You might be making assumptions about the quality of PvZ2 code.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPhone 14 Pro Faced 'Unprecedented' Setback Leading to Removal of New Graphics Processor
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
In my opinion it’s likely, the graphics are the weakest part of all Apple Silicon: I read a report that Apple, when Apple Silicon was starting, underestimated the future importance of GPUs.
But they have the resources to try to fix that.
Not saying that it won't be amazing, but do you really think a larger than average bump in GPU performance will be a big reason?
Realistically the last couple of iPhone generations are overpowered for 99% of users. Take an iPhone 11 Pro and an iPhone 14 Pro, turn off the 120 Hz. Can you tell a difference in performance? I doubt it.
IMO the biggest upgrade over the past couple of years were 120 Hz, better battery life (both 12 Pro and 13 Pro had decent improvements in battery life) and better cameras.
If you could've gotten only one of the previous couple of iPhone generations, the one to get was the 13 Pro.
We have 1TB phones now. Maybe next year we could see 2TB models. Five years from now who knows what the minimum and maximum capacity of iPhones will be, or how fast 5G will let people download 100GB apps.
1000 times this.
Since the article is paywalled, I can't tell if they actually quantified this garbage claim - but if Apple discovered this anywhere near the second half of this year, then we wouldn't have gotten A16 chips. Since those have new hardware to support the feature, we also would likely not have gotten Dynamic Island.
Indeed. It isn't like the S8 is just a S6 with a new name painted on. They just don't move all products to the latest process and architecture every year, because there's no justification and because their upstream fabrication partner only has so much yield/capacity on those processes anyway.
Obviously Dynamic Island is destined to die once they are able to put all the sensors and cameras behind the display.
It's a neat fun gimmick offering more direct access to background apps and I would consider it useful and an improvement over the notch, but it's clearly just a temporary solution.
Maybe they will include some of the things like access to music playback into the status bar once the camera/Face ID cutouts are gone, but in it's current form it's living on borrowed time.
There is no way Apple will throw away this much display area indefinitely.
Applications start 50% faster due to new memory architecture. Tasks complete 40% faster because of improved CPU. Additional RAM means more applications can be running at the same time, Safari has to reload pages less often. Some GPU-heavy operations complete 3x faster. Typical game frame rate doubled. ML tasks run over 3x faster, and some features are disabled in the OS due to performance. 4x cellular bandwidth because of 5G.
I'm thinking I could tell.
A last minute discovery doesn’t mean it was right before launch, but rather it indicates it was during the final validation stage of prototyping. This could have been last year and still be considered “last minute.”
What we do know is Apple missed its 2-year deadline for the transition to Apple silicone because it’s most powerful computer, that would have benefited from a beefier GPU, is still running Intel.
This report finally unveils the reason we haven’t seen an Apple silicone powered Mac Pro, since the M series is basically the A series with more cores (what used to be marketed as AX before it was called M). A fundamental setback to the underlying architecture has affected everything.
Thats assuming they can put all the sensors and cameras behind the display and be happy with the tradeoffs.
Five years after the iPhone X, and we didn't get those sensors hidden - we got them shrunk and moved down a bit.
Since Apple is on about a five year design refresh process, I suppose we'll find out sometime before iPhone 20.
Currently, having a camera go through the screen impacts image quality. It impacts the quality of the displayed image in the area of the camera. Your screen is also typically much more prone to scratching (as the dedicated lenses are more scratch resistant, more brittle materials like sapphire). The camera and screen technology have to be paired, so they need a vendor that can supply both to meet their needs (and Apple typically tries to have multiple vendors for everything)
Apple also has more than just a camera they need to expose - they need to expose the FaceID components like the flood illuminator and dot projector. They need to supply the proximity sensor, the speaker and microphone, and craft a way for the ambient light sensor to work even if it is underneath a screen.
They have been almost certainly working on it for years, and it may or may not be feasible to ever meet Apple's requirements.
That’s one of the main reasons I upgraded. Literally no difference at all or worse.
Agree. But that’s exactly why i returned it as that’s more or a niche use scenario for me. Not enough to justify and upgrade
I dunno, three years into a four year development process is just not "last minute" to me.
We don't know what Apple has planned for the Mac Pro, but for many users a "Mac Studio with thrice the graphics" actually still doesn't meet their needs.
_Some_ of these people need some multiple of that in GPU power. Some need far more RAM than the SoC's support. Some need things like afterburner cards (which are basically FPGAs). And some extend their system via a massive amount of external I/O.
The design guidance for the current Mac Pro was basically - make it "modular" again. Apple Silicon in its current form is not modular and does not sufficiently support modular systems.
But again, we don't know their plans. I would assume they would need to find a justification for a more modular silicon architecture in general for the Mac Pro to make sense as a product, since a fully custom CPU for a single entry in the $10k+ workstation computer market makes incredibly little financial sense.
If the Mac Pro was going to be a yet-larger Mac Studio, sure. But if that was their target, they would not have a Mac Pro at all - they would just have a future Mac Studio option with yet more cores at double the base price and heat sink surface area
All this shows is apple doesn't appreciate the talent it has had. Since the introduction of the M1 platform there has been little to no architecture improvements in either graphics or processor design.
If you can't reward the best people you have they will go elsewhere.
If you can't reward the best people you have they will go elsewhere.
iPhone 16 can still come with lightning to comply EU mandate.
Why? I do want ray tracing on my video cards. But not on my phone.
"Why? I don't want 3D rendering in my phone!"
And yet, it is exactly what modern phones are able to do.
Power has increased exponentially, and now we have powerful small computers in our hands.
Maybe this happened too soon, but I don't see why we can't eventually have ray tracing in a phone, especially if there's hardware acceleration to do that.
Its a good thing that ray tracing is coming for Apple GPUs, although I see it being useful more in desktops than in phones or ipads.
It's obviously useful for gaming and e.g, light simulations (e.g, changing the light source of a photo). It's a very processor-intensive task if done by the GPU alone, but much more reasonable if done by specialized hardware.
Far from game changer. And for me it’s a bit more of an annoyance than anything remotely useful. A16 is pretty much same performance as A15 in real life, and the camera is great if you shoot in ProRAW but not much noticeable otherwise.
After using it for 3 months, feel the dynamic island is a gimmick, that will be remembered along with the Touch Bar when the need for a cutout is finally eliminated. The notch was a much elegant solution.
Look, I like to make snarky comments as much as everybody. And a rumor about a scrapped feature is not as good as a reliable report of a successful implementation. But why aren't more people excited at even the slight possibility that Apple is working on vastly improving the gaming performance of Apple Silicon? Isn't Ray Tracing the one hardware feature Mac users envy the PC Master Race for? I for one salute to the efforts of the Apple Silicon team! 🫡