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iOS 14.5 Beta 5 References Unreleased 'A14X' Chip Rumored for iPad Pro

Wando64 said:
Time for a dual OS iPad?
iPadOS when used as a tablet.
MacOS when docked.

It is certainly powerful enough to handle it.
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websurfer83 said:
That would be my dream for the iPad Pro.
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It would be amazing indeed, but you know what? For the last months I have LOVED the iPad Pro as an iPad and nothing else, it’s the perfect snappy Mac companion, the continuity features work amazingly well for me, the markup continuity I use it every minute (capture screenshots, annotate them on the iPad since they auto appear there), put things on iCloud folders then procreate/affinity photo on them, just finally opened affinity designer and the curve tools are amazing, etc... don’t know, the fact that it’s constrained to ONLY iPad things makes it a more understandable tool vs the “can do it all” OS X with its hanging thousands of processes dragging the system down.

Don’t get me wrong, I like them both a ton and have their uses... but if an iPad is in OSX mode while docked I get the feeling I’ll be needing TWO iPads then... one that stays mostly dock and the other that’s always ready to react to the docked one like it currently happens.

EDIT: this comment that I missed from the comments is also on point and quite related to what I’m trying to put into words.

jonblatho said:
You realize that would require rebooting between two OSes each time, no?

Even if you can accomplish state restoration from A to B and back to A to make it “seamless,” good luck turning that into a pleasant user experience while you wait for a reboot.
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Aeronauts said:
My patience is running out. Just release the damn thing.
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No kidding. I wanted to get an iPad last year to upgrade from the 10.5 up to a 12.9, but it just wasn’t enough for me to upgrade with minimal upgrades from the 2018 pro. Fingers crossed this will have new display, a14x, same series 2 Apple Pencil, maybe 8gb ram, and landscape front camera. dont Give two hoots about 5G
 
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Lemon Olive said:
LOLOL. Much needed? What pray tell is much needed? It doesn't need anything.
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hdmi 2.1 and its associated features would be fantastic. the comment youre replying to needing an a14 simply because the rest of their devices having an a14 is w/e. though with promoting apple arcade i could see them bumping it to a14 for this, and given that the update cycle on an apple tv is quite long it's not a bad idea.
 
terminator-jq said:
These new iPad Pros will be interesting. Especially when you consider the following:

- The 2018 iPad Pro models are still very fast even by todays standards.
- The 2020 iPad Pro models are basically just the 2018 with an extra GPU core and better camera.
- The 2020 iPad Air... gets awfully close to the 11" iPad Pro
- Current rumors point to Mini-LED being exclusive to the 12.9"

With all of that in mind, its going to take a whole lot more than better specs to get people to upgrade... M1 style speed is good and fine for geek bench scores and bragging rights of "my iPad is faster than your desktop" but in the real world does it really matter? Over the years Apple has added some great iPad exclusive features to iOS but lets be honest here... for the most part the iPad is still very much a large screen iPhone.

Personally I'm really hoping to see Apple bring more than just power to the iPad Pro. Lets get some "Pro" level applications like Logic and Final Cut. The iPad needs to be further differentiated from the iPhone and the iPad Pro needs to be clearly different than the base iPad and iPad Air.
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I disagree with this last bit. Why does the Pro need to be clearly different from the Air or standard iPad? So that people who pay the Pro price feel better about their purchase decision?

All iPads should run the same iPadOS, the way they do now, and provide the same functionality. The higher tiers can have nicer fit and finish, nicer screen tech, bigger storage, better speakers, etc. But I disagree that base level iPads should be relegated to consumption devices and only the Pro allowed to get some work done.
 
jefhai said:
there is a huge competitive advantage enabling their iPad tablets to run macOS vs Microsoft surface etc. it’s an alternative to their Mac computers. And it’s almost free for Apple to support and do, one the SoC is capable enoug.
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The iPad is already an alternative to the Mac and is outselling Macs by a huge margin.
 
smulji said:
I actually think Apple sees big growth opportunities for the Mac otherwise why go through all that time and investment into making Apple Silicon for Macs
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Right now, until something changes, the best way to develop for iPads and iOS (which is where most of the Apple developers are making their money) is MacOS. My guess is that Apple intends to keep it around for awhile (since they’ve made them a good bit cheaper to produce without Intel) as development systems. The sales may never go to zero, but it will drop back into the single digit millions going only to folks that need FCP, Logic Pro, and to develop apps.
 
What's the relationship between A14 and M1? Why A14X is not based on A14 but on M1?
 
It won’t be dual boot ever. It is not easy enough for most users.

However, maybe there will integrate MacOS APP store to iOS App Store for selected pro models. And any universal app, with someone triggering the box to say make it available, the apps will appear.

I think that would be more intuitive and follow what they have done for ipad->Mac apps.

Hopefully next update will bring Mac App Store on the App store
 
Hori said:
Doesn’t matter how powerful it is if it’s running iPad os.

The software is the iPad bottleneck. Not the hardware.

ipad pro feels like it has no reason to exist now that the m1 air is out.
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Why do people say this? Can you write on a Mac display, or use the display as a touch screen interface? Can you take pictures with the Mac for scanning documents etc? I use my iPad Pro all the time for just about everything Right along side my MacBook Pro.
 
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Wando64 said:
But I don’t think the two should merge.
In my opinion they should both be there (if so desired by the user) with MacOS appearing only when docked.
As for the apps, it could work the same way as for the Watch.
The watch app is installed automatically when the iOS app is installed.
Likewise, the iPadOS app could be installed automatically when the MacOS app is installed e.g. MS Office, or Photoshop, etc...

For those not interested in MacOS on the iPad, they would still have the option of running iPadOS only.
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It just seems like a waste of storage space to not have at least some level of merging or ability to share parts of the app between the iPad and macOS versions. As we all know Apple isn't exactly generous with storage. There at the very least needs to be any easy way to share/store files in between the two OSes, like I don't want my photos stored twice because the two photos apps have no way of talking to each other.
 
I think that what will ultimately happen is a convergence towards a more universal UI, so that the same software can end up being used on MacOS and iPadOS (just like many here, I dont see the point of a pure MacOS "port" on iPads). just like we have responsive web interfaces, why can't we have responsive software where the interface adapts based on the main input method?

On the go? Touch interface
Docked on MK? Keyboard interface
on Desktop? Keyboard interface

I think that with apple moving to the same chip family across its devices, the only difference that is left is the input method and that's great. Some categories of work are better done on a keyboard, other are better done touching a screen. So all Apple has left to do is providing the tools to let third-party developers carry that vision and build products that are best in class in their own "input" category.

I think this has started happening and Apple has been sneakily preparing all the required building blocks :

  • Laptops moving back to better keyboards
  • big sur adopting design language from iDevices
  • Cursor from the magic keyboard which makes it possible to navigate on keyboard-first interfaces without too much effort to change the user interdace.
TLDR: WWDC can't come soon enough!
 
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reallynotnick said:
It just seems like a waste of storage space to not have at least some level of merging or ability to share parts of the app between the iPad and macOS versions. As we all know Apple isn't exactly generous with storage. There at the very least needs to be any easy way to share/store files in between the two OSes, like I don't want my photos stored twice because the two photos apps have no way of talking to each other.
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I regularly use my iPad to work on files stored on my two Macs via wifi.
I hardly keep any data on the iPad itself. All of my documents, videos and music are on the Macs and on OneDrive.
I have a choice to access from the Macs when I am at home or directly from OneDrive when I am outside.
The Files app has come a long way in that respect.
 
transpo1 said:
Totally disagree. Eventually, Apple will merge the two OS’s into one product or leave them as separate hardware products (iPad and Mac) with overlapping but differing capabilities. Not everyone’s use case fits your own.

I would love to use my tablet as a writing instrument with Pencil then switch and use it for all my (currently) MacOS-only apps the next. Apple’s not afraid to cannibalize itself as long as there’s enough differentiation to make both hardware products necessary.
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Nope, they absolutely never will, and to even think its possible shows a real lack of understanding of what macOS even is, or does.
 
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Wando64 said:
Thank you. I had not thought of it.

Why having a single computer to do all that you need it to do, when you can have two instead?
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Exactly, we don’t want jack of all trades, master of none junk.

Specialization is good.
 
iPadified said:
I think it is just a rebranding of the M1 chip with perhaps little lower clock frequency for increasing the battery life.
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Maybe with fewer cores and maybe without the unified memory architecture, because it would be too thick and too expensive to package in for the iPad.
 
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