iOS and iPadOS are still full of micro stutters and random animation lag all over the place. No chip is gonna make up for apples software quality control problems.
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Apple Debuts Next-Generation M4 Chip
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lemme tell you a story about the very first iPad featuring the very first Apple silicon chip: the A4
and yes, it was released before the iPhone 4.
far better package...alone if the M2 ipad pro had the new thermal architecture would be faster at peak and most in sustain performance
My understanding is that the thermal limit of the MBA is intentional - there are only so many watts of heat you can dump into a chassis sitting on a person's lap. I presume the iPad's special cooling is primarily to avoid the perception of hot spots?
iPad sales have been struggling lately. I think this is intended to give the iPad lineup a little boost.
The iPad 3 also had the A5X - which was quite a bit more powerful than the A5 in the iPhone 4S at the time.
Not necessarily. Could still get 12GB of RAM standard when it comes to computers. /hopium.
No but seriously. It is entirely possible the 8GB config is only for the iPad Pros. It's far easier to multitask and use RAM on a computer vs an iPad so they could bump it to 12, and as we know, apple will be stingy wherever they can. We won't know until the M4 comes to actual computers. But this definitely doesn't help the speculation for it.
Also the iPad 2 debuted the A5 almost 6 months before the iPhone 4S
I thought for sure it wouldn’t happen. I’m glad it did! I was wrong, Mark Gurman was right!
M4 is tremendous but also quite expensive. Moose law no longer exists.
It does in Canada.
It’s intended to save money. They’re dumping the far more expensive M3 as quickly as possible.
I have an M1 Air with 8GB and the RAM more than anything else has blown my mind on this thing. I’d have apps stored in memory for weeks and they’d just be sitting there waiting for use.
I remember reading a BBC News article on something, and forgot about it. A few weeks later I was messing around on the iPad and viewed all open apps. I tapped on the BBC app. Not only did it take me to the article I had open, but to the exact part of the article I was reading.
This was explained in the keynote – it's not a thermal or battery issue, it's that they needed the M4 with its new display controller to be able to drive the new Tandem OLED display.
Interesting to see that the M4 still has Thunderbolt 4 controller on board. I was hoping for Thunderbolt 5. Maybe they will add that to the desktop/laptop versions of M4?
Also, I think there is a realistic chance that Apple will announce the M4 Studio at WWDC. Why? Because they certainly wouldn't announce new Macbooks at that event and what else could they announce in terms of hardware? Also, if they won't announce any hardware at all, wouldn't it be quite strange to unveil the M4 early May and the next M4 related news only almost half a year later (at the typical annual October or early November Apple hardware event)? Fingers crossed that the M4 Studio is incoming soon!
Also, I think there is a realistic chance that Apple will announce the M4 Studio at WWDC. Why? Because they certainly wouldn't announce new Macbooks at that event and what else could they announce in terms of hardware? Also, if they won't announce any hardware at all, wouldn't it be quite strange to unveil the M4 early May and the next M4 related news only almost half a year later (at the typical annual October or early November Apple hardware event)? Fingers crossed that the M4 Studio is incoming soon!
The cost difference won't be more than 10 bucks MAX per unit, though, surely?
These are propably running at lower GHz compared with what the laptops will use. So, they may have started with the iPads, but I expect more powerful M4's for the laptops.
it might be considerably more than that. N3B takes more patterning steps, which means considerably more time from wafer start to finished product. Economies of scale means shifting everything to N3E will also result in lower costs.
We’ll probably look back 5 years from now and comment how odd M3 was in terms of production lifespan.
You are forgetting that iPads usually run at lower frequencies. So, unless that is unchanged also then this would apply.
An M3 was supposed to cost, what, $40 per unit? Obviously bill of parts estimates can't be accurate, as it's just educated guessing. Apple said build costs in 2023 were less than 2022 I believe, so things aren't going too badly.