cgWerks

thadec said:
… So, there never has been any reason for Apple Silicon Macs not supporting discrete graphics via M.2, PCIE or Thunderbolt other than Apple simply not wanting to. Which was the same reason why Apple locked Nvidia out of the Mac ecosystem and had people stuck with AMD GPU options only: purely because they wanted to. My guess is that Apple believed that they were capable of creating integrated GPUs that were comparable with Nvidia Ampere and AMD Radeon Pro, especially in the workloads that most Mac Pro buyers use them for. Maybe they are, but the issue may be that it isn't cost-effective to do so for a Mac Pro line that will sell less than a million units a year.

Exactly! And, if this is to be, this pretty much solves Apple’s gaping GPU hole. People who need a fairly good level of GPU performance might be fine ‘out of the box’ and people who need more, could add it. I just hope the eGPU aspect is the case, so it isn’t limited to the Mac Pro.

keithw said:
Absolutely 100% accurate! They simply "don't want to."  If my old iMac Pro can get top-notch graphics performance across a TB3 interface, there is simply no reason they couldn't do the same thing with ASi, whether through TB3 or a PCIe bus.

Yes,. for some things the bus matters, but for the most part, the bus isn’t saturated with normal app to GPU communication. TB3/4 has been mostly fine, and TB5 is on the way, right?

mattinoz said:

What was wrong with threads?
Oh that's right threads allow for sensible debate as each point needs its own tweet and therefore counter points can address directly.
The new wall of text allows any sensible counter to be sunk below a sea of noise. 

Fair point, but it runs the other way as well. It’s easy to just post a short tweet challenging something, but often takes a lot more words, clarity, and data to rebut something.

The main issue with threads, I guess, is just having to keep breaking stuff up, and all the sub-threads under a point part-way in a series and such. This *might* clean things up a bit, but who knows.

A point, then response, then response, etc. will remain a thread. It just won’t *have* to be a 4 or 5 tweet response, but can be a single tweet responding adequately.

That said, I do fear the ‘wall of text’ aspect if it gets abused. I don’t think most people will read bigger tweets anyway, as they barely read headlines as it is (or even a 280 character tweet well enough to often respond well).

muthuk_vanalingam said:
But the key player in this whole discussion is Microsoft - and their interest in making a windows version compatible with ARM. So long as Microsoft holds back on this, Intel/AMD can breath easy.

Yeah, IMO, this is key. It is all (or at least mostly) about the apps. There is a lot of talk about performance, power usage, etc. but at the end of the day, the question is whether a certain set of apps the user needs exists for the computing platform.

Obviously, given the state of the world, sales will slant towards laptops (work from home, mobile office, etc.) though this trend isn’t new. Also, people are going to be  more picky about how they spend their diminishing purchasing power. A computer is an important tool for most people, so it might not be an expense they can skip, but they’ll be looking more at foundational needs, quality, & longevity. Apple delivers a lot of that (if they don’t lose on software compatibility).

I’ll go on record admitting I consider Elon near hero-status for taking over Twitter and exposing the corruption.

That said, I don’t agree with several of his decisions regarding Twitter as a business. He didn’t buy it *just* to be altruistic, and fear for what it might become. What he/they did to Twitter 3rd party apps was really uncalled for. That’s the kind of thing you do with advanced notice.

I do support this character expansion limit, but primarily to make threads unnecessary. Sometimes you just want (or more, need to) post a few paragraphs or include some information, and having to break it up across a dozen tweets doesn’t benefit anyone, IMO.

What I don’t get (if I’m understanding correctly), is the showing the summary with ‘more’ button for non-Twitter-Blue, but for Blue, will it just display the whole thing? I think it would be better to have the more for everyone, as having some huge ‘tweets’ is going to make using Twitter harder, I’d think.

danox said:

Oh boy, a bigger Landfill doesn’t make for better garbage….

Garbage is everywhere. If you don’t know how to sift through it, you’re in trouble. But, sometimes more data is necessary, especially to make or rebut a point. It is a welcome addition, I’m just not sure of the implementation. Like it or not, Twitter is where it is at for a lot of information flow. I don’t think that is going to change.

exceptionhandler said:

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I for one would like to see 3 models iPhone mini, iPhone, iPhone plus… none of this pro none sense.  Only major differences would be screen/battery size and camera modules. And the budget phone ends up just being last years model or the SE.

Yes, that would be excellent!

They should have a budget phone (at least one), but I don’t know the size on that (I suppose poor people wouldn’t mind a couple size options, too… but using a phone as a primary computing device pushes larger-screen necessity). I think if it were last year’s model, that would erode new sales a bit too much. The SE (if it has to be the cheap phone), makes sense as last design revision, rather than last year, with a couple chip-generations back powering it.

But, IMO, this really isn’t complicated. Apple is ‘thinking’ way, way too hard about this.