The New iPad Pro Features Apple's M1 Chip (techcrunch.com) 75
At today's Spring Loaded event, Apple unveiled a new version of the iPad Pro, equipped with the M1 chip that was first introduced on the company's Mac line. TechCrunch reports: The new chip sports an 8-core CPU, with performance up to 50% faster than the A12Z Bionic found on the previous generation. There's also an 8-core GPU, which it claims is up to 40% faster. The system can be decked out to up to 16 GB of RAM and 2 TB of storage. The device further blurs the line between the company's tablet and desktop offerings, as well as improved battery life now listed as "all day." The Pro also adds Thunderbolt support to the USB-C, which allows for a number of new features including external display support and wired transfers up to 40 Gbps.
As reported, the new tablet (12.9-inch only for now) features an improved display -- Liquid Retina XDR, according to Apple's marketing terms. Among other things that brings much improved high dynamic range. The display is powered by 10,000 micro-LED. That allows for a hugely improved contrast ratio and 1,000 nits of brightness, without hammering the battery life. The 11-inch version starts at $799 and the 12.9-inch, which adds the Liquid Retina display, starts at $1,099. Pre-orders on the tablets starts April 30 and the product is set to start shipping in the second half of May -- along with a number of other products introduced at today's show.
As reported, the new tablet (12.9-inch only for now) features an improved display -- Liquid Retina XDR, according to Apple's marketing terms. Among other things that brings much improved high dynamic range. The display is powered by 10,000 micro-LED. That allows for a hugely improved contrast ratio and 1,000 nits of brightness, without hammering the battery life. The 11-inch version starts at $799 and the 12.9-inch, which adds the Liquid Retina display, starts at $1,099. Pre-orders on the tablets starts April 30 and the product is set to start shipping in the second half of May -- along with a number of other products introduced at today's show.
Re:16 gb max? (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't written software for iOS, so I'm not familiar with either how much RAM applications typically require, but also whether or not iOS supports any form of virtual memory management to take advantage of the fact that it uses SSD storage, which suggests that it *might* be able to handle some intelligent memory management.
Out of interest, can you give any examples of software that runs on an iPad that reaches a 16Gb limit please? I'd be very interested in understanding what software, or types of software, has hit that limit.
Re: 16 gb max? (Score:2)
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You're visiting some retard sites if your tabs are using more than one gig per.
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Aggregate, I can give a relevant observation.
I just bought a new M1 MacBook Air last week. The price was agreeable, and I have a mild addiction to buying cool laptops.
Right now I'm sitting at about ~11GB used, and about ~5GB cached files.
So that's pretty good.
I've got a web browser (Firefox), an iTerm window with a dozen or so tabs, iMessage.
Fire up MatterMost, Zoom, Adium, and I'm now over 13GB, with my cached files correspondingly down to around 3GB.
That's far too much memory pres
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On the mainframe systems I've used over the years, the OS optimizes resource consumption to get the maximum out of the machine at all times. So if you're just running a couple of appliations, then why not let the OS deploy spare RAM to act as cache. If you launch more applications or open apps draw more memory, you can just release and overwrite the cache occupancy on a least-recently-used basis.
In other words, in an optimi
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Interesting, but is that "memory pressure", or is it opportunistic consumption?
Well the full 16GB is "used" at all times, when the applications are using 11GB the OS consumes the remaining 5GB for cache, as the memory usage of the applications increases the cache is reduced.
On the mainframe systems I've used over the years, the OS optimizes resource consumption to get the maximum out of the machine at all times. So if you're just running a couple of appliations, then why not let the OS deploy spare RAM to act as cache.
That's not a mainframe thing, macOS does that for example, that's what the OP pointed out:
Fire up MatterMost, Zoom, Adium, and I'm now over 13GB, with my cached files correspondingly down to around 3GB.
In other words, in an optimized OS we might expect to see the memory occupancy as close to 100% all the time.
Yes that's what he said he's seeing on macOS, 11GB applications + 5GB cache = 16GB 100%, then 13GB + 3GB cache =
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My objection of course is not to the fact that it's using remaining RAM as cache.
It's that it doesn't take much to get you up to 13GB, which at that point means your cache is smaller (thus performance as a whole decreases)
And it means a single app using 3GB of RAM will cause an OOM situation, and paging will occur.
Of course, the OS supports paging to disk, like anything else, and the disk is enormously fast (compared to a spinner) so that makes it less visible
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I'm very interested in this observation... it strongly suggests that 16Gb RAM is insufficient for a tablet
It's true. I don't know what I would do with a tablet with 2GB RAM any more.
(It's 2021 and you still don't know how to use b/B... WTF)
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What tablet had 16Gb ram ten years ago? The Galaxy Tab, announced in Oct. '10, had 512Mb.
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You know what those are called?
Tablets.
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You mean, detachable keyboard laptops
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It's 16GB RAM (memory), you are thinking about primary storage and the article states that these iPads can have up to 2TB.
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You're confusing SSD size (typically 128GB today) with RAM size.
The original iPad (2010) had 256 MB of RAM, and the latest (8th gen) has 3 GB.
Going from that to 16GB is a huge jump.
how hard to sideload finder? (Score:2)
how hard to sideload finder?
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What is "sideload finder"?
Re: how hard to sideload finder? (Score:2)
underwhelming (Score:2)
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Like putting gold in an Etch A Sketch (Score:1)
Like putting gold in an Etch A Sketch
The lines are blurring (Score:5, Insightful)
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Its a recognition that the space between a tablet and a full blown workstation isnt in the processor anymore.
It certainly shows how far the manufacturers of desktop CPUs have fallen.
Re:The lines are blurring (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone was afraid that Apple was going to turn Macs into iPads.
This makes me think Apple are going to turn iPads into Macs.
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I don't care what they do with the iPad operating system as long as they fix the god-awful multi-tasking interface. It's the least discoverable and jankiest way to try to do two things at once on a computer. Truly execrable.
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There's still the difference between iOS and macOS and I wonder which way that'll end up.
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IMHO there is no point in putting the M1 in an iPad if the end goal is not to run macOS at some point.
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Well, that's the question.
Either iOS evolves into a desktop OS, possibly a crippled one.
Or macOS evolves into a mobile OS, basically: Same OS under the hood, but different interfaces.
Or the two merge at some point and become compatible but different "flavours" of the same underlying code.
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Its a recognition that the space between a tablet and a full blown workstation isnt in the processor anymore. Its pretty much the size of the screen, and the presence or absence of a keyboard and mouse.
No. Maybe the difference between a tablet and a normie desktop PC you'd be right, but there's a shitton more to an actual workstation than a processor, GPU screen size and input device. Unless you use your workstation as a playstation that is, but even that term has a distinctly high performance meaning these days.
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What do you think a workstation is?? I don't think the iPad can hold a candle to my workstation on you know workstation tasks. It had a weedy little CPU, a weedy little GPU and not much storage. Because it's a tablet not a workstation.
My workstation has a 12 core ryzen, 64G ram, as 2080 Ti, and a big spinning disk in addition to the flash storage.
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That's about 1% of the market and, yes, it's a pretty darn important part. And buying Apple for those applications is probably not the way to go.
For the other 99%, Apple products are great.
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yep that's what a workstation is for. For me, video editing, deep learning and other miscellaneous computation tasks. My work workstation similar, except not video editing and much more compiling. It's faster than the much newer macbook pro I have for work and importantly doesn't sound like a tornado when it gets under load.
My 10 year old Thinkpad W510 gets more use because I do more websurfing than video ediing, and the workstation is not located in a convenient place for doing such things casually.
For th
Real work is done on non-workstations (Score:2)
..., if you're a hardcore video editor doing massive rendering tasks, computational engineer, or theoretical scientist, yup you need every bit of power you can get and a dedicated GPU with as many cores as you can afford.
That's about 1% of the market and, yes, it's a pretty darn important part. And buying Apple for those applications is probably not the way to go.
For the other 99%, Apple products are great.
Actually, to contradict the both of you somewhat...anyone doing serious scientific computation in the modern era will be using a grid somewhere quite distant from their workstation, and can use a fairly low-spec machine on their desktop. I haven't asked a computer near me to do anything tough for nearly a decade.
Powerful GPUs, big memory and big storage in a workstation are the domain of video editors, gamers and dilettantes.
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The architecture is the same but the form factor is not. With active cooling, a bigger power supply, and access to bigger storage and more bulky peripherals, the desktop will still be a much more capable machine and have different scenarios for usage.
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My take is that the M1 is designed around cooling efficiency. If you have hundreds of watts to burn and can tolerate a 12 pound heat sink, go Intel or AMD with a dedicated graphics card. They're designed for that scenario. You'll get more computing power AND heat your room for the winter.
Apple is getting a lot of Slashvertising here (Score:2, Funny)
Apple Introduces M1 Chip-Powered iMac
followed almost immediately by
The New iPad Pro Features Apple's M1 Chip
,
Apple Announces $29 AirTag, a New Tile-like Item Tracker
followed almost immediately by
Tile Bashes Apple's New AirTag as Unfair Competition
, they've captured almost half the front page already. Why not
This Week's Apple Product Announcements
, which covers all of that?
Re:Apple is getting a lot of Slashvertising here (Score:4, Funny)
Because it makes more threads for you to complain in!
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https://g.co/kgs/DspcT2 [g.co]
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Yes it is!
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Yes it is!
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Yes it is!
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... yes it is!
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I'm sorry, the five minutes is up.
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Re:Apple is getting a lot of Slashvertising here (Score:4, Insightful)
It's almost like there was an industry event on this week. But surely that can't be it.
Look you really need to get over yourself. If hearing updates from the big names in Tech worries you that much then rather than only turning of Slashdot on April 1st, mark your calendar for the 4 times a year Apple host events. You may also want to turn of Slashdot when major Microsoft events are on, for E3, WMC, or any other major event takes place. God forbid you see a news site actually repeat what was said at such an event.
I for one am impressed you wasted so much time posting in something you weren't interested in, and off topic at that. Maybe it's time to find a hobby.
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And we're all impressed you wasted so much time being an asshole, and an off topic asshole at that.
There's a difference. I enjoy being an arsehole. I get up early because there are otherwise not enough hours in the day in which to be an arsehole. I certainly don't go around being an arsehole and then at the same time complain about being one. That would be kind of stupid and a waste of my time which is better spent being an arsehole to stupid people on the internet.
I'm glad you're impressed. I'll consider that validation of all my good work, even if you meant it in jest while (as expected) completely mis
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You are on this site every. fucking. day. proving you're an asshole.
Well yes. I normally log on for some news during my lunch period to clear my brain between work. Do you not have a hobby? I like this one. This site gives me lots of +5 insightful comments (kind of like the one you claimed made me look like an arsehole), so the reality is we're all arseholes here, the mods are arseholes, the posters are assholes, the editors ... well they are cheap bots lacking intelligence, but if they were human no doubt they'd be arseholes too.
it shows you have no life to speak of. Sad.
Yes few of us have a life at work. That why
seems like they are homgenising their entire produ (Score:2)
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Needs SD Card Slot and Removable SSD (Score:2)
Tweener (Score:2)
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You've totally and utterly misunderstood the "pro" here -- the iPad Pro is used by people whose jobs and workflows are enhanced by mobility. Sports coaches. Field engineers. Medics. Artists. Real estate agents. And on and on. They will use iPads to analyse athletes' movements, get an exploded AR view of a machine they're repairing, document wound progression, draw an image on-site, create a floorplan. All of those tasks are much better done with an iPad than with a desktop computer.
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They will use iPads to analyse athletes' movements, get an exploded AR view of a machine they're repairing, document wound progression, draw an image on-site, create a floorplan.
LOL. You watch too many commercials, dude.
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Close enough professionally to 2 of those industries to know that's complete nonsense.
I'm sure some people use those things. Probably because they saw too many commercials too.
They then quietly put the iPad in the corner, because they learn as everyone does, that just because a Tony Stark interface is cool, doesn't mean it's actually good.