Which iPad to Buy My Grandma Who Currently Has iPad 3rd Generation?

[EugW]

Scaling to two cores is relatively easy. For the most part, you've got the iOS stuff on one core while the active app can have full use of the other core.

It's beyond that that's not so easy. There's a reason why even on A12, there are fast cores and slow cores instead of all cores being homogeneous.

3 cores is not a major issue, which is why on A10X it's 3 simultaneous fast cores, or 3 simultaneous slow cores.

In fact, I remember way back when, people were surprised A8X in the iPad Air 2 went with 3 cores instead of 4, but later that year the general consensus was that it was pretty easy to max out 3 cores but it was harder to max out 4. So, 3 made sense, even back in 2014.

OTOH, in 2018, A12 went with 6 simultaneous cores, and A12X went with 8 simultaneous cores.

 

[willentrekin]

hello,

My grandma has the iPad third gen which is the first iPad with Retina display. It’s time for her to upgrade. She only mainly uses it for YouTube app and occasional news websites so she doesn’t need the 12inch iPad Pro.

I was considering getting her the $329 iPad. The basic one. But I hear that the display isn’t laminated which sucks so I was considering getting her the iPad Air 1 or iPad Air 2. She doesn’t even have an email account. Purely YouTube videos.
[doublepost=1555130623][/doublepost]Edit: I guess to add to this. Is her third generation iPad w/ Retina display laminated? Which iPads have laminated screens? It’s just that I’ve owned the basic $329 iPad and I’ve definirely noticed the gap when using the screen. I know my grandma won’t complain but you know, she’s my grandma.

I checked with your grandma. She says she needs the 2018 iPad Pro 12.9 with cellular connectivity and 1 TB of storage. She would prefer the space grey model but said she'd settle for silver if she must.

Hope that helps!

 

[Falhófnir]

Nah, that's not really true. iOS is heavily optimized for multi-core already.

What you say may was true a decade ago, but it's no longer 2009.

Furthermore YouTube runs just fine on the iPad Air 2. I don't think I've heard anyone ever say YouTube performance was a problem on the iPad Air 2.

I'm sure it's become less of an important factor as SC performance has accelerated ahead of system requirements, but it will certainly always remain the case that multi core performance can only do so much to make up for single core. As @rui no onna said, it's diminishing returns past dual core for all but stuff that really taxes the system. Once you've got iOS running on one core, and safari on the second, it's unlikely that you've got enough parallel work to really make use of a third core.