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Apple

The Last Thing the iPad Needs Is a Spec Bump (theverge.com) 128

An anonymous reader shares a column: When Apple CEO Tim Cook and a bunch of his deputies take the virtual stage next week to announce new iPads, they're going to spend a lot of time talking about specs. If the rumors are true, we're going to get new iPad Pros with OLED screens and thinner bodies, new Airs with faster chips and a correctly placed front camera, and a couple of new accessories. Before they even launch, I feel confident telling you these are the best iPads ever. But after all these years, I still don't know how to tell you whether you should want an iPad. Or what you'd want to do with it.

This has been true forever, of course. The iPad is the jack-of-all-trades in Apple's lineup, a terrific device in many ways that still feels increasingly redundant now that so many people have big phones and long-lasting laptops. Apple seems to have spent the last decade-plus enamored with the idea of the iPad as a shapeshifter -- a device that can be exactly what you need at any given time. The company loves that the iPad's use case is hard to pin down, that it means different things to different people. It's a fun, good, ambitious idea: The One Gadget To Rule Them All. The way to make that happen, though, is not to upgrade the chips or move the buttons or redesign the rounded corners. It's to focus less on the iPad itself and more on the things you attach to it.

[...] The iPad is a screen and a processor, and everything else should be an add-on for whenever you need it. Give the gamers a controller and an external GPU. Give the music lovers a speaker dock, and give the smart home fanatics a bunch of buttons that connect to various devices. The photographers need lenses; the spreadsheeters need a keyboard with function keys. The Pencil and the Magic Keyboard are a start, but Apple needs to do much more. The company needs to spend less time worrying about the iPad itself -- a device famous for how long it lasts and that hardly anyone is using to its full potential -- and more time on how to make it more than just a tablet. (Plus, bonus for Apple: it's going to be a lot easier to get people to buy accessories than to convince them to upgrade their iPad when they don't need to.)

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The Last Thing the iPad Needs Is a Spec Bump

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  • I mean, that's what the iPad is. The more Apple tries to turn it into a laptop replacement, the more they stray from the mark. Just as the more they keep trying to turn Macbooks and iMacs into giant iPads and MacOS into iOS, the more they miss the mark.
    • Well....it can work well with the increased power...depending on what you are doing.

      With the Apple Pencil...you can, while on the road, do some SERIOUS work on photos with the Affinity Suite of tools....and video? Well, run Davinci Resolve on this thing (or even FCPX)...but with Davinci...have you SEEN what they can do with not only video editing, but sound, VFX and of course...color correction/grading.

      It does take that extra power to run these type of apps....and it's nice to be able to take your "work" with you to the poolside, or beach....or just the back yard when the weather is nice...piddle around with a video, tend the smoker or brew some beer....

      Anyway...I find use out of them.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        Over time as macbooks end up being more like ipads both in terms of hardware and OS, it won't make a difference anyways. It's already fairly close to being a simple matter of banning anything that didn't come from the app store. Shit, even the first and second stage bootloaders are already virtually identical between the two, and several OS middleware applications are as well.

        • Over time as macbooks end up being more like ipads both in terms of hardware and OS, it won't make a difference anyways. It's already fairly close to being a simple matter of banning anything that didn't come from the app store. Shit, even the first and second stage bootloaders are already virtually identical between the two, and several OS middleware applications are as well.

          You've got it exactly backwards.

          MacBooks aren't moving toward being iPads; iPads are moving toward being "Lite" MacBooks.

          Having said that, I do wish I could just load macOS onto an iPad Pro; or that Apple would create a MacBook with a Dockable iPad for a screen. But there are power and cooling considerations that I am sure Apple has reasoned would make that concept be too compromised of a Device.

          • MacBooks aren't moving toward being iPads; iPads are moving toward being "Lite" MacBooks.

            The firmware and middleware was created on the ipad, then made its way to macos. Not the other way around.

            Having said that, I do wish I could just load macOS onto an iPad Pro

            Apple really wouldn't like that. In fact, during litigation in recent years they've only ever made a case for why they believe it should be exactly the opposite. Right now they're working to convince you that you don't need to install unapproved applications on your mac. When, not if, they succeed in that, there won't be a macos.

    • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday May 02, 2024 @02:24PM (#64443062)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I've had my 11" iPad Pro for 5.5 years now, and for me it is a perfect laptop replacement-- it isn't a desktop replacement by any means, but I can get by doing just about anything from my iPad. I like that I can remove the keyboard to slim it down when just reading. I don't need thinner, lighter, or faster really; I never feel like those things constrain me.

        I will upgrade when they release the new version, as mine has lived a rough life and it is time. I would rather buy a Linux solution, but there are t

        • Similar - my main computer(s) are desktops both at home and in the office. Multiple screens, a mouse and a USB keyboard...

          So there is no conceivable situation I would want or need both a laptop and a tablet. Pick one; a device that I can tear off the keyboard to watch Youtube cat videos on the train would win...

          Tablets don't run 'real' software? Well my employer lets us WfH via RDP over VPN, so my work computer ain't my input device anyway.

      • by e3m4n ( 947977 )
        My iPAD gets the most use during long car rides. I can stream downloaded movies to kill time, and browse websites. It also serves as a laptop replacement when traveling for anything web based. If I do have to interact with work, I can use Teams or our 8x8Work app to do audio/video. My iPAD case has a wireless keyboard integrated for better productivity if I have to do administrative tasks from web managed sites. This is a lot more convenient than carrying my tech bag with its laptop. And its automatically a
    • by Kisai ( 213879 )

      The iPad is for people who need a computer, not a phone, but don't need any of the accessories of a computer (Eg no printers, computer mice, keyboards, cameras, storage, etc)

      The iPhone is for people who need a phone. Like realistically, "ipad kids" is a term for giving a kid an iPad instead of mommy's 3x more expensive iphone.

      • The ipad works great with printers. I know its very confusing, but any wireless printer works pretty well with cloud printing. It detects the printer automatically and can print to it if its on the same network. It works better than any windows or linux based device does with HP's own drivers.

        And well, it works well enough with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. The mouse support is really really odd. I can't recommend that for anyone. And of course it works great with icloud storage.

        But yeah, An ipad is a big
      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        The iPad is for people who need a computer, not a phone, but don't need any of the accessories of a computer (Eg no printers, computer mice, keyboards, cameras, storage, etc)

        The iPad is for people who need an office suite and/or a web browser — the same sorts of people for whom a Chromebook would be effective. It is way too limited to be a good general-purpose computer replacement, and will continue to be way too limited until you can either run macOS or Windows on it (whether directly or in a virtualization environment).

        Tablets are great as web browsers or for consuming video content. They're downright miserable for everything else. It's all about the apps, and even n

        • Not an Apple fan by any means, but I use my ipadpro gen2 12.7” bought cheap used for all my limited computer needs, apart from an old Dell core2 desktop that does my TV streaming.
          Apps dont mean a thing to me, other than ebay and banking, which are covered well.
          Ive also got a good powerful laptop I never use.
          My Dad found the ipad great as he got older, he used it until he passed at 97 yo.
          Shock news, Slashdotters are not the target market.

          • by unrtst ( 777550 )

            Not an Apple fan by any means, but I use my ipadpro gen2 12.7” bought cheap used for all my limited computer needs, apart from an old Dell core2 desktop that does my TV streaming. ...
            Ive also got a good powerful laptop I never use.

            I don't think this says what you think it says.
            The more significant factor here is that most people don't really need a computer at all. If you're only using a tablet, are not making much use of apps, and never touch your laptop/desktop, then it sounds much like the parent post said, "Tablets are great as web browsers or for consuming video content. They're downright miserable for everything else."

    • Does the iPad still NOT ship with a native calculator app?

  • by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Thursday May 02, 2024 @01:52PM (#64442990)

    You want to sell someone a device so they have to lug a dozen extra devices for their usecase? Most complaints I see about Macbooks, for example, are the opposite. Carrying all the adapters and peripherals makes people annoyed.

    I think the iPad non-pro has a use case: it's a computer for mom and the (young) kids, it does basic computer things. It's the iPad pro that's not clear to me. I absolutely think there is a compelling thing to do to it, but Apple may be too much at the mercy of its app store revenues.

    • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      This was my thought too -The guy wants to turn the iPad into MacBook without a keyboard.

      The is nothing less 'portable' than something with pile of external dongles, adapters, etc hung off it just to make it useful.

      USB-C or a conventional proprietary connector type-y docking station or port-replicator works for the desk but it does not travel. Nobody wants to walk into the conference room of the coffee shop and assemble and squid like array of thunderbolt gadgets, only to tear it all down (and probably have

      • Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Thursday May 02, 2024 @02:14PM (#64443038) Homepage Journal
        See my response above...about my use cases for doing some heavy duty developing of my photos with things like Affinity Photo....or even doing some video work with Davinci Resolve (sound editing, video editing, VFX, color grading)....

        And I don't really need anything external by the Apple Pencil

        To run these apps...you do need some serious horsepower...but I can move data in/out from cloud...or just load it up on the iPad itself, since you can get with like 2 TB of storage....

        I might bring my iPods Pro 2 with me for better sound, but that's it.

        And this way, I can do some work or 'fun' work while out at the pool or beach or beach bar taking a break, etc.

        I'm not sure what all squid array of things I need to attach to still do some serious work or play on a loaded up iPad Pro....?

      • Well, this was yet another 'tech" blog post so - no surprise that it's chock full o' silly ramblings.

      • >>The guy wants to turn the iPad into MacBook without a keyboard.

        They'd be better off releasing a MacBook with a touchscreen. I know lots of people would like that.

        • Only if Apple enhanced MacOS to use a touch screen. Otherwise it is like my last two work Windows laptops: almost none of my work load benefits from a touchscreen. In fact it gets in the way if I accidentally touch the screen and my window shifts focus and now I am typing in the wrong place.
      • This was my thought too -The guy wants to turn the iPad into MacBook without a keyboard.

        The is nothing less 'portable' than something with pile of external dongles, adapters, etc hung off it just to make it useful.

        USB-C or a conventional proprietary connector type-y docking station or port-replicator works for the desk but it does not travel. Nobody wants to walk into the conference room of the coffee shop and assemble and squid like array of thunderbolt gadgets, only to tear it all down (and probably have to close or restart half the apps using the stuff) 15min later.

        Strawman much?

        In a conference-room setting, whether the "squid" attaches to a Dock that then attaches with a single cable to a Laptop or a Tablet; or if the "squid" converges directly into dedicated Legacy Ports on a Laptop, is a total Red Herring. Either way, there's a Squid.

        But, you're right: There's a (much) better way.

        If the Conference Room has an Apple TV box hooked to its Projector/Audio System, the Presenter with either a MacBook or an iPad can wirelessly cast their Presentations, Videos, Webpages, e

    • by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      It's the iPad pro that's not clear to me.

      When we had new windows put on our old house before selling it, one sales guy had an iPad pro. He used it to take pictures of our house, loaded them into an app, and swiped through the different styles of windows so we could see what they looked like applied to our house in real-time. Once we picked what we wanted, he had a Bluetooth printer in his car that he used to print out the quote.

      I guess you could do the same thing with a phone and a laptop, or a convertible laptop, but it's fewer things than the fo

      • It's the iPad pro that's not clear to me.

        When we had new windows put on our old house before selling it, one sales guy had an iPad pro. He used it to take pictures of our house, loaded them into an app, and swiped through the different styles of windows so we could see what they looked like applied to our house in real-time. Once we picked what we wanted, he had a Bluetooth printer in his car that he used to print out the quote.

        I guess you could do the same thing with a phone and a laptop, or a convertible laptop, but it's fewer things than the former, and smaller than the latter.

        Not to mention that laptops, no matter how small and light, are kind of a pain to walk around a house with, let alone actually use, while balanced on your arm, "open".

    • You want to sell someone a device so they have to lug a dozen extra devices for their usecase? Most complaints I see about Macbooks, for example, are the opposite. Carrying all the adapters and peripherals makes people annoyed.

      I think the iPad non-pro has a use case: it's a computer for mom and the (young) kids, it does basic computer things. It's the iPad pro that's not clear to me. I absolutely think there is a compelling thing to do to it, but Apple may be too much at the mercy of its app store revenues.

      iPad Pro + Pencil is a great art platform. With a keyboard case it's a nifty carry-along for writing. I haven't really found any other use-case outside of quick gaming or looking things up. Otherwise, iPads are consumption devices. They could change that, but then it'd step into desktop territory.

      • Have they improved the registration of the Apple Pencil to be better than finger painting/crayons? Wacom has the precision advantage if that matters to your art. It does to mine.

        • Have they improved the registration of the Apple Pencil to be better than finger painting/crayons? Wacom has the precision advantage if that matters to your art. It does to mine.

          I guess I never had problems with the Apple Pencil tracking once I had a decent program. ProCreate + Pencil was a better experience for me than any Wacom I ever had access to. Granted, I'm rarely playing with the truly high-dollar Wacoms, and I'm a very casual artist, but based on reviews places I've hung with "real" artists, my experience doesn't seem that unique.

    • I didn't understand the issues people had of Apple switching to all USB-C/Thunderbolt ports from the collection of USB-A, HDMI, mini-DP/Thunderbolt, and/or whatever. When I got my new USB-C laptop I bought a dozen USB-C to USB-A adapters and then stuck them on the USB-A cables and adapters I had, then got a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter for my Ethernet adapter, just leaving the adapters with the cables and treating the cables and adapters like they were a single unit.

      It kind of sucks to have to ge

    • by e3m4n ( 947977 )
      I have a non-pro ipad and its what I take most of the time when traveling. Its case has the wireless keyboard, and my AirPods automatically sync uo with it. In a pinch it works well to take care of quick work issues when they are typically web based already. As for the simplified computer for young kids, I would steer them toward Chromebook since they will be using that ecosystem a lot in public schools.
      • Kids hate the chromebook. Our schools given them to students and a lot of their material is there. But they sit entirely unused around here collecting dust during the summer or when the material is just on a website they can get via their ipads or home computers.

        There's no way to get my kids to agree on a single thing, except they they're not going to use their chromebooks without a fight.

  • Are f* better for everything

    • Agree.

      My Galaxy S8 Ultra tablet is a way sexier device than any iPad Pro. I have been using iPads for a long time, but made a switch to Samsung and haven't looked back.

  • I always thought that the iPad worked best for elementary school students who haven't figured out how to use a keyboard yet. The touch interface is much easier to learn.

    Once you get to the point where you can work a keyboard and mouse, a laptop makes for a much more useful device. They're also great for watching movies while traveling, but I doubt that most people are going to pony up $1,000 for an iPad Pro just do to that.

    • No Google ate their lunch with chromebooks, because Apple didn't care enough about management. It takes so little time to figure out a keyboard and touch pad, like less than an hour for kids over the age of 6.
  • Who was that guest editor who wrote an editorial about how replaceable battery were battery banks? Was this written by the same guy?

    People can already easily buy bluetooth accessories that do this well...a bluetooth speaker, keyboards, game controller, etc. (The idea of add-on lenses is stupid).

    So what is this guy arguing? That Apple should promote it more? That there should be official Apple licensed bluetooth game controllers? That users should be more into it? That app developers should do a better

  • increasingly redundant now that so many people have big phones and long-lasting laptops

    2010 called. They want their opinion back.

  • I bought iPad in 2020 hoping to use it with an Apple Watch (that was gifted to me) and Apple Health. And I was super surprised because it's not supported. Why? Probably to force people to buy iPhones instead.
  • I use my ipad for:

    • Streaming video
    • Kindle
    • DJI Drone Flying
    • Games
    • Pictures or video calls with a group present

    Now whether any of these would really benefit from a spec jump is a different discussion.

    • The OLED screen jumps out at me as a useful upgrade. An iPad is mainly a screen.

      Although, they make some nice non-OLED screens too.

      • That's my thinking.
        My miniLED iPad and miniLED MBP screens bug the ever-loving fuck out of me for watching movies on.
        They're awesome about 90% of the time, but every once in a while, you get something bright moving on a dark background, and watching that little square try to track it is so immersion breaking it makes me wonder who the fuck ever signed off on the tech for watching media on.

        I would trade my miniLED iPad Pro in for an OLED one in a heartbeat.

        Although, they make some nice non-OLED screens too.

        I don't know. I have supposedly a couple of thei

  • Only the iPad mini is threatened by phones. Not the full sized.
  • When you're using the iPad 11th generation and it's now old, you'll wish you had just a little bit more AI processing, a little more RAM... But you won't wish it had a bunch of dongles to bring along with it. A spec bump on an appliance computer is always and fundamentally good. It pushes out the obsolescence runway.
    • My iPad Air 2 is pretty much end of life at this point. I guess that I need to get a new one if I want to stream Netflix on it.

    • All i wish for my 6-year-old/6th gen ipad is to be able to replace the battery for a reasonable cost... Its $119 USD, thats absurd. It literally browned out today at 28% battery..
      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        A new battery and all the tools to do the replacement are currently on sale for $10 Canadian. Looks like Americans still have to pay $50 US though, or $40 for just the battery.

        https://canada.ifixit.com/prod... [ifixit.com]

        If you need to pay someone to do it for you, $120 is probably less than you'd pay a plumber if you can't fix your own toilet, or a mechanic if you can't change your own oil.

  • by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Thursday May 02, 2024 @02:19PM (#64443050)

    What the iPad is that phones a laptop aren't, is big and thin.

    I use mine as a reader. It's my music book, that I prop up on the piano's music rack. It's my busco book, that I prop up on my tall music rack, the one I play violin from

    It's my library, my comic book reader, and it's fantastic for handwriting notes. Those notes are searchable and even my chicken scratch cursive is searchable.

    Freehand sketching and diagramming are also superb. It's also my notebook for meetings, etc.

    For me, the iPad does things no laptop or phone can do.

    I do wish they'd make it bigger. 11.9 is basically a sheet of printer paper. I need something a bit bigger, the size of piano book paper. 15 inch diagonal.

  • by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Thursday May 02, 2024 @02:30PM (#64443082) Homepage Journal

    They will push the AI angle until maybe 1.5 years from now, when it falls out of fashion.

    My knowledge of customer feedback from the spate of AI helpers from Microsoft, Google and others is that they kinda work sometimes and that mostly, customers hate it. It's like turning on FSD in the middle of a city in my Tesla. You put more effort into monitoring and checking the AI's output than you would just driving.

    Similarly with writing a document, or writing code. There is no AI that can help me write the stuff I write. It's mired in company secrets that no AI is trained on and the AI can't put together cogent technical arguments that cover more than a single sentence. It's like having an illiterate child writing over your sheet of paper.

    This isn't a value prop for customers and it won't turn out to be one. AI will bury itself in the fabric of the world in the form of classifiers, human language parsers and image/data enhancement but no one is going to pay for that, it'll just be an additional cost on businesses that need to have these convenience functions to feature match the competition.

  • iPad is good enough to become my daily driver. i dunno who hurt the author of that article.

  • I love my current generation iPad Mini for things like running digital mixers for live sound engineering, recording audio (with outboard AD/DA), hi-rez music playback into my home stereo's really nice DAC ("lossless" Airplay 2 is limited to lower bit depths/sample rates and it resamples), and as a robust, ultralight, small travel computer with a folding bluetooth keyboard.

    My phone could technically do all of those things, but the iPad's much larger screen and beefier battery make it work waaaay better--a
  • by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Thursday May 02, 2024 @02:40PM (#64443104)
    The future of the iPad includes use as a display for Macs. Look at MacBook Pro (MBP). Imagine a detachable screen being an iPad. The MBP base really a dock for an iPad.

    When the iPad is docked it acts as a GPU and display for the MBP. macOS on the MBP controls it. iPadOS strictly in the background unseen, perhaps available as a "coprocessor"(*) for running threads on the iPad's Apple Silicon CPU in parallel with the MBP's Apple Silicon CPU.

    When detached iPadOS takes over and becomes visible, the iPad now acts like a tablet, no longer just a display. Perhaps documents are handed off from the macOS version of an app to the iPadOS version of an app. Ex Pages, Numbers, etc.

    Note this would allow for GPU (and "coprocessor") upgrades for a MBP by getting a new iPad.

    Besides a MBP dock. Perhaps let iPads connect to any Thunderbolt 4 port on any Mac to be an additional display and/or "coprocessor".

    (*) Yeah, not a true coprocessor since we are not really sharing RAM. So some sort of distributed shared memory scheme over Thunderbolt 4 would be needed. Obviously not for casual use but some higher end rendering, image processing, computer vision, and other computationally heavy things where the memory transfer of source and destination data would be a relatively small thing.
    • TB isn't really fast enough for this.
      Modern local buses have hundreds of GB(ytes) per second of bandwidth.
      A single lane of TB4 has about 4.6.
      You can say things like "but eGPUs work!", but you leave out an important aspect of that working- that they do it poorly.

      That doesn't prevent them from coming up with a more suitable bus connection for your described system, though.
      • by drnb ( 2434720 )

        TB isn't really fast enough for this.

        Distributed computing doesn't necessary need a fast connection. It depends on how long the job takes on s single system. Consider a distributed compilation system at LAN speeds.

        Slower access to shared memory is a normal issue in distributed shared memory.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        I think the "coprocessor" aspect is a secondary functionality, an additional display being the primary utility of plugging in an iPad. It's just so tempting to get access to the iPad's CPU even if only at TB4 speeds.

        • Distributed computing doesn't necessary need a fast connection. It depends on how long the job takes on s single system. Consider a distributed compilation system at LAN speeds.

          This simply isn't true.
          You're right that certain jobs do not, but they're a minority of jobs.
          Most parallelizable jobs are simply not embarrassingly parallel- i.e., able to be crunched without interdependence.

          Slower access to shared memory is a normal issue in distributed shared memory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]... [wikipedia.org]

          It sure is, but not anywhere near the factor we're talking here.
          You're dropping it to the amount of "decent ethernet" (40GbE). The bare minimum for a local bus would be infiniband- which is about 30 lanes of TB4 these days (800Gbps)

          I think the "coprocessor" aspect is a secondary functionality, an additional display being the primary utility of plugging in an iPad. It's just so tempting to get access to the iPad's CPU even if only at TB4 speeds. Hence my thinking of distributed computing being a more realistic model than real multiprocessing.

          You'd be hard pressed to sell a coprocessor for a Mac that could do v

          • by drnb ( 2434720 )

            Distributed computing doesn't necessary need a fast connection.

            This simply isn't true.

            I think you are conflating distributed computing and parallel computing. Slower access to shared memory is absolutely something dealt with even in distributed shared memory, let alone distributed computing in general.

            Slower access to shared memory is a normal issue in distributed shared memory.

            It sure is, but not anywhere near the factor we're talking here. You're dropping it to the amount of "decent ethernet" (40GbE). The bare minimum for a local bus would be infiniband- which is about 30 lanes of TB4 these days (800Gbps)

            A friend's distributed shared memory research used workstations connected via TCP/IP on the same LAN.

            It's just so tempting to get access to the iPad's CPU even if only at TB4 speeds. Hence my thinking of distributed computing being a more realistic model than real multiprocessing.

            You'd be hard pressed to sell a coprocessor for a Mac that could do very little other than speed up compilation.

            I've done computer vision research and some processing stages have taken seconds to execute on a Mac laptop. The underlying computations having locality so segmenting an image and processing the

            • I think you are conflating distributed computing and parallel computing. Slower access to shared memory is absolutely something dealt with even in distributed shared memory, let alone distributed computing in general.

              Actually, I was operating under the assumption that *you* were conflating them.
              Parallel computing is what computers do in the modern day. Multi-core, Multi-socket, and in the case of supercomputers- multi-node low-latency high-bandwidth shared parallel computing.
              Distributed computing is a relic of a time long since past that frankly, sucked, and only applied to embarrassingly parallel tasks- compiling things, calculating a mandelbrot, etc. Anything that didn't require coherence in the dataset.

              A friend's distributed shared memory research used workstations connected via TCP/IP on the same LAN.

              Your friend'

              • by drnb ( 2434720 )

                Distributed computing is a relic of a time long since past that frankly, sucked, and only applied to embarrassingly parallel tasks- compiling things, calculating a mandelbrot, etc. Anything that didn't require coherence in the dataset.

                Nope. It's an active area of research. Its not meant to apply to all parallelization.

                Your coherence claim is erroneous. A complete initial state can be provided.

                A friend's distributed shared memory research used workstations connected via TCP/IP on the same LAN.

                Your friend's distributed shared memory research was less than I have at my lab at work- and it's built with bottom dollar, so I'm guessing you're really stretching the meaning of the word "research" here.

                PhD thesis. it's about accurately distributing a workload, whether participants are local or remote. It's not about hardware pissing contests,

                I've done computer vision research and some processing stages have taken seconds to execute on a Mac laptop. The underlying computations having locality so segmenting an image and processing these independently is practical.

                I'd guess you have a slow Mac, or were doing something silly like using the NPU.

                MacBook Pro, i5. Although the code is portable and runs under Windows, macOS or Linux. x86-64 and AArch64 (testing on iPad A13, waiting for M3 mini). Non-ML, the project was using highly customized algorith

                • Nope. It's an active area of research. Its not meant to apply to all parallelization.

                  Your coherence claim is erroneous. A complete initial state can be provided.

                  If a calculation can be done on a set of data with no relation to any other calculation done on that data, then it can be parceled out without worry for coherence.
                  That is a job that is worth doing over a slow bus, if the far-end processing unit is fast.
                  There's nothing erroneous about that, and an initial state is meaningless if coherence is required.
                  Coherence over a slow bus will be slower than simply queuing the work locally, period.

                  PhD thesis. it's about accurately distributing a workload, whether participants are local or remote. It's not about hardware pissing contests,

                  Computing isn't about pissing contests- it's about useful work.
                  Distrib

                  • by drnb ( 2434720 )

                    If a calculation can be done on a set of data with no relation to any other calculation done on that data, then it can be parceled out without worry for coherence.

                    Sometimes coherence can be maintained by further calculations on the multiple end states.

                    There's nothing erroneous about that, and an initial state is meaningless if coherence is required. Coherence over a slow bus will be slower than simply queuing the work locally, period.

                    It depends on the nature of the computation. For example an accumulator array that sums up "votes" at pixel locations. These calculations often operate on a neighborhood around a pixel (or edgel) so segmenting an image can cause coherency problems near shared borders. A initial state of a previously completed job can maintain coherency. For jobs run in parallel their final states can be combined to maintain coherency.

                    Computing isn't about pissing contests- it's about useful work.

                    Th

                    • I'll stop the thread of ever expanding replies and answer with this-

                      If I said it using the iPad as a node over a slow bus couldn't do useful work, I overplayed my hand.
                      However, in today's programming paradigms, which have abandoned the older paradigms that favored that kind of thinking- the usefulness of it is very questionable.
                      Very few software suites support distributed computing anymore. Except for a couple very specific workloads, and some hobbyist workloads, it's simply more practical to get a mach
                    • by drnb ( 2434720 )

                      But it would be a hobbyist such as yourself, or me at 20 when I was trying to get every 486DX in my house to produce a deep Mandelbrot dive.

                      I had a 68K coprocessor card in my Apple //e to send "jobs" to,

                      Like the "coprocessor" stuff mentioned in past posts, it was a secondary opportunistic use. It was sitting there begging to be used. :-)

                      FWIW, Macs and iPad can talk over a cable using usbmuxd. An unsupported API so it cannot be used for anything published through the App Store.

                    • FWIW, Macs and iPad can talk over a cable using usbmuxd. An unsupported API so it cannot be used for anything published through the App Store.

                      Ya- I used it on a jailbroken iPhone ages ago.
                      The linux project seems to be highly mature at this stage (in so much that I can't remember the last time it had trouble talking to my iPhone)
                      Through thunderbolt, there's an additional easy method of communications- it supports a native EoTB (i.e., fake network adapter)
                      if you plug your Mac into another machine, Windows, Linux, or Mac, it'll create a Thunderbolt Ethernet Interface.

      • Consider that 8K/60Hz video requires something like 80 Gbps of bandwidth, with some variation based on color depth and compression. Also consider that Thunderbolt 3 and 4 allow for up to 40 Gbps of bandwidth. If I'm sending some kind of graphics primitives to an eGPU for it to fill out the rest and send on to a DisplayPort display then it might not be too much to expect that the primitive data is half that of the raw video, give or take if there's some compression in the process. It would appear to me th

        • Consider that 8K/60Hz video requires something like 80 Gbps of bandwidth, with some variation based on color depth and compression. Also consider that Thunderbolt 3 and 4 allow for up to 40 Gbps of bandwidth. If I'm sending some kind of graphics primitives to an eGPU for it to fill out the rest and send on to a DisplayPort display then it might not be too much to expect that the primitive data is half that of the raw video, give or take if there's some compression in the process. It would appear to me that an eGPU would do fine in processing video for a single 8K display, or some multiple display system with similar data output requirements.

          Oh- it's more than fine for display. This wasn't about display.
          Video bandwidth requirements are quite benign compared to algorithmic bandwidth requirements- if you hope to maintain any kind of decent performance.

          If the eGPU is to accelerate video to an internal display then the math is different. The data throughput is split between the graphic primitives going out to the eGPU and the raw data (again perhaps allowing for some compression) coming back to send to the display. Laptops and tablets today don't have 8K displays, perhaps with some exceptions I'm not aware of. Probably more like a 1080p, 1440p, or maybe 4K at most. With half the bandwidth of a Thunderbolt 3 channel, 20 Gbps, there can be 4K@60Hz video coming from the eGPU into the computer. The eGPU systems I've seen are USB-C/Thunderbolt docks in addition to graphics processors so some of the bandwidth is used for USB ports, maybe Ethernet or some other ports, but there is almost certainly bandwidth to spare for that.

          eGPU systems are not good- particularly for anything other than "game" usage, which has a pretty simple data transfer requirement.
          Primitives can be pre-loaded and are generally designed to fit within reasonable amounts of VRAM.
          Every game made in the last 20 years has a loading screen that loads a

          • by drnb ( 2434720 )

            Video bandwidth requirements are quite benign compared to algorithmic bandwidth requirements- if you hope to maintain any kind of decent performance.

            Original poster butting in here ... I think you are taking the distributed shared memory reference too literally. I am not talking about extending a laptop's virtual memory to include the iPad's RAM. I am referring to parallel computations. Each CPU, laptop and iPad, having its own copy of processing code, the laptop sending source data to the iPad, the laptop processing half the source and the iPad the other half, the iPad returning its half of the result. Whether full or partial source is sent to the iPad

            • Original poster butting in here ... I think you are taking the distributed shared memory reference too literally. I am not talking about extending a laptop's virtual memory to include the iPad's RAM. I am referring to parallel computations. Each CPU, laptop and iPad, having its own copy of processing code, the laptop sending source data to the iPad, the laptop processing half the source and the iPad the other half, the iPad returning its half of the result. Whether full or partial source is sent to the iPad depends on locality of the computation.

              I had assumed you meant parallel computing, because the world has left heterogeneous slow-bus computing in the dust.
              There's a reason you don't see eGPU over USB3, and why eGPU over TB frankly sucks ass compared to x16 PCIe attached.

              Image processing and computer vision can have simple data transfer requirements too. OpenCV shows eGPUs working well there too.

              Only in the case that you have no compute ability on the local machine!
              OpenCV does demonstrates a *drastic* reduction of performance via eGPU compared to a local bus.

              There's no damn way you can swing this- there's a reason buses keep getting faster, not slower.

              Anything you

              • by drnb ( 2434720 )

                There's a reason you don't see eGPU over USB3, and why eGPU over TB frankly sucks ass compared to x16 PCIe attached.

                My point is that when you only have that TB connection, using it may be better than not.

                Image processing and computer vision can have simple data transfer requirements too. OpenCV shows eGPUs working well there too.

                Only in the case that you have no compute ability on the local machine!

                Or if you have more pending work than the local machine can do in parallel. A workload that would need to be serialized on the local machine. Some of that serialization might be sent to the TB machine.

                • My point is that when you only have that TB connection, using it may be better than not.

                  But why not make it better?
                  Having just the TB connection makes it a novelty, not a really useful thing.
                  Sure, you can run a handful of OpenMP programs with a special support for running arm64 kernels on the remote... but nobody wants that. Not really.
                  What they want is faster symmetrical multiprocessing.

                  Or if you have more pending work than the local machine can do in parallel. A workload that would need to be serialized on the local machine. Some of that serialization might be sent to the TB machine.

                  You're right. Serialized workloads could treat it as an entirely separate computer with a fast network connection.
                  But again- the utility of such a thing is so very limited that it functionally makes the se

                  • by drnb ( 2434720 )

                    But why not make it better?

                    But again- the utility of such a thing is so very limited that it functionally makes the second computer a waste for 99.9% of all people.

                    Because we're making do with what we happen to have. A Mac and an iPad.

                    • Again, though- it makes the utility essentially a waste of a second computer for 99.9% of all people.
                      I don't disagree that it would be "wouldn't it be cool if I could use my iPad as a computer in general, and do this particular thing with it also if I wanted?" but you'll never see a product built around that.

                      What you're really arguing for is the freedom of the iPad from the bullshit software restrictions imposed upon it- and there, I couldn't agree with you more.
                      Your iPad can already function as an exte
              • There's a reason you don't see eGPU over USB3,

                Yes, there is a reason. The reason is that the USB protocol was not built with the broad range of I/O that ThunderBolt and PCI were built to handle. With USB there's device classes in mind, and these would be common peripherals that were traditionally handled with a "low speed" interface (in scare quotes because what is "low speed" is something of a moving target as technology has advanced) such as a printer, mouse, keyboard, network interfaces, and "small" (again a moving target) removable media (initial

  • I don't have any reason to upgrade my iPad. And I use it quite a lot. When I bother to take the time to close all the apps, I find there are at least 10 of them open.

    Lots of people have the arrogance to assume that just because they don't "get" it, there must be nothing to get. But I am as technical as anybody, and I find it amazingly useful.

    I had one major annoyance... the iPad wouldn't use my Bind9 server for resolution, no matter what I did, which meant it couldn't resolve my internal servers by hostname

  • This is such a dumb article. "I can't find a use for the iPad." So what. I can't find a use for a bra. But my wife sure can. And she also drives an iPad as her primary computing device. She does email on it, browses the web, video calls the kids, shops on amazon, reads books, on and on. For her it is the only device she needs. LOTS OF PEOPLE FIT THAT DEMOGRAPHIC.

    Some people want a pickup, some people want a convertible miata. The world does not revolve around you!!

    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      This is such a dumb article. "I can't find a use for the iPad." So what. I can't find a use for a bra. But my wife sure can. And she also drives an iPad as her primary computing device. She does email on it, browses the web, video calls the kids, shops on amazon, reads books, on and on. For her it is the only device she needs. LOTS OF PEOPLE FIT THAT DEMOGRAPHIC.

      Some people want a pickup, some people want a convertible miata. The world does not revolve around you!!

      The problem you have is that the tablet fad is over, not just Ipads but all tablets, it's just that Ipads have further to fall before they reach the bottom.

      People aren't buying tablets any more, most people who want one already have one and there's no impetus to upgrade as the one they have still works so most new tablet sales are to replace broken ones. TFA is right that a spec boost wont change that. I have a cheap tablet (Nokia T10), it replaced a 2013 Nexus 7, both pretty much had on purpose, they pl

  • I have been using a 8" (16:10) Windows tablet daily since 2015. While MS Windows leaves a lot to be desired, this tablet has a headphone jack, stereo speakers and a SD card slot. It has a battery bump that is really comfortable to hold, and a built-in kick-stand.
    It has a high-resolution "retina"-class screen, and I don't need a $100+ "Apple Pencil" to point at it: I can use a friggin' REAL ACTUAL PENCIL as a pointing device, because the capacitive touch screen senses it.

    What I want is a worthy successor to

  • iPad
    iPad mini
    iPad Pro (mayyyyyybe 2 sizes)

    1. There isn't an inch of daylight between the iPad and the iPad Air. Give it up already.

    b. I have a hunch that people looking at a 12" iPad Pro 256 for $1,199 are thinking - for $200 less I get a MBA with built-in keyboard and trackpad... that could explain the shift to Mac sales seeing today's earnings, but I haven't dug into those yet.

  • I use my iPad for eBooks, Documentation PDFs, light browsing, Video Conferencing when not at the desk.
    I use my phone for calling and also all of the above when I'm not at home to use the iPad or the computer.
    When at the desk, in front of the computer, I use that for everything + work, heavy browsing and actual computer stuff.
    Could I live without and iPad, just with my phone and desktop ? Yes. But I prefer the bigger screen of the iPad to the phone's screen and I don't feel like siting in the chair in front

  • I use my iPad on flights and that's basically it. It's compatible with my XBox controller for a few games and I can download movies from whatever streaming service I happen to be subscribed to. It's really a great little device for a flight.

    The problem is that it's too expensive to perform such simple tasks. A cheap Android tablet will do all the video stuff and some of the game stuff (lots of games are iOS only) for 1/2 to1/3 the price.

  • First... Over the many years I've said at least my share of bad things about Apple and Adobe as corporations. Maybe more than my share.

    30 years ago I started a series of cartoons for a fairy tale/fantasy for my children. The deal was I would do the drawings, they would write the story. I was, as I had always been, a pencil, ink, and erase guy. About a year ago while cleaning out file drawers I came across the originals. I've picked the story back up, this time for three granddaughters.

    Paper was a
  • iPads, and tablets more broadly, have always been a solution in search of a problem.

    About the only thing I think they really do well, and better than either a phone or a tablet, is consuming video media. That's all they've ever been used for in my house, at any rate - by everyone in the house.

    Almost everything else they can do, phones and laptops do better, and have always done better. They had a niche for a while due to battery life when paired with a bluetooth keyboard, but not so much anymore.

    If they'd d

  • iPad is the only thing my wife uses ! Light weight, easy to handle and does everything she wants. Everyone doesn't need a laptop or computer. She's on her 3rd one. Rarely does she use my iMac. Her choice and loves it.
  • The iPad needs a "MacOS" app that loads up the full native desktop compute experience.

    On the iOS side the iPad needs to support multiple user profiles by default and not just when set up under MDM. It's insane that this is a fully baked and shipping feature that's so frequently requested but is simply withheld.

    Apple are being assholes about these obvious features because the convergence and device sharing cut into sales of multiple devices. How is buying 5 different devices supposed to be "green" when you c

Keep up the good work! But please don't ask me to help.

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