KITA

The iPad Pro is an amazing piece of hardware, but iPadOS is holding it back from actually being useful for productivity beyond basic or niche tasks. Even previous iPad Pro models are well under-utilized for their hardware capabilities.

Despite all the flak they get for "not being a tablet", Microsoft's 2015 Surface Pro 4 was the benchmark for productivity in this form factor. Sure, it didn't have smooth touch apps that iOS/iPadOS offers, but it could use the pen for literally any drawing app, OneNote, StaffPad, CAD software, etc. While at the end of the day, it was a still full Windows PC that could run just about any software, VMs and work with pretty much any device (dock, printer, monitor, controller, external storage, wired network, etc.)


Yes, it was running full desktop PTC Creo in 2015.

I do hope Apple finally finds a way to bridge macOS and iPadOS for the iPad Pro, because there is so much potential there (keeping my fingers crossed for WWDC21).

AppleInsider said:

Still in the shadow of Apple

Looking at what Microsoft presented on Tuesday, the Surface Laptop 4 is certainly an adequate Windows notebook from the Windows developer for anyone who wants one. It has its quirks, such as the display and the port options, but it will probably serve anyone who wants to use Windows perfectly fine.

Microsoft's problems start when you compare it against Apple's M1-based notebooks. Apple's offerings are smaller, offer a higher display resolution, and crucially provide more performance through the use of Apple Silicon. Apple's offering is minus the use of Windows 10, of course -- at least for now.

At the end of the day, it always comes down to use case.

The M1 is an outstanding chip, but if it's forced to run software through Rosetta and potentially give up its performance advantage, or simply not run the software at all, then it's obviously a poor choice for someone who needs to run applications in the x86 Windows environment.

A couple other things to note, the battery claims from Microsoft might not be the best to go by (real world is usually lower), as well, the SSD on the Surface Laptop 4 can be swapped out for a larger one.

Microsoft's future Surface devices will likely include new Arm chips as well. For example, Qualcomm will be releasing their first NUVIA based SoC for laptops in late 2022. If their design is anything to be believed, it's likely they'll be quite competitive with Apple right out of the gate.

NUVIA Phoenix performance (take with a grain of salt):



Additionally, other companies will be using Arm configurations for PCs too, giving Microsoft more options. For example, MediaTek Arm CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs will be in laptops together:

NUVIA's Phoenix expected performance:



Keep in mind that these are projected numbers, however, the credibility comes from the people behind the design.

Qualcomm acquiring them might add further credibility to their claim.

chasm said:

the 888 SoC has already been tested against the A14 and found to be lacking

I'll repost something I said previously about the 888 vs A14:

This is a bit deceiving given the claim seems to hang mostly on peak CPU and peak GPU performance.
While I understand it's going on what's been provided, the Snapdragon 888 likely has a more powerful GPU in sustained performance (claimed and historical implementations demonstrate this).
Note - the higher end Snapdragon 865/+ based devices have typically offered the same peak and sustained performance. Meanwhile, the A13 and especially the A14 can be a bit of a mess despite that impressive peak performance.

The 888 also has a better integrated 5G modem and an extremely impressive ISP. In terms of AI? The 888's DSP (+CPU/GPU) offers 26 TOPS, the A14 only offers 11 TOPS.

So I wouldn't exactly say the 888 is lacking, it just has all of its strengths outside of Geekbench and a peak GPU performance test.

dyonoctis said:

Seriously people, when the M1 was released everyone on that forum started to tell how it would change the industry, how a shift from x86 would happen.

 And when that begins to happen 

That alone is a misconception, the cloud computing industry (one that Apple is not a part of) has been moving towards ARM for years. That's the highlight of the Bloomberg article, that Microsoft is creating ARM chips for their Azure servers. The fact that some of that tech might trickle down to their Surface line is not the main takeaway and certainly not the driver behind Microsoft's decision - yet Appleinsider decided to completely frame this article as Microsoft following Apple.