canukstorm

dewme said:

Pjs said:

The future of the Ipad pro is bleak.  Prices are higher.  And they still use the Ios base ....

I wouldn't go as far as saying that. It really depends on your use cases and whether you need a touch based device and support for Apple Pencil, which is a big plus for iPad Pro and totally missing from MacBook Air. However, if you are leaving your iPad Pro permanently parked in a keyboard doc, don't use Apple Pencil, and don't really care about touch, the fanless M1 MacBook Air is a very attractive option for some folks.

I've yet to find a detachable keyboard with iPad or MS Surface that was enjoyable to use when sitting on my lap. On the other hand, I've always considered the MacBook Air to be the most enjoyable laptop/notebook computer ever from an ergonomics perspective. The thin front edge, great keyboard, glorious trackpad, and lap stability is unmatched by any "composite" device.

The least enjoyable Apple product from an ergonomic standpoint, for me, is the 12.9" iPad Pro. It's too tall, too wide, too heavy, and just too clumsy to hold and use just as a tablet. I feel like I'm holding a big screen TV in my hands when I'm cozied up on the sofa with it. But yes, it is pretty good as a small countertop TV in the kitchen when it's docked. I've had one for 3+ years and I really dislike it a lot. I'll either trade it in for a new iPad Air or a new M1 MacBook Air. I'm leaning much more towards the latter option because the MBA is such a joy to use and I have a smaller iPad Pro to fill my tablet needs. If the iPad Mini wasn't so far behind the technology and design curve I'd also get one of those for tablet-only usage, but I think my next Apple purchase will be an M1 MacBook Air. 

h4y3s said:

Don’t overlook the unified memory architecture that Apple can deploy, (as they own the whole stack) this will save 2x on a lot of common functions! 

cloudguy said:

Correction. They most certainly can develop both AAA titles and mobile ones. Microsoft has been doing that for awhile. Forza is a great example as it is both a 4K game on XBox and a free to play game on mobile. But they need to talk about how they are going to turn the Apple TV into a (last gen ... it can't compete with PS5 or XBox X) console with a massive infusion of resources and support, not name dropping a title that can run on a cheap 3 year old Android tablet that is coming your way via a $5 a month service.

Point of contrast ... Microsoft spent $7.5 billion for Bethesda just to get more titles for xCloud (for the near term anyway).  By contrast, Lucasfilm (Star Wars!!!) only cost Disney $4 billion, which is also how much Disney paid for Marvel ($4 billion). Gaming is a bigger industry than Hollywood now and was BEFORE covid-19 obliterated the film industry this year (AND caused a gaming boom). 

If Apple is going to make Apple TV - and Apple Silicon generally - a real gaming platform beyond mobile titles that is just a hint of the investment that it would take.

zimmie said:

entropys said:

I was sorta hoping The ASi SOC would be a different chip to the iPad’s.

humongous even. A power unconstrained monster in comparison.

"A14X" here is probably a placeholder. There's little reason for an iPad and the entry-level Macs to use different processors, though. It just needs some PCIe lanes or an integrated Thunderbolt controller to be suitable for Macs. Make one chip, and just don't use the Thunderbolt on the iPads (or do use it instead of just USB 3 over USB-C).

revenant said:

is it possible to have two chips that run together and the OS sees and uses it as one chip? 

Sort of. Multiple cores on a single chip have a bus which connects them. This lets them share some data about what they are doing with the other cores on the same chip, so the OS knows which cores have available time for work. This bus can be extended out past the physical chip to let you use many separate chips. For example, the 2006-2012 Mac Pro models had sockets for two processors (yes, some of the 2009-2012 only had a single socket on their drawer, but the same motherboard could take a two-socket drawer).

What you can't do is connect two processors together and present them to the OS as a single, faster core. More processors means you can do more things at the same speed, not that you can do one thing faster. Fortunately, a lot of processor-intensive work can be split into chunks which can be worked in parallel.

aderutter said:

I wouldn’t expect a Mac to have the same chip as an iPad due to the comments Apple have said about a family of SOCs for the new Macs.
I guess the MacBook Air would be okay with an A14X but I would expect the Macs to have more cores, especially the MacBook Pro rumoured for next weeks event. But having two A14X SOCs would be nice, and efficient from a manufacturing perspective
I don’t really want a MBP that is only performance equivalent to the current Intel MBP, I want something that is far ahead in more than just heat and battery.

The A12X already keeps pace with current high-end laptop chips from Intel. A13 cores are faster and more efficient. A14 cores will be faster and more efficient still. With laptop cooling, I expect the laptop A14 to be able to perform extremely well for the bottom of Apple's range (MacBook Air, 2 TB3 MBP).