The Apple iPad Pro Review
by Ryan Smith, Joshua Ho & Brandon Chester on January 22, 2016 8:10 AM ESTSoC Analysis: CPU Performance
Now that we’ve had a chance to take a look at A9X’s design and a bit on the difference between the x86 and ARM ISAs, let’s take a look at A9X’s performance at a lower level.
From a CPU perspective A9X is just a higher clocked implementation of the dual-core Twister CPU design we first saw on A9 last year. As a result the fundamentals of the CPU architecture have not changed relative to A9. However A9X relative to A8X drops down from three CPU cores to two, so among the factors we’ll want to look at is how Apple has been impacted by dropping down to two faster cores.
We’ll start things off with Geekbench, 3, which gives us a fairly low-level look at CPU performance.
| Geekbench 3 - Integer Performance | |||||||
| A9X | A8X | % Advantage | |||||
| AES ST |
1.17 GB/s
|
0.98 GB/s
|
19%
|
||||
| AES MT |
2.85 GB/s
|
3.16 GB/s
|
-10%
|
||||
| Twofish ST |
120.7 MB/s
|
64.0 MB/s
|
89%
|
||||
| Twofish MT |
228.3 MB/s
|
182.7 MB/s
|
25%
|
||||
| SHA1 ST |
1.03 GB/s
|
0.53 GB/s
|
94%
|
||||
| SHA1 MT |
1.95 GB/s
|
1.48 GB/s
|
32%
|
||||
| SHA2 ST |
205.8 MB/s
|
119.1 MB/s
|
73%
|
||||
| SHA2 MT |
395.5 MB/s
|
330.6 MB/s
|
20%
|
||||
| BZip2Comp ST |
8.95 MB/s
|
5.71 MB/s
|
57%
|
||||
| BZip2Comp MT |
17.0 MB/s
|
16.6 MB/s
|
2%
|
||||
| Bzip2Decomp ST |
14.7 MB/s
|
8.98 MB/s
|
64%
|
||||
| Bzip2Decomp MT |
28.1 MB/s
|
25.2 MB/s
|
12%
|
||||
| JPG Comp ST |
33.7 MP/s
|
20.6 MP/s
|
64%
|
||||
| JPG Comp MT |
64.4 MP/s
|
60.8 MP/s
|
6%
|
||||
| JPG Decomp ST |
89.2 MP/s
|
53.0 MP/s
|
68%
|
||||
| JPG Decomp MT |
166.5 MP/s
|
153.9 MP/s
|
8%
|
||||
| PNG Comp ST |
2.11 MP/s
|
1.35 MP/s
|
56%
|
||||
| PNG Comp MT |
4.04 MP/s
|
3.82 MP/s
|
6%
|
||||
| PNG Decomp ST |
31.5 MP/s
|
18.7 MP/s
|
68%
|
||||
| PNG Decomp MT |
56.9 MP/s
|
56.3 MP/s
|
1%
|
||||
| Sobel ST |
138.3 MP/s
|
82.5 MP/s
|
68%
|
||||
| Sobel MT |
258.7 MP/s
|
225.6 MP/s
|
15%
|
||||
| Lua ST |
3.25 MB/s
|
1.68 MB/s
|
93%
|
||||
| Lua MT |
6.02 MB/s
|
4.60 MB/s
|
31%
|
||||
| Dijkstra ST |
10.1 Mpairs/s
|
6.70 Mpairs/s
|
51%
|
||||
| Dijkstra MT |
17.6 Mpairs/s
|
16.0 Mpairs/s
|
10%
|
||||
The interesting thing about Geekbench is that as a result of being a lower-level test the bulk of its tests scale up well with CPU core counts, as the benchmark can just spawn more threads. Consequently I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect here, as this presents the tri-core A8X with a much better than average scaling opportunity, making it especially harsh on the A9X.
But what the results show us is that even by dropping back down to two CPU cores, A9X does very well overall. The single-threaded results are greatly improved, with A9X offering better than a 50% single-threaded perf gain in the majority of the sub-tests. Meanwhile even with the multi-threaded tests, A9X only loses once, on AES. Otherwise two higher clocked Twister cores are beating three lower clocked Typhoon cores by anywhere between a few percent up to 32%. In this sense Geekbench is something of a worst-case scenario, as real-world software rarely benefits from additional cores this well (this being part of the reason why A8 and A9 did so well relative to quad Cortex-A57 designs), so it’s promising to see that even in this worst-case scenario A9X can deliver meaningful performance gains over A8X.
| Geekbench 3 - Floating Point Performance | |||||||
| A9X | A8X | % Advantage | |||||
| BlackScholes ST |
14.9 Mnodes/s
|
8.52 Mnodes/s
|
75%
|
||||
| BlackScholes MT |
28.2 Mnodes/s
|
24.9 Mnodes/s
|
13%
|
||||
| Mandelbrot ST |
2.23 GFLOPS
|
1.27 GFLOPS
|
76%
|
||||
| Mandelbrot MT |
4.27 GFLOPS
|
3.66 GFLOPS
|
17%
|
||||
| Sharpen Filter ST |
2.10 GFLOPS
|
1.08 GFLOPS
|
94%
|
||||
| Sharpen Filter MT |
4.01 GFLOPS
|
3.12 GFLOPS
|
29%
|
||||
| Blur Filter ST |
2.68 GFLOPS
|
1.53 GFLOPS
|
75%
|
||||
| Blur Filter MT |
5.08 GFLOPS
|
4.47 GFLOPS
|
14%
|
||||
| SGEMM ST |
6.77 GFLOPS
|
4.12 GFLOPS
|
64%
|
||||
| SGEMM MT |
12.7 GFLOPS
|
11.6 GFLOPS
|
9%
|
||||
| DGEMM ST |
3.32 GFLOPS
|
2.02 GFLOPS
|
64%
|
||||
| DGEMM MT |
6.21 GFLOPS
|
5.61 GFLOPS
|
11%
|
||||
| SFFT ST |
3.52 GFLOPS
|
1.92 GFLOPS
|
83%
|
||||
| SFFT MT |
6.67 GFLOPS
|
5.40 GFLOPS
|
24%
|
||||
| DFFT ST |
3.21 GFLOPS
|
1.80 GFLOPS
|
78%
|
||||
| DFFT MT |
6.02 GFLOPS
|
5.11 GFLOPS
|
18%
|
||||
| N-Body ST |
1.41 Mpairs/s
|
0.78 Mpairs/s
|
81%
|
||||
| N-Body MT |
2.69 Mpairs/s
|
2.34 Mpairs/s
|
15%
|
||||
| Ray Trace ST |
4.99 MP/s
|
2.96 MP/s
|
69%
|
||||
| Ray Trace MT |
9.56 MP/s
|
8.64 MP/s
|
11%
|
||||
The story with Geekbench 3 floating point performance is much the same. Performance never regresses, even in multi-threaded workloads. In lightly threaded floating point workloads A9X is going to walk all over A8X, and in multi-threaded workloads we’re still looking at anywhere between a 9% and a 29% performance gain. This goes to show just how powerful Twister is relative to Typhoon, especially with A9X’s much higher clockspeeds factored in. And it lends a lot of support to Apple’s ongoing design philosophy of favoring a smaller number of high performance (and now higher-clocked) cores.
SPEC CPU 2006
Moving on, our other lower-level benchmark for this review is SPECint2006. Developed by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, SPECint2006 is the integer component of their larger SPEC CPU 2006 benchmark. As was the case with SPEC CPU 2000 before it, SPEC CPU 2006 is designed by a committee of technology firms to offer a consistent and meaningful cross-platform benchmark that can compare systems of different performance levels and architectures. Among cross-platform benchmarks SPEC CPU is generally held in high regard, and while it is but one collection of benchmarks and like all benchmarks should not be taken as the be-all end-all of benchmarks on its own, it provides us with a very important look at CPU performance that we otherwise cannot get.
SPECint2006 is the successor to the SPECint2000 test we’ve been using periodically for the last couple of years now. Initially released in 2006, SPECint2006 is still SPEC’s current-generation CPU integer benchmark. We’ve wanted to switch to SPECint2006 for some time now, but have been held back by the overall low performance of tablet SoCs, which lacked the speed and memory to run SPECint2006 and to do so in a reasonable amount of time. However now thanks to the greater performance and greater memory of A9X, we’re finally able to run SPEC’s current-generation CPU benchmark on a tablet.
SPECint2006 is composed of 12 sub-benchmarks, testing a wide variety of scenarios from video compression to PERL execution to AI. This is a non-graphical benchmark and I believe it’s reasonable to argue that the benchmark set itself leans towards server high performance computing/workstation use cases, but with that said even if it’s not a perfect fit for tablet use cases it offers a lot of real-world tests that give us a good variety of different workloads to benchmark CPUs with. SPECint2006 scores are in turn reported as a ratio, measuring how many times faster a tested system is against the SPEC reference system, a 1997 Sun Ultrasparc Ultra Enterprise 2 server, which is based around a 296 MHz UltraSPARC II CPU.
| CINT2006 (Integer Component of SPEC CPU2006): | ||||||
| Benchmark | Language | Application Area | Description | |||
| 400.perlbench |
C
|
Programming Language | Derived from Perl V5.8.7. The workload includes SpamAssassin, MHonArc (an email indexer), and specdiff (SPEC's tool that checks benchmark outputs). | |||
| 401.bzip2 |
C
|
Compression | Julian Seward's bzip2 version 1.0.3, modified to do most work in memory, rather than doing I/O. | |||
| 403.gcc |
C
|
C Compiler | Based on gcc Version 3.2, generates code for Opteron. | |||
| 429.mcf |
C
|
Combinatorial Optimization | Vehicle scheduling. Uses a network simplex algorithm (which is also used in commercial products) to schedule public transport. | |||
| 445.gobmk |
C
|
Artificial Intelligence: Go | Plays the game of Go, a simply described but deeply complex game. | |||
| 456.hmmer |
C
|
Search Gene Sequence | Protein sequence analysis using profile hidden Markov models (profile HMMs) | |||
| 458.sjeng |
C
|
Artificial Intelligence: chess | A highly-ranked chess program that also plays several chess variants. | |||
| 462.libquantum |
C
|
Physics / Quantum Computing | Simulates a quantum computer, running Shor's polynomial-time factorization algorithm. | |||
| 464.h264ref |
C
|
Video Compression | A reference implementation of H.264/AVC, encodes a videostream using 2 parameter sets. The H.264/AVC standard is expected to replace MPEG2 | |||
| 471.omnetpp |
C++
|
Discrete Event Simulation | Uses the OMNet++ discrete event simulator to model a large Ethernet campus network. | |||
| 473.astar |
C++
|
Path-finding Algorithms | Pathfinding library for 2D maps, including the well known A* algorithm. | |||
| 483.xalancbmk |
C++
|
XML Processing | A modified version of Xalan-C++, which transforms XML documents to other document types. | |||
Although designed as a CPU-intensive benchmark, it’s important to note that SPECint2006 is officially labeled as “stressing a system's processor, memory subsystem and compiler.” The memory subsystem aspect is fairly self-explanatory – it’s difficult to test a CPU without testing the memory as well except in the cases of trivial workloads that can fit in a CPU’s caches – however the compiler aspect calls for special attention. As SPECint2006 is a cross-platform benchmark in the truest sense of the word, it’s impossible to offer a single binary for all platforms – especially platforms that had yet to be designed in 2006 such as ARMv8 – and, simply put, the moment you begin compiling benchmarks for different systems using different compilers, the performance of the compiler becomes a factor of benchmark performance as well.
As a result, and unlike many of the other benchmarks we run here, it’s important to note that compilers play a big part in SPECint2006 performance, and this is by design. Compiler authors can and do optimize for SPEC CPU, with the ultimate goal of giving the tested CPU the best chance to achieve the best possible performance in this benchmark; the compiler should not hold back the CPU. However in turn, all results must be validated, so overly aggressive compilers that generate bad code will be caught and failed. The end result is that in a cross-platform scenario with different binaries, SPECint2006 isn’t quite as apples-to-apples as our more traditional benchmarks, but it offers us a unique look at cross-platform CPU performance.
For our testing we’re using optimized binaries generated for Apple’s A8X/A9X SoCs and Intel’s Broadwell/Skylake processors respectively. The following compiler flags were used.
Apple ARMv8: XCode 7 (LLVM), -Ofast
Intel x86: Intel C++ Compiler 16, -xCORE-AVX2 -ipo -mdynamic-no-pic -O3 -no-prec-div -fp-model fast=2 -m32 -opt-prefetch -ansi-alias -stdlib=libstdc++
Finally, of SPECint2006’s 12 sub-benchmarks, our current harness is only able to run 10 of them on the iPad Pro at this time, as 473.astar and 483.xalancbmk are failing on the iPad. So the following is not a complete run of SPECint2006, and for the purposes of SPEC CPU are officially classified as performance estimates.
To start things off, let’s look at the Apple-to-Apple comparison, pitting A9X against A8X.
| SPECint_base2006 - Estimated Scores - A9X vs. A8X | ||||||
| A9X | A8X | A9X vs. A8X % | ||||
| 400.perlbench |
25.0
|
14.1
|
78%
|
|||
| 401.bzip2 |
17.6
|
11.5
|
54%
|
|||
| 403.gcc |
20.5
|
12.4
|
65%
|
|||
| 429.mcf |
18.7
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
|||
| 445.gobmk |
23.4
|
13.0
|
80%
|
|||
| 456.hmmer |
25.1
|
14.1
|
79%
|
|||
| 458.sjeng |
23.6
|
13.6
|
73%
|
|||
| 462.libquantum |
74.6
|
49.2
|
52%
|
|||
| 464.h264ref |
41.3
|
24.0
|
72%
|
|||
| 471.omnetpp |
10.3
|
8.0
|
29%
|
|||
Unsurprisingly, A9X is leaps and bounds ahead here. The smallest gain is with 471.omnetpp, a discrete event simulator, where A9X holds a 29% lead. Otherwise A9X takes a significant lead, beating A8X by upwards of 80% in 445.gobmk, a Go (board game) AI benchmark.
Calling back to our iPhone 6s review for a moment, A9X has a much larger advantage vs. A8X with SPECint2006 as compared to A9 vs. A8 on SPECint2000. A good deal of this has to do with A9X’s significant clockspeed bump versus A8X, but at the same time this also illustrates how the newer SPECint2006 rates A9X and Twister even more highly than A8X/Typhoon. As we’ve seen time and time again, Twister is a much faster CPU core than the already fast Typhoon, and this is a big part of why Apple continues to top our ARM benchmarks.
Last but certainly not least however is our main event, A9X versus Intel’s Core M CPUs. As we’re finally able to run SPECint2006 on an Apple SoC, this is the first chance we’ve had to compare Apple and Intel CPUs using SPEC, so it’s exciting to finally be able to make this comparison.
At the same time this comparison not just for academic curiosity; as Apple has significantly improved their CPU design with every generation and has quickly moved to newer manufacturing processes, they have been closing the architecture and manufacturing gap with Intel. Twister and Skylake are fairly similar designs, both implementing a wide execution pipeline with a focus on achieving a high IPC, and in this latest generation of devices, coupling that with a fairly high 2GHz+ clockspeed. Over the years Apple and Intel have approached this problem from different angles – Apple built up from phones to tablets while Intel built down from desktops to tablets – but the end result is that the two have ended up in a similar place in terms of basic architecture design goals. Meanwhile from a manufacturing standpoint Intel is arguably still roughly a generation ahead with their 14nm FinFET process – naming aside, their transistors are smaller than TSMC’s 16nm FinFET – so Apple is the underdog from this point of view.
The burning question is of course is whether Apple’s CPU designs are catching up to the performance of Intel’s Core lineup, thanks to the continual iteration of architecture and manufacturing on the Apple side, versus the slower rate of growth we’ve seen over the last few generations with Intel’s Core lineup. The iPad Pro in turn finally gives us the opportunity to try to answer that question, as the faster SoC coupled with a form factor and TDP closer to regular Core M devices gives us the most apples-to-apples comparison yet.
To that end we have assembled a smorgasbord of Core M devices to compare to the iPad Pro and A9X SoC. Perhaps the most apple-to-apple comparison is the iPad Pro versus the 2015 MacBook; though approaching a year old, this is still Apple’s current generation MacBook, with our base model incorporating an older Broadwell-based Core M-5Y31. Also from the Broadwell generation we have an ASUS Transformer Book T300 Chi, which uses a high-end Core M-5Y71, to showcase the performance of Intel’s highest clocked Core M processors. Finally, from the latest Skylake generation we have the ASUS ZenBook UX305CA, which incorporates Intel’s base-tier Core m3-6Y30 CPU.
Finally, it should be noted that to keep testing as close as possible, all of these devices are passively cooled, and that as a result all of these devices are also TDP/heat throttling though much of the SPECint2006 benchmark. Ultimately what we’re measuring here is not the peak performance of each system, but rather its sustained performance under the TDP limitations of their respective designs. If unrestricted, undoubtedly all of these devices would score higher.
| SPECint_base2006 - Estimated Scores - A9X vs. Intel Broadwell/Skylake | ||||||||
| A9X | Core M-5Y31 (2015 MacBook) |
Core M-5Y71 (Asus T300 Chi) |
Core m3-6Y30 (Asus UX305CA) |
A9X vs MacBook % | ||||
| Base/Turbo Freq | 2.26GHz | 0.9/2.4GHz | 1.2/2.9GHz | 0.9/2.2GHz | ||||
| 400.perlbench |
25.0
|
21.7
|
28.5
|
24.4
|
15%
|
|||
| 401.bzip2 |
17.6
|
14.6
|
19.6
|
15.3
|
21%
|
|||
| 403.gcc |
20.5
|
22.8
|
31.1
|
28.2
|
-10%
|
|||
| 429.mcf |
18.7
|
35.9
|
46.7
|
38
|
-48%
|
|||
| 445.gobmk |
23.4
|
16.9
|
23.7
|
18
|
38%
|
|||
| 456.hmmer |
25.1
|
43.9
|
61.9
|
48.1
|
-43%
|
|||
| 458.sjeng |
23.6
|
19.2
|
26.1
|
19.3
|
23%
|
|||
| 462.libquantum |
74.6
|
292
|
476
|
409
|
-74%
|
|||
| 464.h264ref |
41.3
|
38.4
|
49.7
|
37.3
|
8%
|
|||
| 471.omnetpp |
10.3
|
16.3
|
23.7
|
20.6
|
-37%
|
|||
As this is a fairly dense lineup I’m not going to call out every figure, but let’s focus on a few key areas. First, on A9X versus the Core M-5Y31 (MacBook), the advantage flips between each device as each test hits upon different strengths and weaknesses of each CPU’s architecture. Overall each device wins half of the benchmarks, however the Core M powered MacBook wins by a larger average margin. In other words, the iPad Pro is competitive with the MacBook depending on the test, however on average it ends up trailing in performance.
Relative to the MacBook, the iPad Pro does best in 445.gobmk, the Go benchmark, while its largest deficit is with 462.libquantum. The latter is a particularly interesting case as the benchmark is very easy to vectorize, giving us perhaps our best look at the vector performance of Twister versus Broadwell, and how well their respective compilers can actually vectorize it. The end result has the Intel platforms solidly in the lead here, hinting that Intel still has better vector performance at this time.
Shifting gears to the Asus ZenBook UX305CA and its newer Skylake based Core m3-6Y30, to little surprise Skylake closes the gap with A9X in the benchmarks where Core M was losing, and pulls further ahead in the benchmarks where it was winning. Despite this the two systems split the number of wins at 5 each, but in the cases where the ZenBook is winning it’s very clearly winning. Overall Skylake sees some decent performance improvements relative to the Broadwell CPU in our MacBook – with the exact gains depending on the test – allowing it to widen the gap compared to the A9X. Overall A9X is still competitive in specific scenarios, but on average it definitely trails the Skylake Core m3.
Finally, going back to Broadwell we have the ASUS Transformer Book T300 Chi, which incorporates a high-end Core M-5Y71 processor. This is still officially a 4.5W TDP processor, and as a result this essentially measures Broadwell Core M’s best case performance. With a maximum CPU clockspeed of 2.9GHz as compared to the slower low-end Skylake and Broadwell CPUs, the T300 Chi unsurprisingly beats the iPad Pro in every single benchmark. At best the two are neck-and-neck with Apple’s best benchmark, 445.gobmk, but otherwise it’s a clear and very significant lead for Intel’s fastest Broadwell Core M processor.
In the end, what to take away from this depends on how you want to read the results and what you believe the most important CPU comparison is. As Apple doesn’t use multiple bins/clockspeeds of A9X processors, this muddles the comparison some since there’s a significant difference in performance between Intel’s fastest and slowest Core M processors, and at the same time Intel’s official list prices put every CPU except the top-bin Core m7-6Y75 at the same price of $281.
Ultimately I think it’s reasonable to say that Intel’s Core M processors hold a CPU performance edge over iPad Pro and the A9X SoC. Against Intel’s slowest chips A9X is competitive, but as it stands A9X can’t keep up with the faster chips. However by the same metric there’s no question that Apple is closing the gap; A9X can compete with both Broadwell and Skylake Core M processors, and that’s something Apple couldn’t claim even a generation ago. That it’s only against the likes of Core m3 means that Apple still has a way to go, particularly as A9X still loses by more than it wins, but it’s significant progress in a short period of time. And I’ll wager that it’s closer than Intel would like to be, especially if Apple puts A9X into a cheaper iPad Air in the future.
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jasonelmore - Friday, January 22, 2016 - link
This, there is no filesystem. The hardware can be as fast as it wants, but it's severely limited by it's input options, and it's locked down nature. A ipad, or a phone for that matter, will never be able to replicate a x86 device. aarch64 is crude in comparison to x86 as detailed in the 2nd page of this article.Sure they can re-write a lot of it, and make a bunch of compramises to make it work, but they wont' waste the time, because:
1: nobody wants to pay more than $10 for apps on the platform because it's seen as a toy and disposable within 4 years
2: Lacks a true filesystem for moving files from physical media, to the devices
3: Lacks precise input methods for quick and ultra precise manipulation of the software (unlike mouse or trackball on pc). Like Slicing a video file, or selecting text and making it Bold, italic, underlined
4: platform lacks pro level payment and upgrade options for developers
Sc0rp - Friday, January 22, 2016 - link
There's a file system, you just don't have access to it.1) Pretty much any computer is disposable in 4 years because the shelf life for hardware before it goes obsolete is about 3 years. Protip: If you 'upgrade' your processor, video card and/or motherboard (!) you just assembled a new computer. It doesn't matter that it is in the same case that your old computer used. Also users are willing to pay more than $10 for software. But, to be honest a lot of legacy developers from the desktop realm have been giving their users the shaft on software prices for years and years and consumers are more apt to pay $6 for an app that actually does that they need rather than $700 for one that does way more than they ever will need.
2) There is a file system. You can plainly see it and interact with it when you use software like iExplorer. Personally, I have no problems with handling files on iOS9 and moving them about.
3) Apple Pencil. Have you heard of it?
4) Actually those options already exist on the platform. I don't know why you think they don't when they so clearly do and have been demonstrated by iOS game developers for years now. You mean to tell me that I can pay $6-20 for a ship or $100 for a bushel of smurfberries but somehow there's no way to add in upgrade options? Dude, just make it optional DLC.
jasonelmore - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
keep drinking the kool-aid man.1: apple has succeeded in convincing you that computers are disposable within 4 years. Thousands of schools around the world are using Pentium 4's and Nehalm Pc's. These pc's can run the latest photoshop CC, Office Suite, or any other software that has been made recently.
I know a ton of people using i7 920's and are playing the latest games no problem. With apple, the applications just wont load at all, because they require a certain OS. WIndows 10 Supports very old hardware, and very slow hardware. Same with any flavor of linux. OSX and iOS do not.
2: the file system is not accessible within the device. So your argument is basically this. Use a 2nd machine, install a third party application, and access the files. Really? Pro's don't need a hidden or in-accessible file system, they need file permissions, and only a jailbreak can give that to them.
3: The pencil is a drawing device first and foremost. It is not designed, nor meant to be, a primary way of interacting with the device's OS and applications. Moreover, only one device in apple's entire product history, supports this peripheral. Good luck slicing video with precision. A mouse can hover over a precise point, and offer two context actions via left or the right mouse button. A pencil can hover over a precise point, and do nothing. any actions require tap and hold, and buttons aren't used anywhere except for drawing apps.
4: Developers want to be able to charge yearly fee's for updates, instead of release a whole new app. Like Tweetbot 1, 2, 3,, 4. In-app purchases are not meant for upgrades. They are meant to be used as a glorified "demo" system. You demo the app, and then buy it if you like it. There are a number of articles and reddit posts about developers leaving ios and going with their own distribution platform due to apples store policies. Big developers too, not little ones.
Constructor - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
You clearly don't know what you're talking about.1. The iPad 3 which I have just replaced with an iPad Pro has just started its new life for a new user after 4 years of perfectly up-to-date and fully supported use by me. It is still fully supported and almost everything that's available for iOS still runs on it, most of it very well – and that on a device which has about 1/10th of the iPod Pro's performance!
The main reason why you can still use old Windows PCs (or old Intel Macs, for that matter, like I'm doing right now!) without too many disadvantages against new ones is that Intel has entered a prolonged stagnation phase since they've bumped into the end of Moore's Law with their ridiculously outdated x86 architecture. There simply is hardly any movement forwards any more on the Intel front.
Meanwhile Apple is cranking up the performance of their own processors at a speed we haven't seen for a decade on the desktop (it's actually a major achievement that the older iOS devices run as well as they do compared to the multiple times more powerful new ones!).
2. Where I want filesystem access under iOS, I have it. I use Good Reader as my general-purpose local file manager for all kinds of files (including local or remote up- and downloads) and I can use iCloud, Dropbox and others for online shared filesystems. Your imagined problem is pretty much just an imaginary one.
3. The Pencil is a precise pointing device. Which can be user everywhere. It's just not needed most of the time, in part because the touch interface can be used very precisely without it already.
4. Payment is actually a lot easier and simpler than on any desktop platform, and in-app-payment is explicitly not permitted for "demo unlocking". Where it's done well it can unlock additional features, which can be used for featured upgrades as well.
Your whole post betrays above all a profound ignorance about iOS and looks a lot like a panicked attempt to somehow justify why the exact habits you happen to have formed somehow were the only possible way to do anything for everybody.
But as always, the world is not as simple or as limited as that.
jasonelmore - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
1: what about the iphone 4, or ipad 2? Stuck on iOS 7 and can't be updated any further2: Physical media? USB drive? Even android can take a thumb drive. This allows android to be more of a traditional computer. You can store ISO's on your phone, EXE's, etc, and use your phone as a mini-laptop for working with other machines. Your goodreader just lets you view the files, so your solution is to email it or dropbox it everytime you need it on a different device? that's what we call a "work-around".
Sending everything over the cloud is not something everyone wants to do, or can do. What if your in a area with no service, or better yet, you don't subscribe to service, and you want to use the phone as a computing device on wifi.
3: again, the pencil is not comparable to a mouse or trackpad. the ipad has no cursor, Your fingers are large compared to a mouse selecting a single pixel on a screen. Main actions, and contextual actions are done via tap, long press, etc.. selecting text on a touch screen should be a good enough example to understand what i'm getting at.
4: did you know apple will not even let you update apps you already own, if your credit card expires, or does not have any money on it?
the fact that you are trying to argue this point, only shows that you have not been following public out cry on this subject. No Paid upgrades, No demo's (very important for expensive pro like apps), no way for developers to respond to bad reviews, at any given time apple can replicate your app, and since apple apps are not sandboxed, they have a inherit advantage. everyone else must be sandboxed, and pay a 30% royalty.
Regarding payment on PC, pretty much everything pro level has gone to a subscription model. If by easy, you mean having a credit card on file for all purchases, then ok, it's easy. But it's also locked down, and like i said, you cant update the app if your card suddenly runs out of money or you go over the credit limit. it will force you to enter a new credit card, just to update a app you already paid for.
look man, if your ok with apple making all the choices for you, then by all means, keep on doing what your doing. but some people have different ideas and want to customize the device to their needs.
i can tell your a fanboy because you started insulting me there at the end, and that only shows your having a hard time justifying what you say to be true. These are not my habits, they are established work-loads that people have been doing on their computers for decades.
you really do need a filesystem to be called a comptuer. and you need a cloud service that is compatible with all platforms and file types. Your solutions to a lot of my arguments is used a bunch of third party programs. a file system is fundamental to computing. there should be a 1st party file explorer (even a restricted one with the option to run root). To deny that access is basically saying "we are apple and we know better, you don't need that option"
Constructor - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
1: what about the iphone 4, or ipad 2? Stuck on iOS 7 and can't be updated any furtherWrong again, both directly and contextually.
First, The iPad 2 is still supported by iOS 9.2.1 which is the current version. Only the iPhone 4 has iOS 7 as its latest version.
This is a pretty illuminating comparison of iOS device performance historically:
http://browser.primatelabs.com/ios-benchmarks
(Select Multi-Core results)
iOS 9 now covers a performance range from the iPad Pro down to the iPhone 4S which is 13 times slower.
The iPhone 4 is even 26 times slower, and it only has a single CPU core, contrary to all devices which are still currently supported to this day (including the iPad 2).
And I'm pretty sure you'd be right in front raking Apple over the coals for iOS 9 running less than smoothly on that single-core iPhone 4.
It's actually quite remarkable how well iOS still runs on those over four years old devices after the breakneck performance development of the past years in the iOS space.
2: Physical media? USB drive?
And then where is that floppy drive "everybody knows" is absolutely required..? ;-)
Even android can take a thumb drive. This allows android to be more of a traditional computer. You can store ISO's on your phone, EXE's, etc, and use your phone as a mini-laptop for working with other machines. Your goodreader just lets you view the files, so your solution is to email it or dropbox it everytime you need it on a different device? that's what we call a "work-around".
...and wrong again!
Good Reader can do many things, among them using DropBox. But I can also simply tap a button and Good Reader appears in my local WiFi network (including in the one my iPhone has just provided) as a bog-standard WebDAV network drive which I can directly mount on my Mac, on a PC or on any other mobile device (including on a Good Reader instance running there if I want).
GoodReader can also mount locally available shares and download from these (or upload to them).
I can also throw files to another Apple device purely locally via AirDrop, or I can exchange files locally via Weafo (which appears as a web-server from which anybody else can download the file). And that's only scratching the surface (ahem) of what I could do with iOS since I have simply stopped exploring further for the time being because I haven't needed more than that personally.
You know very little about what's actually possible under iOS.
3: again, the pencil is not comparable to a mouse or trackpad. the ipad has no cursor, Your fingers are large compared to a mouse selecting a single pixel on a screen.
...and that is why there is the Pencil for those rare events where I actually need to address specific pixels. Finger-based UIs can actually be quite precise otherwise, so these needs are actually relatively rare.
Main actions, and contextual actions are done via tap, long press, etc.. selecting text on a touch screen should be a good enough example to understand what i'm getting at.
You can't have actually used iOS devices if you still believe that. Text selection – to take your example – works very well and very precisely by finger touch alone because it is designed for exactly that.
4: did you know apple will not even let you update apps you already own, if your credit card expires, or does not have any money on it?
I've never used a credit card for iTunes in all those years and never had a single problem.
the fact that you are trying to argue this point, only shows that you have not been following public out cry on this subject. No Paid upgrades, No demo's (very important for expensive pro like apps), no way for developers to respond to bad reviews, at any given time apple can replicate your app, and since apple apps are not sandboxed, they have a inherit advantage. everyone else must be sandboxed,
"Outcries" about Apple are the norm rather than the exception. And of course there are valid points to be made in multiple directions. But the measure of the App Store is where there is one that actually works better for a) the users and b) the developers.
There isn't one.
So Apple may not actually have made all the wrong compromises there, as inconvenient as some of them may be for some people. Perfection sounds nice, but actually achieving an actually workable solution is much harder than just clamouring for one.
and pay a 30% royalty.
Ouch. Again with the cluelessness!
First up, these 30% are no "royalty" as pure profit for Apple as you appear to believe, they cover all the costs of distribution including minimum payment transaction charges which are quite substantial as a ratio at the very low item prices in the App Store (no, the percentages you've heard of don't apply there – the minimum charges are much higher than that!). They also cover all other fees and expenses, also including cross-subsidies for the large number of distribution of free apps.
That all the other app stores have never been able to undercut Apple here should have given you a hint or two: It's pretty much run at cost, at Apple as much as anywhere else.
look man, if your ok with apple making all the choices for you, then by all means, keep on doing what your doing. but some people have different ideas and want to customize the device to their needs.
You don't even know what can or can't be done with iOS as it is, and yet you're all about sweeping generalizations.
i can tell your a fanboy because you started insulting me there at the end, and that only shows your having a hard time justifying what you say to be true. These are not my habits, they are established work-loads that people have been doing on their computers for decades.
I'm simply fed up with always the exactly same ignorant cow manure being shoveled all over the place by people who are full of prejudices but empty on actual knowledge of the topic, let alone actual, practical experience.
you really do need a filesystem to be called a comptuer.
Rubbish. I could just as arbitrarily claim that if you didn't have a HiDPI screen your machine was a mere toy and "completely unusable" for any serious uses just because that's what I fancied most.
In real life with real use I need solutions which are appropriate to my actual needs. Stomping your foot and throwing tantrums when you can't replicate exactly the same workflow you happened to have earlier is silly and shortsighted.
Successfully working with IT has always meant adapting what was actually available to what one actually needed and being creative at getting both together for as much pragmatic efficency as feasible.
Crybabies whining about their bygone habits and preferences have always been left behind in the process when new opportunities appeared on the scene.
and you need a cloud service that is compatible with all platforms and file types. Your solutions to a lot of my arguments is used a bunch of third party programs. a file system is fundamental to computing. there should be a 1st party file explorer (even a restricted one with the option to run root). To deny that access is basically saying "we are apple and we know better, you don't need that option"
It is as if you haven't paid any attention for the past nine years.
iOS is a safe, stable and still extensible mobile platform which can run third-party software. This was extremly hard to achieve, and Apple forced a lot of compromises regarding "hackability" because of it. I get how that rubs many people the wrong way (not least as a developer myself, even if not for iOS so far), but as someone who has developed and handled substantially complex, extensible systems (some from the ground up) I am very much aware of where crucial decisions have to be made for something like that, and between which alternatives these decisions have been in major cases.
And the very real stability and safety (including privacy protection!) which actually results from Apple's decisions is hard to deny.
I'm not at all denigrating your preference for completely different kinds of systems where many decisions have been made completely differently, but your problem here is that you don't seem to be aware what these criteria and these options even are when it's about the creation of a major platform.
One can easily disagree with many of Apple's decisions and rules, and that aplies to myself as well in various cases, but actually being aware of why Apple is handling many things the way they do is actually relevant here, and in most cases it's actually knowable.
You'd be much better off if you started at least questioning some of your evident prejudices and preconceived notions at the very least for some broader perspective – which is valuable even if your conclusions for your own system preferences end up in exactly the same place as they do now, just not out of sheer ignorance any more.
Morawka - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
Good reader requires you to be on the same network as the machine you want to share files with. Some networks do not even have wifi ap's so your sol in that regard. The only workaround I've found is to pack around a nano wifi router that can run off a battery pack, and physically hook it into the network (if you even have access to the ports). ita really just a file viewer with a few nifty features, but it does not excuse the lack of a native solution. Micro usb otg thumb sticks are the shit. No worrying about sensitive files over the network.MaxIT - Saturday, February 13, 2016 - link
You are becoming ridiculous... Are you really complaining because a smartphone from 2010 isn't supported anymore in 2016 ? Lol at you ...Tell me about HTD Evo or Google Nexus One, both android flagships from 2010 .... They were death and buried by 2012 .....
FunBunny2 - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
-- bumped into the end of Moore's Law with their ridiculously outdated x86 architecture.not true, strictly speaking. years ago Intel stopped executing the ISA in silicon, and went with an emulator which ran "micro-code" on a "micro-architecture". the real processor (ALU, etc.) in a X86 chip is some RISC machine; which gets changes each tock. whether this is really more efficient than using those billions and billions of transistors to do all of X86 in silicon is a question I've never seen answered.
Constructor - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
Exactly: They have been forced to build a real-time hardware cross-assembler into their CPUs because that was the absolute last resort to get ahead at all any more. Absolute madness, and close to a miracle that they've pulled that off at all, even with the substantial penalties that entails.The ARM64 ISA, by comparison, is completely new, legacy-free and was designed from scratch for optimal execution efficiency. It's not even backward compatible to ARM32. The two are completely different, much more different than x86 and AMD64.
ARM CPUs generally don't need any microcode – they can decode and execute the instruction stream directly, and complications are kept to a minimum (just consider, by comparison, what an Intel CPU needs to take care of internally when processing asynchronous high-priority interrupts, for instance!).
Intel has always completely botched their basic ISA designs. Remember the original x86? What a horrendous, incompetently conceived turd! The painful iterations after that were hardly any better, and If AMD hadn't helped them out with AMD64 (which given what they had to start from was actually somewhat decent), if they hadn't put everything in chip design and manufacturing and if the Microsoft monopoly hadn't afforded them a perfect base for their own monopoly, they would have been toast a long time ago already.
The declining Windows PC market, however, is not a good portent at all for Intel specifically, especially when looking at the continuous profit erosion of the dwindling number of PC manufacturers.
The era of the ascent of the Windows PC is over. The rollercoaster car has just passed the top of its climb.