When you realize you haven’t charged your laptop in more than a week and it still has half a charger left.
Stick that in your x86, Intel!
ARM
ARM-Based 12-inch MacBook Specs Include A14X Bionic SoC, up to 16GB RAM, 20-Hour Battery Life & More
To me it would make sense if the first Macintosh to sport Apple’s ARM system on a chip was the basic MacBook. It’s entry level enough to support up selling more powerful machines, and down low enough to write it off if the horse power cells to wow everyone’s eyes out of their sockets.
“Looking at these rumored specs, it honestly looks like Apple wants to repurpose the discontinued 12-inch MacBook to sport its own A14X Bionic SoC. Since the A14X Bionic is expected to be made on the 5nm process and not have a ridiculously high TDP, the 12-inch MacBook’s chassis should be sufficient to cool the chip“
Which would also be inline with modern Apple and Samsung devices. Not to mention, if it’s not busted: why fix it?
The Next Phase: Apple Lays Out Plans To Transition Macs from x86 to Apple SoCs
Kind of happy to see this. While I don’t envision Apple ever releasing a Mac that both appeals to me, and falls within my price range, I do very much want to see more “Conventional” computers with ARM processors.
Based on my iPad Pro, and nearly a decade of working Android tablets to death, I think the crossover point works. High end ARM SoCs are up to snuff for missions like the MacBook Air and iMac. For the general computing tasks the problem is more that ARM based PCs aren’t really a thing you can go out and buy. Not so much a lack of horse power. The processors kickass at this point.
Rather the main use case I see for x86 in Apple’s world: is for devices like the Mac Pro. Where uncompromising horse power should be what comes along with that absurd price tag. For regular people, we just want our computers to do our job promptly.
And I’m pretty sure that even the basic iPad far out sells the Mac Pro, lol. For better or worse the demand for Uber powerful computers often go hand in hand with the software packages for highly specific and very resource intensive business tasks. Not Joe Blow checking his email or doing office files.
A Quick look at the Pinebook Pro USB – C video output
Gotta admit that looks pretty damned good for such a SoC. Being what it is perhaps that should be expected; since the “OP1” in a certain high profile Chromebook is very similar.
My various ‘Pi and old ODroid wouldn’t be able to pull off any of that so easily :P.
Forbes: The New Pinebook Pro Will Challenge Google Chromebooks For $199.
Can’t say that I’ve ever cared a lot about Rockchip’s SoCs but that actually sounds pretty damned tempting. The chipset should deliver a really nice bang for the buck. Very tempting indeed!
At least as far as 14″ laptops with anything weaker than a Core i7 and 32 GB of RAM can go, and for those you would have to shift the price tag over a decimal place. Let’s just say for $200: you have no right to complain about the horse power that a Cortex A72/A53 like that can deliver.
Intel’s chipsets targeting that $200 price point tend to struggle just playing my music and opening tabs without stuttering. In fact getting tired of that is the number one reason my Chromebook will likely get retirement this year or next year.
Hmm, I wonder for the hell of it how bad the Graphics driver is for the RK3399’s GPU. Last time I tried a Mali it was on an Exynos 5 and I was most unimpressed by the desktop graphics performance. But that was quite a few generations ago.