jdiamond

tskwara said:

timmillea said:

5nM/3nM = 1.6 recurring, suggesting a move from the 5nM process to the 3nM process would yield a 67% improvement in speed/power ratio. We are not seeing that.

Not accounting for other changes and just looking at the size reduction ratio alone, I think the math would suggest that 3nM is a 40% reduction of 5nM, so maybe a 40% increase in speed?

You guys are referring to a concept called "Denard Scaling", but that hasn't actually held up since the late 1990s, and it took a nosedive in the 2000s after 28nm.  Today's denser processor nodes lead to only single digit percent increases in performance.  Some of this is because voltage scaling slowed down.  Some parts, like caches, haven't shrunk at the same rate.  The capacitance of wires and devices is going up.  I remember NVIDIA was freaking out after the 28 nm node, because following that, even the cost per transistor wasn't going down.

Yes -and just as Fujitsu designed the SVE SIMD extensions for ARM, it was Apple that created the 64-bit ARM ISA (v8+), totally redesigning it in the process, as they were the first company on Earth to require 64-bit ARM CPUs.  We used to joke about how the new ISA was "ARM" in name only.  So in theory, they could license the ISA to ARM.  And of course, Apple hasn't used the ARM microarchitecture since the Newton - it's a total Apple design.  So what benefit does Apple get from the ARM name?  Just participation in a wide software ecosystem, where people have already created "ARM" versions of popular software, vs the smaller number of companies who would make things for "Apple Silicon".

The biggest apparent technical issue seems to be the failure of the quad-die Apple Silicon chip.  Perhaps they could make up for this with a dual socket system?  In principle, GPU support is a driver issue, not a HW issue.  It'd also be great if they found a way to do a two tiered memory system, so you could add terabytes of DRAM to the embedded system.  It sounds difficult, but Apple already pulled something similar off with the old two tiered SSD/HDD systems.  You'd let the 192GB of on-die RAM page out to the 8 TB of DIMMs.

I think the main reason to design and support the Mac Pro, even if it loses money overall, is the halo effect.  People who love to use the MacOS, but need to do a larger scale project, particularly with GPUs, suddenly find they are forced to leave the Mac eco system. Just knowing that it is possible to still use MacOS at the higher end provides a layer of comfort in Mac based businesses thinking of expanding in the future.  It also might help with other products on Apple's road map, if it gains them experience in pushing Apple Silicon and GPUs to higher performance levels.

It's the new "Apple Mouse Unified Design Language" - eventually, all Apple devices will have controls and ports on the bottom.  JK, there was probably some moment when it was coming off pre-production and someone said - that looks great!  Where's the power button?  And they realized they'd completely forgot to make one, because none of the prototypes actually turned on.

Why a whole stand accessory?  Just a prosthetic button on the front that somehow reaches underneath.

Your mileage obviously may vary.  I have a 16" Macbook Pro with the 10 CPUs and 32 GPU cores.  Running straight x86 Java Minecraft through Rosetta is honestly barely playable - sometimes you can get 20 fps, but you get frequent slowdowns.  It's a lot like trying to play Minecraft on my 2015 MBP.  Then I used MultiMC with (and this is important) an ARM version of Java that is NOT the one that comes bundled with MacOS.  I was shocked to immediately get 500-700 frames per second, just like YouTubers got!  But I found this was a peak case - it can drop as low as 60FPS.  But mind you, this is at high resolution and a render/simulation distance of the full 32 chunks.  (It you use the java that's bundled with Macs, you only get about 45 fps.)

I've been doing a lot of comparisons with M1 native versions vs Intel, and Minecraft hit the #1 spot, often running a solid 100x faster in the best case, and about 5x faster in the worse case.  I will be overjoyed if the new Minecraft Java for M1 will be this good.  All they ever had to do was switch out which JVM they bundled Minecraft with, but I'm not surprised they kept this really low key - they don't want people noticing how much faster Java with M1 is versus Bedrock on Wintel.
 

Guys, no one is implying Apple will make a physical car.  It's like AppleTV - initially, everyone hoped for an amazing Apple TV that was transparent and thin.  But it ended up just being a little box you hook up to a normal TV.  There's no reason to think this wouldn't be similar in concept to car play.  Apple would just be helping car companies that need to play catch up on things like self driving features, etc.  And they could go to town integrating the infotainment/entertainment systems with their own stuff.

Just another point of reference:  My daughter went to film school, and her instructor *used* to use FCP for most of the curriculum.  But after the FCP-X change, he dropped it from the program, and the students now learn using Davinci Resolve and other tools.  So Apple was as entrenched as they could possibly get and they threw it all away.  I think the main point isn't how much money Apple made from FCP, but how it enabled people to use Mac Hardware and have state of the art, fully optimized software for their needs.  I think Windows was the ultimate example of how it's the available software that sells the hardware. If you're making a film and you have to use software that doesn't run well on a Mac, then you can't use a Mac.

Well, I'd say Disney Plus is the main competitor to Netflix, and Apple embraced Disney Plus and made it the premier video streaming app on VP.  That wouldn't make Netflix feel warm and fuzzy.  Honestly, the browser version of Netflix is great - the only big flaw is that so far, Netflix seems to block 4K and 4K/HDR on browsers - that would be a huge bummer for VP.  But I agree - it's not a market yet.  

Buy a 16" Macbook Pro with an 8TB hard drive.  Tear the screen off with your bare hands.  Done.

BirderGuy said:

I’m not sure why this is necessary if you have two factor authentication set up.  Even if they get into the phone they would need the code sent to a trusted device.  No?  

My understanding is one such trusted device is the phone itself, which the thief would be holding?  Plus, on a typical phone, if he had the passcode, he could then see all your emails and texts.