iPad Pro Tidbits: A9X Outperforms MacBook, Apple Pencil is Weighted, T-Mobile Financing and More

[maxsix]

I just want to write and work....not manage an OS.

I agree, that's why I truly enjoy my Surface Pro 3 when I want easy portability.

My smartphone of choice based on it's excellent fast multitasking and easy access file system is my Nexus 6.

When speed and productivity are not the highest priorities I use my iPhone 6+

My MBP & MBA & MB are also top notch...

 

[_illusionistk]

These tests are misleading.

1. Geekbench is not an accurate depiction of relativistic efficiency and power across two completely different architectures.

Linus Tarvolds:

"[Geekbench] actually seems to have gotten worse with version 3, which you should be aware of. On ARM64, that SHA1 performance is hardware-assisted. I don’t know if SHA2 is too, but Aarch64 does apparently do SHA256 in the crypto unit, so it might be fully or partially so.

And on both ARM and x86, the AES numbers are similarly just about the crypto unit.

So basically a quarter to a third of the "integer" workloads are just utter BS. They are not comparable across architectures due to the crypto units, and even within one architecture the numbers just don’t mean much of anything.

And quite frankly, it’s not even just the crypto ones. Looking at the other GB3 "benchmarks", they are mainly small kernels: not really much different from dhrystone. I suspect most of them have a code footprint that basically fits in a L1I cache.

-Linus"

• The test are skewed towards the ARM arch without considering x86
• The test are too simple to represent real world workloads

2. The respective GPUs in these SoC are NOT doing the same amount of work. The iOS/Android benchmarks are Floating Point-16 based whereas the graphics calculations under Windows is Floating Point-32. A much more demanding and higher precision mode.

3. These test are contingent upon there being nothing else running in the background residing in memory and using CPU & GPU cycles. Windows is HUGE, so there is probably more power reserve just to run the OS than there is for all of the potential that this ARM processor has.

 

[Renzatic]

• The test are skewed towards the ARM arch without considering x86
• The test are too simple to represent real world workloads

I can agree with that. Geekbench is fine judging relative performance between machines of the same architecture, but it's a bit iffy going between ARM and x86.

There's no doubt that the Apple A9 is a helluva powerful chip, but when you have people running around screaming MY IPHONE 6S IS MORE POWERFUL THAN AN I7 DESKTOP after seeing the geekbench scores, you have to question its validity.

 

[kuwxman]

Timmy is just mad the Surface Book is what the iPad Pro SHOULD have been.

 

[CFreymarc]

Wow talk about made up "facts". The hardware certification is indeed created and defined by Microsoft.

Nope. You are not in the business. That hardware certification draft went back and forth between major PC manufacturers dozens of times before Microsoft gave in on many demands before it was published and make "official." HP specifically was a pain to Redmond and threatened an anti-competitive claim if they went Watson on that program.

 

[zomboooo]

The problem isn't "daily" mundane "web" surfing tasks. It's those times when you need to kick it into a "advanced" use mode to power through a task. Which iOS just doesn't have the capacity to do without prior modification (be it 3rd party apps to add pseudo-file systems, or outright Jailbreaking).

If all I'm going to do with the "tablet" is "web surf" and check email, those "non-gaming daily activities", I can get a far cheaper tablet either from Apple's own lineup OR from a competing OEM.

When you're selling Laptop like performance, at laptop like prices, without an OS that can actually do Laptop level tasks, you have a failed/nich device. Hurts even more that those laptops come with more storage capacity/options to boot (lack of USB and lack of SD card on iPad 'Pro').

Turn it around and look at the Surface Pro 4, in tablet mode it runs more or less like iOS, when you use Touch focused applications for those "daily" things. But when you need the utility spike for something more serious you can flip it around and drop an external keyboard and mouse on it. Plus you can access additional storage solutions very simply. At about the same price point.

I have a 27' iMac. I do developing work and "serious" stuff there. I don't need a Macbook pro or surface product because these screen sizes can't get most of my serious stuff done. In addition, I've owned a surface pro 3 which I traded in after 3 months. The reason is that windows 8 or 10 is not designed for tablets. There might be 5 "buttons" in an 1 cm^2 area. You can't do things by touching the screen and that's why so many people turned off the touch screen feature after they bought so called "All-in-One" laptops. My native language is not English so please don't pick on my grammar or something. But I'm really tired of people saying that iPad Pro doesn't run a full OS. Because it's not designed to do so. I like an iPad pro's beautiful screen and the ability to make some draft then later move it to my iMac (thanks to El Capitan's handoff feature) to be "serious". iOS is not windows or Mac OS. iOS is a different OS. AND people do pay extra money to enjoy smoother experience. Not everyone is a DIY enthusiast or a gamer or a guy who has much "serious" work to do.

 

[maxsix]

These tests are misleading.

1. Geekbench is not an accurate depiction of relativistic efficiency and power across two completely different architectures.

Linus Tarvolds:

Out of respect, it's "Linus Torvalds"

(spelling corrected as a courtesy)

 

[69650]

Because you can't get a pencil??? You immediately assume poor logistics? That's a big egotistical

How is that egotistical? I think maybe it's past your bedtime.

Yes it's poor logistics management. They're advertising the Pencil and Keyboard as essential accessories and yet they can't supply them in sufficient quantities at launch. If Microsoft did that we would be laughing our socks off.

They're the most valuable company in the world not some little start up. They should be able to predict launch demand. That's why they're paid the big salaries.

 

[jase1125]

Nope. You are not in the business. That hardware certification draft went back and forth between major PC manufacturers dozens of times before Microsoft gave in on many demands before it was published and make "official." HP specifically was a pain to Redmond and threatened an anti-competitive claim if they went Watson on that program.

Oh I PROMISE you I know vastly more about the certification process than you. Good try though. No need to convince you are anyone else, but you are flat out wrong.

 

[jase1125]

I have a 27' iMac. I do developing work and "serious" stuff there. I don't need a Macbook pro or surface product because these screen sizes can't get most of my serious stuff done. In addition, I've owned a surface pro 3 which I traded in after 3 months. The reason is that windows 8 or 10 is not designed for tablets. There might be 5 "buttons" in an 1 cm^2 area. You can't do things by touching the screen and that's why so many people turned off the touch screen feature after they bought so called "All-in-One" laptops. My native language is not English so please don't pick on my grammar or something. But I'm really tired of people saying that iPad Pro doesn't run a full OS. Because it's not designed to do so. I like an iPad pro's beautiful screen and the ability to make some draft then later move it to my iMac (thanks to El Capitan's handoff feature) to be "serious". iOS is not windows or Mac OS. iOS is a different OS. AND people do pay extra money to enjoy smoother experience. Not everyone is a DIY enthusiast or a gamer or a guy who has much "serious" work to do.

That just isn't so for many including myself. I use Windows 10 all day long on my Surface Pro 3 with touch. Including "non-touch" optimized apps. The only app I have a problem using touch only is Photoshop, but then I'm using my pen anyway for editing so it is largely irrelevant. Windows 8, I agree it was a problem. Windows 10, it isn't at all.

 

[jase1125]

.

 

[ctg7w6]

You're own assertion was way over the top and deserves the response;
I'm pretty tired of people coming here and praising something I was forced to use for work for a while and was a pretty bad experience!

Surface line has been a major money pit for microsoft; sales through dumping is not a good place to be.

As for the tablet portion, even the surface 4 online forums are filled with bad experience and yeah, no app.
So, why not just buy a great laptop and a great tablet instead of having a crappy experience with both.
The cost will be the same.

My assertion was over the top because I praised a product that you didn't enjoy using? Get over yourself. Clearly not everyone is as vehemently opposed to the Surface Pro line as you are, as evidenced by millions of happy customers. Apple also has millions of customers, but also some people that don't like them.

I don't think you seem to understand that people have different preferences from you, and that that is not a cause to bludgeon someone. In fact, it is a good thing... It allows people to cross the aisle and find new ways of innovating the products that they do like. You need to grow up.

 

[monochromator]

These tests are misleading.

1. Geekbench is not an accurate depiction of relativistic efficiency and power across two completely different architectures.

Linus Tarvolds:

"[Geekbench] actually seems to have gotten worse with version 3, which you should be aware of. On ARM64, that SHA1 performance is hardware-assisted. I don’t know if SHA2 is too, but Aarch64 does apparently do SHA256 in the crypto unit, so it might be fully or partially so.

And on both ARM and x86, the AES numbers are similarly just about the crypto unit.

So basically a quarter to a third of the "integer" workloads are just utter BS. They are not comparable across architectures due to the crypto units, and even within one architecture the numbers just don’t mean much of anything.

And quite frankly, it’s not even just the crypto ones. Looking at the other GB3 "benchmarks", they are mainly small kernels: not really much different from dhrystone. I suspect most of them have a code footprint that basically fits in a L1I cache.

-Linus"

• The test are skewed towards the ARM arch without considering x86
• The test are too simple to represent real world workloads

2. The respective GPUs in these SoC are NOT doing the same amount of work. The iOS/Android benchmarks are Floating Point-16 based whereas the graphics calculations under Windows is Floating Point-32. A much more demanding and higher precision mode.

3. These test are contingent upon there being nothing else running in the background residing in memory and using CPU & GPU cycles. Windows is HUGE, so there is probably more power reserve just to run the OS than there is for all of the potential that this ARM processor has.

On a more recent note:

"By: Linus Torvalds (torvalds.delete@this.linux-foundation.org), November 11, 2015 3:02 pmRoom: Moderated Discussions
...
I don't think there is any question whether the performance is there.

The real issue is how much Apple ends up caring about old applications. Could they do a Macbook with Twister and have it perform well with native apps? No question. I agree that they already almost certainly outperform the current Core M in the Macbook. But what about legacy apps?

In the Macbook form factor, I suspect they don't care a lot. It's not like people buy those as workhorse computers anyway, and emulating x86 apps (slowly) takes care of compatibility. But is it fast enough to run x86-emulated MS Office? And some photoshop, even if not necessarily a lot?

I personally think a Macbook form factor would have made more sense than the iPod Pro. Maybe it's some flaw in me, where I don't see the point of a mediocre keyboard and a bad "not-hinge" balancing act.

But yes, I'd expect that we'll see an ARM Macbook to test the waters. In the not-too-distant future. It will take much longer to move off Intel in the bigger machines, but I think Apple does want to try it, and it makes sense to start at the low end where people already went for form over performance.

Linus"

Where's your god now?

 

[Crzyrio]

I have a 27' iMac. I do developing work and "serious" stuff there. I don't need a Macbook pro or surface product because these screen sizes can't get most of my serious stuff done. In addition, I've owned a surface pro 3 which I traded in after 3 months. The reason is that windows 8 or 10 is not designed for tablets. There might be 5 "buttons" in an 1 cm^2 area. You can't do things by touching the screen and that's why so many people turned off the touch screen feature after they bought so called "All-in-One" laptops. My native language is not English so please don't pick on my grammar or something. But I'm really tired of people saying that iPad Pro doesn't run a full OS. Because it's not designed to do so. I like an iPad pro's beautiful screen and the ability to make some draft then later move it to my iMac (thanks to El Capitan's handoff feature) to be "serious". iOS is not windows or Mac OS. iOS is a different OS. AND people do pay extra money to enjoy smoother experience. Not everyone is a DIY enthusiast or a gamer or a guy who has much "serious" work to do.

This! I don't understand how people can say using a desktop OS on a tablet is even a remotely good idea, if you in fact are doing 'work' on it.

With Apple's integration right now, going from iPad to Mac is so seamless, everything is in the cloud. By the time you are at your desktop computer the file is ready, and a lot of times available through handoff.

 

[monochromator]

Also:

Matt Priestley ‏@mattp4478 17h17 hours ago
So... iPad Pro is now in the building - let's do this! #affinitydesigner @MacAffinity
​

Affinity suite, led by Affinity Designer are seemingly coming to iPad Pro. I hope this trend continue with other developer, hopefully iOS will catch up to win/OSX in the pro apps department in a few years. At least some of the pro apps will be exclusive to iOS/OSX. I know Affinity Suite and will be exclusive to OSX/iOS at least for a few years. Pixelmator too. Procreate is currently iOS only. If you think about it, cheaper, up and coming Adobe competitor seems to develop on OSX/iOS only. If you use those apps, Surface Pro is really not an option. For illustration and vector design at least, iPad Pro seems to have a bright future.

Now it's up to Apple to make iOS conducive to serious work. A better file management will be great.
If no trackpad support Apple need to make the keyboard shortcut up to par with, or surpass the OSX. I mean why can't I use the arrow key then Enter to open apps in the Home Screen, so as in the Spotlight search (you can open spotlight via shortcut but no way to navigate and opening the search result by keyboard).

 

[CFreymarc]

Oh I PROMISE you I know vastly more about the certification process than you. Good try though. No need to convince you are anyone else, but you are flat out wrong.

We can live on differnet sides of the elephant.

Unless you been around the invitation only sessions at the Mt. View Microsoft campus that almost became a backyard brawl over what many say was an attempt requiring gating parts into PCs making them "approved" designs such as the SecureFlash fiasco, just like the Surface tablet, then you have some clout.

In short, many on-line (look in the forums yourself) accused Microsoft of scheming a PC design requirement for Windows 10 where it was impossible to replace the OS with competing products such as Linux or even a non-approved OS X install.

For now, you sound like another Redmond talking head. I'm done here.

 

[cbrec]

"deluded"

One can say that OS X and iOS are better separate. But when Apple configures both softwares into one piece of hardware, which will inevitably happen, they will push it as, "Revolutionary" and "A New Era". In the meantime, apologists and Tim Cook will brush it off as not ideal.

Apple changed when Jobs died. Innovation stopped. What started is milking each product with the smallest innovation for as much money possible. Apple's starting to look like how they did before Jobs came back in the late 90s.

Surface Book is the one of the most innovated computers in awhile. If it wasn't for LP X and FCP X, I would be getting one. So good for Microsoft and Google. If it wasn't for them, Apple would rarely try to innovate, leaving us consumers on the losing end.

 

[touchstoned]

LMAO the rationalizations by intel fans, get over it. You lost the race for perf/w back in 2013 with A7 and now Intel can't even come close to competing with A9X on the GPU or CPU front. Their closest tablet competitor is Core M3 that performs 30-200% slower and draws 3x the power.


By the way, Geekbench is THE 99% the EXACT SAME TEST ON X86 AS iOS. The only difference is the workloads of a couple tests are slightly longer on the x86 side. People have run the iOS compiled test on x86 machines and the scores are IDENTICAL.

Quit your rationalizations and judge something on its merits, instead of your ridiculous prescribed notions about who "should" be the performance leader. x86 is dead and it died this week with what will surely be the beginning of the end of x86 Macs. Tim Cook and analysts are already predicting intel's death.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Intel integrated GPUs (used on MacBooks) are decent...
Maybe Macs in general shouldn't move to ARM, but considering performance showed here, niche computers like MacBook or 11" MBA could take advantage of those fanless powerful SoCs.
Who cares about games ?

Obviously you don't care about games. Most of the rest of the entire planet does, however. Most Mac users have simply given up on Apple ever supporting gaming properly and yet for no good reason what-so-ever; Macs could rock at gaming if Apple put even a small effort into offering a good GPU and keeping drivers up-to-date. A lot of people are not happy with the intrusiveness/spying and advertising and forced updates of Windows 10. Now is a better time than ever for Apple to take more market share away from Microsoft pushing the privacy angle. Gaming is a big problem for many potential switchers, however. Apple should have kept Windows7 support for awhile longer (for boot camp switchers) and they need to offer a REAL desktop, not a mobile system with a big monitor (regardless of gaming). A $2500 desktop should not be using mobile parts in any part of the system. And how long are they going to let the new Mac Pro languish without an update for that matter?

If Apple wants people to take their iPad "PRO" seriously, they need to stop screwing around and start taking "Pro" software seriously again. That deal with IBM is a good start on Enterprise. Start offering XServe again and fix the damn problems in the Server App (look at its ratings and complaints). Look at the complaints about Final Cut Pro even today. Look at the ratings for El Capitan for that matter. Apple has been going downhill for awhile now. Offering a larger iPad with a pencil without fixing these other glaring problems is not the answer. It's a product without a market.

Timmy is just mad the Surface Book is what the iPad Pro SHOULD have been.

The Surface Book is the product I said Apple should have offered YEARS ago. There is no doubt that Microsoft copied the Macbook Pro in designing the Surface Book and YET it goes where Apple refuses to tread. No, OS X is not currently touch-optimized. Most desktop users don't use touch all that much in Windows 8 or 10 either, but at least they have the OPTION if they need/want to OR an application that CAN make good use of Touch can be made for it. It's not even an option for Mac kiosks. It greatly limits what CAN be done in OS X. Apple could easily have made something like the Surface Book out of a Macbook Pro and had it run iOS when in tablet form with some bridging modes to tie them together for file transfers, etc. That would have been a FAR better solution for an "iPad Pro" which is already as unwieldy as the Surface Book for a tablet, but lacks the proper software base.

Imagine if you could draw with the new pencil, etc. and then rotate the screen back and edit your drawing in the full version of Photoshop with ONE portable device. Here, at best you will get a severely limited version of Photoshop and be forced to use the Cloud to transfer files or carry a Macbook Pro with you ON TOP OF the iPad Pro. Why Apple cannot see what a crap solution that is compared to just having a hybrid is beyond me. It doesn't have to blend OS X and iOS perfectly overnight. It just needs to have BOTH on one device and some internal file/networking to bridge the software together. Adobe and others could create a tablet front-end connection to their already existing full suite of Photoshop in NO TIME and it would work perfectly awesome together.

Would everyone need that? No. Does everyone need this iPad Pro? No. So WTF is the difference? Apple isn't being smart about this. They will be forced to put more and more functions in iOS to make this thing more of a notebook replacement but it will never be one. But it could have been both as Microsoft's Surface Book demonstrates. It's utterly SAD that Microsoft is now more innovative than Apple for hardware offerings.

Windows may have its down points and Windows 10 is a privacy nightmare, but clearly they see market opportunities that Apple is BLIND to. The tablet market is about tapped out by itself, but a hybrid synergistic market is virtually untapped except for Microsoft's product offerings and they are clearly starting to take off. This is a missed opportunity on Apple's part. And whether you think OS X should "merge" or stay separate, it is clearly going to have to offer SOME type of touch support in the future or be left behind as a relic of the early 21st century because in the future, computers will offer every type of input interface imaginable and Microsoft clearly sees that (Cortana, touch, etc.). There is NO GOOD REASON that Siri isn't a part of El Capitan already. Letting Microsoft beat them to the punch on something they invented is pathetic, really. Not everyone will need/want voice input on a desktop or notebook, but some will and not offering more options means incentives to pick a Surface Book or other Windows PC over a Mac in the future.

 

[BornAgainMac]

Microsoft should respond to Cook: "At least with our product, we offer our accessories for purchase at launch for everyone that wants one. Laptop replacement my ass."

 

[hiddenmarkov]

LMAO the rationalizations by intel fans, get over it. You lost the race for perf/w back in 2013 with A7 and now Intel can't even come close to competing with A9X on the GPU or CPU front. Their closest tablet competitor is Core M3 that performs 30-200% slower and draws 3x the power.


By the way, Geekbench is THE 99% the EXACT SAME TEST ON X86 AS iOS. The only difference is the workloads of a couple tests are slightly longer on the x86 side. People have run the iOS compiled test on x86 machines and the scores are IDENTICAL.

Quit your rationalizations and judge something on its merits, instead of your ridiculous prescribed notions about who "should" be the performance leader. x86 is dead and it died this week with what will surely be the beginning of the end of x86 Macs. Tim Cook and analysts are already predicting intel's death.

Linus would actually be very vendor neutral. He is not white knighting intel. His OS, or at least the framework he laid out, and many put their spin on runs on many architectures (sparc, ppc, intel over the years, amd). He knows a bit about benchmarking the take away.

Benchmarking is a debate in itself really. I know a real quick way to have the A9 fail horribly. Put it under load for a good long while. It will thermal cutoff and drop performance like a stone. An active cooled intel will bury it since its thermal cutoff will come much later on. Here in lies the problems with benchmarks. They can can find a middle ground to avoid this..but by doing so they remove what makes one thing better potentially.


Also why would apple do this. They switched from PPC. Which back in its day actually gave them a very good edge. I know in many areas of scientific computing it edged out intel in FLOPS races. TBH....it faired well against very specifically designed architectures as well. Intel switch get them very good cross code compatibility to be more accepted in the market. It lost FLOPS in the process though.

I tried to find current flops rankings with the A9 but can't seem to find any. I have older data showing Intel has an edge over other ARM's. Now here we can argue who needs mega or giga FLOPS. I would say I do....my interests run lots of calculations. Apple would care about people like me...as the truly great thing about macs in science is we can use many tools that are *nix based (science likes *nix, free apps, can build good bare bones systems with a free OS...extends the budget a bit doing so). If not direct ported they build off source easily enough. it tbh is why I switched to a mbp.

I view it in some ways as a very stable *nix/bsd platform (I am in CLI a lot in terminal). had too much fun with *nix installs on other laptops where every upgrade was a fun game of guessing what breaks on this update (wireless my usual suspect, solutions went from mild to wild with that one..).

 

[touchstoned]

Linus would actually be very vendor neutral. He is not white knighting intel. His OS, or at least the framework he laid out, and many put their spin on runs on many architectures (sparc, ppc, intel over the years, amd). He knows a bit about benchmarking the take away.

Benchmarking is a debate in itself really. I know a real quick way to have the A9 fail horribly. Put it under load for a good long while. It will thermal cutoff and drop performance like a stone. An active cooled intel will bury it since its thermal cutoff will come much later on. Here in lies the problems with benchmarks. They can can find a middle ground to avoid this..but by doing so they remove what makes one thing better potentially.


Also why would apple do this. They switched from PPC. Which back in its day actually gave them a very good edge. I know in many areas of scientific computing it edged out intel in FLOPS races. TBH....it faired well against very specifically designed architectures as well. Intel switch get them very good cross code compatibility to be more accepted in the market. It lost FLOPS in the process though.

I tried to find current flops rankings with the A9 but can't seem to find any. I have older data showing Intel has an edge over other ARM's. Now here we can argue who needs mega or giga FLOPS. I would say I do....my interests run lots of calculations. Apple would care about people like me...as the truly great thing about macs in science is we can use many tools that are *nix based (science likes *nix, free apps, can build good bare bones systems with a free OS...extends the budget a bit doing so). If not direct ported they build off source easily enough. it tbh is why I switched to a mbp.

I view it in some ways as a very stable *nix/bsd platform (I am in CLI a lot in terminal). had too much fun with *nix installs on other laptops where every upgrade was a fun game of guessing what breaks on this update (wireless my usual suspect, solutions went from mild to wild with that one..).

Really? Because Ars did exactly what you asked. Here are the results:

No throttling. Please show me where you can "easily" make A9 or A9X throttle, because Ars couldn't do it.

 

[Palladium SG]

LMAO the rationalizations by intel fans, get over it. You lost the race for perf/w back in 2013 with A7 and now Intel can't even come close to competing with A9X on the GPU or CPU front. Their closest tablet competitor is Core M3 that performs 30-200% slower and draws 3x the power.


By the way, Geekbench is THE 99% the EXACT SAME TEST ON X86 AS iOS. The only difference is the workloads of a couple tests are slightly longer on the x86 side. People have run the iOS compiled test on x86 machines and the scores are IDENTICAL.

Quit your rationalizations and judge something on its merits, instead of your ridiculous prescribed notions about who "should" be the performance leader. x86 is dead and it died this week with what will surely be the beginning of the end of x86 Macs. Tim Cook and analysts are already predicting intel's death.

Intel fanboys: "My 4790K is 4.4GHz, only draws like 80 times more power and at least cost 10 times as much, but still can't even beat the A9 by 2X in ST performance. Where is your Apple A9 god now?"

 

[hiddenmarkov]

Really? Because Ars did exactly what you asked. Here are the results:

No throttling. Please show me where you can "easily" make A9 or A9X throttle, because Ars couldn't do it.

Well you have 3 massive dips on the A9 for starters. A8 takes a few lumps it seems.
No reference to a desktop CPU as well.

And link to see how they killed the CPU would be nice. Many benchmarks I the seen run vanilla code that just spins up the CPU as it were. Its usually one task as well.

Here is how I kill CPU..R analysis on large data sets. Tends to remove things like predictive analysis and such a proc can use to internally improve performance as basic workflow of clean data, analysis and graphing can have it all over the place internally. I see this quite readily when I throw in time code for different parts of my R script. Somethings run smooth as silk, others take time. basically some stuff is low hanging fruit the processor can bang out fast. Other stuff its has to think a bit.

Why Linus' comments and the posters summation of them is accurate to some degree. Need to factor in real workloads. I tbh do not see many "real" apps on mobile at this time. Now when/if apple gives FCP for full blown editing of a 30 minute video on this setup, I will keep an open mind. I want apple to amaze me tbh. Or when adobe/capture one/etc put a real app on this to run some heads to heads of say a batch post processing of raws again the mind is open here. I would even be nice here...the batch has to fit in the gb memory limit for both systems (yes I am i giving up the 16gb of my MBP). Assume 20-30mb per raw we have a fair match up.

I am not even an A9 hater. Special built proc on an purpose designed iOS...it should work great. to draw an analogy, I used to build and race street cars (usually local track, will plead he 5th to late night runs on empty roads...). Cheapest option I had to reduce weight? Rip out interior. Few pounds here and there, get some differences. Was this making it top choice for a family drive as well? Not really.

Moral to this story...enjoy the A9 as yes it seems to be good. But its working in a specific realm. limited os and purpose built hardware. Like my street race cars...a great day at the track not a shocker. Sucking as a generic family drive around car....also not a shocker.

Desktop replacement though....not seeing that angle. Not even an apple thing, I heard mumblings of I think qualcomm trying for an ARM based computer. I wish them well...but iffy waters here. Intel rose to the top here on the bodies of many special architectures. I actually liked sparc architecture and suns's OS. Pricing and added pains of application support is what killed it. AMD has only faired well in general competition (I will exclude mainframe/super realm here) . And that is only because it made the caveat of being a RISC based setup that says you know....we might want to play nice in the sandbox with intel.

 

[73b]

Don't you think you hit the nail on the head? You admit you'd never give up use of your laptop.

Do you think you speak for everyone or just yourself?

Do you think that there's literally millions of new people that clearly only know iOS and in fact ONLY use iOS and earth to everyone they probably don't even even own a Mac - wow earth shattering I know -- so YES there's enough of a market of people - potentially young professionals who will be able to plenty productive in our newer "dumbed down" society.

There's a vast mass market of people that use technology devices to CONSUME rather than theoretically PRODUCE like some us (don't let your head fall off here) old schoolers.

I've got a Mac Pro, Mac mini Server, iPhone 6s+, iPad Air, Apple TV 3, etc etc etc.

I think I can say with authority that one CAN produce CONTENT - some professional I might add -- on a iPhone, iPad etc. Yea I said that.

What's there to grasp about that? These devices shoot HiDef video etc they are very capable of being used professionally as is for various content creation objectives and it will only improve.. No yea buts needed. Times are changing. People and a generation or two will not even ever interact with a desktop or laptop. So?

Of course those people exist, and it will be great for them. I said Apple is approaching the wrong way because they are pushing it as a laptop replacement. People who have and use laptops would probably never switch from OS X to iOS. Even the people who only use iOS have no need for this because they already have iPads and this doesn't do anything more to make it worth the upgrade.