In a my environment, it's pretty standard for Youtube (4K) and many other website tabs running in the background all at once, while compiling code, Git pushing/pulling, other services running, etc...
And occasionally, there'd be Lightroom, Capture One, Final Cut Pro processing things in the background on top of those as well. Very often, these processes take up to 1 hour to complete.
So yes, everything literally has to run at the same time. It's a completely different use case than iOS. If I can't even do the above, then there's no point to having a Mac at all.
Going back, the iPad Pro at full load is not a pretty sign. It's very obvious Apple has to allow the chip to draw much more power, and be able to dissipate much more heat. So the question is: under sustained heavy load, does the "need less power" statement still apply? And to what degree?
It makes perfect sense to expect
some Macs to be able to stream 4K youtube with dozens of tabs while also compiling code and running media software in the background, but it's worth noting that the Macbook Air, present generation and all past, would be running hot, loud, and frankly throttled trying to do all that. Not all Macs and certainly not all Intel chips can gracefully handle the kinds of workloads you're describing, which is why someone with your needs obviously buys a Macbook Pro if not a desktop Mac of some sort. The chip in the iPad is in no way comparable, power-wise, with the kinds of Intel chips that can achieve what you're talking about, but it
is more directly comparable to the Macbook Air.
The chip in the 13" Pro is rated 28w TDP, the 16" 45w, and the desktops significantly higher from there, and all these chips run at significantly higher wattage under load than their TDP. Anandtech's testing of the A12X found that it
averaged around 8w actual draw during a sustained load test, which gives some hint of the thermal room of the device. The "not pretty" full load you're describing is probably right around that 8w.
LTT found that the current Macbook Air, which has a terrible cooling system,
could probably maintain 10w power draw with no throttling or significant heat. That's not enough for the supposedly "10w" Intel chip in the device, so it throttles pretty quickly, heats up, and spins up fans loudly. But that 10w thermal headroom would, in theory, be enough to cool the A12X under load more or less indefinitely. And while Geekbench is not a great benchmark for most things, it's a pretty good indicator of comparative full load, non-throttled speeds, and the
2-year old iPad Pro is faster than
Intel's best in the Macbook Air before they both start throttling. It seems reasonable to assume that an A12X shoved in the current Macbook Air chassis would run faster than the current Intel Air without any of its heat and throttling issues. And that's neglecting two years of architectural improvements and a die shrink for a theoretical A14X. The A-X chips may run hot and throttle in the iPad Pro chassis, but even a thin and light laptop chassis should give them breathing room.
Beyond the limitations of a thin and light laptop, we don't know what Apple can achieve, that's true. But if we can reasonably conclude that an A14X in a Macbook Air would absolutely smoke Intel's best chip for the same TDP, and I think we can, then there's at least reason to be optimistic that with 28w or 45w of headroom, Apple could build a larger, higher core-count chip that should at the minimum be competitive with the respective Intel offerings, if not objectively better.
As regards concerns about running iOS v MacOS, if you hunt you can find general impressions on Twitter and Reddit and such from developers with A12Z DTKs, and they seem to be unanimous in being pleasantly surprised with the fluidity and performance of MacOS on that environment.
www.pcworld.com
