“Apple would like to see improved iPad sales. To do so, they need to differentiate their product from all others in a commanding way,” J. M. Manness writes for Seeking Alpha. “One big differentiating factor will be TouchID, Apple’s fingerprint detection technology.”
“The processor will definitely be updated to a new A8, which will be made with the new 20 nanometer process, allowing more capacity and lower current draw,” Manness writes. “One important new feature I believe will be incorporated is support for 4K ultra-high definition TV. At double the resolution of current 1080p (3840 pixels wide by 2160 pixels tall), this utilizes 4 times the number of pixels (8.3 megapixels).”
“The introduction of iOS 8 will be huge with the introduction of [HomeKit] and [HealthKit]er, and the easy connectivity of Handoff, whereby if you are working on one device, you can easily pick up your job on any other.,” Manness writes. “Metal = Extraordinary Gaming. Metal will be absolutely huge. It is a differentiator that cannot be overlooked, and which no other system will be able to duplicate. Apple has managed to eke out a 5X to 10X graphics improvement by designing a low level interface for their graphics processor that bypasses the industry standard OpenGL. The response from several leading game developers has been incredible with jaw-dropping demonstrations at the WWDC.”
“It is important to understand that this is an ongoing advantage that Apple will have. It cannot be overcome by upgrading GPU power as it is a software to GPU enhancement,” Manness writes. “The competition will be so greatly inferior.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: No other tablet-maker has ever been able to compete with iPad. Now they’re falling behind even faster!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “farkas” for the heads up.]
I get one.
My wallet has been waiting for this for a while. It will be a worthy replacement for my iPad 3. Can’t wait!
I hope you’re not suggesting that the iPad Air will come with a 4K display. That would be insane.
Yea, not sure these analysts even understand HDTV resolution let alone 4K res.
If you can’t see the pixels on an iPad now, why bother with 4K displays? All that will do is cause the video chip to process 4 times more data to throw at the screen. That impacts battery life.
I doubt these ANALysts understand that the reason their index finger smells funny is that they continually have it up their ass tickling their prostate. I. Between tickle sessions, they talk out their asses, spewing forth pure and utter nonsense just to hear (smell?) themselves speak.
On a living room TV, and to a lesser extent, on a 30″ monitor, UHD/4k makes sense, but on a. Mobile device like the iPad, it’s just pointless specs, and apple has never been a company to do pointless specs. The retina display makes sense because it makes the pixels invisible. Making a display with pixels so small, an electron microscope is needed to count that is sheer lunacy.
As for other not being a belt to duplicate The Metal API, the twat who wrote it clearly doesn’t even understand what an API is. Google, Microsoft,,even those clueless idiots at Samsung could create a competing API to take advantage of the GPUs present in mobile devices, to compete.
The real edge apple has is that they have done it at a pace that means they do it right, not first. It is still up to the developer community to use it, and truth move told, apple has long developed APIs in the past that went nowhere because developers did not want to get trapped or whatever other reason they had. I think Metal has a particularly better chance though, due to the volume of devices apple has out there that all work with the same source code, without the problems of androids stupid fragmentation.
Plus Apples ecosystem is better integrated, and more complete than anyone else’s, and in a much more sensible manner than say Microsoft’s conglomerates mess that is windows 8. iOS 8 and Yosemite with iCloud drive takes it to a whole new, more useful level.
Apple not a company to do pointless specs? You’re and idiot. They’ll be doing it in three months with different sized phones.
There’s nothing pointless about building the larger screened phones that customers have been wanting for years. Maybe I’m missing something, list a few things you think are pointless specs.
I was waiting for this next one . I’m in
4K content won’t take up more space than is practical on a portable device I’m sure.
There was some big announcements from Google this week that no one is talking about, even Apple sites, that will Android fans will have a hard time explaining. 64bit is the big one. They made fun of it last year, until they were proven wrong about the speed increase. When the new Android 64bit phones come out this year they will be a generation behind in hardware and software. Google Play app updates instead of carriers to help fragmentation issues. Apple, day one of App Store. Set top box that can mirror and have games. AppleTV can mirror iOS an OSX already. Also play games with four players and have different screens on the TV and the device. There are a few apps that can do this. The problem is lag. There is evidence that Apple has solved this. When the new ATV comes out they will have thousands of games the first day and third party controllers already on the market. Somehow Fandroids don’t talk about this.
I don’t think that the A7 was faster just because it was 64 bit, most of the speed increase was due to it being designed by Apple to run an OS designed by Apple on devices designed by Apple.
It makes a big difference when “Generic” isn’t a design goal.
I read a broad spectrum of tech sites and you are incorrect, the announcements of this week are very much talked about. You may not have seen much publicity on Apple sites about the Android announcements, this is because from my experience they mainly only report stories critical of Android or products that are not so good. When they are positive or good there is little or no comment.
64 bit is mentioned, but no one is touting it as the “big one” just a natural development. If people did comment on 64 bit being on the 5S is was because it really bought very little in terms of major performance and iphone fanatics were sounding like that just trebled the horsepower on their car. It was this over exaggeration that was critisised not the fact 64 bit was included.
As for new Android phones being a generation behind iphones in hardware and software you are very wrong here. Higher-end Android phones are already ahead of the iPhone, especially in features that matter and for operating system IOS 8 which is touted as a major update, contains mostly features that have been on Android phones for years, so no generation ahead there, in some cases three generations behind.
Apple TV has been talked about for years, but nothing forthcoming yet. Same for iWatch there’s not much to talk about except what we would like to see in these products from an Apple perspective. I hope when they do come out and if they do the products are as good as is being touted.
Over exaggeration? See how thoroughly the 1.3 GHz dual core A7 trampled the higher clocked quad core competition.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/5.
And that was with the competition cheating, too.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7384/state-of-cheating-in-android-benchmarks.
This means nothing, specs, speed tests are not important its its how a phone performs in the real world that matters. You have read that here many times. Put a 5s against a better Android phone and you will see it is just as fast and smooth. Apps are just as reliable too in my experience. I will post two links that show that in tests Android is shown to more responsive and apps nearly half as likely to crash than in IOS.
My point is 64 bit does not make any real difference in real life you see little difference in performance. What really would make a difference is a better quality and bigger screen, Improved battery life and better durability, sadly all things the IPhone is actually behind in at this present time.
When you consider many Android phones have better, much bigger screens, are as good as an iPhone in performance, more durable, run an OS that can do much more than IOS yet still have a significantly better battery life, saying they are generations behind is naive in the least.
The IPhone 6 may catchup, I really hope so, but for now we can only wait and see.
So, benchmarks, like the man behind the curtain, should be ignored, and your assertions carry more weight. I guess, from that point of view, bigger surely means better.
There are benchmarks that are designed to gauge overall performance, the performance of particular components and subsystems and to simulate real life usage. So if benchmarks are so unimportant, why did so many Android manufacturers go through all the trouble and risk of cheating?
“are as good as an iPhone in performance” assumes that I bought your prior stream of BS. Sorry, I didn’t. Look at the charts. The A7 (dual core and slower clock) equipped 5s left all the others in the dust except for a couple prototype tablets running so hot that the tablet real-estate was required to dissipate the heat.
While there are many good Android devices on the market, nothing beats one company designing the SoCs, the devices they’re used in, the OS controlling it all and the computers, devices and operating systems with which they interface. It’s a level of integration the Android ecosystem can only dream of.
Actually I do not ignore benchmarks, though they can be misleading and these are also way out of date. Here are one of many more up-to-date benchmark tests
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/test-centre/mobile-phone/3515533/whats-fastest-smartphone-2014/
Makes iPhone look slow yes! However, my point was put an iPhone next to a Note 3, LG S3 or any similar phone and the difference in speed and lag is almost imperceptible. This is the real performace that the user has on a day to day based, now that really matters.
So no generation gap here if anything the Iphone 5S is slightly behind. Now look at where there are huge gaps.
– Bigger, better resolution screens makes a huge difference to the productivlty and enjoyment on a smartphone, so is the small, low resolution screen generations ahead in this area, no for sure, its two or three behind.
– Battery life, crucially important what ever phone you have, especially if you cannot replace the battery. Despite having a lesser screen, smaller processor and simpler operating system the iPhone cannot compare with the opposition in the area it have half or less of the battery life of its major competitors.
-Durability, How your phone survives the rigours of daily use is also very important. Again here the iPhone is very much behind in how it performs against drops, scratching, water intrusion and dust.
OS – As I said before IOS is behind Android in so many areas and the proof is the amount of catching up in IOS 8 confirms this.
So the iPhone is generations ahead, no sorry its way behind and we have to wait to see if the iPhone 6 can do it.
As for your comments in integration I agree Apple degree of integration is ahead of others. but does that make it better?
Take my example I have Macs, an ipad, Ipod and use Airports for my network. I used to use an iPhone but got so frustrated with its shortcomings that I moved to a Note 2 which not only cured these shortcomings but increased my productivity and enjoyment of a phone much more that I expected. After updating to a 3 I rarely use my ipad as I can do most things on the Note. Now do I miss having a great connected ecosystem, yes a little, but its more than compensated by having a phone that does what I want it to do.
Let me expand this further, in the next few years our “tech gear” is going to be more and more integrated, not just phones and computers but many electronic appliances. Any ecosystem that is tied to one supplier is at a big disadvantage. You do not like the Apple TV and prefer a Sony; you cannot afford a Mac or any of Apples products; Apple does not make a TV, but want integration ……….. if any these is the case you are stuck or compromised. Of course there are advantages to a one supplier of connected products, but you cannot ignore the major downsides either.
Apple are not the only ones with an ecosystem either, Google is better placed at the moment for the future as Android is open and many manufacturers will supply the products that are connected and therefore these will be far more accessable to consumers across the world. This means that the ecosystem of Apple may well be a liability in the future as integration across a wider range of products becomes a reality.
I imagine a new Apple TV with an A7(x) and deeper implementation of iOS(8). In combination with Metal, this would be an awesome casual gaming system.
Hogwash! Nothing more than Fanboy FUD. Samsung and Intel along with several others are already there. Galaxy Note 12.2, Surface 3 are inctedible tablets and as is iPad but they all occupy a space thats fits their end users wants and needs.
The new Galaxy Tab S also looks a really fantastic tablet and the fact that I have not seen any stories on that in MDN means it really must be a threat to the iPad Airs best tablet crown and certainly looks better than the iPad mini. We will have to wait and see when it is released fully.