Incoming apple upgrades...

[GWestphal]

iPhone 5S: Fingerprint sensor, A7 (quad core), better camera, IGZO screen?, NFC?

Mac Pro: 12 core, dual GPU, smaller

iMac: wireless AC, Haswell, think this will have the same design as last year?, possible IGZO screens?, Thunderbolt 2?

iPad 6: A7X, mini to get retina, IGZO screens?, probably also fingerprint sensor, better camera, NFC?

MBP: Haswell, wireless AC, IGZO screens?, thunderbolt 2?, nicer cameras

Airs: Haswell, wireless AC, (still no retina which is insane...), nicer cameras

Mavericks: OpenGL 4.1 support (hopefully they can push it to 4.4 in the next year or so), some fancy scheduling and power saving under the hood jazz

iOS 7: finally front screen access to powering on and off features, new flat paint job


Does that pretty much sum up the incoming changes? I feel like there aren't any real game changers in there. While I appreciate the power saving work under the hood of Mavericks and nice tech like IGZO, things just seems a little lackluster. Maybe we're at the top of a technology S curve right now...


Things that would be nice....

iPhone:
-All band LTE (world phone),
-zero bezel screen,
-magsafe lightning/microUSB,
-sealed/water proof,
-no mechanical buttons (part of the sealing deal, not sure how that works with a speaker and but maybe a laser mic or just bluetooth only from the device),
-instant on camera,
-wireless charging,
-faster storage

iMac:
- new design,
-easier to upgrade,
-3mm thick zero bezel IGZO screen (a mini with and uber thin screen on top essentially,
-fingerprint scanner on mighty mouse.

Mac Pro-upgradeable

Air:
-Retina IGZO near zero bezel

 

[JAG87]

Holy wishful thinking. I'm a big Apple fan and I still think they couldn't come up with half of things you listed.

In my opinion, the most important updates they can do to the iPhone is finger print sensor (if it works properly i.e. instant unlock), world wide LTE bands, better low-light performance from the camera (i.e. larger aperture), and of course better battery life. Besides those things, anything else is icing. But if all those 4 things are present, that might make me switch from my iP5.

On the Mac side, I'm looking forward to more battery life and Thunderbolt 2 for a possible eGPU application. Besides that, I'm happy with what I have already.

And bring on the iPad mini with retina already. I will throw money at Apple for one. Perfectly ergonomic, just needs a god damn retina screen and an A6X/A7.

 

[joshhedge]

I'm betting the new rPros will have PCI-E SSDs - That's a game changer IMO.

Edit: Does anyone know if there are any differences between PCI-E SSDs and SATA SSDs? I'm going to assume if there would be it, it would be minimal?

 

[Ancalagon44]

Apple will not use dual cores in either the iPhone or iPad.

 

[joshhedge]

Apple will not use dual cores in either the iPhone or iPad.

I can see them sticking with the dual cores, perhaps, but updating the core architecture and raising the clocks slightly but going with a big GPU update to PowerVR Rogue.

If you recall the MBP range took forever to move to quad core, only doing so once the original i7s came out, I really doubt Apple are in any rush to prematurely release a quad core SoC.

Furthermore, If you think about Snapdragon 600/800 QC SoCs they suffer from quite bad throttling under load for both the CPUs and GPUs due to reaching their thermal ceiling, so to speak. If Apple does QC, it will only be in the iPad, as I can't see Apple thinking that throttling would be acceptable.

 

[TheStu]

I'm betting the new rPros will have PCI-E SSDs - That's a game changer IMO.

Edit: Does anyone know if there are any differences between PCI-E SSDs and SATA SSDs? I'm going to assume if there would be it, it would be minimal?

Of course the new rPros will have PCIe SSDs, there's no reason for them not to.

There are significant differences between PCIe and SATA SSDs:
1: The connectors are different, they are nowhere near pin compatible
2: PCIe SSDs are much, much faster. The 2013 MBAs clock in at around 800MB/s Read/Write. The 2012 MBA was something like 400-500MB/s
3: If you want to go faster, just add more lanes. Each PCIe 3.0 lane is good for just about 1000MB/s each way (I think it's each way). So with just 1 lane, you have already doubled SATA III speeds. But if that gets too slow, just add another lane.

 

[GWestphal]

PCI-E SSDs are nice, but not a game changer IMO. They were already getting 400 MB+ performance from SATA SSDs. So, while the speed may have doubled, it doesn't do a ton for us real world but reduce copy times and that's assuming you're copying to similarly fast media. I do hope all computers move to PCI-E SSDs though, but that's just because it is more efficient and makes sense too.

 

[TheStu]

PCI-E SSDs are nice, but not a game changer IMO. They were already getting 400 MB+ performance from SATA PCI-E SSDs. So, while the speed may have doubled, it doesn't do a ton for us real world but reduce copy times and that's assuming you're copying to similarly fast media. I do hope all computers move to PCI-E SSDs though, but that's just because it is more efficient and makes sense too.

Qua?

 

[GWestphal]

Err, SATA SSDs rather.

 

[TheStu]

Err, SATA SSDs rather.

Yea, but PCIe SSDs buys us more headroom down the road, we've already tapped out SATA III. Adding more lanes as needed, without changing the governing spec is better than having to propose, draft, implement/roll out a new spec every time you hit a speed wall.

 

[GWestphal]

Sure, I get that, while better transfer is better. Where we see the most real world benefit was from the IOPS and access times which aren't improving or at least not in noticeable ways.

 

[Rakehellion]

The speed of your drive improves everything you do on the computer. That's like saying we don't need faster CPUs or RAM.

 

[Rakehellion]

Retina Air isn't happening because the air is intended to be a budget model.

 

[joshhedge]

Of course the new rPros will have PCIe SSDs, there's no reason for them not to.

There are significant differences between PCIe and SATA SSDs:
1: The connectors are different, they are nowhere near pin compatible
2: PCIe SSDs are much, much faster. The 2013 MBAs clock in at around 800MB/s Read/Write. The 2012 MBA was something like 400-500MB/s
3: If you want to go faster, just add more lanes. Each PCIe 3.0 lane is good for just about 1000MB/s each way (I think it's each way). So with just 1 lane, you have already doubled SATA III speeds. But if that gets too slow, just add another lane.

Whoops sorry I forgot to actually include what I was looking to find out, the power draw difference, I am aware about the speed difference etc and thank you for the clarification on that. But would using a PCIe SSD reduce idle and load power consumption?

 

[mmntech]

I doubt the iPhone 5S will have a finger print scanner.

I can see Apple continuing to use a dual core processor for the iPhone for battery life. Frankly, quad core is overkill in a smartphone. Though I'd bet the A7X for the iPad will be quad, which is where it could really benefit. We already know the A7 is 64-bit, which is a huge improvement for tablets as you no longer have a RAM ceiling.

Remember that "S" models are just speed bumps. So most likely the iPhone 5S will be identical to the iPhone 5 with a faster processor and perhaps a better camera. If they redesigned it, it would be the iPhone 6.

 

[ControlD]

I doubt the iPhone 5S will have a finger print scanner.

I can see Apple continuing to use a dual core processor for the iPhone for battery life. Frankly, quad core is overkill in a smartphone. Though I'd bet the A7X for the iPad will be quad, which is where it could really benefit. We already know the A7 is 64-bit, which is a huge improvement for tablets as you no longer have a RAM ceiling.

Remember that "S" models are just speed bumps. So most likely the iPhone 5S will be identical to the iPhone 5 with a faster processor and perhaps a better camera. If they redesigned it, it would be the iPhone 6.

Do you really think Apple is going to go over 4GB of RAM in the next iPad when they are sitting at 1GB right now? Are there that many tablet apps screaming for more RAM? The 64-bit processor sounds more like a good marketing point than anything else right now.

 

[joshhedge]

Do you really think Apple is going to go over 4GB of RAM in the next iPad when they are sitting at 1GB right now? Are there that many tablet apps screaming for more RAM? The 64-bit processor sounds more like a good marketing point than anything else right now.

64bit increases the available memory bandwidth, which would be extremely useful for the intergraded GPU in the AX chips. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

 

[Eug]

Are all-band LTE chipsets widely available?

Yeah, PCIe SSDs are very nice in terms of improved performance, but the drawback is that they will no longer be cheap to swap out. The one nice thing about my ancient 2009 MacBook Pro is that I can put any drive I want into it at any time, instead of having to pay the Apple tax up front.

Yeah, we already have that problem with the Retina MBP and the Air, but now it will be across the line. Mind you maybe there will no longer be a non-Retina Pro. If not, I hope the price of the Retina Pro drops significantly. In fact, I'm considering rolling the dice and putting up my 2009 non-Retina Pro up for sale next week before the inevitable price drop for used and refurb Pros after the next Pro release.

Oh and I want a 24" Retina iMac, but I'm not expecting it. I don't find my 27" iMac with its high ppi non-Retina iMac very ergonomic.

 

[ControlD]

64bit increases the available memory bandwidth, which would be extremely useful for the intergraded GPU in the AX chips. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

That could be. I was thinking more of the traditional 3.7Gb memory cap for applications, but maybe there are benefits I am not aware of.

 

[Rakehellion]

Yeah, PCIe SSDs are very nice in terms of improved performance, but the drawback is that they will no longer be cheap to swap out. The one nice thing about my ancient 2009 MacBook Pro is that I can put any drive I want into it at any time, instead of having to pay the Apple tax up front.

That's how technology works. A 2.5" SATA drive still costs more than a 3.5" drive for the same capacity.

 

[Rakehellion]

We already know the A7 is 64-bit, which is a huge improvement for tablets as you no longer have a RAM ceiling.

The memory cap for iOS is about 100MB because there's no virtual memory. Hell, most desktop programs don't use more than 4GB of memory. There are reasons to upgrade to 64-bit besides memory addressing.

 

[Kaido]

I've heard that Apple will have 5K screens out for the desktops next rev.

 

[Eug]

That's how technology works. A 2.5" SATA drive still costs more than a 3.5" drive for the same capacity.

2.5" SATA HDD costs more than 3.5" SATA because of miniaturization, etc. For SSD, they're pretty much all 2.5" (or smaller). If you want to use it in place of a 3.5" drive, you just use a bracket.

This is not the case with PCIe vs SATA for SSD. The controller is different, but the bulk of the cost, the flash memory components, are largely identical..

The issue here I am getting at is that Apple's solution will likely be a custom form factor, specific to Apple, not adhering to any common standard.

 

[mmntech]

Do you really think Apple is going to go over 4GB of RAM in the next iPad when they are sitting at 1GB right now? Are there that many tablet apps screaming for more RAM? The 64-bit processor sounds more like a good marketing point than anything else right now.

No, but Android tablet makers will certainly be considering it in the next couple of years. A mainstream, mass produced 64-bit ARM has a host of benefits including more powerful tablets PCs. 2GB is standard now, 4GB will probably be the norm by next year.

 

[Rakehellion]

This is not the case with PCIe vs SATA for SSD. The controller is different

Bingo.

but the bulk of the cost, the flash memory components, are largely identical..

Except they're faster.