SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the another-bite-at-the-tablet dept.
Though it has been rumored to be in the works for a few years now, the big Apple announcement on Sept. 9 was the iPad Pro, a 12.9" tablet with a screen resolution of 2732×2048. The price starts at $799 for the 32 GB Wi-Fi version, increases to $949 for 128 GB of storage, and $1079 for 128 GB and LTE cellular connectivity. Two accessories are available: a $99 Apple Pencil with a 240 Hz input scanning rate, and a $169 Smart Keyboard, a form and price which may be familiar to you if you have seen Microsoft's Surface. Battery life of the iPad Pro should reach 10 hours, comparable to previous iPads. The iPad Mini 4 is a 7.85" tablet. Mini 4 weighs up to 304g (0.670 lbs) while the Pro weighs up to 723g (1.594 lbs).
The A9X chip in the iPad Pro will be built on either Samsung's 14nm or TSMC's 16nm FinFet process. Apple claims the CPU is 80% faster and the GPU is twice as fast compared to the A8X SoC. This would make the CPU 22 times more powerful than the one in the original iPad, and the GPU 360 times more powerful.
The iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus replace the previous iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models. The new versions use the Apple A9 SoC with 70% faster CPU and 90% faster GPU performance than the A8. The M9 motion coprocessor is built onto the SoC, and Apple has added always-on Siri activation, similar to the Moto X. The display adds a "precise force sensing layer" called "3D Touch," similar to the "Force Touch" on Apple Watch. The front-facing camera has been increased from 1.2 to 5 megapixels, and can use the display as a flash to enable... low light selfies! The rear camera can now record 4K resolution (presumably Ultra HD) video.
The new Apple TV will cost a minimum of $149, more than double the $69 price of previous versions. The SoC inside has jumped from Apple A5 to Apple A8, and RAM has been quadrupled to 2 GB, which should allow it to act as a console, running a broader selection of more powerful games and apps. The tvOS UI can be controlled using voice recognition (Siri) or by remote. The remote comes with a "touch surface" and dedicated Siri button to initiate voice input.
iOS 9 and watchOS 2 will launch on Sept. 16. OS X El Capitan will launch on Sept. 30 with unchanged system requirements from the previous version, Yosemite.
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Thursday September 10 2015, @11:35AM
The tablet is interesting to me, and as a dyed-in-the-wool pen computing afficionado (yes, I had a Newton, and an NCR-3125 running PenPoint, and more Tablet PCs and Windows pen computers than I'd care to count), I should be the target market. Things which keep me from buying one:
- iOS --- it would appeal far more if it were running full Mac OS X
- no daylight viewable display (still missing my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4121 --- really wish I could manage to get Mac OS X running on it)
- no pen silo (not wild about bulking up the machine w/ a case, but guess I'd have to)
- no eraser
- no selection of sizes --- guess that'll be an announcement for the future --- if it were possible to use the Apple Pencil stylus on an iPhone as well as a tablet running Mac OS X, I might be tempted
(Score: 2) by cosurgi on Thursday September 10 2015, @12:05PM
The hardware is very interesting, especially since it has keyboard too. Problem is that I would like to dual-boot this tablet with debian.
#
#\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
#
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 10 2015, @12:56PM
Surface Pro? [techradar.com]
It took me a while to realize that Apple even copied the "Pro" name.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @04:16PM
Um, MacBook "Pro"?
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Wednesday September 16 2015, @02:33PM
Considered getting a Surface --- wound up w/ a Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10:
- smaller and lighter
- includes GPS (only available on the cell-enabled Surface)
- fond memories of a Toshiba T1200XE from way back when
The only issues I have w/ it are:
- screen isn't especially bright, nor is it daylight viewable
- somewhat fragile (screen is plastic w/ no oleophobic coating and easily scratched, case is plastic, ditto)
- satin gold, and the matching keyboard case has a brown pleather exterior
- Windows 8.1 is a weird tablet / desktop hybrid --- I was far more comfortable and productive w/ Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
(Score: 1) by rob_on_earth on Thursday September 10 2015, @02:26PM
Keyboard and pen are not included and cost $149 and $99 extra respectively
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday September 10 2015, @03:56PM
For $149, those keyboard keys had better click really loud when used in the train.
(Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Thursday September 10 2015, @04:24PM
If you see a stylus, they blew it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @01:40PM
The only use for Apple products is recreation. It is an expensive hobby though. Wow.
I'm just having fun watching Apple nuts rationalize this thing vs. the clearly superior Surface.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by isostatic on Thursday September 10 2015, @03:40PM
The only use for Apple products is recreation. It is an expensive hobby though. Wow.
That's exactly right. Certainly can't edit tonights news on one. Certainly can't. Certainly can't do all those very important spreadsheets and stuff that people on the train seem to do. Certainly can't run up eclipse or vim.
What can you do on an IT related "non-apple-product" than you can't do on an "apple product".
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @04:47PM
I suppose you are right if tonight's news is your shitty blog or twitter account or if those very important spreadsheets are your shitty grocery list.
I can honestly say I've never seen a Apple user with eclipse or vim open. Ever.
And the IT people using Macs that I have seen are usually doing nothing but viewing websites or they are remoting into a real machine to do real work[Linux/Unix/Windows].
Real computers are joined to a domain managed by Active Directory.
They work remotely via Cisco VPN clients.
They use MS Office, because Apple's shit replacements suck as much as the others do.
Then there is Visual Studio, SSMS, and on and on and on.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by isostatic on Friday September 11 2015, @09:06AM
Tonight's news I was referring to had 6 million viewers and the package was edited in a field in Syria on FCP X. There's a built in Cisco VPN client but we use f5. The package is fed back by a Java program which controls ffmpeg and fires stuff via http.
But sure, edit your "shitty blog" on windows if you want. A lot of work nowadays is web related and doesn't matter what you use.