mfryd
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Three iPhone 15 models rumored to get Thunderbolt/USB4 connector
While Apple is likely to switch to USB-C, it is not because the EU is forcing the switch. Consider the Apple Watch. It lacks USB-C, and uses a magnetic charging puck. If Apple placed a plastic plug in the lightning port of an iPhone 14, it would meet the new EU rules. The USB-C requirement only applies to phones that use wired charging, not to phones that use wireless charging. If Apple plugs up the Lightning port, and changes the documentation to read that EU model iPhones may only be charged with a MagSafe® or Qi charger, then the device meets the EU guidelines. Now if the consumer removes the plastic plug in the lighting port, that would be on them.
However, I don't think this will happen. Apple is already moving their entire product line to USB-C. The iPad is in the middle of transitioning. The Apple TV remote has switched over. It's only a matter of time before the iPhone, AirPods, etc. move to USB-C.
Remember, Apple is not afraid of abandoning old users in order to move to a new technology. Apple was happy to abandon their proprietary Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) Mice and Keyboards, when they suddenly switched to USB. The original iPhone and iPods had an Apple 30 pin connection, that was abandoned when they moved to lightning.
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Stage Manager updates in iPadOS 17 don't go far enough quite yet
It would be nice to have a portable Mac with touchscreen capabilities.danox said:mfryd said:The ideal would be for Apple to allow the option of running Mac OSX on the iPad. An M1 or M2 based iPad has the same processor, RAM and storage as the MacBook Air. The iPad supports mice, trackpads and keyboards via BlueTooth. Dock your iPad to an Magic Keyboard, and you get a wired keyboard and trackpad. These iPads even have USB-C for connecting all sorts of peripherals (including traditional USB wired mice and keyboards).
The reason you can't run Mac OSX on an iPad is an Apple policy issue, not a technical one.
Allowing users the option to run Mac OSX would give users access to the full Mac window system and Mac-only Apps. Mac OSX already supports iPad OS apps, so that's not an issue.
My speculation is that Apple doesn't want to allow Mac OSX as it might allow users to run Apps that were not from Apple's App store. Thus people could buy Apps without Apple receiving a cut of the revenue. Furthermore, by opening up to third party Apps, iPad security is reduced. Safety and security are some of Apple's selling points.
The solution is simple. Don’t buy an iPad.When you want to minimize weight, current model Macs don't let you ditch the keyboard and trackpad.But you are correct, in that given Apple's current policies, you need to buy a Mac if you want to run Mac OSX. It's that some people would like for Apple to offer the option of running full Mac OSX on the iPad.
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Stage Manager updates in iPadOS 17 don't go far enough quite yet
The ideal would be for Apple to allow the option of running Mac OSX on the iPad. An M1 or M2 based iPad has the same processor, RAM and storage as the MacBook Air. The iPad supports mice, trackpads and keyboards via BlueTooth. Dock your iPad to an Magic Keyboard, and you get a wired keyboard and trackpad. These iPads even have USB-C for connecting all sorts of peripherals (including traditional USB wired mice and keyboards).
The reason you can't run Mac OSX on an iPad is an Apple policy issue, not a technical one.
Allowing users the option to run Mac OSX would give users access to the full Mac window system and Mac-only Apps. Mac OSX already supports iPad OS apps, so that's not an issue.
My speculation is that Apple doesn't want to allow Mac OSX as it might allow users to run Apps that were not from Apple's App store. Thus people could buy Apps without Apple receiving a cut of the revenue. Furthermore, by opening up to third party Apps, iPad security is reduced. Safety and security are some of Apple's selling points.
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Why Apple uses integrated memory in Apple Silicon -- and why it's both good and bad
Adding sockets reduces reliability and increases support costs. Not all customers are competent. Many customers will break things when adding memory. They will not plug chips fully in, kill chips with static shocks, and not properly reclose the unit. Any of these dramatically reduce customer satisfaction and drive up costs. There is the business question of whether socketing memory will increase profits by bringing in more customers, or reduce profits by driving up costs and lowering customer satisfaction.melgross said:
We’re talking about no change in distance. The socket can be exactly where the RAM packages are now. If extra sockets are added, one on each side. We’re talking about 0.375”.mfryd said:
Actually, moving the memory further away from the CPU does add latency. Every foot of wire adds about a nanosecond of delay.melgross said:Ok, so the writer gets it wrong, as so many others have when it comes to the M series RAM packaging. One would think that’s this simple thing would be well understood by now. So let me make it very clear - the RAM is NOT on the chip. It is NOT “in the CPU itself”. As we should all know by now, it’s in two packages soldered to the substrate, which is the small board the the SoC is itself soldered to. The lines from Apple’s fabric, which everything on the chip is connected with, extend to that substrate, to the RAM chips. Therefore, the RAM chips are separate from the SoC, and certainly not in the CPU itself. As we also know, Apple offers several different levels of RAM for each M series they sell. That means that there is no limit to their ability to decide how much RAM they can offer, up to the number of memory lines that can be brought out. This is no different from any traditional computer. Every CPU and memory controller has a limit as to how much RAM can be used. So, it seems to me that Apple could, if it wanted to, have sockets for those RAM packages, which add no latency, and would allow exchangeable RAM packages. Apple would just have to extend the maximum number of memory lines out to the socket. How many would get used would depend on the amount of RAM in the package. That’s nothing new. That’s how it’s done. Yes, under that scheme you would have to remove a smaller RAM package when getting a larger one, but that's also normal. The iMac had limited RAM slots and we used to do that all the time. Apple could also add an extra two sockets, in addition to the RAM that comes with the machine. So possibly there would be two packages soldered to the substrate, and two more sockets for RAM expansion. Remember that Apple sometimes does something a specific way, not because that’s the way it has to be done, but because they decided that this was the way they were going to do it. We don’t know where Apple is going with this in the future. It’s possible that the M2, which is really just a bump from the M1, is something to fill in the time while we’re waiting for the M3, which with the 3nm process it’s being built on, is expected to be more than just another bump in performance. Perhaps an extended RAM capability is part of that.Then there is the issue of how many wires you run. When the memory is physically close to the CPU you can run more wires from the memory to the CPU, this allows you to get data to/from the CPU faster. It's not practical to run a large number of wires to a socket that might be a foot or more of cable run away. That means you transfer less data in each clock cycle.
Generally socketed memory is on an external bus. This lets various peripherals directly access memory. The bus arbitration also adds overhead.
Traditional CPUs try to overcome these memory bottlenecks by using multiple levels of cache. This can provide a memory bandwidth performance boost for chunks of recently accessed memory. However, tasks that use more memory than will fit in the cache, may not benefit from these techniques.
Apples "System on a Chip" design really does allow much higher memory bandwidth. Socketing the memory really would reduce performance.
the way they do it now is to have one package on each side of the SoC. When they double packages, they put one slightly further down, and the other slightly higher. We’re talking about fractions of an inch from the way they add packages. There’s nothing really different here. Just substitute soldered on packages to low profile sockets. Not talking about going to DIMMs. The same packages they use now, but with pins instead of solder connections.
you’re talking about something entirely different, and it doesn’t apply. Sickest won’t change anything here.
Remember, the vast majority of customers never open up the computer. Socketing memory increases costs for these customers with a feature they don't need.
For customers that demand expandability, merely socketing memory may not be enough. The market segment that Apple would gain with socketed memory may be very small.
Remember, if people want socketed memory, but buy Macs anyway, then Apple won't gain sales by adding socketed memory. If customers really demanded socketed memory, then there wouldn't be anyone buying Macs.
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Why Apple uses integrated memory in Apple Silicon -- and why it's both good and bad
How many pins would the socket need to accommodate the current chips? How reliable are those sockets? Are the current chips available in a socketable version?melgross said:
We’re talking about no change in distance. The socket can be exactly where the RAM packages are now. If extra sockets are added, one on each side. We’re talking about 0.375”.mfryd said:
Actually, moving the memory further away from the CPU does add latency. Every foot of wire adds about a nanosecond of delay.melgross said:Ok, so the writer gets it wrong, as so many others have when it comes to the M series RAM packaging. One would think that’s this simple thing would be well understood by now. So let me make it very clear - the RAM is NOT on the chip. It is NOT “in the CPU itself”. As we should all know by now, it’s in two packages soldered to the substrate, which is the small board the the SoC is itself soldered to. The lines from Apple’s fabric, which everything on the chip is connected with, extend to that substrate, to the RAM chips. Therefore, the RAM chips are separate from the SoC, and certainly not in the CPU itself. As we also know, Apple offers several different levels of RAM for each M series they sell. That means that there is no limit to their ability to decide how much RAM they can offer, up to the number of memory lines that can be brought out. This is no different from any traditional computer. Every CPU and memory controller has a limit as to how much RAM can be used. So, it seems to me that Apple could, if it wanted to, have sockets for those RAM packages, which add no latency, and would allow exchangeable RAM packages. Apple would just have to extend the maximum number of memory lines out to the socket. How many would get used would depend on the amount of RAM in the package. That’s nothing new. That’s how it’s done. Yes, under that scheme you would have to remove a smaller RAM package when getting a larger one, but that's also normal. The iMac had limited RAM slots and we used to do that all the time. Apple could also add an extra two sockets, in addition to the RAM that comes with the machine. So possibly there would be two packages soldered to the substrate, and two more sockets for RAM expansion. Remember that Apple sometimes does something a specific way, not because that’s the way it has to be done, but because they decided that this was the way they were going to do it. We don’t know where Apple is going with this in the future. It’s possible that the M2, which is really just a bump from the M1, is something to fill in the time while we’re waiting for the M3, which with the 3nm process it’s being built on, is expected to be more than just another bump in performance. Perhaps an extended RAM capability is part of that.Then there is the issue of how many wires you run. When the memory is physically close to the CPU you can run more wires from the memory to the CPU, this allows you to get data to/from the CPU faster. It's not practical to run a large number of wires to a socket that might be a foot or more of cable run away. That means you transfer less data in each clock cycle.
Generally socketed memory is on an external bus. This lets various peripherals directly access memory. The bus arbitration also adds overhead.
Traditional CPUs try to overcome these memory bottlenecks by using multiple levels of cache. This can provide a memory bandwidth performance boost for chunks of recently accessed memory. However, tasks that use more memory than will fit in the cache, may not benefit from these techniques.
Apples "System on a Chip" design really does allow much higher memory bandwidth. Socketing the memory really would reduce performance.
the way they do it now is to have one package on each side of the SoC. When they double packages, they put one slightly further down, and the other slightly higher. We’re talking about fractions of an inch from the way they add packages. There’s nothing really different here. Just substitute soldered on packages to low profile sockets. Not talking about going to DIMMs. The same packages they use now, but with pins instead of solder connections.
you’re talking about something entirely different, and it doesn’t apply. Sickest won’t change anything here.
