Apple in their presentations sound as if they are giving their hardware for FREE (JUST $399) and if not mistaken, they never discussed in their presentation one of the important things in a watch, Battery Life. :(
This. At $499 it'd be a steal, and might tempt entry-level iPad buyers, but at $599 seems less compelling. I think they were worried about cannibalizing 11" Pro sales if they made it too much cheaper...
I still us a 2017 iPad Pro. I tend to spend more because I keep these things forever - I doubt I would have even gotten this one had I not dropped my 4 year old (at the time) regular iPad and completely shattered the screen. $599 is crazy if you 'upgrade' every year - but why? What really doesn't work? Everything seems to work fine on my iPad, running 13.7 (just updated the other day). It's plenty fast enough. Changing the shape or other odd "aesthetic only" things do not warrant replacement. OMG, it looks so 2017! My bezzels are 2mm bigger than the new one. WHO CARES? $599 is a whole lot less painful if you figure a 4-5 year life, if not more. And yes, they CAN and WILL last that log (unless you smash it). My iPhones last me a good long time too, never had a problem with the battery not maintaining charge after a year or two. I have an 8 Plus now, I actually bought the previous model (but new) because it was lower in price after the new ones were out and it performs just fine. I don't expect to replace it for at least another 2 years. Because it works, and presumably will keep on working, just like all my previous ones. I've always skipped two or three upgrades before replacement, now these things are fast enough that I see no reason to upgrade unless it literally is broken. Sorry, I am just not a consumer whore who needs the latest and greatest on release day. Of ANYTHING - I went 8 years before recently replacing my main desktop, even hobby stuff - I refuse to pre order, every product that comes out with pre orders, a few months after the product is delivered, I see it all over eBay for less than the original asking price. I have never missed out on something I wanted - I ALWAYS find it later, no matter how much the manufacturer says "preorder now or you won't get it".
I've also got a 2017 iPad Pro, but I'm not sure what the comparison you're trying to make is - if you're shopping for a new iPad, for whatever reason (which, given that Apple's statement at the event that 50% of iPad buyers are 1st timers, means that most aren't upgrading from a recent model), you've now got a choice between the $329 (often $299, sometimes even $249) iPad.... or a jump up to the $599 iPad Air, or the $799 iPad Pro. The gap is large enough that basically no one will cross-shop the iPad and the Air, though some might the Air and the Pro. $599 seems like a lot given what else $600 buys, not given that the Air will likely last 6 years.
Every time Apple has said this in the past it has been ST. But I agree, 40% ST at this stage of the game would be ASTONISHING! SVE/2 present, and AMX finally unlocked?
SVE/2 has nothing to do with ARMv9. Was introduced as an addendum to ARMv8.2 Fujitsu is an ARMv8 machine.
AMX is unclear but SGEMM (matrix multiply instructions) are part of ARMv8.6 Still unclear after a year if Apple has implemented those or added custom instructions.
There is more or less full support for SVE in LLVM right now. There has been on-going work (led by Apple...) to add fully-fledged matrix support to LLVM (in the same way that there's already full vector support) so one keeps hoping that once that is done AMX will be visible to developers and we'll see what's actually there!
Seems like the 40% in article is misleading. The article suggests it is speed of A14 over A12, but elsewhere what I am reading says - 40% refers to A12 over A10 (nice, true, but uninteresting except for iPad buyers!) - no sort of performance indication was given for A14 except the usual "more faster"
Hmm. Arstechnica ALSO says A14 is 40% faster. The A14 seems definite, the "predecessor" is unclear. Maybe meaning is it's 40% faster than previous iPad Air, IE A12, so 20% faster than A13.
ipad Air is 40% faster CPU, 30% faster GPU, 2XML (10X OnCPU matrix multiply) “Compared with the previous generation” accordinng to Apple website.
But the event explicitly states “compred to previous iPad Air” for CPU, 30% faster for GPU “as well”. A13 makes martix multiply on CPU 6X faster. 20% faster in other things compared to A12.
So CPU is 16% faster, GPU is 8% faster and ML is 83% faster compared to A13. That is Meh enough for Apple to try to hide it. For A13 they gave perf/efficiency at iso perf breakdown by component.
Cheaper Apple Watch/Ipad will sell very well. Not sure if Ipad Air is that much more value compared to 11" Ipad which generally is available around 700 with deals. But Ipad Pro still uses A12 series chip though enhanced for Ipad. Reviews comparing A14 with A12Z should be interesting. Plus Apple will be updating Ipad Pro with A14x and Mini Led early next year. Though that will be at a higher price.
Anyone else leave feeling distinctly underwhelmed? The iPad Air is cool, I guess, but at $599 feels kinda expensive for something that's still a couple stops short of a real computer. At $499 it'd be very compelling, though.
The base ipad is the only exciting thing. An a12 for $329 isn't bad at all. Too bad they didn't mention a base memory upgrade. 32gb is nearly unusable these days with the size of iOS now.
If past base iPads are any indication, you'll be able to get the 128GB model for like $350 every 6 weeks starting on Black Friday. At that price I'm really not sure why they make the other models.
Well, because the base model will likely be on sale for $299 somewhere pretty much around the calendar, and $249 at rare times. I just don't get how the product managers sleep at night charging $100 for 96GB of NAND in 2020. Was their last job at a car dealership, charging $500 for a floor mat and a cargo net?
Triggered much? He didn’t tell you how to use your iPad. In saying “nearly unusable” merely expressed his opinion that 32GB is too small for many use cases. Not sure what’s so difficult to comprehend about that, nor why you feel compelled to attack and suppress any opinion that differs from your own. It’s kinda weird.
The base iPad has been a decent deal for a while, but at the same time, it's been incremental progress and there's frankly not a ton of reasons to upgrade from recent generations in almost all use cases.
If you buy an iPad Air (or any iPad) expecting to get a PC you will be gravely disappointed... Someone who uses the term "real computer" and thinks that's meaningful will not be happy with even an iPad Pro.
I couldn't agree more. The iPad Pro is a joke. My daughter plays minecraft on it and at times it stutters embarrassingly and the battery runs out in just over three hours. Even trying to use it instead of my Surface Pro at a conference was a lesson in frustration...
Not an Apple fan, but that 5 nm SoC is nice; it has about 50-60% of the transistor count that NVIDIA's big Ampere has; not bad for a mobile SoC, not bad at all. Wish the next SoCs for Android had anything even close.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
51 Comments
Back to Article
ant_in_pnc - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Event starts at 10am PT (not 10am ET)Hxx - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
another year another iphoneAlistair - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
I want ARM Macs, iPhones, and the next iPad Pro, all not on the docket for today. Might as well skip today's video.Hxx - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
i guess no iphones today oh welldeil - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Samsung have another device every time ceo sneeze. but at least they have not copy-paste each year.Hxx - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
the watch literally looks like a copy pasteRoy2002 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
So no iphone today.Oyeve - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Ug, enough about the watch already.psychobriggsy - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
It's worse now. Fitness fitness fitness.How about a pub crawl companion instead?
Srikzquest - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Apple in their presentations sound as if they are giving their hardware for FREE (JUST $399) and if not mistaken, they never discussed in their presentation one of the important things in a watch, Battery Life. :(Achtung_BG - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
A12 SoC from 2018.....plewis00 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Not as bad as the 2019 iPad which had the 2016 A10 (same as the 2018 before it). The A12 is actually a pretty big step up for a budget model.name99 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
iPad comes in three ranges:iPad cheap, iPad medium, iPad expensive.
This is iPad CHEAP. iPad Medium will use A14, iPad expensive will use A14X.
zeeBomb - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
No iPhone today, eh? pain.plewis00 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
A14 is 2x faster than a comparable laptop... what is a comparable laptop exactly? Faster in what?Roy2002 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Macbook Pro?sing_electric - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Booting? I could believe that.name99 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Certainly in NN inference...Srikzquest - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
People know where Apple is good at, I don't know why they need to go for the hyperbole comments or these kind of cringe worthy comparisons.Midwayman - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
I mean you can get some really abysmal low end laptops.mkaibear - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
$100 more expensive for the base model Air? What's the storage?mkaibear - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
64Gb for the base model just like before.So $100 extra. Ouch.
Midwayman - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
If they had made the base 128gb it would be a lot more palatable.sing_electric - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
This. At $499 it'd be a steal, and might tempt entry-level iPad buyers, but at $599 seems less compelling. I think they were worried about cannibalizing 11" Pro sales if they made it too much cheaper...Alistair - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
yeap the price is now way too highrrinker - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
I still us a 2017 iPad Pro. I tend to spend more because I keep these things forever - I doubt I would have even gotten this one had I not dropped my 4 year old (at the time) regular iPad and completely shattered the screen. $599 is crazy if you 'upgrade' every year - but why? What really doesn't work? Everything seems to work fine on my iPad, running 13.7 (just updated the other day). It's plenty fast enough. Changing the shape or other odd "aesthetic only" things do not warrant replacement. OMG, it looks so 2017! My bezzels are 2mm bigger than the new one. WHO CARES? $599 is a whole lot less painful if you figure a 4-5 year life, if not more. And yes, they CAN and WILL last that log (unless you smash it). My iPhones last me a good long time too, never had a problem with the battery not maintaining charge after a year or two. I have an 8 Plus now, I actually bought the previous model (but new) because it was lower in price after the new ones were out and it performs just fine. I don't expect to replace it for at least another 2 years. Because it works, and presumably will keep on working, just like all my previous ones. I've always skipped two or three upgrades before replacement, now these things are fast enough that I see no reason to upgrade unless it literally is broken. Sorry, I am just not a consumer whore who needs the latest and greatest on release day. Of ANYTHING - I went 8 years before recently replacing my main desktop, even hobby stuff - I refuse to pre order, every product that comes out with pre orders, a few months after the product is delivered, I see it all over eBay for less than the original asking price. I have never missed out on something I wanted - I ALWAYS find it later, no matter how much the manufacturer says "preorder now or you won't get it".sing_electric - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
I've also got a 2017 iPad Pro, but I'm not sure what the comparison you're trying to make is - if you're shopping for a new iPad, for whatever reason (which, given that Apple's statement at the event that 50% of iPad buyers are 1st timers, means that most aren't upgrading from a recent model), you've now got a choice between the $329 (often $299, sometimes even $249) iPad.... or a jump up to the $599 iPad Air, or the $799 iPad Pro. The gap is large enough that basically no one will cross-shop the iPad and the Air, though some might the Air and the Pro. $599 seems like a lot given what else $600 buys, not given that the Air will likely last 6 years.name99 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
" I wonder if this is ST or MT performance?"Every time Apple has said this in the past it has been ST. But I agree, 40% ST at this stage of the game would be ASTONISHING!
SVE/2 present, and AMX finally unlocked?
name99 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
40% ST is in line with these rumors:https://www.notebookcheck.net/Alleged-Apple-A14-Ge...
depending on exactly how you do the measuring (new compilers? new version of GB5 that' uses SVE/2?)
dudedud - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Has ARM finally introduced arm v9?I don't see how they could make use of it without v9
name99 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
SVE/2 has nothing to do with ARMv9. Was introduced as an addendum to ARMv8.2Fujitsu is an ARMv8 machine.
AMX is unclear but SGEMM (matrix multiply instructions) are part of ARMv8.6 Still unclear after a year if Apple has implemented those or added custom instructions.
There is more or less full support for SVE in LLVM right now.
There has been on-going work (led by Apple...) to add fully-fledged matrix support to LLVM (in the same way that there's already full vector support) so one keeps hoping that once that is done AMX will be visible to developers and we'll see what's actually there!
name99 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Seems like the 40% in article is misleading. The article suggests it is speed of A14 over A12, but elsewhere what I am reading says- 40% refers to A12 over A10 (nice, true, but uninteresting except for iPad buyers!)
- no sort of performance indication was given for A14 except the usual "more faster"
name99 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Hmm. Arstechnica ALSO says A14 is 40% faster.The A14 seems definite, the "predecessor" is unclear. Maybe meaning is it's 40% faster than previous iPad Air, IE A12, so 20% faster than A13.
Nice, as expected, not crazy spectacular!
GC2:CS - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
iPad is 40 % faster CPU 2X faster GPU (12 vs 10)ipad Air is 40% faster CPU, 30% faster GPU, 2XML (10X OnCPU matrix multiply) “Compared with the previous generation” accordinng to Apple website.
But the event explicitly states “compred to previous iPad Air” for CPU, 30% faster for GPU “as well”.
A13 makes martix multiply on CPU 6X faster. 20% faster in other things compared to A12.
So CPU is 16% faster, GPU is 8% faster and ML is 83% faster compared to A13.
That is Meh enough for Apple to try to hide it.
For A13 they gave perf/efficiency at iso perf breakdown by component.
They will probably reveal more in the future.
trivik12 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Cheaper Apple Watch/Ipad will sell very well. Not sure if Ipad Air is that much more value compared to 11" Ipad which generally is available around 700 with deals. But Ipad Pro still uses A12 series chip though enhanced for Ipad. Reviews comparing A14 with A12Z should be interesting. Plus Apple will be updating Ipad Pro with A14x and Mini Led early next year. Though that will be at a higher price.Midwayman - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
I'm heard rumors the 11" pro will be going away and they're trying to shift buyers of it to the air anyways.sing_electric - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Anyone else leave feeling distinctly underwhelmed? The iPad Air is cool, I guess, but at $599 feels kinda expensive for something that's still a couple stops short of a real computer. At $499 it'd be very compelling, though.Alistair - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
minor improvements, large price increase...Midwayman - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
The base ipad is the only exciting thing. An a12 for $329 isn't bad at all. Too bad they didn't mention a base memory upgrade. 32gb is nearly unusable these days with the size of iOS now.A5 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
If past base iPads are any indication, you'll be able to get the 128GB model for like $350 every 6 weeks starting on Black Friday. At that price I'm really not sure why they make the other models.sing_electric - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Well, because the base model will likely be on sale for $299 somewhere pretty much around the calendar, and $249 at rare times. I just don't get how the product managers sleep at night charging $100 for 96GB of NAND in 2020. Was their last job at a car dealership, charging $500 for a floor mat and a cargo net?name99 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
STOP freaking telling everyone else how to use their iPads!!!If you buy an iPad, for example, as an eBook reader, or to mount on the wall as a home controller, then 32GB is plenty enough storage.
sbrown23 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Triggered much? He didn’t tell you how to use your iPad. In saying “nearly unusable” merely expressed his opinion that 32GB is too small for many use cases. Not sure what’s so difficult to comprehend about that, nor why you feel compelled to attack and suppress any opinion that differs from your own. It’s kinda weird.sing_electric - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
And this ignores the fact that Apple could add like $5 (or less) to its BOM cost and double the storage, but chooses not to.sing_electric - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
The base iPad has been a decent deal for a while, but at the same time, it's been incremental progress and there's frankly not a ton of reasons to upgrade from recent generations in almost all use cases.name99 - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
If you buy an iPad Air (or any iPad) expecting to get a PC you will be gravely disappointed...Someone who uses the term "real computer" and thinks that's meaningful will not be happy with even an iPad Pro.
Speedfriend - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
I couldn't agree more. The iPad Pro is a joke. My daughter plays minecraft on it and at times it stutters embarrassingly and the battery runs out in just over three hours. Even trying to use it instead of my Surface Pro at a conference was a lesson in frustration...shaddixboggs - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Pumped for new apple watch. Hell yes.eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - link
Not an Apple fan, but that 5 nm SoC is nice; it has about 50-60% of the transistor count that NVIDIA's big Ampere has; not bad for a mobile SoC, not bad at all. Wish the next SoCs for Android had anything even close.Jake13942 - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
"Tim Apple is wrapping up the show" LOL Did AT just call him Tim Apple?Speedfriend - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
Still the ugliest watch on the market and with useless battery life?