A9 is substantially faster

[Vanilla35]

The difference being, in this case, that we know for a fact that the improvement from A7 to A8 is 20% and the improvement from A8 to A9 is more like 40%.

Yes. But there is no Mini with an A9, so the comparison is pointless.

You're forgetting that 1) They shaved down the size of the iPad Mini 4 even more (quite a bit more), and subsequently, 2) They under clocked the A8 in the Mini 4 (likely due to the former) which means they did, and probably will, run into cooling/throttling issues with equivalent Air quality (speed) chips in the Mini form factor.

Granted, with that said, I'm not sure why the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus don't have any problems with heat. Even though they're clocked lower, the surface area/space of the chassis is significantly less.

I want an iPad Pro.

However I want Devs to write apps and GAMES that take full advantage of the iPad Pro.

Do you think this will happen?

I highly doubt it. For several reasons. First the most obvious; it's just another iPad. If people didn't do it already with great chips like the A7X (and they didn't really), they won't do it now. Second, the market for the iPad Pro is going to be super small. Especially with the Air 2 looking like a great deal for a more "reasonable" form factor, hardly anyone is going to have a Pro unless they're a techie or professional.

 

[RebornProphet]

oK, from the front page we can see the A9 is scoring around 2400 on geek bench, vs 1720'ish for the A8 in the iPad mini 4 and 1350 or so in the iPad mini 2 and 3.

In other words, the A8 was a pretty sad jump in performance, but the A9 is a bit of return to form. Sadly the mini 4 is using last year's technology in the A8 and so we're seeing the benefits of more RAM in multitasking, but single apps aren't really going to go much faster on the iPad mini 4. Makes the case for upgrading from the mini 2 a lot harder unless you are really going to use split view a lot. I'm even more tempted to wait for a A9 refresh of the mini now ...

The A8X was/is a monster of a chip. The fact that the standard A9 is only a little higher than the A8X makes me wonder what the hell the A9X is going to benchmark at.

 

[Piggie]

You're forgetting that 1) They shaved down the size of the iPad Mini 4 even more (quite a bit more), and subsequently, 2) They under clocked the A8 in the Mini 4 (likely due to the former) which means they did, and probably will, run into cooling/throttling issues with equivalent Air quality (speed) chips in the Mini form factor.

Granted, with that said, I'm not sure why the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus don't have any problems with heat. Even though they're clocked lower, the surface area/space of the chassis is significantly less.



I highly doubt it. For several reasons. First the most obvious; it's just another iPad. If people didn't do it already with great chips like the A7X (and they didn't really), they won't do it now. Second, the market for the iPad Pro is going to be super small. Especially with the Air 2 looking like a great deal for a more "reasonable" form factor, hardly anyone is going to have a Pro unless they're a techie or professional.

Never sure I get the logic with this as an argument.

If there are less apps specifically for the pro, and YOU make one specifically for the pro, then chances are more pro owners will buy it. Your app will be a GIANT fish in a small pond.
Far better for you to offer one app just for the pro and get tons of sales, than to have to compete with 1000's of apps.

You can be sure pro owners will be looking for anything that shows off their device and will want it.

 

[rkuo]

The A8X was/is a monster of a chip. The fact that the standard A9 is only a little higher than the A8X makes me wonder what the hell the A9X is going to benchmark at.

Actually the ways in which the A8X excelled were mainly brute force ... The extra CPU core and GPU units, more memory bandwidth, etc. The A9 looks like a serious process upgrade this time where the single cores are just straight up faster ... And then they doubled memory and flash bandwidth again over the A8X. It really is going to be a beast.