Apple's Chips

#1

Not necessarily Anker related, but since this is a tech forum, I figured I’d see what your thoughts were.

Apple’s new A10X chip with their iPad Pros is proving to be a beast. In Geekbench 4, which doesn’t really mean real world results, the new iPad Pros are on a similar level as the 2017 MBPs, which is pretty impressive.

I’m wondering how much of that is iOS vs macOS, as I find it hard to believe Apple’s mobile chips would be nearly as powerful as Intel’s made for laptops.

If macOS wouldn’t lower the performance drastically, I foresee Apple’s custom chips being used in their MacBook Pros before we know it (a few years?) It seems like the performance of iOS devices has really gotten better the last several years as Apple continues to improve their architecture. Look at the speed tests. Some part may be optimization of apps, but five or so years ago, Qualcomm’s top of the line processor weren’t being overtaken by Apple’s, were they? What do you guys think? I usually make fun of Apple for being extremely slow to add new features, but they may be nailing the performance game with their custom designed processors.

#2

Apple is more often than not slow to implement (or support) universal software/hardware features but certainly have been consistent with there improvements to proprietary chips. Performance however is more down to end OS, IMO. You can have the worst hardware specs going but with the right custom OS it can seem like lightning, i.e Ubuntu / Linux variants on hardware which was designed for Windows XP but would balk at Windows 7 etc

As Apple continue to make improvements to and amalgamations between the iOS / macOS I can see some of these chips making their way into macOS based products (maybe MacBook). Yet for serious ‘pro’ applications I think they will continue to rely on Intel for the foreseeable future.

Truer words were never spoken, point in fact the return of my 2017 MacBook Pro 13" after only a few days of use. While the GeekBench scores trumped the previous years model, completing what I would call some basic tasks (video editing, web, multitasks etc) which were demo’d by various reviewer’s on YouTube seemed to hammer the 2017 machine, not to mention the heat generated :fearful:

My last MacBook Pro was around 2010 or so and I think the spec vs function vs price model has certainly suffered in their vision of making things ‘thinner’.

1 Like
#3

@joshuad11 @ndalby I usually follow Apple on what they implement and you are right, the iPad pro is becoming more and more powerful at each release. When IOS 11 releases it will make the iPad more like a Surface pro, but no where near as capable as a MacBook Pro.

My dad has an iPad pro, he likes it for the big screen since he wears glasses. He uses it for email, news and playing a couple of games. A Lenovo laptop is what he uses for productivity, work for example.

I use Mac book pro for school, an iPad pro, yes in september have files, similar to finder. Though would not have the RAM, CPU storage to run programs. I do lots of coding using many different programs that are either CPU or RAM heavy, coding also cannot be done well on an iPad pro.

I have the new Mac Book pro 2017, the heat is not to bad, I like it and enjoy it. I don’t usually keep laptops on my lap (hahah) on a table is where it sits.

Intel might not be used in the future for their rushed i9 processor, just about everyone in the “Tech World” has seen it. AMD has really stepped up their game lately, even just 16 hours ago they announced the AMD EPYC processor that is the now major competitor to Xenon.

An all apple made internals for a device would be interesting because they could then make the entire product the way they want, not having to make room for an intel mother board and require that specific size power output to keep it going.

1 Like