Well, the LPDDR4X spec supports 16 GB chips too but from what I gather, it's not a practical real world product available in volumes and at pricing that Apple would require.
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Apple Testing at Least Nine New Macs With Four Different M2 Chip Variants
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With the expected improvements in yields due to TSMC's process maturity, it will be interesting to see if there is a binned M2 Pro and if so, will it just be the GPU cores (so 10C/14G)?
I think it would be pointless. A12 is already fine. If they wanted to upgrade it, they could go to A14 or A15. No need at all for an M series chip unless they decide to make it into a console or something (which I wouldn't expect any time soon).
Interesting question. I guess we shall see this year.
Agreed. The jump from A10X to A12 was already barely necessary; I’m guessing they did it in part so they can stop manufacturing the A10. New features like higher frame rate HDR seem more like a cherry on top than what drove them to make the new model.
For video playback, the A12 does plenty even at 4K, and then some.
I need more GPU power than what the Mx series has currently. Also, there's (currently) no 14inch pro available with the Mx chip, only Mx Pro or better.
If only they priced the Apple TV 4k mark 6 more competitivery. You only have to keep an eye on the base iPad to see it come for barely double the price and have battery, screen, camera, Touch ID and A13 cpu.
Yeah, but products like Roku already exist, and they just don’t have much of an incentive to compete with them on price. So they’re stuck in a bit of an awkward spot.
The move from M1 to M2 doesn't raise my eyebrows near as much as the possibility of an 'entry level' 13" MBP making a comeback. With the price/spec spread of the MBA, that would seem to make a MBP superfluous.......a marginally better screen and whatever other option changes Apple could make surely won't make up for the usual price increase here.
Since Apple has never put a current A-series chip in the Apple TV, instead using previous generation chips, I would not bet on Apple putting an M1 in there. Would that make a difference in using it? Just using the current A15 would probably be faster than an M1 at the kind of tasks an Apple TV does. M1s use the same CPU cores as the A14 chips.
LSPCON for HDMI 2.1 wasn’t available at the time. Just launched late last year. Too late to go into the MBP or Mac Studio.
The obsession with HDMI 2.1 baffles me considering what a complete CF the spec is now. HDMI 2.0 is fine for literally 99% of users out there.
You are contradicting yourself. Do you need more GPU than the M1 Pro or M1 Max offers? If so, then why are you talking about the 14” only offering the M1 Pro or better? The M2 isn’t going to be offered in the 14” Pro and it certainly won’t have more GPU oomph that the M1 Pro or M1 Max. The M2 Pro or M2 Max won’t be arriving until next year, so your choices are limited if you need something near term.
I would love to see better 5K over HDMI support, which essentially means HDMI 2.1, and I would love to see more 5K monitors out there with 5K over HDMI support. It's kind of been a catch 22 situation for this until now. Maybe that wouldn't happen any time soon anyway, but having no proper support of it on HDMI 2.0 surely doesn't help the situation.
DisplayPort 1.4 supports it (including over USB-C), but DP has its own problems, including the fact that we've had the same support issues on the DisplayPort side too, with only recently many computers and monitors getting DisplayPort 1.4 support. The thing that bugs me the most about DisplayPort is often times it's hard to find out know what version of DisplayPort the machine or monitor has (at least on the Windows side).
I think they really lost that market with the 4th-gen Apple TV offering solutions nobody needed at double the price of its predecessor with an infuriating remote to boot.
I own two 3rd-gen Apple TV’s, they kicked Roku’s butt, better remote, better experience all around. Then 4th-gen came along, and now I own two Roku devices and a TCL Roku TV. Total convert, dislike the ads, but everything else is good. Even Airplay works great, go figure. Now why would I go and spend more $$$ on something that doesn‘t work as well?
My 3rd-gens are now collecting dust because of planned obsolescence.
No, Apple royally screwed up there, they could have owned that market.
But it would’ve been a Pyrrhic victory. Yeah, they could make a $30 stick and quickly grow market share, but to what end?
Interesting. I wasn't aware of that. However, I wonder if they are going to be the sole supplier, and if so, I wonder what the cost would be, and how fast they can ramp up production. Samsung being the sole supplier could give Apple pause, but maybe not if Samsung truly has enough capacity. Samsung has been the sole supplier for several of Apple's components in the past.
Anyhow, 24 GB chips would be a nice interim update, if Samsung actually comes through with this in a timely manner and at reasonable cost, until the various companies can get 32 GB chips into the market. I don't think Apple really wants to increase the number of RAM chips used.
EDIT:
With the 2/4/8 chip setup, even if they did use 24 GB chips, I'm thinking Apple would not use them across the line. It would not be used at all with the Pro line, and only at the high end for Max and Ultra. Something more like:
Pro: 16 / 32 GB
Max: 32 / 64 / 96 GB
Ultra: 64 / 128 / 192 GB
This would reduce Apple's needed volume of 24 GB chips, especially if production capacity and cost were issues.
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Maybe, but I don't think so. They need not compete at the ultra low-end, the 3rd-gen Apple TV sold at $79, a reasonable premium over competing devices that were at the time clearly inferior. They could have iterated their way to 4th-gen at the same price point rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater and double the price.
Well, first off, why not? It would be pretty cool. It could support things like AI algorithms to improve the picture, 8k (these tvs do exist now), up to 144HZ, better HDR, their own version of SRS/DLSS. Lots of new stuff.
Since they are talking about releasing a video game controller anyway, why not release an appleTV with an M1 and a controller as a higher end console/appletv hybrid? Maybe charge $300+? I would buy it for one.
There are enough games on Apple Arcade that it would probably be fun to mess around with. The M1s have got to be getting pretty cheap, so maybe at the end of this year or next they might be at the right price to pull this off. Everything moves forward. The M1 is almost two years old. Eventually it will show up in the Apple TV. It's just a question of when. I think I read it would make the apple console about as fast as a PS4, which would be pretty cool.
Yep.
For my Sony TV with Android TV, I have Disney+, Netflix, Prime Video, and Apple TV+. For my own video files, I can't run Infuse, but I can run vlc. And it has a better remote than the piece of junk remote that came with my 4K gen 1 Apple TV. Guess what media streaming box I did not buy for that TV...
That said, I do use that 4K Apple TV with my LG TV as the Apple TV interface is nicer, and I can't run either Infuse or vlc on that TV natively.
It would be nice if Macs could finally support 8K computer displays (which means having both the connectivity, and a UI that offers an 8K-optimized option), after which some might appear on the market. Maybe the existence of 8K TV's and 8K video processing is enough to motivate Apple to support 8K, after which the 8K computer displays might follow [TV's don't typically work well as computer displays, because they're not optimized for displaying text.]
[The current 8K Dell Ultrasharp probably wouldn't work because it requires a dual-Display Port connection using an older Display Port standard. That's too bad because, at $3800 from Dell, it's <2/3 the $6000 (with stand) of the 6K Apple XDR.]
[The current 8K Dell Ultrasharp probably wouldn't work because it requires a dual-Display Port connection using an older Display Port standard. That's too bad because, at $3800 from Dell, it's <2/3 the $6000 (with stand) of the 6K Apple XDR.]
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