Apple "Determined to Kill Off the Laptop for iPads"

Megalith

Megalith

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The Register believes that Apple is intentionally trying to kill their laptops because iPads, which run iOS, a walled garden, lets the company exclusively decide what runs on it and what it can take a cut of. Their evidence stems from Apple’s latest product launch, which included updated versions of the MacBook Air and iPad Pro. Compared to the latter, the former not only received lukewarm updates but had its price increased by 25 percent.

Except of course, Apple still isn't there. And while they can be a stubborn lot they also read the financials – people love the MacBook Air. Despite its best efforts to kill it off with the MacBook and carve a divide between most consumers and professional users with a new line of MacBook Pros (the ones with the silly touchbar), we love a laptop. And so Apple has, begrudgingly updated it. Likewise the Mac Mini. But the star of the show in its mind is the iPad Pro.
 
Cook would have you believe that they just want to protect you from data collectors that are weaponizing your profile with military precision gnuck gnuck gnuck.
 
don't buy apple, problem solved.

just saw a vid on Linus saying the Microsoft surface is a fanatic laptop if you're in the the market for a thin type laptop.
 
Sikkyu said:
don't buy apple, problem solved.

just saw a vid on Linus saying the Microsoft surface is a fanatic laptop if you're in the the market for a thin type laptop.
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Well, don't buy a Macbook Air unless you absolutely must run full-fat OSX on an ultrabook.

An XPS13 will run circles around it, and it's just the best of the very good from HP and ASUS and Lenovo and...
 
The 1tb iPad Pro looks pretty badass to me. Good luck finding a better laptop than that for the price. You guys realize it has a GPU that's as powerful as an Xbox One S, right? The CPU is no slouch, either.
 
SickBeast said:
The 1tb iPad Pro looks pretty badass to me. Good luck finding a better laptop than that for the price. You guys realize it has a GPU that's as powerful as an Xbox One S, right? The CPU is no slouch, either.
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Yeah get real, prove that, I'm sorry but just no. there is no way they are slamming a GPU in there that competes with something that uses the power it does. XB1 S is similar to a desktop RX580, you're gonna have to really back that up.
 
Sikkyu said:
don't buy apple, problem solved.

just saw a vid on Linus saying the Microsoft surface is a fanatic laptop if you're in the the market for a thin type laptop.
Click to expand...

Or just buy any laptop you can find at a decent price. Problem solved.

Where the issues arrive is ecosystem of os. Apple has so many people locked into their ecosystem that they will never leave apple and their icloud storage of photos and videos. The same goes for companies that invest heavily into apple. Switching back to a windows solution is costly and 'not very cool'
 
Vercinaigh said:
Yeah get real, prove that, I'm sorry but just no. there is no way they are slamming a GPU in there that competes with something that uses the power it does. XB1 S is similar to a desktop RX580, you're gonna have to really back that up.
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Xbox One and One S' GPUs are weaker than the Radeon 7790. Only the One X has the more powerful GPU.
 
SLee said:
Xbox One and One S' GPUs are weaker than the Radeon 7790. Only the One X has the more powerful GPU.
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Yes, however they have an on-die cache that makes them perform closer to a Radeon 7850. Similar performance to a GTX 1050.
 
NemesisX said:
I use both. It's not difficult. Apple isn't a prison. Their products just work well together.
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You're also a technologically competent individual who posts on hardocp. When last looking at getting a new phone, both my parents said they HAD TO get another new apple phone cause they would lose all their icloud shit and had 0 interest learning how to deal with.
 
SLee said:
Xbox One and One S' GPUs are weaker than the Radeon 7790. Only the One X has the more powerful GPU.
Click to expand...
That much difference between the versions is silly but does seem I got my letters mixed, not surprising considering how little I give a shit about consoles. This just gives me less reasons to.
 
N4CR said:
What's worse is they have millions of damn RGB lights on the front too. It's getting ridiculous!
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:ROFLMAO:

Though paired with a decent keyboard and apps that don't suck (haven't tried, wouldn't know), I assume they'd do alright. At least for straightforward stuff.

Now real work? Who knows. Perhaps they can be decent RDP front-ends. Perhaps I need to try that at home...
 
Apple is focused on selling services more than devices which we all know now since Cook's announcement (where they will no longer report unit sales figures). Having everything in the iOS realm is the best road to push users into their service offerings.

I will say that an iPad Pro is fine for most consumers. That being said, my wife has a newish iPad and wanted a laptop. She uses her laptop and kindle and the iPad is rarely used. Should be interesting to see how many people buy into a strictly iOS ecosystem. I've ditched my Apple computer for Linux Mint and am happy for the most part.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
:ROFLMAO:

Though paired with a decent keyboard and apps that don't suck (haven't tried, wouldn't know), I assume they'd do alright. At least for straightforward stuff.

Now real work? Who knows. Perhaps they can be decent RDP front-ends. Perhaps I need to try that at home...
Click to expand...
I can see when in a pinch they're useful don't get me wrong, as you said is one good example, workmate uses a surface for this stuff occasionally. Real downfall of portables for more than temp work is ergonomics, screen height being the main issue. Remote screen + input and you're sussed though!
I use my cellphone via steam link to check email from bed or control stuff and for this it's fine.
 
SickBeast said:
Yes, however they have an on-die cache that makes them perform closer to a Radeon 7850. Similar performance to a GTX 1050.
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Actually the HD7850 would be closer to a GTX 750 Ti - the GTX 1050 is about 20% faster than the HD7850.
Outside of that, agreed!
 
Vercinaigh said:
Yeah get real, prove that, I'm sorry but just no. there is no way they are slamming a GPU in there that competes with something that uses the power it does. XB1 S is similar to a desktop RX580, you're gonna have to really back that up.
Click to expand...
Ehh, it is pretty easy to get HD7850/HD7790 performance with a small GPU this day and age.
Heck, the Quadro P1000 (basically a SFF GTX 1050) that I'm using is more powerful than an HD7850 by about 17% and only has a 47 watt TDP; the Quadro P1000 is also faster (except in memory bandwidth) than the GTX 480 with a 250 watt TDP from 2010 - things are definitely progressing!

Even the GT 1030 (not the lousy SDDR4 version) only has a 30 watt TDP and is roughly the equivalent of an HD7770.
 
Red Falcon said:
Ehh, it is pretty easy to get HD7850/HD7790 performance with a small GPU this day and age.
Heck, the Quadro P1000 (basically a SFF GTX 1050) that I'm using is more powerful than an HD7850 by about 17% and only has a 47 watt TDP; the Quadro P1000 is also faster (except in memory bandwidth) than the GTX 480 with a 250 watt TDP from 2010 - things are definitely progressing!

Even the GT 1030 (not the lousy SDDR4 version) only has a 30 watt TDP and is roughly the equivalent of an HD7770.
Click to expand...
Sure I get you, but phones need GPU's with like sub 10 watt consumption AFAIK lol. That's just....I have a hard time with that one for -now- surely we'll get there...and I thought it was the more powerful X so got my letters mixed as I couldn't care less about consoles, and so took it as a RX580 which was major lulz worthy. 7850 sure....eventually before long, but I doubt now.
 
Vercinaigh said:
Sure I get you, but phones need GPU's with like sub 10 watt consumption AFAIK lol. That's just....I have a hard time with that one for -now- surely we'll get there...and I thought it was the more powerful X so got my letters mixed as I couldn't care less about consoles, and so took it as a RX580 which was major lulz worthy. 7850 sure....eventually before long, but I doubt now.
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That is true for phones, but a large tablet like the iPad Pro might be able to withstand a slightly higher TDP - maybe 15-20 watts? (really depends on the cooling - total speculation/guestimating on my part)
I can see them doing this, but the main thing is, these games aren't offered through Steam (yet or if ever) and since the tablets are on ARM64 and not x86-64, the games offered will need to be programmed and compiled/optimized for that ISA.

This also is far more powerful hardware in the iPad Pro than in the Nintendo Switch by a large margin, so low-end gaming is definitely possible; I would personally prefer a controller over the touchscreen, though, yuck! ;)
Perhaps this is Apple prototyping and testing the waters to see if more powerful ARM64-based devices will be feasible in the near future to potentially replace x86-64 and/or OS X.

Also, Adobe Photoshop is showcased in that video after the 1:06:00 mark - definitely worth the watch!
They also mention that the CPU has 8 cores - 4 "performance" cores and 4 "efficiency" cores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A12X

Take this with a large grain of salt:
https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/...-nearly-matches-top-end-x86-cpus-in-geekbench

MBP-vs-iPad8.png


As IdiotInCharge stated, those older CPUs are hardly "top-end" x86-64 processors, but this new A12X SoC does come close, and by 2020, Apple could have a feasible CPU on their hands to replace x86-64 once and for all.
Again, this is all speculation on my part and I'm just going off of the data we have available at this point. :)
 
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Sure, show me an ipad that can transcode like my 6850k my buddies 1920 and I'll think about it.
 
It's like saying they're determined to kill off bikes with electric scooters.
 
Red Falcon said:
That is true for phones, but a large tablet like the iPad Pro might be able to withstand a slightly higher TDP - maybe 15-20 watts? (really depends on the cooling - total speculation/guestimating on my part)
I can see them doing this, but the main thing is, these games aren't offered through Steam (yet or if ever) and since the tablets are on ARM64 and not x86-64, the games offered will need to be programmed and compiled/optimized for that ISA.

This also is far more powerful hardware in the iPad Pro than in the Nintendo Switch by a large margin, so low-end gaming is definitely possible; I would personally prefer a controller over the touchscreen, though, yuck! ;)
Perhaps this is Apple prototyping and testing the waters to see if more powerful ARM64-based devices will be feasible in the near future to potentially replace x86-64 and/or OS X.

Also, Adobe Photoshop is showcased in that video after the 1:06:00 mark - definitely worth the watch!
They also mention that the CPU has 8 cores - 4 "performance" cores and 4 "efficiency" cores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A12X

Take this with a large grain of salt:
https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/...-nearly-matches-top-end-x86-cpus-in-geekbench

View attachment 117592

As IdiotInCharge stated, those older CPUs are hardly "top-end" x86-64 processors, but this new A12X SoC does come close, and by 2020, Apple could have a feasible CPU on their hands to replace x86-64 once and for all.
Again, this is all speculation on my part and I'm just going off of the data we have available at this point. :)
Click to expand...

Interesting, I hardly see this supplanting x86 however. but perhaps consoles will once again adopt non x86 processors. Would be bad for the the consumers for crossported (With reasonable performance) games but, who knows.
 
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