yes of course...but not at this magnitude...we know now, April, everything that apple is releasing this year and early 2021
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Leaker: Apple Planning iPad Air With Under-Screen Touch ID, ARM MacBook, Game Controller, and More
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They are different devices. I never used a keyboard with my iPads, but to me it is a complementary device, I wouldn't replace my Macbook with an iPad. Some people do use their iPads with the keyboard on all the time, maybe a 12" MBP will be a better device to them. I think the 12 Macbook still make sense today as an ARM Mac with a light form factor and great battery life. Eventually they'll migrate to ARM other models like the Air and the Pro, but it will take time and versions of macOS compatible with Intel will still be released for years, as Apple just introduced the Mac Pro.
I'm not in a hurry for an ARM Mac, just bought my 16" MBP and I plan to keep it for 4-5 years, then I guess I'll be ready for the ARM transition.
If you think all the feature upgrades of the 2020 4th gen are small, what will that make the 5th gen? Rumors say maybe only a faster SoC—as if it really needs to be faster.
No thanks! It'll probably be awful - Apple have a terrible track record of ergonomics - look at their mice (and don't even get me started on the Siri Remote). I also wouldn't be surprised if it was irritatingly simplified, eg no analogue triggers like the Nintendo Switch controller, though I'd say that likely depends what current MFI controllers support - do they have analogue triggers as standard? Personally I'd like to see standard controllers get a little *more* complicated, with dual stage triggers and rear/grip buttons, which are both very easy to understand and phenomenally useful features.
To be fair, I *loved* the old remote. The metal one with the ring of buttons. So simple to use, so little wasted space. But the Siri Remote, OMG. Worst Apple product ever.
Is it just the bezels you like? I can't think of any other example TouchID has, except on a phone (and not under screen) where you can feel it's location and activate it whilst the phone is coming out of your pocket.
Why? There's Windows for ARM. I think you may well be right, but not necessarily.
You what? Can you elaborate?
I'm not sure about that, for a few reasons. Is Sony under as much scrutiny as Apple, and doesn't Sony announce things long before they enter production?
ARM again ... this is the wrong discussion. This is a sideshow. Far more important than the processor architecture is that the software works properly. There are way too many bugs. Look at the threads on Catalina. There have been complaints about the poor software quality for years. Usability and software design was also better and more consistent at Apple once.
Apple products should stand out in a positive sense and not only in terms of price or limited hardware choice (for example where is the Mac "Midi"?). Stupid hardware ideas with the wrong focus ("Functions follows forms", Keyboard experiments at the cost of the user, ...) are also possible with ARM.
There is also a lot to do when it comes to data protection/privacy. In my PiHole, for example, a lot of Apple pops up, although I use almost no iCloud and have turned off all kinds of things. Why? Where can I find an explanation of this topic on the Apple website? Why do I have to do my own research?
Apple products should stand out in a positive sense and not only in terms of price or limited hardware choice (for example where is the Mac "Midi"?). Stupid hardware ideas with the wrong focus ("Functions follows forms", Keyboard experiments at the cost of the user, ...) are also possible with ARM.
There is also a lot to do when it comes to data protection/privacy. In my PiHole, for example, a lot of Apple pops up, although I use almost no iCloud and have turned off all kinds of things. Why? Where can I find an explanation of this topic on the Apple website? Why do I have to do my own research?
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ARM based macbook would be perfect. I have an iMac for the heavy duty work, requiring virtualization, but I now have a MacBook Air for the light stuff, and my wife uses it. No need for any legacy or windows-only apps there.
Bringing low-end Macs to ARM is relatively easy. There's less software that needs to be ported over, since that target audience uses fewer native apps anyway.
High-end Macs rely on Intel far more heavily, especially once Windows becomes involved.
It's also unproven (in public, anyway) how well Apple Ax can scale to high TDPs in the first place.
MacBooks will continue to run MacOS, regardless of the CPU architecture. (iPads will continue to run iPadOS.)
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What I find interesting is that I think one rumor has mentioned AMD, but all the others mention ARM.
I have the last iPad Pro that supports Touch ID and in bed, I see Face ID becoming a huge nuisance, which is why I haven’t upgraded my iPad since 2017.
If this new Air has the top notch features of a Pro but has that awesome Touch ID over Face, I’m buying it. About time.
If this new Air has the top notch features of a Pro but has that awesome Touch ID over Face, I’m buying it. About time.
Unbelievable how people here are focused on perf, I mean in the real world people don't even know what is an A-series processor! They just want their device to be blazing fast and that's what it is!
It's also funny knowing the history of Apple vs Android, in the past, Android's fans where all about "We got the best x-cores, y Gb of RAM, iPhone are so bad in perf" and Apple's fans were like "Okay, but we have the best design + the best OS we don't care about tech specs"
Now people are crying for a 10% benchmark improvement they will never see in real life, the proof being that event the first-gen iPad Pro is still rocket fast! And the future update will not depend on the chipset but more on Apple will to support the device for a longer period
No, current programs are not "written in x86-64". They're written in Objective C, C++, Swift etc. - which don't depend on the processor architecture - and compiled to x86 code. Huge swathes of applications will simply require the developers to tick the "ARM64" box in XCode, re-compile and test: in many cases it will be far less work than the recent switch to 64 bits, or the annual update to cope with the latest OS X version - which could involve changing code or even re-designing apps to work with new security features.
Yes - there will be exceptions where processor-specific code has been used for speed or optimisation, but in 2020 that sort of thing is overdue for replacing with calls to OS frameworks (Metal, Accelerate etc.) anyway, and other optimisation is best left to the compiler. Even then, we're talking about replacing small sections of code, not a complete re-write of the app. Lovingly hand-crafted machine code is hard work and no developer with any sense uses it unless there is a very, very good reason.
I'm not saying it's a non-problem, but its nothing like the complexity of (say) making a Mac version of a Windows app or even a iOS version of a Mac app. Even with Photoshop for iPad, a huge part of the difficulty is totally re-inventing the UI for touchscreen, dealing with the limited RAM/storage of the iPad and the peculiar security restrictions of iOS.
The unavoidable problem areas are likely to be:
- Goodbye to x86 Bootcamp/x86 virtualisation/x86 Docker (but hello to iOS/ARM and ARM Linux/Docker and maybe ARM Windows)
- Any "abandonware" no longer being actively developed/supported (that hasn't already been killed off by Catalina and the loss of 32-bit support)
- Some big dinosaurs with loads of legacy code and huge ecosystems of third-party plugins
- Some custom hardware drivers - but that's only because certain manufacturers suck at long-term support, and they're just as likely to drop support for the next x86 version of MacOS anyway.
This! Absolutely! IMHO, just as you say, Apple should really introduce a Mac, not a Mac Mini or Mac Pro, but a Mac, ITX sized Machine with support for full size GPU. A machine for the average person that can also install Windows and game on it with a decent sized CPU cooler that runs silent on load or even fanless on idle. Sell that for 1500 without GPU.
Other than that, software needs to be focused on.
Although, we have to look at the bright side, since Jony left things are already getting much better...
Only one choice if you want an 8” iPad. Only one choice if you want a 13” iPad.
Three choices if you want a 10-11” iPad: $299 entry level, $499 mid-tier and a $799 high-end Pro.
If people can choose among dozens and dozens of different breakfast cereal on the shelf, or among a couple hundred car models, I think they can handle three iPads that are separated by hundreds of dollars.
I’d hope so, but that sounds too good to be true.
Keep in mind the 12” MacBook was priced as a premium product, despite having the least powerful chips of any Apple device.
The average person doesn’t install Windows on a Mac, let alone game on it. There’s little usage of—or demand for—Windows on Mac, and gamer demand for relatively expensive Mac hardware won’t move that needle at all, imo.
The AMD rumors would take a lot less effort on Apple's end, but seem fueled more by wishful thinking than actual need or likelihood.
Yes, currently, AMD Ryzen Mobile handily beats Intel in multicore. It also looks like, for a year or two from now, AMD will do better than Intel in that segment. But extrapolating from that strikes me as foolish. Ice Lake looks like Intel is finally fixing some of their issues, and Tiger Lake will likely build on that. Now the only question is how quickly they can move those other segments (45 W, 65 W, etc.) to 10nm as well.
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This is a scenario that less than 1% of Apple's target audience is interested in.
I think you're extremely naive about the amount of this code out there, especially when touching anything to do with DRM and anything involving third party graphics libraries and rendering engines such as Unreal which are much, much more common than Metal is. Metal objectively will never succeed because of the lack of cross platform applicability
They're going to be a huge deal on a 12" MacBook, because people who buy a 12" Macbook instead of an iPad do it precisely because of the things that MacBook can do that an iOS device cannot, which is significantly overrepresented on that list.
Anyone who travels and spends a lot of time in hotel rooms, which is almost certainly the vast majority of 12" MacBook buyers.
Yes, if there's one thing the 2015 Core M MacBook was great at, it's games.
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That MacBook was barely fast enough to run Chrome, much less any game.
The notion that 1% of Apple's audience is interested in gaming is the deepest FUD imaginable.
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I'm literally typing on one that happily runs The Sims 4 for example.
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I'm literally typing on one that happily runs The Sims 4 for example.