Performance is not linear, as you're expecting. Heavier workloads need to be handled each year as we add more needs and expectations to our devices.
More screen pixels. More photo pixels. More connected wireless accessories.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPad Pro's M4 Chip Outperforms M3 by Up to 25%
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Performance is not linear, as you're expecting. Heavier workloads need to be handled each year as we add more needs and expectations to our devices.
More screen pixels. More photo pixels. More connected wireless accessories.
But don’t we already know the speed of the Snapdragon X Elite? Isn’t it in between the M2 and M3?
I’m not sure that there’s enough demand for either Apple or Microsoft to make Windows ARM bootable natively on Macs. Microsoft officially sanctions Parallels as the preferred way to run Windows ARM on a Mac.
We've seen leaked benchmarks of prototypes. But I'll reserve judgement until we see actual tests of shipping products.
I guess you were trying to be clever? it's not too much power, is that the baby OS or 95% of its apps can't take advantage of it. it's time for iOS to grow up or get it out of here and just slap even a limited version of Mac OS on the pads.
Next time write it correctly 😂😂😂.. sweet burn otherwise lool not
"everyone" does not know this and most people don't care. I have helped a few people buy Macs and no one knew what kind of processor was inside. I think this is the usual case.
That said, I am very interrested in the M4 and later Macs. I'm working in robotics and just now have decided to move from Intel Xeon and Nvidia GPUs to Apple Silicon for AI and related work. I'm getting very respectable performance on the M2-Pro. In a year I'll buy whatever is best and available. But most people, they would do well with a Chromebook.
This + the AI that the M4 is built to support that’s pending announcement at WWDC have made me decide to wait for M4 MBP. M4 Pro is gonna be a nice jump.
I doubt Apple designs their product release schedule around what would humiliate the competition.
What likely happened is that the M3 was always a stopgap measure because the M4 chip wasn't available yet (they didn't want to make consumers wait another year for new Macs), and even if it were, Apple wouldn't be able to make enough M4 chips to go into all their Macs (remember that the MBA is Apple's most popular consumer laptop, while the iPad Pro is a niche product category due to its price).
The MBA may get the M4 chip later in the year if Apple can ramp up production enough, or it may not. At the scale that Apple operates, a lot of their product design decisions really comes down to whether they can secure sufficient manufacturing capacity or not (for example, one theory being floated for why the iPhone 6 got only 1 gb of ram was because Apple didn't have enough ram to outfit all their iPhones with 2gb of ram, given their sales projections).
It's simple logistics at play, and it explains decisions to offer an iPad Air variant with the M2 chip.
If you wanna make beautiful art there’s a prompt for that. You don’t need a dumb brick iPad.
This is like getting excited about yet another engine upgrade for the sports car that drives in traffic all the time
I actually think the ramp to M4-based architecture will be faster than expected. By all accounts, production of TSMC's N3E is very good. Apple is poised to make a big AI push this year so they will want pretty much their entire Mac lineup "AI Ready". Don't be surprised if Apple updates their entire desktop lineup (except for iMac) during WWDC and the iMac / MBP / MBA by this Fall
Man, to me it’s crazy.
I love my iPad and am using it right now, but all I do on it is mostly surf the web. It is the best web browsing experience on the couch or bed bar none.
My m1 iPad is going strong and more than good enough. In fact I dropped from second floor on tile (it bounced off a shoe) and was not damaged at all. And it hasn’t bent like the last one I owned.
No way I’m getting rid of this until it bites the dust, no matter how amazing the screen or fast the processor of this new one. Who is doing real work on their iPad? It’s a toy.
The M3 is on a more expensive node (version) on the 3nm process (N3E). The M4 is on a later 3nm node (N3P) that is less expensive. Apple used N3E for the A17 Pro and M3 chips to be able to get on 3nm quicker but they seem to have decided that was for a limited run and and now moving their newer generated to the less expensive N3P.
If Apple can only run AI on the newest chips, that will severely hinder their ability to get this in front of most of their customers. There doesn’t seem to be anything in the M4 that is really unique for AI, just more faster components. At most, you would have the AI running faster on newer chips and slower on older chips. That is a familiar pattern. There are also likely to be some AI processes that can only run on server side.
Yeah but including needing to buy a new magic keyboard case, it works out to be much more expensive. I'm glad the old case works on so many old iPads and the new Air.
This is powerful, but as others have mentioned it's limited by iOS. Perhaps Apple are getting ready for the big unveil of Mac OS on these iPads? The new keyboard set up has a mouse pad, and remember when Apple redesigned Mac OS with stacked (vertical) buttons and everyone thought this was because they were getting ready to open Mac OS up to be viable on touch screens. Maybe we're getting very close to that time.
What's the difference between single core and multi core? Like, what can you do with one or the other while using your phone or ipad?
I've always seen this tests on youtube but never really understood the difference.
I have no idea what you're trying to say.
Modern chips, like the M4, have multiple individual processors in them. The M4 has up to 10 processors in the chip. Software can be written to run its code in one processor or in multiple. Running software in multiple processors can speed up the work but it is more complicated. Many apps only run on one processor at a time.
the benchmarks will tell you how fast a app would run using a single processor and also how fast it would run using multiple processors.
There are more nuances and complexities around this topic but that is the basics and probably the most helpful to you to understand the meaning of benchmarks.
Unfortunately 25% much more power held back by the bottleneck iPadOS is. The M4 Pro doesn‘t do anything better than the M1 Pro does in a real world scenario.
Apple hit it out of the park, and the new iPad Pro is amazing. Looking forward to a M4 Mac Studio. I still feel bad for those who got an M2 MAX, that chip had no reason to exist. A year and half later and an iPad beats it.
These results are based on the 10-core chip right? I wonder how to the 9-core chip performs which will be the bought by the majority of iPad Pro customers.
I had scheduled/budgeted to get a new M3 machine about this time, but I too decided to wait until the M4 thing shakes out to see where Apple is going. I'll just live with the old Intel iMacs for a while longer.