iPad Pro Holup! A12Z Bionic running Big Sur, native apps support on a desktop and running Tomb Raider??

[mdjasrie]

So I was watching the keynote yersterday, but correct me if I am wrong, did they just popped in an A12Z bionic SOC onto a desktop environment running Big Sur, showing all the native apps running off the A12Z and playing Tomb Raider with it?

I mean, I have always known that the SoC on the iPad Pro is crazy powerful, but I never realise how powerful it can be just blazing through the demo running all those apps smoothly on a desktop environment. Has Apple reached a stage where they are not confident they can do better than intel in the performance department?

And considering that the iPad Pro has virtually no active cooling at the back of the device to keep the chip cool while running CPU and/or GPI intensive tasks, is Apple trying to show us that their SoC is far more efficient than Intel?

Is this Apple’s holy grail? Will we finally start to see 24-hour battery life on future Macbooks? How about whisper quiet operations on the iMac??

 

[sracer]

An A12Z is running iOS or macOS to unitask Tomb Raider isn't very informative. The real test will be in full multitasking scenarios. I think it is a bit premature to claim that the macOS on Apple silicon is going to be amazing. I'll reserve judgment until I see how well it performs doing typical macOS desktop tasks.

 

[AxiomaticRubric]

@mdjasrie : ARM Macs will be *incrementally* amazing. Don't expect "holy grail" performance straight away. It will take time to reach the milestones you mention (24-hour battery life, fanless cooling, etc.... assuming these are even possible in the near future).

Also keep in mind the ARM Mac they are using for the WWDC demos is an undisclosed model and configuration. It could have crazy good internal hardware and not necessarily represent the actual performance of the first ARM Macs released to the public.

 

[AutomaticApple]

So I was watching the keynote yersterday, but correct me if I am wrong, did they just popped in an A12Z bionic SOC onto a desktop environment running Big Sur, showing all the native apps running off the A12Z and playing Tomb Raider with it?

I mean, I have always known that the SoC on the iPad Pro is crazy powerful, but I never realise how powerful it can be just blazing through the demo running all those apps smoothly on a desktop environment. Has Apple reached a stage where they are not confident they can do better than intel in the performance department?

And considering that the iPad Pro has virtually no active cooling at the back of the device to keep the chip cool while running CPU and/or GPI intensive tasks, is Apple trying to show us that their SoC is far more efficient than Intel?

Is this Apple’s holy grail? Will we finally start to see 24-hour battery life on future Macbooks? How about whisper quiet operations on the iMac??

It looked as if Tomb Raider was being run at low settings.

 

[muzzy996]

It looked as if Tomb Raider was being run at low settings.

I thought the same. Good start though.

 

[cupcakes2000]

It looked as if Tomb Raider was being run at low settings.

Don’t forget it was being emulated, not natively run.

 

[TheRealAlex]

So I was watching the keynote yersterday, but correct me if I am wrong, did they just popped in an A12Z bionic SOC onto a desktop environment running Big Sur, showing all the native apps running off the A12Z and playing Tomb Raider with it?

I mean, I have always known that the SoC on the iPad Pro is crazy powerful, but I never realise how powerful it can be just blazing through the demo running all those apps smoothly on a desktop environment. Has Apple reached a stage where they are not confident they can do better than intel in the performance department?

And considering that the iPad Pro has virtually no active cooling at the back of the device to keep the chip cool while running CPU and/or GPI intensive tasks, is Apple trying to show us that their SoC is far more efficient than Intel?

Is this Apple’s holy grail? Will we finally start to see 24-hour battery life on future Macbooks? How about whisper quiet operations on the iMac??

I’m sure its mainly leveraging the GPU as well and the Bigger heatsinks and Fans and cooling possible in a MacMini form factor. If MacOS BigSur were to run on a iPad Pro with a A12Z it would run for 2 seconds before Over heating and melting the chip there’s no cooling possible the iPad Pro form factor can support.

Than MacMini running BigSur probably has 8GB of RAM and an over clocked A12Z with all Cores at MAX.

 

[etn]

Will we finally start to see 24-hour battery life on future Macbooks? How about whisper quiet operations on the iMac??

I (and probably everyone else here) would love to see 24-hour battery life, but I am really afraid what we will get is a 10-hour thinner device. (And also -needless to say- cheaper to manufacture...)

 

[Shirasaki]

Apple clearly wants to remove cooling fans on their Mac for a long time. A12Z has shown some potential but we are not there yet. But if apple straight up using iPad Pro chip on MacBook, it will be very interesting for people to decide either using macOS 11 or iPadOS 14.

 

[Wokis]

I don’t know if ATP was wrong but their impression was that Apple did not mention what chip was in each demo station, just that they did it with their own silicon (could be the 12 core rumored) and that the DEV KIT will have an A12Z

 

[TheRealAlex]

I don’t know if ATP was wrong but their impression was that Apple did not mention what chip was in each demo station, just that they did it with their own silicon (could be the 12 core rumored) and that the DEV KIT will have an A12Z

Did they mention how much RAM the DevKit has ? I wish we could see a DevKit taken apart. I’m sure it has a Overclocl A12Z with a big HeatSink and cooler.

 

[cupcakes2000]

Did they mention how much RAM the DevKit has ? I wish we could see a DevKit taken apart. I’m sure it has a Overclocl A12Z with a big HeatSink and cooler.

16gb

 

[filmbuff]

I don’t know if ATP was wrong but their impression was that Apple did not mention what chip was in each demo station, just that they did it with their own silicon (could be the 12 core rumored) and that the DEV KIT will have an A12Z

They showed during the demo that it was an A12Z with 16GB RAM and said they were using that the whole time.

 

[hovscorpion12]

If Apple releases the iPad Pro with 16GB ?

 

[Brien]

A lot of people seem to be thinking Apple is going to roll their own GPUs.

I certainly hope the pro machines keep discrete graphics...

 

[Digitalguy]

Did they mention how much RAM the DevKit has ? I wish we could see a DevKit taken apart. I’m sure it has a Overclocl A12Z with a big HeatSink and cooler.

Developes are not allowed to take it apart and do bencharks, and have to return the machine to Apple at the end of the period.... So if someone does not comply they better not be discovered by apple or they'll be in trouble...

 

[MyopicPaideia]

The innards and benchmarks will get leaked at some point before the first Apple Silicon Mac ships in October, mark my words ?.

It is astonishing though that several of you above didn’t just search these forums for the specs of the DTK machine, or even note that they specifically said in the Keynote they were using the A12Z DTK spec machine for all the Big Sur demos. And to think it was driving the Apple Pro Display HDR as well... tasty.

Now though, it is a bigger question mark/frustration - when can we get more of macOS into iPadOS!? Oh, and when can iPadOS get cool code names like macOS?

Also, macOS 11! OS X officially done at point release 10.15. End of an era...the King is dead, long live the King!

 

[Digitalguy]

The innards and benchmarks will get leaked at some point before the first Apple Silicon Mac ships in October, mark my words ?.

It is astonishing though that several of you above didn’t just search these forums for the specs of the DTK machine, or even note that they specifically said in the Keynote they were using the A12Z DTK spec machine for all the Big Sur demos. And to think it was driving the Apple Pro Display HDR as well... tasty.

Now though, it is a bigger question mark/frustration - when can we get more of macOS into iPadOS!? Oh, and when can iPadOS get cool code names like macOS?

Also, macOS 11! OS X officially done at point release 10.15. End of an era...the King is dead, long live the King!

Even insider top secret information like the foldable iphone gets leaked, so no doubt that at some point someone will manage to leak benchmarks, hopefully for them without getting caught.
Otherwise, I guess we'll have to wait 2021 for pro apps and more macOS features like monitor support on ipad....
Now full macOS on ipad in a sort of "Desktop mode" is not coming before years, if ever... I would see a potential touch screen macbook (maybe with IpadOS as a tablet mode) coming before that...

 

[muzzy996]

What I'm really interested in seeing is the DTK machine being stretched on the storage IO side. I'm excited for the future of the iPad given the influence that the shift to ARM based MacOS will have on it. Right now though the inconsistent behavior of USB-C with non-apple devices leaves more to be desired from the iPad as far as I'm concerned. My MacBook Pro is aging (2012 model) and I'd love to replace both it and my 2017 iPP 12.9 with a new iPad but I don't want to do that just yet until I know I can do more with file management quickly and reliably regardless of source or destination, just like one has always been able to do on a Mac or PC.

 

[Falhófnir]

The innards and benchmarks will get leaked at some point before the first Apple Silicon Mac ships in October, mark my words ?.

It is astonishing though that several of you above didn’t just search these forums for the specs of the DTK machine, or even note that they specifically said in the Keynote they were using the A12Z DTK spec machine for all the Big Sur demos. And to think it was driving the Apple Pro Display HDR as well... tasty.

Now though, it is a bigger question mark/frustration - when can we get more of macOS into iPadOS!? Oh, and when can iPadOS get cool code names like macOS?

Also, macOS 11! OS X officially done at point release 10.15. End of an era...the King is dead, long live the King!

I'm really interested to know when they made the decision to make it 11.0, it seems it was very last minute as there's a lot of 10.16 references still baked into BigSur!

 

[MyopicPaideia]

I'm really interested to know when they made the decision to make it 11.0, it seems it was very last minute as there's a lot of 10.16 references still baked into BigSur!

Yeah, they probably kept it a secret from most even internally I would imagine until late, and now during the beta period they will have to clean that all up, but I’m sure on the VP and C level they knew.

The other thing though is the design. While I do really like the direction, to unify look and feel with iPadOS, a lot of it seems not fully baked. Non-symmetrical spacing, disjointed icon design, etc. Hopefully they will fix some of that stuff before GM release.

I’m most irritated that my 2012 quad core mini won’t be able to make the jump to 11.0! Oh well, have to get a new Apple Silicon version I guess!

 

[ian87w]

And who said that Apple didn't put in like two or four A12Zs in the machine?

 

[Falhófnir]

Yeah, they probably kept it a secret from most even internally I would imagine until late, and now during the beta period they will have to clean that all up, but I’m sure on the VP and C level they knew.

The other thing though is the design. While I do really like the direction, to unify look and feel with iPadOS, a lot of it seems not fully baked. Non-symmetrical spacing, disjointed icon design, etc. Hopefully they will fix some of that stuff before GM release.

I’m most irritated that my 2012 quad core mini won’t be able to make the jump to 11.0! Oh well, have to get a new Apple Silicon version I guess!

Quite a lot of that was also true with iOS 7 if I remember correctly? Almost every beta brought tweaks to the design so it looked a lot better by launch date. I think it really took until iOS 9, or even the mid-cycle design tweak in iOS 10 to really start looking 100% polished again though!