Questionable rumor claims Apple's next-gen 'A10' processor could switch to six cores

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  • Reply 121 of 159
    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post

    A desktop class device has a mouse input.

     

    Today. 35 years ago it had a bunch of lights and switches.

     

    Notice that Apple is selling a keyboard but not a mouse with the iPad pro. 


     

    Yes, that makes my point for me. For heaven’s sake; think for five seconds.

  • Reply 122 of 159
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    Today. 35 years ago it had a bunch of lights and switches.

    Connected to a time sharing terminal with a qwerty keyboard. The mouse however was the real paradigm change.
    Yes, that makes my point for me. For heaven’s sake; think for five seconds.

    I have no idea why you think it makes your point for you. It's the keyboard and mouse that differentiate the tablet from the desktop device with the mouse bring the most important.

    There is no way an iMac screen is going to have touch as its primary input. Trust both me and Steve jobs in that.
  • Reply 123 of 159
    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post

    I have no idea why you think it makes your point for you. 

     

    It’s not as though Apple is creating multitouch products, has stated that multitouch is its future, and is transitioning its desktop OS to be more multitouch or anything.

     

    OH WAIT.

     

    ...Steve jobs in that.


     

    Who never said that, so...

  • Reply 124 of 159
    asdasd wrote: »
    Not necessarily. They may disallow apps downloaded from the web from launching regardless of user preferences but that will kill the market for a power Mac or a Mac Pro for power users.

    Apple wasnt doing anything extraordinary when it locked down the iPhone. The pre existing "smart phones" were locked down for apps. Invitation only in fact. Apple drove a truck through that wall and got dogs abuse for a "walled garden" when Google propagandised their open alternative. But that was later.

    Since then people seem to believe that Apple wants to lock down the Mac despite no real effort years later to do so. It's like assuming that a walled garden in the Xbox inevitably leads to a closed Windows machine.

    I think the App Store lockdown depends on where Apple expects to take this concept in the coming years/decades.

    If, in an initial release with a low-cost notebook, their is no visual change in how Mac OS X looks or acts, I would lean toward Apple wanting ARM to eventually overtake their entire line. If, the UI is considerably less Mac-y, perhaps with no standard Finder for dumping files and folder randomly all over the system, only App Store access for apps, no Terminal access, and/or perhaps replacing Desktop and Dock with something more akin to Launchpad—god I hope not!—then I'd lean heavily toward the traditional Mac-line living on indefinitely for the less common, but still very important old school and/or power user.
  • Reply 125 of 159
    mstone wrote: »

    Sure great poke at Adobe but that makes no sense. If the software is bloated on Intel, then it is bloated on ARM. The only thing that would make it run faster is to un-bloat it or run it on faster hardware. But you do have a point. If Adobe rewrote CC for ARM they would have the opportunity to clean it up. Of course piling new code on top of legacy code for years is going to lead to inefficiencies but constantly rewriting everything from scratch on a yearly basis is really expensive. I know because I am maintaining some 10 year old code and I want to rewrite it but no one wants to pay me to do it.

    Objectively speaking, would you agree with the premise and idea that Adobe is in need of a complete rewrite for their flagship titles Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign... or not?

    I've been saying that the do since around CC5. A rewrite, or at the very least a separated development stack that better utilizes each platform's framework strengths.

    This is exactly what Pixelmator and Serif/Affinity have done with very small teams of dedicated engineers. Each of those teams have written more than 90% of Photoshop's currently capabilities, and in the case of Affinity Photo... actually added tons of usability improvements that you can't find in Adobe's "photo editor".

    *IF* because of their size and internal inertia, Adobe can't find any other way to get their engineers to "rewrite" code than to write it from the ground up for iOS devices, could we not conclude that eventually... in the not too distant future... they will also have 90% of x86 functionality? Will it fit 90% of it's user's expectations and usage? Maybe.

    Adobe and Microsoft both showed off some advances coming to the iPad Pro, that I personally would love to use on the desktop any device that presents itself as an efficient tool for the job at hand.

    MacPro's and even iMacs just might go the way of Scitex and Sun Spark stations at some time in the near future. I'd suggest not to fight it like your bosses in your youth... even if you've come to the point in your life that their methodical, patient and wise understanding makes more sense to you than it did at the time.
  • Reply 126 of 159
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ThePixelDoc View Post





    Objectively speaking, would you agree with the premise and idea that Adobe is in need of a complete rewrite for their flagship titles Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign... or not?

    I cannot make a determination on that because I know almost nothing about Adobe's programing. Who knows if they haven't already rewritten the apps recently? We are on the outside looking in. One thing I do know is that they don't use Xcode exclusively. They write most modules and functions directly in C++ and then import them because they want to retain as much cross platform compatibility as possible. People saying it is trivial to compile an app with a new target architecture is as easy as selecting it in Xcode, do not understand the extreme complexity of Adobe apps.

     

    I occasionally send them bug reports and feedback and they always respond quickly asking for additional details. Recent example: I discovered that if you leave inDesign open for many days it will eventually cause the cursor to behave strangely like flickering or showing the wrong cursor. After I reported it, two different engineers contacted me for more details. Another issue again related to leaving inDesign open for many days, the eyedropper sample tool eventually stops sampling styles and only samples color. Both issues still exist, even in the latest version, but I'm hopeful they will be corrected in the next version which could drop at any time as they are constantly updating all their apps.

     

    Since they switched to CC I find they are far more effective in making updates and improvements.

  • Reply 127 of 159
    rcfarcfa Posts: 1,124member
    iOS
    melgross wrote: »
    By what measure? If it's an iOS laptop, no problem. If it's an OS X laptop, problem.


    We've been over this a number of times. Making an ARM OS X device is a lot more difficult than an iOS one. It's one reason Microsoft went with i3, i5 and i7 chips for the Surface Pro.


    People keep thinking that Apple has OS X on ARM, since it's pretty much the same thing as iOS inside, and that Apple has iWork apps on iOS, so they could do that too. Simple! But it's not so simple. There is no way that Desktop Office or Apple's FCP suite, or Creative Cloud, would work off an ARM chip. Not going to happen! There is lots of software for OS X that's just too big and needs too much processing power for this. Then, there's the little problem that these third party apps would need to run in emulation. Forget it!


    Well, I'm assuming it would be running a variant of iOS with OSX relegated to 'pro' machines, and destined to die in the distant future.

    iOS and OS X are the same OS: Darwin.
    The ONLY difference is one has a touch UI, the other a mouse UI.
    Even the programming frameworks other than the UI are the same.

    The switch would be less "complicated" than the switch from PPC to Intel, since by now everything is 64-bit, little-endian; so no issues with byte order or word length issues.
    Non assembly code essentially only requires a recompile to create a universal binary.
  • Reply 128 of 159
    solipsismy wrote: »
    I think the App Store lockdown depends on where Apple expects to take this concept in the coming years/decades.

    If, in an initial release with a low-cost notebook, their is no visual change in how Mac OS X looks or acts, I would lean toward Apple wanting ARM to eventually overtake their entire line. If, the UI is considerably less Mac-y, perhaps with no standard Finder for dumping files and folder randomly all over the system, only App Store access for apps, no Terminal access, and/or perhaps replacing Desktop and Dock with something more akin to Launchpad—god I hope not!—then I'd lean heavily toward the traditional Mac-line living on indefinitely for the less common, but still very important old school and/or power user.

    Just to add some spice to the pot -- FoundationDB.

    FoundationDB is Fast, Safe, Flexible.

    It is based on an Ordered Key/Value pair * -- basically a primitive iOS or OS X Dictionary -- except that the keys are stored/maintained in lexicographical order. This allows very fast manipulation of slices of the DB. For example, retrieve/count/update/list all the cities in any level of:

    United States | California | Contra Costa County | Population

    With FoundationDB, this is done with a few powerful calls and FoundationDB does the heavy lifting -- that's its job!

    No joins, secondary keys, intersection data as in a traditional SQL DB.

    * It is interesting that SQLite4 uses (and exposes) a key/value pair to store its data.

    You can create as many [ordered key] indexes as you wish even for ad hoc uses -- say our DB above with Political Party Affiliation, Average Income, etc.

    Often, all the data [even metadata] is in the index itself -- contained in the keys with empty values.


    OK, that's the base layer!


    But, FoundationDB allows you to build layers atop the base layer -- layers like a traditional SQL layer.


    That's where Apples FineFinder comes into play.

    It is almost trivial to create an Hierarchical Layer atop the base layer -- similar to the hierarchical tree structure used by most OSes' File Systems.

    https://foundationdb.com/key-value-store/recipes/developer/hierarchical-documents

    The structure can be accessed as a drill-down hierarchy (as in the FineFinder) and, can have alternate access through efficient, ordered, alternate indices.

    One big advantage is that the metadata is contained within the indices.


    The net: If Apple were to use FoundationDB to reimplement the FineFinder they could gain speed, efficiency, multi-threading -- without changing the appearance to the Power User.

    Truly, FTFF -- would mean FoundationDB fixed The FineFinder (and got rid of MDB and so much more).


    Recently. I've been backing up our Macs prior to updating them to El Capitan. It's a real PITA to copy Applications, Home Folders etc. to a Thunderbolt RAID.

    The FineFinder does:
    1. an entire scan of the copy source before starting any copy -- often taking 30-40 minutes
    2. then copies a file at a time to the destination -- often taking tens of hours

    You cannot pause the copy, just cancel it.

    It's done in the background -- and considerably slows any foreground processing.


    This seemed particularly excessive to me ... Especially after I had watched a FoundationDB Demo ** where they moved an active database, running transactions, from one server to another with less than a 20-second hiccough where it transferred control from old to new.

    ** This demo was taken down when Apple acquired FoundationDB.
  • Reply 129 of 159
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    It’s not as though Apple is creating multitouch products, has stated that multitouch is its future, and is transitioning its desktop OS to be more multitouch or anything.

    OH WAIT.

    Who never said that, so...

    http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-touch-screen-mac-2010-10?IR=T

    "We've done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn't work. Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical.

    It gives great demo but after a short period of time, you start to fatigue and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. it doesn't work, it's ergonomically terrible.

    Touch surfaces want to be horizontal, hence pads.

    For a notebook, that's why we're perfected our multitouch trackpads over the years, because that's the best way we've found to get multitouch into a notebook.

    We've also, in essence, put a trackpad -- a multitouch track pad on the mouse with our magic mouse. And we've recently come out with a pure play trackpad as well for our desktop users.

    So this is how were going to use multitouch on our Mac products because this (he points at someone touch laptop screen) doesn't work
  • Reply 130 of 159
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    You and I have been around tech long enough to realize that if you don't constantly ask: "What if, What if" -- you'll soon be asking "What just happened?".

    Well, yeah, but I think we can narrow things down to realistic expectations. Some things just won't happen.
  • Reply 131 of 159
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by melgross View Post





    By what measure? If it's an iOS laptop, no problem. If it's an OS X laptop, problem.



    We've been over this a number of times. Making an ARM OS X device is a lot more difficult than an iOS one. It's one reason Microsoft went with i3, i5 and i7 chips for the Surface Pro.



    People keep thinking that Apple has OS X on ARM, since it's pretty much the same thing as iOS inside, and that Apple has iWork apps on iOS, so they could do that too. Simple! But it's not so simple. There is no way that Desktop Office or Apple's FCP suite, or Creative Cloud, would work off an ARM chip. Not going to happen! There is lots of software for OS X that's just too big and needs too much processing power for this. Then, there's the little problem that these third party apps would need to run in emulation. Forget it!



    Hi Melgross,

     

    I've been reading AppleInsider for many years without signing up before now.  Why did I just sign up?  Someone was wrong on the internet, the best of reasons :)

     

    From reading this thread, I see you've been doing graphics artist stuff for a very long time, but I see no mention of if you've done any software development.  For a very quick summary of my background, my formal education is electronics and automation, and from when I was around 10 on (with 8K RAM TRS-80's) I've been coding for many decades, across a large number and range of computers from embedded microcontrollers up to distributed 64-bit systems, and iOS, OSX, and working at places you've probably heard of (Yahoo!, Intel, Microsoft, Amazon) and a number you haven't etc. and your statement is a rather strong one, that I'm curious how you claim there's a technical reason that you can't make OSX and the various high-end desktop applications run on an A series processor.

     

    From my experience, having used the various graphics software and complex applications through the decades, as well as writing and testing them, a modern A series CPU has no technical limitation that keeps it from being capable of running that high-end software: if it won't run in 4 GB RAM, it's not like it's a technical problem to add external RAM, but seriously, those applications do run in that amount of RAM: I've done it on my older Macs without a problem.  The speed of the CPU, while it's nice for it to be responsive for the heavy processing, does not make a real difference for regular GUI interactions: most of the heavy lifting, once the algorithms for the graphics operations or whatever has been done, is all a matter of the GPU, which does it far faster than a general purpose CPU.  In fact, Apple has nice SDKs for offloading the performance-critical graphics operations off to graphics hardware, and I'm not talking about only Metal, but lower-level APIs as well.

     

    How big can an application get before you can't run it?  With how iOS and OSX works, that's not really a problem for executable code size or even graphical data for the GUI: that's memory-mapped into RAM, and when memory gets tight, the Least Recently Used segments are discarded, and when they're needed again, they're read back in, with something else discarded, and possibly flushed: this is invisible to all but the lowest-level code, which most applications (iOS or OSX) don't do, and iOS and OSX (which are, as others have stated, mostly different from UI SDKs/APIs) are the same animal.  Our current iOS devices pointedly don't swap, because they're not using SSDs that the Macs are, but that's really, again, a non-issue: it's not clear yet if the A9x in the iPad Pro is using SSD level Flash, or just regular iOS device quality, but that's a non-issue for the CPU/chip.  In addition, Apple has made clear that the storage on the iPad Pro is much faster, but I'll have to wait and see.  As with resource data and code, applications can also explicitly memory map their data into the address space, and it's invisibly managed: this is how Core Data works to some degree, and if you avoid using Core Data, you can have more explicit control over it.  It all comes down to the question: how have you designed and implemented your application?

     

    Based on the fact that I've run the Adobe software on an iMac not as powerful as an iPad Air 2 I bought, and knowing you don't always need as much RAM to accomplish the goal (depending on what that goal is) there is no technical reason why Apple couldn't build and run a complete desktop version of OSX on an A series processor.  It wasn't that long ago when Apple was still selling Macs with 2 GB RAM, and now they still sell the lower-end ones with 4 GB RAM.  Are you going to tell me you can't make the suites work on those?

     

    The large applications, unless they're created by insane developers, have a huge portion of their code written in a platform-agnostic manner, and mostly the GUI (which is rather complex, admittedly) is specific to a machine.  There's zero reason that they can't create a touchscreen version of the GUI for any of their applications, if they want to.  Currently, it appears Apple is maintaining touchscreen-only (no mouse) for A series devices, but technically, they don't need to.  With all the information and experience I have at hand, the only things stopping Apple from releasing a full OSX version running on A series processors is purely a matter of choice, which is dictated by marketing and the likelihood of it being financially successful: there's no underlying technical reason at all why Apple can't do it, as there's nothing intrinsically harder for them to make the OS run on A series processors, and developing for A series processors for Adobe and the others with large applications isn't technically harder, either.

     

    So, if you can give valid technical reasons Apple can't build and run and release OSX on A series processors, I'm all ears.

  • Reply 132 of 159
    melgross wrote: »
    You and I have been around tech long enough to realize that if you don't constantly ask: "What if, What if" -- you'll soon be asking "What just happened?".

    Well, yeah, but I think we can narrow things down to realistic expectations. Some things just won't happen.

    Yea & Nay ...

    Apple in the Enterprise!

    I remember a conversation I had with Guy Kawasaki after Steve returned to Apple -- basically he was asking what Apple could do to sell more computers -- basically I was answering make it easier for business to buy Apple products as part of a solution!

    At the time we were selling hundreds of Corvus LANs and HDDs into businesses along with Macs ...

    Including the likes of:
    • IBM
    • EMI-Thorne
    • Daimler Benz
    • Coherent
    • Fairchild Schlumberger
    • Piper Jaffery

    Oh ... Add Apple to that list with 7 separate LANs


    Today, Apple has a tremendous opportunity in enterprise!

    Enough of that.


    I agree with you, and many here, that it will be difficult/impossible to replace the kb mouse for certain classes of Mac users.

    For example, the Video Editor using FCP -- rarely uses the mouse, but constantly uses the kb for speed, accuracy and productivity -- without ever taking his eyes off the screen.

    An auxiliary, customizable kb on a connected iPad might be of some value -- but I don't think it would replace the old tried and true.
  • Reply 133 of 159
    I agree with you, and many here, that it will be difficult/impossible to replace the kb mouse for certain classes of Mac users.

    Except for TS's comments about touchscreen iMacs I don't recall any comment that came close to suggesting the keyboard and mouse/trackpad would go away.
  • Reply 134 of 159
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    solipsismy wrote: »
    Except for TS's comments about touchscreen iMacs I don't recall any comment that came close to suggesting the keyboard and mouse/trackpad would go away.

    He's been more specific but others are talking about iOS and OS X merging, with the iOS paradigm dominant. I don't think so. The will stay seperate. Cars and trucks.
  • Reply 135 of 159
    asdasd wrote: »
    He's been more specific but others are talking about iOS and OS X merging, with the iOS paradigm dominant. I don't think so. The will stay seperate. Cars and trucks.

    OK. I just want to make sure that when I mention an ARM-based notebook or desktop "PC" no one thinks I'm talking about it running iOS with its CocoaTouch UI. For some reason I see a lot of iOS = ARMs and Mac OS X = Intel as their set-in-stone demarcation points.
  • Reply 136 of 159
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    wizard69 wrote: »
    I'm not sure why you believe this. Right now an ARM based laptop with 8GB of RAM would have very similar performance to today's Mac Book. Given that Apple could operate the device at a higher power level than in the iPhone I really think this discussion is over.
    This is nonsense. Beyond that MS dropped ARN due to lack of sales which was due to a half assed product.
    Why? The ARM 64 bit architecture can address a lot of memory, all Apple would need to do is to implement the addressing in hardware. In any event I'm expecting iPad Pro to demonstrate a whole bunch of new app capabilities when it is released.
    There is a lot of software that can't run decently on the Mac Book, that is the reality of any generation laptop.
    No you could just run native apps.

    But that's just not right!

    The new Macbook is a very poor performer. Not exactly something to brag about. And the new chips that's now coming out is about 30% better.

    But that's a bottom of the line device. The i3 is a more likely competitor. And it doesn't look as though a realistic comparison can be made just yet. And Apple uses i5s in their Macbook Air machines, which is a whole level better yet.

    So yes, this discussion is over, it's not equal.

    I don't see how you can run native apps. What native apps, except a few that Apple would bring over. There won't be any.
  • Reply 137 of 159
    solipsismy wrote: »
    asdasd wrote: »
    He's been more specific but others are talking about iOS and OS X merging, with the iOS paradigm dominant. I don't think so. The will stay seperate. Cars and trucks.

    OK. I just want to make sure that when I mention an ARM-based notebook or desktop "PC" no one thinks I'm talking about it running iOS with its CocoaTouch UI. For some reason I see a lot of iOS = ARMs and Mac OS X = Intel as their set-in-stone demarcation points.

    I suspect that most here know you well enough to understand what you mean.

    We have Logitech kbs for our iPads -- they're OK, but no substitute for a real kb and mouse/trackpad.

    However, Cocoa Touch could be enhanced to take advantage of a real kb and mouse/trackpad when attached -- instead of the UI-neverland that exists currently ... Maybe we'll see some of this with the iPad Pro, next month.
  • Reply 138 of 159
    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post

    Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical.



    Good thing no one said ANYTHING about vertical surfaces.

     

    Except Dell and HP, and we know how well they worked out. :p

     

    Originally Posted by SolipsismY View Post

    Except for TS's comments about touchscreen iMacs I don't recall any comment that came close to suggesting the keyboard and mouse/trackpad would go away.

     

    100% I expect to see physical keyboards around for nearly forever, but I don’t figure OS XI will have mouse/cursor support. Maybe.

  • Reply 139 of 159
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    solipsismy wrote: »
    Your point? You think those specs are somehow capable except for the processor? How much do you think an A10 will cost Apple as they sell upwards of 100 million per quarter compared to what Intel offers for CULV processors? You think the cost is 1:1, or more for the A-series chip? Really?

    What are you talking about? I already said that the estimates for Apple's SoC is between $27-35, while the i5 Apple uses for the Macbook Air is about $125. What are you
    Yea & Nay ...

    Apple in the Enterprise!

    I remember a conversation I had with Guy Kawasaki after Steve returned to Apple -- basically he was asking what Apple could do to sell more computers -- basically I was answering make it easier for business to buy Apple products as part of a solution!

    At the time we were selling hundreds of Corvus LANs and HDDs into businesses along with Macs ...

    Including the likes of:
    • IBM
    • EMI-Thorne
    • Daimler Benz
    • Coherent
    • Fairchild Schlumberger
    • Piper Jaffery

    Oh ... Add Apple to that list with 7 separate LANs


    Today, Apple has a tremendous opportunity in enterprise!

    Enough of that.


    I agree with you, and many here, that it will be difficult/impossible to replace the kb mouse for certain classes of Mac users.

    For example, the Video Editor using FCP -- rarely uses the mouse, but constantly uses the kb for speed, accuracy and productivity -- without ever taking his eyes off the screen.

    An auxiliary, customizable kb on a connected iPad might be of some value -- but I don't think it would replace the old tried and true.

    I remember that just after Steve came back, he had a press conference. He was asked how Apple would get large business back. His reply:

    "The enterprise isn't our customer."

    That was it. End of story.

    But years later, with the iPhone, things changed. Business and government are standardizing on iOS, particularly iPhones. iPads have the large majority in business and government too, but recently, Android and Microsoft have been making some inroads, thus the deal with IBM. And likely, the Pro.


    Edit. It seems the forum software borked my post to solipsismY. Sorry, both somehow got put together, and the end of mot post to Soli was cut off. Odd.
  • Reply 140 of 159
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    melgross wrote: »
    But that's just not right!

    The new Macbook is a very poor performer. Not exactly something to brag about. And the new chips that's now coming out is about 30% better.

    But that's a bottom of the line device. The i3 is a more likely competitor. And it doesn't look as though a realistic comparison can be made just yet. And Apple uses i5s in their Macbook Air machines, which is a whole level better yet.

    So yes, this discussion is over, it's not equal.

    I don't see how you can run native apps. What native apps, except a few that Apple would bring over. There won't be any.

    But that's been explained more than once in this thread.
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