wizard69

cgWerks said:

Well, that's one way to get rid of the creatives.
I wonder how many apps will make that transition?

Not enough!    Im not sure if Apple gives a damn anymore but you wont see professional apps moving away from OpenGL.  Professional in this case being CAD/CAM type tools.  Games i dont care about that much and frankly there is huge incentive for those developers to switch.  The problem lies squarely in the realm of likited distribution software where developers cant justify a different API on every platform.    Thus you either get no ports at all or Mac OS specific apps.  

Sadly it is crap like this that has me on an HP laptop at the moment with the eventual aim to see if Linux can do it for me.  

Sadly the author seems to have no idea what will happen at WWDC.   Also WWdC is as much about hardware as it is software, the point of WWDC is to get developers to use new features that are often tied to new hardwarec.  Of course i have my own guesses:

1. swift 5 will be huge this year with the ABI solid.  Hopefully we wikl see indications that the rest of the suite will flesh out. 

2.  New Macs for the desktop.   The desktop and even the laptops are pretty pathetic at this point.  Im not sure if the transition to ARM will happen if not more halfway machines. 

3,   More hardware to accelerate machine learning and AI type apps.   Expect a coprocessor for Macs mainly because Intel is way behind the curve here.     This may be pprocessed in the ARM chip already in some Macs but the reality is a full fledged coprocessor coikd offer an incredible increase in ML performance.  

4.   I actually agree that the more that Siri can do locally the better.    This however requires performance which is still lacking in some platforms.  However Apple needs to start sooner ratger than later so expect a lot of hardware to go obsolete.  

5.   Speaking of hardware i wouldnt be surprised to see custom i86 hardware in partnership with Intel or AMD.   The goal would be to integrste Apple specific hardware.  This woukd include camera hardware, the ML/AI hardware and other features Apple has invested a lot of time and money into.  Custom i86 chips are about the only way for Apple to go outside of its own ARM chios.  

6.   Expect Apple to start to buikd more AI/ML like features into its operating systems.  I fully expect Knowledge Navigator like functionality.  Frankly this why Siri needs to become locally centered.    This may be what the rumored Star project is all about.   That is hardware and software optimized for a different sort of interaction with the user.    The OS basically becomes an agent with natural language processing that shifts user interaction into the future.  


In any event a quick off the top of my head list.   Oh buy the way dont forget all the small things that make a huge difference.  

dws-2 said:

The trouble with Consumer Reports is that they believe adding up all the numbers for a bunch of discrete tests actually tells you how good a product is. They don't have any Apple bias, except that Apple products tend to be more about the experience than the specifications.

Actually the problem here is with forum members that are butt hurt over one data point.   

Say you are about to buy a new truck and start asking people how they did with their recent purchase.   Do you take the comments of one person as an absolute reflection on the dealer and the car manufacture?   Most people wouldnt.  

Some of consumer reports more useful data actually comes from longterm studies such as repair frequencies on cars and msjor appliances.  The reality is you can only uncover so much in product testing of new stuff.  The real value in consummer testing comes from the long term.   A csr that suffers from major breakdowns well before 100,000 miles sjould cause people to reconsider. 

In the end all Consumer Reports does is offer a valid data point.   How one uses that info defines its value.    

nunzy said:

This makes Apple one step closer to the day they ditch Samsung once and for all. Displays are next.m

chasm said:

As speed tests have subsequently shown, Intel either wildly miscalculated the performance hit the patches might cause, or Apple is waaaaay more clever than other companies (or both), since any performance impact in the devices that have now been protected from Meltdown and Spectre have been non-existent to barely-noticeable, which would mean it was way less than 10 percent for power-users like this audience. What’s appalling here is that it has taken Intel five months to discover new problems, all while they keep “tocking.” Maybe it’s just a pile-on of coincidences, but Intel seems to have hit a wall in its progress, and that is being complicated by these long-dormant flaws in its chips. I hope they are (or will) take the opportunity to really clean house on this front, and likewise other chipmakers like ARM.

The impact is highly variable but for single user systems like Apple sells the hit has been minor.    If you are running a server though there are serious performance and security concerns.   Phoronix has and likely will be running benchmarks detailing when and where the patches have an impact in the severs space.   Apple gets off with only very minor performance issues due to the way their systems are used.