liquidmark

Blaster said:

When dismissing the idea of laptops with touchscreens, Mac users keep citing ergonomic issues.  But when we have iPads with touchscreens propped up on a stand with a physical keyboard attached, essentially becoming the very thing Mac users are dismissing, I don't see those same Mac users arguing ergonomics.  Why is that?

AI2xxx said:

AppleInsider said:

Apple's original 12.9 inch iPad Pro ... but now the same power and capabilities are available in a more compact, highly mobile package for $200 less.

Nope.

GFXBench 3.0 - Manhattan Offscreen:

iPad Pro 12.9 (Metal) - 5017 Frames (80.9 FPS)
iPad Pro 9.7 (Metal) - 3117 Frames (51.1 FPS)
iPad Air 2 (Metal) - 2695 Frames (43.8 FPS)

Source: https://gfxbench.com/result.jsp

AI2xxx said:

liquidmark said:

Of course iPad can't run dx11 or 12 benches. That is a Windows only api. It's like judging Windows by its ability to run apple exclusive api's like METAL or something like that. Also, the reason why I pointed out the i3 when I was talking about 3dmark  is because those are the scores that are given from within 3dmarks app itself. It doesn't give scores on the core m3 sp4 when I look. Also it really does not matter as to what the sp4 scores because two years ago we wouldn't even be having this conversation and two years from now the whole conversation will likely be very different. The mere fact that the iPad pro scores on par with the i3 surface pro in that test is pretty remarkable. That's my point so you can put it back in your pants.

look, you're the one that got bent out of shape because some article that's not this one, said that the iPad pro was faster than then surface pro 4. Well I was only telling you why that is. Don't screed at me like I wrote the damn article or am making the claims that the article made.

"DX12 (or even DX11) equivalent benchmarks". I'm not saying it has to run DX12/DX11. There are other API's that have a comparable feature set to DX11, OpenGL 4.x or Vulkan, but Apple's Metal only offers an equivalent feature set to OpenGL ES 3.1. 

Why is that remarkable? The Y series i3 in the Surface Pro 3 was a terrible implementation of Intel's worst Core chip, it scored considerably lower than the U series i5 in the Surface Pro 3. How is getting close to a 2 year old chip remarkable in a benchmark that holds very little relevance? 2 years ago Apple also wasn't making SoC's for a device as large as the iPad Pro. The i5 from 2 years ago scored higher than the iPad Pro today.

AI2xxx said:

liquidmark said:

The benchmark that they are referring to is the geekbench benchmark of the m3 surface pro 4 vs the iPad pro iirc. in that test, the iPad pro did score better than the m3 surface pro 4. In 3Dmark the iPad pro scores almost as well as the i3 surface pro 3 (actually, my iPad pro scores about 500 points better than the average for an i3 surface pro 3 in ice storm unlimited. The device averages are less than 100 points in difference).

Geekbench 3 has never been a reliable benchmark for comparing x86 and ARMv8. You wouldn't see reputable websites such as Anandtech try and use it for that purpose.

 The i3 in the SP3 is 22 nm Haswell and the SP4 uses 14 nm Skylake, a whole tick-tock ahead (Haswell --> Broadwell --> Skylake). The core m3 SP4 scores ~42,000 while the iPad Pro scores ~33,000 (from Futuremark's webpage).  Either way, 3DMark Ice Storm tests with DX9_3 and OpenGL ES 2.0. It runs high precision on Windows devices and half precision on iOS and Android. Not exactly a reliable benchmark for modern devices. Of course the iPad with iOS can't run DX12 (or even DX11) equivalent benchmarks, so we can't even compare that properly.  

AI2xxx said:

liquidmark said:

The above article does not say that the iPad pro outperforms a surface pro 4. If it does then you need to provide a quote to support your outraged comment from earlier. It's not that hard.

The above article is not the one being disputed, but the article it links to:

JazzyUK007 said:

I'm afraid to stress that iPads including the Pro are the worst business devices you can ever think of. The iPad Pro still has only one port, has no file explorer, cannot run desktop softwares, no USB, lacks expandable or portable storage management, and lacks support for mouse input, etc etc. Perhaps more troubling for enterprise users is for better or for worse the lack of Active X support in the mobile version of Safari or support for legacy softwares. The limitations are just too many. A couple of days ago, I asked a client of mine to download his company bank statements in pdf and email as an attachment and guess what happened, his iPad kept sending links instead which could not be opened because of online banking security. I also tried it to no avail. I finally gave him my Surface pro 3 and guess what - it was as easy as ABC. It further confirmed that iPads are pretty useless as business tools - except if your job involves browsing, reading and writing articles. People are now realising that slapping a keyboard on an oversized iPad doesn’t turn Apple’s iOS-powered tablet into a real productivity device. Calling it “Pro” does not change the fact that it's still a tablet running a mobile phone OS, thereby suffering from the same software and hardware limitations that relegate most iPads to consumption devices. The only true "Pro" devices out there are Windows 10-based hybrids as they run both tablet and desktop apps. As long as the iPad Pro runs iOS, it'll never be a PC replacement for most people.