On raw performance might, the M4 really does live up to Apple’s promises, should deliver. Single core is up about 20% compared to all M3 chips and more than 40% compared to M2. The generational computational leap from the previous M2 iPad Pro is at least a 42% jump on single-core and multi-core.
All this computational power….on iPadOS 😵💫
Right, like they don’t really have many AAA, the main thing holding this back is firmly the OS. I just truly don’t get it
Market segregation is worth it for them and the chips will be used in plenty of other hardware anyway, so dumping them in iPads doesn’t hurt, even if it’s mostly just marketing fit the products, nor does it necessitate a product change.
It’s a waste of computing power, though.
I have an M1 MacBook Air and barely ever actually used the CPU. Putting these chips in iPads, which are mostly used for drawing at most, is just a waste, and one of the reasons they’re so incredibly expensive. Apple could have just kept producing M1s and putting those in current iPads.
The reality is, there’s zero innovation in Apple products. The switch to M1 was really great, but everything since then was just “more M is more better”, utility stayed the same, price went up. Awesome.
Perhaps with a more robust OS, such as Linux or macOS the battery and thermals would just not suffice?
I mean, an iPad is basically a larger phone, which I think can get hot enough if pushing it to its limit
Also I don’t think the RAM would be enough for intensive tasks, the device as it is could be pretty good for gaming though, if only the title list wouldn’t be a shit for the most part.
But at the same time, a MacBook Air doesn’t seem much bigger compared to the biggest iPad available.
Isn’t iOS just about heavily modified Unix clone? My jailbroken old iPad has /var/log and misc GNU directories, as well as an Apt package manager to access Cydia repos.
I get it if you’re doing photo editing on an iPad. That stuff is still a CPU hog.
That said, the M3 is on an end-of-life manufacturing process, and now that these things are getting updated every 2 years, it just makes sense to put the M3’s successor in this thing. A Pro M2 is going to stick out like a sore thumb in 2 years, and the M3s are going to start to disappear from the line up soon.
That’s why they also announced a multi camera synced video editing functionality on the iPad version of Final Cut Pro. In theory it can make use of the CPU with a ton of compute involved in video editing, especially with many source videos. Other than that, though, it’s hard to marry that overpowered hardware with underpowered software.
I can only think of one thing you could do with this much power … run an LLM
We’ll find out the future of iPadOS in one month! They have raised the price on the pro models, hopefully they have a big ass update readied up or alll the reviewers are gonna say the same thing “great hardware let down by shit software”
I’m so annoyed they announced this.
I have a slew of raspberry pi’s kicking around, doing various things. I also have a name brand NAS that reportedly lets you run other software, including containerized apps, but their implementation is whack and doesn’t work super well.
I want to get a more powerful machine for use as a replacement server. I’d like to spin up my own LLM tools, use it to with software
like photoprism to auto tag my pictures, or even spin up Frigate on it.
My leading contender had been either a Jetson Orin nano or a system with the core ultra 155h chip. But now I might have to wait until they announce/release M4 Mac minis - which is really annoying because I want instant gratification for my half-baked ideas.
Now you have the time to actually write up a design document and let your half-baked idea become a fully cooked one before you drop a bunch of cash on it
What are you, some kind of financial advisor!?
…. because if you are, are you taking new clients? My shit is whack.
RUNNING IPAD OS?? Apple what is happening 😭
Curious who uses this for pro means. With FCP, Logic, Resolve on there now, who would choose an iPad for these?
Great way for a kid to start learning them, I imagine, but I would wager a guess that most pro peeps are using it for illustration and art.
Whoever can afford this can already afford the laptop alternatives. My guess is that this will be a convenient “nice to have” item whenever bringing along a tablet over a laptop feels like less of a hassle.
Yeah will be interesting, because an Air is what I use for that. I need the keyboard….
I have a powerful PC laptop, then a MacBook Air for days at conferences, airplane, etc.
iPad seems useless for me at least. I have a phone.
Personally I love my iPad as a larger browsing/watching device, for creative uses like vector image work, photo editing, and drawing, occasionally for CAD work (which is remarkably simple with Shapr3D), and of course streaming from my Xbox or PS5 to play remotely. Also it can run Stable Diffusion, which can be fun to play around with.
But the primary reason I originally bought it was for sheet music. 😅
I don’t really need the pro performance, but it’s nice to have for some of the creative stuff. And learning to redo workflows with the pencil and touch inputs can be frustrating and slow at first but I find once I get the hang of them it can be really intuitive and quick. I recently designed a T-shirt design for my dad in a vector app that I had never used before, took me only an hour or so to feel proficient enough to be satisfied with the work and further practice will only make it better.
Obviously it isn’t for everyone, I’m not trying to be an iPad evangelist. But even though I don’t use mine for my primary job I really enjoy working with it when I get to.
If the leaked score is true, isn’t it beating every cpu in single core performance
