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All iPads 64-bit a big deal?

JoeRito

JoeRito

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Not being a computer engineer, I was wondering, is the 64 bit processing on the new iPad air really that big a deal or just a marketing ploy?

Can any apps take advantage of this yet? Will this processor run a full OS X type OS some day soon?
 
Not a super big deal.
But, then again, if this was 1971 and you asked me if color television was a big deal vs black and white I'd give the same answer.
 
Not a big deal right now and by the time it's actually necessary, I think the iPad Air will be too slow to run the latest version of iOS smoothly. Buy the Air because it has features you want now and not because of a mistaken notion of future-proofing.
 
From a performance perspective it is a big deal, since more data can be processed in a shorter time frame without scarifying battery time too much.
 
As the others said, not yet, same as 64 bit wasn't a huge deal on the first PM G5 other than addressing RAM. But it lays the groundwork for the future. You gotta start somewhere, right. Apple needed to do the move now because tablets are slowing eating away at laptops. Apple is preparing itself for the day when OS X and iOS merge. But in the meantime, if Apple is going to put a 64bit proc in it might as well get some mileage out of it. I wouldn't upgrade because its 64 bit but there are plenty of good reasons in addition to the A7 to buy the Air or new rMini.
 
Asking whether 64 bit is a big deal is like asking the steam engine whether internal combustion was a big deal...
 
64-but is getting there

Several if my apps use it. Edovia Screens, Twitteriffic, iWork, iLife, DJay and tons if games. I'm surprised by the uptick in developer adoption this short into the A7 life cycle

iOS is based on OSX originally. The two have a lot of commonality so not entirely sure what you are asking.

Are you asking if 64-bit means iOS will be more like Mac OS?
- if so we are there pretty much. There is a lot of shared things between the two

Are you asking if 64-bit means "Windowed" based GUI?
- if so, I wouldn't hold my breath. We will probably get more multitasking features designed around touch interactions but that's probably it

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Chupa Chupa said:
As the others said, not yet, same as 64 bit wasn't a huge deal on the first PM G5 other than addressing RAM. But it lays the groundwork for the future. You gotta start somewhere, right. Apple needed to do the move now because tablets are slowing eating away at laptops. Apple is preparing itself for the day when OS X and iOS merge. But in the meantime, if Apple is going to put a 64bit proc in it might as well get some mileage out of it. I wouldn't upgrade because its 64 bit but there are plenty of good reasons in addition to the A7 to buy the Air or new rMini.
Click to expand...

Don't know if I agree about the OS merge. Maybe 5 years past but I see Apple really focusing on making great tablets for what they do and great notebooks for what they do best. Apple likes to stay focused on the best solution to the problem. Windows 8 is a perfect example of having no restraint or focus.
 
vigilant said:
Don't know if I agree about the OS merge. Maybe 5 years past but I see Apple really focusing on making great tablets for what they do and great notebooks for what they do best. Apple likes to stay focused on the best solution to the problem. Windows 8 is a perfect example of having no restraint or focus.
Click to expand...

Yes, talking medium to long term. Look at how long it took computer programs, even OSes, to take full advantage of 64bit. It's a long road which is why Apple is starting to lay ground work now. I didn't mean to suggest the next version of OS X will be merged, or even the one after that, or after that one, but it's coming.

Sooner than later, tablet's feature set will closely match that of laptops just as laptop capability did with desktops. Apple is reading itself for that day. It's the same reason why they updated iLife and iWork on both OSX and iOS using the same underlying code, even at the cost of features on the OSX version. It's laying the ground work. Next version will start adding features back to both.

But this is very different than Microsoft's Win 8 plan. Microsoft essentially is trying to get the masses to bend to its will of having the same OS on every platform. Apple is just preparing for when consumers are ready for that day.
 
JoeRito said:
Not being a computer engineer, I was wondering, is the 64 bit processing on the new iPad air really that big a deal or just a marketing ploy?

Can any apps take advantage of this yet? Will this processor run a full OS X type OS some day soon?
Click to expand...


Not big deal until program you are running will need lots of RAM. 64bit will allow larger ram visible to the os, however it is not a problem now since we have 1gb only installed.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
As the others said, not yet, same as 64 bit wasn't a huge deal on the first PM G5 other than addressing RAM. But it lays the groundwork for the future. You gotta start somewhere, right. Apple needed to do the move now because tablets are slowing eating away at laptops. Apple is preparing itself for the day when OS X and iOS merge. But in the meantime, if Apple is going to put a 64bit proc in it might as well get some mileage out of it. I wouldn't upgrade because its 64 bit but there are plenty of good reasons in addition to the A7 to buy the Air or new rMini.
Click to expand...

This.
 
Actually being 64-bit is not a big deal as you don't have enough ram to exceed the 32 bit pointer limit. But the big deal is that the A7 supports the new armv8 instruction set which will actually bring real world performance improvements as apps are recompiled to support it.
 
1gb of RAM is simply not enough to fully utilize 64 bits.

We will truly find out how big a deal it is on next year's model.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
Yes, talking medium to long term. Look at how long it took computer programs, even OSes, to take full advantage of 64bit. It's a long road which is why Apple is starting to lay ground work now. I didn't mean to suggest the next version of OS X will be merged, or even the one after that, or after that one, but it's coming.

Sooner than later, tablet's feature set will closely match that of laptops just as laptop capability did with desktops. Apple is reading itself for that day. It's the same reason why they updated iLife and iWork on both OSX and iOS using the same underlying code, even at the cost of features on the OSX version. It's laying the ground work. Next version will start adding features back to both.

But this is very different than Microsoft's Win 8 plan. Microsoft essentially is trying to get the masses to bend to its will of having the same OS on every platform. Apple is just preparing for when consumers are ready for that day.
Click to expand...

Agreed, I use an iPad Air for work when I'm not on my Mac Mini. I'm able to do about 85% of my job from the iPad. For the rest like testing out software using Parallels Desktop, deployments to production I use Parallels Access to remote into my Mac Mini (which has more power then any portable that ships right now I think) to get the job quickly.

The world is heading slowly to all mobile all the time. Those of us who have the tools should enjoy being ahead of the curve.
 
Sure it's a big deal. It means you have less effective RAM than you did in the iPAd3 and iPad4.

It will take a while to be utilized specifically, other than frameworks/utilities/apps provided by apple that take advantage of them under the hood.
 
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