months to fix up, and the question is how many developers will want to make another change.
Xcode is easy. It already does both x86 and ARM.
But getting major apps recompiled is insufficient. Just with the PPC -> x86 transition, this would need Rosetta. That was built by Transitive and licensed by Apple, but the company was acquired and the new owners did not want to renew the license.
It's interesting that the new owner just happens to be IBM. With whom Apple recently made a deal. Very interesting indeed.
The A7 is already a beast, beating out Samsung's latest flagships in benchmarks. Although the A8 has a significant performance increase, I'm glad they focused on power efficiency, since it will actually give a much larger practical, day to day benefit as compared to more performance.
Not my area of knowledge at all, but can someone explain if these babies are even close to being able to run OS X?
With the most powerful mobile processor on the market, they might be able to run Android. I remember installing 1.6 on my first gen iPhone. Even with the best hardware on the market and the most accurate touchscreen, it lagged like nobody’s business and my Q and P keys couldn’t be touched.
And lets not forget the power usage implications...
True, but I'd be happier with the same thickness as the iPhone 5S with a bigger battery and 2gb+ or Ram.
I love Mr Ive's designs, but he frequently seems to choose form over function when it comes to the thickness of a device.
This was the same in 2012 with the 5, and turned out to be a non-issue. Let's first have people post their experience after using it for a few days before making any assumptions.
The word is that the texas FAB that Apple paid Samsung to build is currently undergoing renovations to prepare for 16nm development so it is offline and that pretty much tells you that Apple is using the supplier from Taiwan. Switching process systems is no trivial matter at this level of production. Apple probably made this processor update as simple as possible to make the yeild curve easier to manage. I would not be surprised if Apple used Samsung to develope the processor for the next generation processor in their pipeline. Intel has seperate teams working on each tick and tock for the next 5 years. That means they have 5 seperate teams working on new processors.
Keeping both fabs busy would make them have to compete for each design win. It would also allow Apple to demand more concessions such as building stronger firewalls between the teams working with Apple and the rest of Samsung's management. The partnership between Apple and Samsung was very important to both companies. Samsung has had much higher quality than their competitors in screens, SSD's and semiconductor manufacturing. Intel is too greedy to make an alliance work with Apple. Having two processors producing chips for Apple's products would also allow for a faster ramp on new designs. It is not hard to imagine that Taiwan would get the basic iPhone chips, and iPad chips. Samsung could supply the Apple phone, iPhone plus, and the next generation apple hardware. The way Moores law is collapsing it may be necessary to hedge your bets to make sure product introductions and or feature sets don't get delayed by problems scaling down to successively smaller geometries.
Samsung has nothing to do with developing Apple's chips. Samsung didn't even know the A7 was a 64 bit chip until after it came out, and they built it!
The extra transistors are from the larger GPU, the extra image sensors, and the hardware for H.265 encoding and decoding, most likely.
Yes, the extra work on the newer GPU could add another 25%. What extra image sensors? The hardware for 265 would be mostly the same hardware as for 264.
But getting major apps recompiled is insufficient. Just with the PPC -> x86 transition, this would need Rosetta. That was built by Transitive and licensed by Apple, but the company was acquired and the new owners did not want to renew the license.
It's interesting that the new owner just happens to be IBM. With whom Apple recently made a deal. Very interesting indeed.
Yes, it does both, but will it recompile ARM to x86?, and visa versa?
It's all about user experience. Apps, if written well and efficiently, do not need more memory. Just throwing more RAM into a device does not solve anything, it only changes the spec. However, more RAM would mean potentially an app not needing to reload with app switching; i.e. reloading a web site when switching from another app.
Currently, 1GB of RAM DOES impact user experience across the board; particularly when using Safari, whose always-reloading behavior when visiting even basic websites is completely unacceptable. Unless the "geniuses" in this forum still want us to believe that this is NOT due to insufficient RAM, of course...
Samsung didn't even know the A7 was a 64 bit chip until after it came out, and they built it!
Talk about a lack of i for detail. Perhaps I should add a sarcasm tag after that one, though I would presume they would know what they were creating, but perhaps one cannot see it if the whole design is layer out for them(?) Really no idea.
But on that topic, they cannot seriously believe their 2011 phablet can be compared to the 5.5 6+ (lol, "that's a misnomer if I ever saw one"; thanks [@]Gatorguy[/@]).
World of difference there. Heck, different galaxy.
Yes, it does both, but will it recompile ARM to x86?, and visa versa?
I'm not sure of your question. It will compile source to either x86 or to ARM. But it won't convert, for example, x86 binary to ARM binary. Is that what you meant?
1gb of ram only???? for a phone that costs between $700 and 1000?? what do we need to wait 3 years and beg again for more ram as we did for larger screens?
If the iPhone is merely the sum of its specs. This is the reductionist philosophy that years of commodity PC parts and "intel inside" have infected the tech world with. I'm not impressed.
1 GB sucks imo. The 5S is a great phone, a forward thinking phone as Apple said. The 6 isn't that way, it will age much faster imo. It's a great phone, but not one I'd buy, even if I needed to now. I'll wait for the 6S or the 7 and also hope that they bring back a smaller version.
Comments
Thanks for the info.
I always recall that Steve had a secret team running Mac OS on Intel in parallel to the Power PC years before it was known. I can't help wonder if there might be a skunk works team deep underground already running OS X on an secret new Apple chip as we speak.
sigh.
You know that Mac OS was ported FROM Intel (White NeXTSTEP) to the G3. It wasn't that secret.
More concerning is the 1GB RAM.
No it isn't.
what do I know!
Precisely my thinking.
iOS 8 does have a desktop mode in safari.
1gb of ram only???? for a phone that costs between $700 and 1000?? what do we need to wait 3 years and beg again for more ram as we did for larger screens?
It's all about user experience. Apps, if written well and efficiently, do not need more memory. Just throwing more RAM into a device does not solve anything, it only changes the spec. However, more RAM would mean potentially an app not needing to reload with app switching; i.e. reloading a web site when switching from another app.
It is kind of pointless to get hung up on 'amount of RAM.' What matters are the primary factors.
Primary factors:
Performance
Price
Battery Life
Screen quality
Screen size
Phone size
Secondaries that don't really matter:
Amount of RAM
Number of Cores
Clock Speed
Number of bits
Battery efficiency
Somebody could build a 1 kb, single core, 8 bit phone with a 1maH battery.
If it is faster, battery lasts longer, has a beautiful screen that works well with no bezel, and costs $2.... it is going to do well
I'm sure Apple tested more memory, and evaluated the price/performance gain and decided on 1 GB using their own process. My guess is the iPhone 6 is going to be a performance beast any way you slice it.
Curious to see how the Note 4 and iPhone 6 will stack up against each other in the 'primary factors.' The iPhone 6 could pull substantially ahead.
Some have said that third parties could always recompile their software for OS X over ARM, but as usual, that's just a pipe dream, and XCode would need to support that. Small, simple, apps can often be run through, and will work with little work afterwards. But major apps will take months to fix up, and the question is how many developers will want to make another change.
Xcode is easy. It already does both x86 and ARM.
But getting major apps recompiled is insufficient. Just with the PPC -> x86 transition, this would need Rosetta. That was built by Transitive and licensed by Apple, but the company was acquired and the new owners did not want to renew the license.
It's interesting that the new owner just happens to be IBM. With whom Apple recently made a deal. Very interesting indeed.
The A7 is already a beast, beating out Samsung's latest flagships in benchmarks. Although the A8 has a significant performance increase, I'm glad they focused on power efficiency, since it will actually give a much larger practical, day to day benefit as compared to more performance.
See, not even good HW can safe Android¡
This was the same in 2012 with the 5, and turned out to be a non-issue. Let's first have people post their experience after using it for a few days before making any assumptions.
All the while blocking 9to5mac URL's and not mentioning the source of many articles here coming from them. That's simply...wrong.
Samsung has nothing to do with developing Apple's chips. Samsung didn't even know the A7 was a 64 bit chip until after it came out, and they built it!
Yes, the extra work on the newer GPU could add another 25%. What extra image sensors? The hardware for 265 would be mostly the same hardware as for 264.
It was first used on the Moto 68xxx chips. Then, when Next discontinued its hardware, it moved to x86.
Yes, it does both, but will it recompile ARM to x86?, and visa versa?
Cue the AI experts telling Apple it needs more RAM ....
Not my area of knowledge at all, but can someone explain if these babies are even close to being able to run OS X?
Of course it needs more RAM - I am tired of seeing Safari reloading EVERY SINGLE open tab whenever I use it.
Unless we are supposed to install this again:
http://tidbits.com/article/837
Irrelevant here. I want a round Apple Watch!
It's all about user experience. Apps, if written well and efficiently, do not need more memory. Just throwing more RAM into a device does not solve anything, it only changes the spec. However, more RAM would mean potentially an app not needing to reload with app switching; i.e. reloading a web site when switching from another app.
Currently, 1GB of RAM DOES impact user experience across the board; particularly when using Safari, whose always-reloading behavior when visiting even basic websites is completely unacceptable. Unless the "geniuses" in this forum still want us to believe that this is NOT due to insufficient RAM, of course...
Talk about a lack of i for detail. Perhaps I should add a sarcasm tag after that one, though I would presume they would know what they were creating, but perhaps one cannot see it if the whole design is layer out for them(?) Really no idea.
But on that topic, they cannot seriously believe their 2011 phablet can be compared to the 5.5 6+ (lol, "that's a misnomer if I ever saw one"; thanks [@]Gatorguy[/@]).
World of difference there. Heck, different galaxy.
Yes, it does both, but will it recompile ARM to x86?, and visa versa?
I'm not sure of your question. It will compile source to either x86 or to ARM. But it won't convert, for example, x86 binary to ARM binary. Is that what you meant?
But that's what Rosetta2 would be for
If the iPhone is merely the sum of its specs. This is the reductionist philosophy that years of commodity PC parts and "intel inside" have infected the tech world with. I'm not impressed.
The specs on this page list the iPhone 6 Plus as having 2GB of RAM. Anybody comment on the validity of this?
http://gpucpu.com/iphone-6-plus-detailed-processor-gpu-specificatios/
The 5S is a great phone, a forward thinking phone as Apple said.
The 6 isn't that way, it will age much faster imo. It's a great phone, but not one I'd buy, even if I needed to now. I'll wait for the 6S or the 7 and also hope that they bring back a smaller version.