Apple Says iPad Air Performance Details Are Accurate Despite 9-Core GPU Mistake

[Beautyspin]

Thats not the sentiment of a rational person grounded in reality. Apple has been in business for 48 years and never developed a reputation for switching specs after the fact.

It's your human right to feel how you want, but its faulty pattern recognition and a fundamental understanding of the tech business to think Apple will reveal your 2-year old iPad Pro has missing GPU cores.

And I'm sorry that you can't return products in India but thats your government's fault for having poor consumer rights. You can't even return an iPad Air you never bought in the first place so all this arguing is for your entertainment only. If you can find real people in the real world suffering issues and needing to return it, due to it having 9 cores (1 more than an M2 Air, by the way), then you would have a case, but you don't, because you don't know anyone with an iPad Air who wants to return it.

We are talking about that in the very thread where they changed their specs after the fact. My question is, is this the only case? How many more are there that they have not caught.

 

[steve09090]

Please check your response. You were the one who suggested it. Temporary Amnesia?

It was sarcasm. As if GPU's fall out 🙄. Sorry you believed it.

 

[steve09090]

We are talking about that in the very thread where they changed their specs after the fact. My question is, is this the only case? How many more are there that they have not caught.

No they didn't. As you well know, they corrected a typo. Get over it.

 

[bgillander]

That is exactly my problem. How many marketing snafus are hiding in those sales pages? Can you guarantee that this is the only one? Did they catch all of them? If they had the capability, they would have caught this too before it happened. It means that this was a serendipitous catch. Until they catch others, we will not know if we have been affected by them.
It does not matter who made the error. It does not matter if it is trivial or earth shattering. They mentioned something in the specs. Users bought them based on those specs. Now the specs are corrected. The customers must be given an option to determine if their choice is correct. Maybe they will not return the iPad or only one out of the million sold will return theirs. That is an option that Apple has to give to the users (the word "choice", I guess, is an anathema to Apple fans). They cannot just say I made a mistake; I corrected it.

You really should not buy any products from Apple in the future, if this is your concern. Honestly, you should not buy any products at all in the future, as it is quite common for ad copy to have errors.

Let me know if you hear of any ACTUAL customers that purchased the M2 Air being denied returns. If anyone in India actually wants to return one that they purchased prior to Apple's correction and is denied that return, well that I would find newsworthy, as I actually do agree that they should be allowed to return it and I would be surprised if Apple didn't allow it because of their error. But that would be up to the buyer actually asking Apple, not Apple asking the buyer.

Beyond that, you are simply making up dream scenarios that are improbable. Maybe Apple has made huge mistakes that have been so major that no one has noticed? They took less than three weeks to correct this error, and probably 2 of those weeks were spent debating whether to even make the change because they knew some obsessed fans would whine on the internet about it for days after.

 

[Delivered]

So here are Apple's specific claims on the iPad Air (2024) landing page:

• The Apple-designed M2 has a 15 percent faster CPU, 25 percent faster graphics, and 50 percent more memory bandwidth than the previous generation.

Allow me to introduce you to Geekbench benchmarking software:

	Single score	Multi score	Metal score
iPad Air 11-inch (M1)	2361	8704	32628
iPad Air 11-inch (M2)	2619	10084	41860

CONCLUSION:

✅ The GPU is 28.3% faster than last year's model which is even more than Apple claimed

✅ The CPU is 15.8% faster in multi core, matching Apple’s claims

✅ Not to mention it now comes with 128 GB storage instead of 64 GB storage, for the exact same price

And keep these two things in mind:

• We’re getting a faster and better iPad Air than last year's model…
• Most people aren't upgrading from last year's model, but a multiple-year old model anyway…

So I can’t make sense of the whiny outrage. If Apple hurt their customer, I get it, but they didn't; they instead delivered a worthy upgrade and a new 13-inch size.

EDIT: Corrected CPU figures so both used Geekbench 6

Metal score for the 10 core gpu is 45454 which is about 8%-9% in gpu compute different. That's about a generational difference or at least 50% of a generational difference on a good year where we get 20% uplift. That's the m2 people thought was in this. Because if you pay attention to specs (and if you are the kind of person to buy an iPad in the first month of launch you likely care at least a little bit you would think this was the same SOC just in iPad Air.

iPad Pro (12.9-inch, 6th generation) Benchmarks - Geekbench

Again everyone keeps going into "the iPad air m2 is still a great iPad that can handle everything even at 9 cores" that's not the disagreement here.

Also "it was a mistake" doesn't really fly in the business world. You give apple 10% less money for the iPad and see if they send it to you then say "it was a mistake" they'll tell you "that's fine give us the rest of the 10% and then you'll get it". here you guys are okay with the mistake going uncorrected. That's fine I hope you carry on in the rest of your life with that kind of energy.

 

[steve09090]

Metal score for the 10 core gpu is 45454 which is about 8%-9% in gpu compute different. That's about a generational difference or at least 50% of a generational difference on a good year where we get 20% uplift. That's the m2 people thought was in this. Because if you pay attention to specs (and if you are the kind of person to buy an iPad in the first month of launch you likely care at least a little bit you would think this was the same SOC just in iPad Air.

I didn’t realise Apple quoted Metal scores. I thought people knew they were getting a 2024 iPad Air, not a 2022 iPad Pro. Further to this, people who are that 'clued up' about cores aren’t going to rely on a glossy advert to determine the power of the iPad Air, and would instead do actual research.

Also "it was a mistake" doesn't really fly in the business world. You give apple 10% less money for the iPad and see if they send it to you then say "it was a mistake" they'll tell you "that's fine give us the rest of the 10% and then you'll get it". here you guys are okay with the mistake going uncorrected. That's fine I hope you carry on in the rest of your life with that kind of energy.

No one has suggested they shouldn’t have corrected the typo. Everyone supports it.

Plus, in the real world, large companies, and governments for that matter, make mistakes. In some instances, people actually die when large companies make mistakes; and that’s common. That’s not happened here. Perspective is sometimes needed when trying to criticise a typo.

 

[PaperMag]

We are talking about that in the very thread where they changed their specs after the fact. My question is, is this the only case? How many more are there that they have not caught.

Obviously all are 100% correct. There was just the one in this instance.

How do we know, especially on the Mac? Because there are utilities for checking, and countless benchmark tests to confirm. And millions of Mac users who would have noticed.

EDIT: Feel free to download Lirum (a free diagnostics tool) to confirm how many cores your iPad Pro has. If it has any less, please get back to us.

 

[PaperMag]

Metal score for the 10 core gpu is 45454 which is about 8%-9% in gpu compute different. That's about a generational difference or at least 50% of a generational difference on a good year where we get 20% uplift. That's the m2 people thought was in this. Because if you pay attention to specs (and if you are the kind of person to buy an iPad in the first month of launch you likely care at least a little bit you would think this was the same SOC just in iPad Air.

Apple made a claim of 25% faster GPU performance in their marketing material—and that is what they delivered—proven by Geekbench scores.

Had a user received significantly less than 25% improvement then people would have a more valid cause to outrage.

Thats the point. Please stop missing it.

Also "it was a mistake" doesn't really fly in the business world.

Theres this thing called discerning and nuance and degrees of impact and damage.

How much something "flies in the business world" is dependent on those things and then needs to be proven in the courts.

I know you want to lump all mistakes into one category, as if there aren't degrees of mistakes, but I'm not going to fall for your argument device.

My entire position is in this summary: this is a mistake, its baffling someone didn't catch this prior to launch, let alone on launch week, but they caught it, and it doesn't damage anyone because performance promised was delivered.

If you disagree, then we disagree—but also if you disagree to such an extreme that you think

• Apple is the worst company in the world for this typo mistake (as opposed to advert mistake)
• or you think Apple are possibly deceptive (in their GPU count) on many other products

then you're opinion isn't a grounded and someone should tell you. If. I'm not claiming thats your position but its certainly someone else's in this thread.

You give apple 10% less money for the iPad and see if they send it to you then say "it was a mistake" they'll tell you "that's fine give us the rest of the 10% and then you'll get it".

That premise doesn't make sense because if you were to dollarize the GPU it wouldn't be 10% of an iPad Air.

And in the case of iPads, people don't buy cores, they buy performance. An 8 core GPU on an M4 is faster than a 10 core GPU on an M1. By your premise, Apple should be charging more for the weaker GPU. But thats not what people pay for.

On the Mac side, your premise would make sense, because Apple was charging $100 for 2 more cores. Had in that case, Apple promised 2 cores for $100, but then only delivered 1 core instead—outrage would be warranted because Apple wasn't selling just performance, they were specifically selling an upgrade in a specific number of cores.

And in the case of Macs, to sell 2 more cores over 8 cores is to sell 25% more GPU compute. If Apple charged $100 for 25% more GPU compute, but only delivered 12.5% more GPU, thats deception and theft—outrage warranted.

But again, where as in the case of the iPad Air, none of their adverts were selling the iPad Air as a 10-core iPad Air, only as an iPad Air with 25% faster GPU—so in this case the advertising wasn't deceptive, it was telling the truth, as proven by Geekbench.

here you guys are okay with the mistake going uncorrected. That's fine I hope you carry on in the rest of your life with that kind of energy.

Thats a strawman nobody here believes or argued.

That you said this lie means you may be operating as a bad actor and if so you should remove yourself from the argument entirely.

 

[Beautyspin]

Obviously all are 100% correct. There was just the one in this instance.

How do we know, especially on the Mac? Because there are utilities for checking, and countless benchmark tests to confirm. And millions of Mac users who would have noticed.

EDIT: Feel free to download Lirum (a free diagnostics tool) to confirm how many cores your iPad Pro has. If it has any less, please get back to us.

You are talking about cores, I am worried about all the specs. There is no guarantee that Apple will only get the core count wrong. It could be anything. It could be different things on different systems. For instance, it could be core count on your Macbook while it could be something else on my Macbook (same model), for instance. How can you be sure?

 

[Beautyspin]

You really should not buy any products from Apple in the future, if this is your concern. Honestly, you should not buy any products at all in the future, as it is quite common for ad copy to have errors.

Let me know if you hear of any ACTUAL customers that purchased the M2 Air being denied returns. If anyone in India actually wants to return one that they purchased prior to Apple's correction and is denied that return, well that I would find newsworthy, as I actually do agree that they should be allowed to return it and I would be surprised if Apple didn't allow it because of their error. But that would be up to the buyer actually asking Apple, not Apple asking the buyer.

Beyond that, you are simply making up dream scenarios that are improbable. Maybe Apple has made huge mistakes that have been so major that no one has noticed? They took less than three weeks to correct this error, and probably 2 of those weeks were spent debating whether to even make the change because they knew some obsessed fans would whine on the internet about it for days after.

It is normal for companies to own their mistakes and apologise and take returns. Apple is different because its customers seem to be different. They keep defendent Apple's mistakes. People like me are the ones who will initiate the class action suits. Meanwhile Apple fans will keep drooling.

 

[Beautyspin]

No they didn't. As you well know, they corrected a typo. Get over it.

I can understand your anguish. Your favorite company cannot even get its specs right. Probably the only company that is so cheap that it thows its customers under the bus. Get over it.

 

[Beautyspin]

It was sarcasm. As if GPU's fall out 🙄. Sorry you believed it.

You were the guy who can dish it but cannot take it. Sorry, I thought you were capable of understanding your own sarcasm. Looks like once you write something, you cannot understand it yourself when you read it.

 

[PaperMag]

You are talking about cores, I am worried about all the specs. There is no guarantee that Apple will only get the core count wrong. It could be anything. It could be different things on different systems. For instance, it could be core count on your Macbook while it could be something else on my Macbook (same model), for instance. How can you be sure?

That app checks all the specs. Did you even look at it before replying?

At some point you have to apply reasoned thinking: There are very smart people out there that eventually find discrepancies, and there are a limited set of specs Apple can skimp on by accident. Are they going to mistakenly list the resolution of the display? The CPU cores? These are things that diagnostic software checks and people will notice eventually. When things go wrong, like when the SSD was writing too much data, people found out. It was't day one but it was eventually.

Again, again, again, you seem to think this was a computer systems error. It was not. It was a typographic error. The engineers knew the entire time it was a 9c GPU. It was the web team that allowed the error to go forward in this one instance, but who knows why. I can only imagine its because they kept postponing this roll out, the roll out was bleeding too close to WWDC prep (which is this Monday) and someone dropped the ball.

But that is in no way indicative of a pattern.

You keep asking the same question with the same insinuation but its unfounded.

 

[PaperMag]

Meanwhile Apple fans will keep drooling.

So you're not an Apple fan? An owner of an iPad Pro? A member of MacRumors?

Because it seems like you drooled enough to drop maybe a thousand on an iPad Pro, and are drooling enough to join Apple communities and have discussions about Apple products.

 

[bgillander]

It is normal for companies to own their mistakes and apologise and take returns. Apple is different because its customers seem to be different. They keep defendent Apple's mistakes. People like me are the ones who will initiate the class action suits. Meanwhile Apple fans will keep drooling.

Again, I said Apple should allow the return if anyone actually requests it. Feel free to show me a list of all those that actually own the product and have requested a return and then been denied.

You now want to initiate a class action suit for a product you do not even own, which is a truly questionable mindset to think you have the high road, as suggesting your own fraud to accuse another party of fraud is simply hypocritical.

 

[Beautyspin]

Again, I said Apple should allow the return if anyone actually requests it. Feel free to show me a list of all those that actually own the product and have requested a return and then been denied.

You now want to initiate a class action suit for a product you do not even own, which is a truly questionable mindset to think you have the high road, as suggesting your own fraud to accuse another party of fraud is simply hypocritical.

Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged. If you believe that your new Apple product is defective please contact Apple Store Customer Service to discuss your options.

 

[Beautyspin]

So you're not an Apple fan? An owner of an iPad Pro? A member of MacRumors?

Because it seems like you drooled enough to drop maybe a thousand on an iPad Pro, and are drooling enough to join Apple communities and have discussions about Apple products.

I am a consumer. I buy a product based on their specs and performance. I am not beholden to any company. I was not aware that to be a member of MacRumors one needed to be an Apple fanboy. I was a member of MacRumors before I owned a single Apple product. My first Apple product was the M1 MBP, btw. Snapdragon X Elite seems to be more promising.

 

[Beautyspin]

That app checks all the specs. Did you even look at it before replying?

At some point you have to apply reasoned thinking: There are very smart people out there that eventually find discrepancies, and there are a limited set of specs Apple can skimp on by accident. Are they going to mistakenly list the resolution of the display? The CPU cores? These are things that diagnostic software checks and people will notice eventually. When things go wrong, like when the SSD was writing too much data, people found out. It was't day one but it was eventually.

Again, again, again, you seem to think this was a computer systems error. It was not. It was a typographic error. The engineers knew the entire time it was a 9c GPU. It was the web team that allowed the error to go forward in this one instance, but who knows why. I can only imagine its because they kept postponing this roll out, the roll out was bleeding too close to WWDC prep (which is this Monday) and someone dropped the ball.

But that is in no way indicative of a pattern.

You keep asking the same question with the same insinuation but its unfounded.

What is the guarantee that this was the only error Apple made (don't care which department made the error). If the sales team made such a basic error, what are the chances that other teams which have more complex tasks have not made errors?

 

[PaperMag]

I am a consumer. I buy a product based on their specs and performance. I am not beholden to any company. I was not aware that to be a member of MacRumors one needed to be an Apple fanboy. I was a member of MacRumors before I owned a single Apple product. My first Apple product was the M1 MBP, btw. Snapdragon X Elite seems to be more promising.

So let me get the facts straight: You're an iPad Pro owner, a MacBook Pro owner, and have been a MacRumors member for 12 years, much of it before you even bought your first Apple product because thats how motivated and enthusiastic you are about Apple products—but somehow other people are the Apple fanboys that drool?

 

[PaperMag]

What is the guarantee that this was the only error Apple made (don't care which department made the error). If the sales team made such a basic error, what are the chances that other teams which have more complex tasks have not made errors?

Why do you keep repeating the same questions as a debate tactic?

Sounds like concern trolling or sealioning.

Anyway, I won't be responding to you any further. Either you're a troll doing this to annoy Apple users or you're stuck on repeat.

 

[steve09090]

Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged. If you believe that your new Apple product is defective please contact Apple Store Customer Service to discuss your options.

There you go. You know there is nothing wrong with what they have done and you have just said it yourself.

You have said that an ipad Air is defective because it comes with 9 GPU cores instead of the advertised 10 GPU cores. If an Apple product is defective, you can return it. Therefore you COULD return it. However, we know it’s NOT actually defective, and as you said you cannot return it under Indian Law.

That should tell you something. The iPad Air is not defective and comes exactly as promised. OR you would be able to return it. Thanks for clarifying your position as you knowing they are right, and arguing against yourself for so long.

 

[bgillander]

Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged. If you believe that your new Apple product is defective please contact Apple Store Customer Service to discuss your options.

Thank you for showing that Apple is open to discussing the issue, as I expected.

If you do NOT believe that product is defective then you really should stop complaining. As I said, any early customer has a valid claim that the iPad Air M2 was not as described and they should be able to return it if they feel that it performing as advertised is not enough and they care more about the core count than the performance. But they would have to actually contact Apple, not just complain on random websites.

Edit: Looks like steve09090 beat me to it!

 

[bgillander]

I am a consumer. I buy a product based on their specs and performance. I am not beholden to any company. I was not aware that to be a member of MacRumors one needed to be an Apple fanboy. I was a member of MacRumors before I owned a single Apple product. My first Apple product was the M1 MBP, btw. Snapdragon X Elite seems to be more promising.

Oh, is that what this is about? Qualcomm boosting?

It does look interesting... I'm still waiting for some full reviews, but I hope WinARM works out well for you.

You will be happy to know that Qualcomm never makes any mistakes. They would never feature a Mac running Resolve in their video comparing the Snapdragon X Elite running Windows to Intel, for instance.

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At least Microsoft has never made a mistake!

 

[Beautyspin]

Oh, is that what this is about? Qualcomm boosting?

It does look interesting... I'm still waiting for some full reviews, but I hope WinARM works out well for you.

You will be happy to know that Qualcomm never makes any mistakes. They would never feature a Mac running Resolve in their video comparing the Snapdragon X Elite running Windows to Intel, for instance.

Qualcomm Enlists 'I'm a Mac' Ad Star for Snapdragon PC Skit

At 52:35 in the Snapdragon Comutex 2024 Keynote video the software they are showing (DaVinci Resolve) is actually running on Mac OS (check out the Apple logo on the menu bar). That's pretty embarrassing since they were supposed to be showing the software running under MS Windows on the...

forums.macrumors.com

Snapdragon Computex 2024 Keynote: The PC Reborn

The PC is at an inflection point. On-device generative AI is poised to revolutionize the future of productivity, creativity, and entertainment. With game-cha...

www.youtube.com

At least Microsoft has never made a mistake!

Good catch. I will not buy Snapdragon X model laptops. Oh wait, Snapdragon does not make Laptops! Let them start making laptops and I will stop buying them from them

 

[Beautyspin]

Thank you for showing that Apple is open to discussing the issue, as I expected.

If you do NOT believe that product is defective then you really should stop complaining. As I said, any early customer has a valid claim that the iPad Air M2 was not as described and they should be able to return it if they feel that it performing as advertised is not enough and they care more about the core count than the performance. But they would have to actually contact Apple, not just complain on random websites.

Edit: Looks like steve09090 beat me to it!

Looks like you have never spoken to Apple customer service in India.