In my experience the iPad Pro is amazing as an standalone consumption device, as light standalone work powerhouse or the perfect companion to anything Mac...
Maybe, just maybe, they’ll replace the touch bar with an iPhone X sized track pad that allows you to switch from track pad to touch pad icons.
Going touchscreen seems more logical to me, though I like touchbar concept instead. This question messes with a lot of different users needs and software UI, specially for longtime, muscle memory trained users. Only option is to have it all and then you choose what to use, but I guess this will be hard to implement on software level in a clean and easy apprehensive way, not to mention cost wise.
You're not "hoping for discrete graphics". You're hoping for good graphics performance. You don't care (nor should you care) how it gets done.
Nothing really. The current MBA is very nice.
Good grief.I'm not moving the bar. I didn't set it to where they were not going to eliminate some along the way. So this isn't a big "change" from my position at all. Nor have I 'moved the bar" in some sense that iGPU are necessarily limited to always being slower than dGPUs. However,
There is exceedingly little evidence though that Apple wants to put in multiple, broad range of Metal family targets into Metal. There are zero dGPUs supported now in macOS 11. Not even Apple's GPU. Apple is out to be "king of iGPU" implementing. That's nice and will lead to a decrease in the number of dGPU they buy. But that has some inherent limits on scaling. Folks who throw 8-10 billion more transistors at the problem than Apple does have a pretty good chance of going faster on a decent variety of workloads. ( especially in the generalized computational space. )
The top 500 supercomputers in the world (https://top500.org/lists/top500/list/2020/11/) . in the top 50 how many pure shared memory systems in that list? None. ( probably none in the whole list but don't feel like walking through the whole thing to verify.)
And dGPU also doesn't necessarily mean can't cut down on the amount of copying.
AMD Helping to Bring Smart Access Memory to Nvidia GPUs
Smart Access Memory will work on Intel, AMD combos too.www.tomshardware.com
Apple has been lame on covering those elemnts from OpenCL 2+ for years and following the base infrastructure that is in the lastest bleeeding edge dGPU packages. That doesn't mean it isn't out there. Just means that under the narrow subset of limited macOS drivers they have an edge. That's lack of doing the work. not hardware.
Sure If Apple remains slack and behind the curve on implementing PCI-e v4 , v5 , 6 ( and CCIX and/or CXL ) they will paint Macs into a corner where Apple iGPU is the only solution, but that isn't necessary nor absent of being dubious on Apple's part.
Does Apple have a better iGPU in the wings. Sure. Is Apple going to whip AMD MI100 and Nvidia's A100 implementations in a computational drag race over the next two years, probably not. Is Apple going to whip a pair of those in a system over the next three years.... even more probably not.
And how about updating the antiquated webcam to a camera that actually provides a high-resolution image? Get with it already, Apple!
Honestly, how much "Pro" work does one do without an external keyboard and monitor these days? I thought I would hate the Touch Bar, but honestly don't even notice it (especially on the newer MBPs with the real ESC key) now. It's "fine" -- nothing I'd pay more to have, but not really a negative, either.
Until and unless they kill off the gimmicky, in-the-way touch bar (OR AT LEAST GIVE US THE OPTION OF NOT HAVING IT on Pros!), Mac is still on my S%&T list.
That's exactly what I want, ideally in a matte black, but that isn't happening. The bezels need to be reduced. I am just wondering if the MacBook will be brought back or not - right now it doesn't feel like it will. I hope I am wrong.
Adobe apps are not “cloud-based” btw, despite having “Cloud” in the name. Cloud-tethered (i.e. license renewals) is more appropriate. Most of the processing is done by your computer, not theirs. “Cloud” is just a cloudy word for “someone else’s computers”.
USB-PD is “universal enough” to charge electronics for now. Being able to deliver 100W should be sufficient in the near future until the world’s airlines increases their 27A limit of in-flight personal batteries. That is, when flying is back “in vogue” again.
So true. At the moment I would actually pay extra to NOT have the TouchBar.
