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This looks so desperate. Next they will be trying to give their stuff away as a straight swap for iPads. Then what, free with tokens from Corn Flakes.:rolleyes:
 
Except you are wrong. On several accounts. There are major advances in this chip that have nothing to do with RAM: Twice the number of registers. Twice the number of vector registers. Vector operations for double precision floating point. That alone makes it run faster. Lots of code is optimised for 64 bit, because years of MacOS X 64 bit optimisations can just be carried over. As an example of actual memory savings, the C++ standard library will not allocate memory for any strings up to 22 characters. NSNumber objects will usually not allocate any memory. Then there are built-in operations for cryptography, making encryption and decryption a lot faster.

Thing is, what you're talking about isn't inherit to the 64-bit upgrade. That's all a part of the physical chip design. If Apple released the A7 with only a 32-bit instruction set, it'd run about the same, give or take a bit depending on certain computation heavy tasks. On iOS, you wouldn't notice much of a difference.

It's like comparing 32-bit Windows vs. 64-bit Windows running on the same chip. The OS itself doesn't run much faster. The only immediate benefit is it's able to access more ram. You only start noticing a difference when you're performing tasks that throw a crapton of numbers at the CPU to crunch. Like compressing and decompressing files, remuxing and encoding video files, encrypting large amounts of files on your drive, stuff like this. These are things that benefit from 64-bit, and even then you only start seeing it shine over 32-bit when it's handling very large amounts amounts of data.

When it comes to consumer desktop environments, what 64-bit offers is more efficiency, less speed. In other words, it won't launch video files faster, or even play them more smoothly, won't display webpages faster, or make your video conferencing calls any smoother, but it'll be able to handle all these tasks at once on a single core with a little more grace. It doesn't make anything faster exactly, but it does make it a little less likely to slow down when you really start pegging the processor. Why? Becuase, like I said above, 64-bit is all about handling large amounts of data better.

But even here iOS won't see much of an advantage (at least not yet) because it's not truly multitasking in the classical sense. The only places I can see it being an advantage are for encrypting files, which might take a couple seconds less on a 64-bit CPU, and programs like iPhoto. Applying filters and tweaking the colors will be faster on the A7. For everything else you use your iPad and iPhone for? You won't notice a bit of difference.

64-bit on the iDevices isn't about making things faster and better. It's all about Apple future proofing the platform.

Ram on the other hand? Immediately beneficial to both developers and consumers. iOS is already pretty good at allocating ram, so you won't notice any speed increase. What you will see are better and more complex apps. And hey, if you have a nice, fast CPU, why hamstring it with limited memory? Think about it. If the iPad 5 has 1GB ram, same as the 3 & 4, what good is the faster CPU gonna do? You'll end up with roughly the same quality of apps...but they'll launch faster. Developers don't have room to allow them to do any more.

Memory usage is 90% dictated by things where 64 bit doesn't produce any memory overhead, that is graphics, video, audio, text.

I'll let someone who actually knows more about programming than I do go into detail about this, but 64-bit programs do take more memory than 32-bit ones. Depending on what's what, it can either be the roughly same amount, a negligable bit more, or, in worst case scenarios, twice as much. From what I understand, the more complicated the program, the more it leverages 64-bit architecture, the more ram it requires.

The end result is...yeah...having more ram wouldn't hurt at all.
 
Does a car get any additional functionality every new model year? It does the same thing...get you to and from a place. Only engines, look, bells and whistles get upgraded really.

You're logic is really really bad.

You're analogy is bad because as a functional vehicle to get you from A to B, there's nothing apart from deteriorating components of a car till it needs replacing that makes people ever want another one unless the new car offers something the old one didn't. The iPad/iPhone has simply had a few tweaks to the design (not sold on the need for a finger print sensor myself). This time next year, I'd expect a change on the level of the iPhone 4S to iPhone 5 on all their iOS devices.

One thing Apple could do with all their iOS devices, including the Apple TV is add a SDXC slot. Although allowing for the overhead of iOS, a 32 or 64Gb device offers more than double or quadruple the storage of the 16Gb base models, adding your own unlimited storage would be a huge bonus.
 
This relies purely on people being dissatisfied with their iPad. Surely the only occasion that happens if people want to upgrade to a newer iPad.

From a completely objective standpoint, I understand the level of dissatisfaction with Apple products is very low, so where is the market for this offer?

I think it's purely designed to create the impression that there is dissatisfaction out there, rather than actually create sales directly.
 
You clearly haven't seen Microsoft's financial reports lately, then. They are doing VERY well. Notice how they just paid cash to buy out Nokia's devices and services division and still have over 70 billion dollars in the bank? Yeah--they're not hurting for profit.

Never said MS was broke, just that there is likely more profit margin in an old iPad than in a new Surface. There certainly is more desire.

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough.
 
The plan

it is clear that ms ****ed up so they are trying to make the wrong right.

1. get hold of iPads
2. sell crappy Surface
3. call already angry customers and offer them the used iPads for their crappy Surface

there is just on flaw microsoft what will you do when the ppl who trade their iPads for surface and they find out they have been robbed by you?
 
I wonder if Bill Gates is saying, "Phew, glad I got out when I did!" Laughing while swinging his gulf club.
 
Agreed! The dancing commercials were, in a phrase, DUMB AS HELL. What were they thinking?

But the commercials where they use Siri as their bitch to show all the things Windows tablets can do that iPads can't do are brilliant :).

Yes, the comparison were good. For me the Surface is superior than the iPad itself.

In my experience, the mistake was the advertising. Yesterday I went to youtube to look for the first iPad commercial and it was all about functionality, not kids dancing like flying monkeys.
 
I'm giving you examples - extreme, maybe, but still relevant. You brag that you can run Photoshop on your Surface. Why not a 4" phone? Based on your exact logic, wouldn't that make such a phone more powerful than an iPhone? No. Nobody in the real world wants to do this. So why do you think editing HD images on a 10" tablet is "powerful"? It's not. But if you feel powerful doing stupid things on a tablet, simply because you can, rather than because it makes sense, then thumbs-up to you, little buddy. Stay warm.

If you've been paying attention, you'd know that Windows 8.1 was accelerated because 8.0 was such a disaster, in a (partial) backpedal of their stupid new ideas. Sure, every OS vendor releases new updates. But not every vendor reverts big chunks of their bold new paradigm within the first update, solely because it was received so poorly.

How is it silly beyond you not wanting to do it? A 10" screen works. As for 8.1, they were talking about moving to an accelerated schedule as soon as Windows 8 came out. According to your logic, they looked into the future and saw that it was going to be bad. They also made a few changes that people like, or might like, but overall that's a good thing. Should they be like Apple or Google that doesn't ask for any input from their uses?

I'm comparing two 64GB devices with similarly functional "optional" accessories that are likely to be purchased with them and I was being very generous. The 64GB Surface Pro is Microsoft's "bottom-of-the-line" Pro model and the 64GB iPad is Apple's "next-to-top-of-the-line" iPad. Of course Windows 8 requires significantly more space for installation that iOS, so that iPad actually has more room for user data than that Surface. On top of that, the iPad is very usable without any keyboard accessory but the Surface is nearly crippled without one of its two available keyboard accessories.

As for the software you mentioned:
Visual Studio - $500 to $4,249 depending on what version you want.
vs.
Xcode - FREE There's just one version and it does everything.

Granted Xcode only runs on a Mac. But, as a developer I'd rather use a computer (as in non-tablet or non-phone device) for development but that's just me. And for me the same applies for Xcode or Visual Studio.

Adobe Creative Suite - $50 per month for the whole suite if you go through Creative Cloud. $20 per month for an individual app.

Almost every Adobe app I could in the app store is FREE. I did find at least one exception which is Photoshop Touch for $4.99. There might be others but I didn't look that far.

And come to think of it, if you want to run Adobe's bloatware, you better get the 128GB Surface Pro. The price just went up to $900 (+$80 for the keyboard.)

Or you could get a 128GB iPad for only $800. Much better value, IMO.

Much better value if you really don't want to do anything major, sure. You have no IDE, no full fledged anything. Also, visual studio express.

Lmao!! Run visual studio on your rt or pro pad. You are funny

Yes, you can run Visual Studio on your Pro. Not the RT. The Pro is full Windows 8.
 
Hey, why badmouth Kia?

This is like the Kia Dealerships advertising they will gladly take your lightly used Mercedes Benz on trade-in....

Except that, these days, Kia's are actually nice, fairly desirable cars. Sure, they aren't Mercedeses, but you get a lot of value for your buck.
 
when will these companies understand that people do't switch. at least not in significant numbers. i will do this in caps.

IT'S NOT THE PRODUCT THAT KEEPS US LOYAL AS MUCH AS IT IS THE MONEY TIED UP IN APP PURCHASES!!

this is not just apple people. it's android and windows users. apple got the giant part of the pie early. i know i won't change because over the last 6ish? years i've bought at least $2000 dollars worth of apps and games. i'm not willing to give those up. or rebuy ones that can comppete on android or windows.
 
I am more proud than ever before that Apple never done this kind of stupidity even when they had minuscule market share. I have been a loyal Apple customer even before the iPods. Yes, I pay premium prices for Apple products that last a very long time. Actually, most of them still work up to now. They might even outlast these MS garbage.
 
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC531ZM/A/apple-ipad-camera-connection-kit

(That works with more than just a camera...it takes all sorts of USB devices)

No good. That's 30 pin. And we need lightning.

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You do realize iOS doesn't have an accessible file system because that's how Steve Jobs wanted it. I only say that because these days every other comment here seems to be what Steve would/wouldn't have done.
I'm pretty sure Forstall had a say in that too. You know the whole 2 versions of the tablet OS Apple had going but Forstall's version won out.

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Maybe if Microsoft wants to pry my iPad out of my cold, dead, hands ;)
Photos like that are funny. Vote to have the freedom to prevent others from having freedom (by shooting them dead).
 
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