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iPhone Apple XS Max?
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andi*pandi
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Sep 12, 2018, 03:25 PM
 
Do they know it sounds like excess?
https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/12/tec...max/index.html
     
turtle777
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Sep 12, 2018, 03:38 PM
 
Stupid naming aside, i can’t get over the $999 for a 64GB Xs.

I waited last year to upgrade from my iPhone 7,and i might wait another year.
Spending over $1000 for a phone is ridiculous.

-t
     
ort888
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Sep 12, 2018, 03:44 PM
 
Is this the smallest year-over-year improvement to the iPhone yet?

Unless you want the iPhone Tennis Max, the new model is barely better than the old one in any way that 99.9% of the population will notice.

A slighter better screen over the already amazing screen? Slightly better camera software? Slightly more waterproof? Slightly faster over the old one that was already super fast?

There is usually some sort of tentpole feature they can point to, but this year they don't even have one.

EDIT: The iPhone 7 over the iPhone 6s was a pretty small upgrade as well.

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turtle777
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Sep 12, 2018, 04:16 PM
 
Exactly. And for essentially getting the same X phone as last year, but no price drop ?

No thank you.

I was already on the fence because of FaceID. I really like TouchID.

Tempted to get an iPhone 8, while supply lasts.

-t
     
reader50
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Sep 12, 2018, 04:19 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
Spending over $1000 for a phone is ridiculous.
I routinely spend over $1000 for a later computer. But I get a long life out of each upgrade. 5+ years every single time, with RAM and storage upgrades along the way. Graphics upgrades on the desktops, and sometimes even CPU upgrades.

But a smartphone does not behave like a pocket computer purchase. No internal upgrades, very limited external upgrades. And you're expected to pitch it every 1-3 years. Under those conditions, I'm having trouble justifying even a $500 purchase price.

If they were upgradeable even a little (storage and/or RAM) to extend their lifespan, the premium price would make a lot more sense.
     
mindwaves
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Sep 12, 2018, 04:25 PM
 
Considering iPhone XR, lost of Touch ID is a big deal.
     
sek929
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Sep 12, 2018, 04:59 PM
 
6s 64GB still works really well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
     
turtle777
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Sep 12, 2018, 05:05 PM
 
Originally Posted by mindwaves View Post
Considering iPhone XR, lost of Touch ID is a big deal.
Size is way too big for me.

Even iPhone 7 is borderline usable with one hand.
With the iPhone X, I lose that ability, plus Touch ID.

Not attractive to me.

-t
     
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Sep 12, 2018, 05:11 PM
 
Yes, this is probably the first time I have been completely uninterested in the new iPhones. The one thing that was a little interesting is that the iPhone 7, which remains a decent phone with OIS, got down to a more reasonable price. The new ones are too big, too expensive and without any feature I would really like. If they had made an XR in a size between the iPhone 6/7/8 and the 5/5s/SE I might have been interested, but no, they all had to be ginormous. And the old X didn’t get a price drop.
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Waragainstsleep
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Sep 12, 2018, 05:44 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
Tempted to get an iPhone 8, while supply lasts.

-t
7 and 8 are still being sold alongside the new ones.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
turtle777
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Sep 12, 2018, 05:53 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
7 and 8 are still being sold alongside the new ones.
Yes, I know. Supply should last for at least another cycle (until Sep 2019).

But you never know...

-t
     
subego
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Sep 12, 2018, 07:17 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
Size is way too big for me.

Even iPhone 7 is borderline usable with one hand.
With the iPhone X, I lose that ability, plus Touch ID.

Not attractive to me.

-t
You can one hand an X, it just takes getting used to. I’ve got stubby fingers, too (size medium glove).

FaceID is great, unless you’re a “keep phone on the table” person. It’s slightly slower than TouchID, but has fewer authentication failures (for me) and those failures are far less irritating (for me).
     
andi*pandi  (op)
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Sep 12, 2018, 08:01 PM
 
I have just gotten used to touch id and find i rarely have failures. And my kids know the password if they need to unlock it to be car DJs.
     
subego
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Sep 12, 2018, 08:21 PM
 
The “for me” qualifier with TouchID boils down to moisture. I’m a sweaty bastard.
     
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Sep 12, 2018, 08:57 PM
 
[...deleted...]
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subego
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Sep 12, 2018, 09:39 PM
 
Originally Posted by reader50 View Post
I routinely spend over $1000 for a later computer. But I get a long life out of each upgrade. 5+ years every single time, with RAM and storage upgrades along the way. Graphics upgrades on the desktops, and sometimes even CPU upgrades.

But a smartphone does not behave like a pocket computer purchase. No internal upgrades, very limited external upgrades. And you're expected to pitch it every 1-3 years. Under those conditions, I'm having trouble justifying even a $500 purchase price.

If they were upgradeable even a little (storage and/or RAM) to extend their lifespan, the premium price would make a lot more sense.
Upgradability doesn’t matter if you sell the old one every year.

It works out to less than a thousand based on what you can get for the “old” phone.
     
The Final Dakar
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Sep 12, 2018, 11:13 PM
 
I'm not in the market for a phone because iOS11 (and presumably 12) breaks compatibility with my car's audio, but the lack of touch ID and what sounds like bigger default screen is *sigh*
     
Brien
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Sep 12, 2018, 11:45 PM
 
Originally Posted by P View Post
Yes, this is probably the first time I have been completely uninterested in the new iPhones. The one thing that was a little interesting is that the iPhone 7, which remains a decent phone with OIS, got down to a more reasonable price. The new ones are too big, too expensive and without any feature I would really like. If they had made an XR in a size between the iPhone 6/7/8 and the 5/5s/SE I might have been interested, but no, they all had to be ginormous. And the old X didn’t get a price drop.
I too was surprised when the leaks started coming that the ‘budget’ model would be 6.1”. Larger than the X/XS, most of the features. Unless you REALLY need a dual camera or 3d touch I don’t know who buys the XS over the XR. A smaller screen would’ve made the upsell easier. Maybe they can’t stuff FaceID in a smaller phone?
     
Brien
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Sep 12, 2018, 11:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
Yes, I know. Supply should last for at least another cycle (until Sep 2019).

But you never know...

-t
I feel like 2018 is the last year we’ll see TouchID and headphone jacks in Apple products.
     
mindwaves
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Sep 13, 2018, 12:18 AM
 
Well, this is interesting. The iPhone XR has a bigger screen than the XS but less features. Usually Apple has larger iPhones have more features. This is good news. I’m hoping Apple will release MacBooks with big screens but less features also, like a MacBook XR.

The new watch is also appealing and looks more watch like due to its rounded corners. A square watch doesn’t do it for me. But I still won’t be buying one as I don’t want to charge my watch every day or two days. Once a month maybe, but I’ll be waiting for a while. Maybe buy a cheap one just for the gym, but a Fitbit would probably be a better choice for that.
     
OreoCookie
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Sep 13, 2018, 03:44 AM
 
I think it is a bummer that there is no smaller phone any longer, especially no smaller cheap phone. I still think many people would like a phone with a 5" edge-to-edge screen. Plus, the prices, uff.
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subego
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Sep 13, 2018, 06:57 AM
 
Originally Posted by Brien View Post
Unless you REALLY need a dual camera or 3d touch I don’t know who buys the XS over the XR.
OLED?
     
P
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Sep 13, 2018, 06:58 AM
 
After thinking about it a little, my read on it is that the XR is the "iPhone 9+". It costs what a + phone used to cost (8+ was a little more), it is the same size as a +-sized phone to hold, and it has a few upgrades over the 8+. The weird thing is that it loses the second rear camera and has a lower res display (Also 3D touch, but Apple never managed to implement that in a clever way). That, and the colors, make me think of the iPhone 5C. If you think of it that way, we got a new super-sized phone (XS Max) in return for losing the regular sized one ("iPhone 9") and also never seeing the iPhone X dropping $100 like past models have. If we theorize on the hypothetical iPhone 9, it would be the XR shrunk down to have a screen the size of the iPhone 8 but bezel-less to be slightly smaller. That sounds a lot like a great SE replacement to me.

Also: iPhone 7+ gets you a higher res display and a better rear camera for $200 less than the XR. Put another way, you pay $200 plus the camera and display downgrades to get that edge-to-edge display and FaceID. Who does that? I honestly don't get it. Why is the XR so expensive, given what you get for your money?
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Sep 13, 2018, 07:04 AM
 
Originally Posted by Brien View Post
Unless you REALLY need a dual camera or 3d touch I don’t know who buys the XS over the XR.
The display is really a lot worse - resolution is lower, color reproduction is worse. The camera is also a serious downgrade. Those two things sell phones. No, the one I don't get is who buys the XR over a 7+ or 8+. Apple's compare page is quite interesting right now:

https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/
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subego
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Sep 13, 2018, 07:11 AM
 
Originally Posted by P View Post
After thinking about it a little, my read on it is that the XR is the "iPhone 9+". It costs what a + phone used to cost (8+ was a little more), it is the same size as a +-sized phone to hold, and it has a few upgrades over the 8+. The weird thing is that it loses the second rear camera and has a lower res display (Also 3D touch, but Apple never managed to implement that in a clever way). That, and the colors, make me think of the iPhone 5C. If you think of it that way, we got a new super-sized phone (XS Max) in return for losing the regular sized one ("iPhone 9") and also never seeing the iPhone X dropping $100 like past models have. If we theorize on the hypothetical iPhone 9, it would be the XR shrunk down to have a screen the size of the iPhone 8 but bezel-less to be slightly smaller. That sounds a lot like a great SE replacement to me.

Also: iPhone 7+ gets you a higher res display and a better rear camera for $200 less than the XR. Put another way, you pay $200 plus the camera and display downgrades to get that edge-to-edge display and FaceID. Who does that? I honestly don't get it. Why is the XR so expensive, given what you get for your money?
I assume there’s some noticeable difference between an A10 and an A12.

For someone on a 2 year cycle, they still have an A10 18 months from now. That could get a little rough, depending on how it’s used.
     
Thorzdad
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Sep 13, 2018, 08:23 AM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
I think it is a bummer that there is no smaller phone any longer, especially no smaller cheap phone. I still think many people would like a phone with a 5" edge-to-edge screen. Plus, the prices, uff.
That would be me. None of these large phones interest me one bit, and the prices make them a hard, definite “nope.”

My wife’s 6s really seems like the sweet-spot for me. Nice, convenient size, good performance, reasonable-ish price. Maybe the SE is in there, too. But, these monsters? At those prices? Meh.

We also tend to be the people who use their tech until it can’t do the job anymore, and not replace them every year or two just because new and shiny, or the specs are better. Even whether the thing can still get OS updates isn’t a prime mover. It’s always more a question of “Is the thing we have still doing the job as required?”

And those have to be the worst model names evar.
     
subego
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Sep 14, 2018, 05:23 AM
 
Preordered.
     
P
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Sep 14, 2018, 07:20 AM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
I assume there’s some noticeable difference between an A10 and an A12.

For someone on a 2 year cycle, they still have an A10 18 months from now. That could get a little rough, depending on how it’s used.
Since Anand moved to Apple and doesn't do analysis anymore, we don't exactly know what is new between them, but the A10 already has the big.LITTLE design. The A11 adds more of the little cores and the A12 apparently improves the graphics and has more of the machine learning hardware. That's fine, but it is all used for the same thing: Apple's AR apps. If AR takes off (and Apple keeps betting that it will), then yes - you likely can't use that without something more powerful inside the phone. OTOH, those features require the 3D camera stuff anyway in most cases, so eh. It may also be that the new 7nm process is all the new hotness it is being sold as and the "big" cores can clock higher at lower power, but that remains to be seen - and even my old 5S is plenty fast enough for basic browsing and games, not to mention the A9 in this SE.

I suppose you could summarize the situation as such that the X-series phones support the AR features, and the other phones don't.
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subego
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Sep 14, 2018, 07:27 AM
 
Maybe the chip isn’t what I should be focusing on, but all my Apple instincts tell me the vast majority of XR users will be happier 18 months from now than the 7 users.
     
OreoCookie
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Sep 14, 2018, 08:33 AM
 
Originally Posted by Thorzdad View Post
That would be me. None of these large phones interest me one bit, and the prices make them a hard, definite “nope.”

My wife’s 6s really seems like the sweet-spot for me. Nice, convenient size, good performance, reasonable-ish price. Maybe the SE is in there, too. But, these monsters? At those prices? Meh.
Before, I though I was being financially sensible by owning iPhones for ~4 years or so. But now with these prices, I have no choice, I can't justify spending 2x1,000+ € for my household unless it is necessary. Apple has really managed to double the entry level pricing (from $500 for the first-gen iPhone after the price drop to $1000), and I think Apple has been getting a bit too greedy here for their own good. The next phone purchase would involve a bit of teeth gnashing and precise accounting.

But I have to say, with the SE (which my wife owns and loves) Apple has shown that either people like us are such a small group to target (although if you multiply that by 100 million, I reckon there would be enough of us), and that the primary motivation is price. When the rumors of the iPhone X started, I was really hoping that Apple would take the iPhone 6/6s/7/8-sized screen and put a much smaller enclosure around it. I would have been all over that phone. Small size has nothing to do with price.
Originally Posted by Thorzdad View Post
We also tend to be the people who use their tech until it can’t do the job anymore, and not replace them every year or two just because new and shiny, or the specs are better. Even whether the thing can still get OS updates isn’t a prime mover. It’s always more a question of “Is the thing we have still doing the job as required?”
I have to say that's one saving grace of Apple phones: you can be sure that you'll be able to use them for 4+ years. Contrast that to Android: my sister is looking for a new Android phone, it's gotta be a Samsung, and they have a two-year OS update policy. So that means she has to decide between a shitty, “new” entry-level phone that is total garbage and a two-year old flagship. My brother and I both recommended the flag ship, but she said, she would not receive updates.

My iPhone 7 has been absolutely great (apart from water damage courtesy of yours truly, but I got a brand new phone for ~$100). Apart from the larger screen and FaceID there is nothing I want from the new phones. And I don't want those two enough that I need to replace my phone now.
Originally Posted by Thorzdad View Post
And those have to be the worst model names evar.
Agreed. I still don't get what the “r” in Xr means and Xs would be the stupidest name (when you insist to read the X as “ten”), if it weren't for the Excess Max. Ugh.

Why not call one iPhone, the other iPhone Pro, and distinguish the iPhone Pro by screen size. Add a model year and presto.
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OreoCookie
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Sep 14, 2018, 08:36 AM
 
@P
I think the most significant advance from the A10 to the A11 was that the A11's LITTLE cores could be used independently of the big ones whereas with the A10, you had to use either the small or the big core (AFAIK the SoC could do this for each of the two pairs separately).

@subego
I can say that there is a noticeable speed difference, but my 7 has been fast enough for me. When I wait it is usually for networking, not the CPU.
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P
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Sep 14, 2018, 09:40 AM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
@P
I think the most significant advance from the A10 to the A11 was that the A11's LITTLE cores could be used independently of the big ones whereas with the A10, you had to use either the small or the big core (AFAIK the SoC could do this for each of the two pairs separately).
There's more of the small cores too, up from two to four, and their max clock is much higher. In effect, the A10 has two in-order cores that work as the low-power state of the big OoOE cores, while the A11 has two OoOE cores and four in-order cores that can be addressed separately by the OS kernel.

But this is utterly irrelevant for anything that isn't a specially designed application, because the kernel isn't psychic. It can't look at an incoming thread and say "this looks like it will run well on an in-order core, so I won't bother waking one of the big guys". I'm sure that two of the in-order cores still work as the low-power state of the real cores, but other than that, I don't think the in-order cores won't spin up unless there is a specific task for them. That specific task must be one of Apple's AR or machine learning applications - I'm not aware of anything else.How else can it work? Run the regular background tasks on the small cores even when the big ones are up? Works, and keeps the big core from having to task switch, but are you going to keep the caches hot? Will it use machine learning to figure out which threads can run on an in-order core? That sounds like more trouble than its worth. Moving the thread from one core to another would be expensive (flushing registers and the first caches down to the LLC), and running it on the wrong core is slow and inefficient, so it seems like it doesn't make sense to take chances.
[/QUOTE]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
Before, I though I was being financially sensible by owning iPhones for ~4 years or so. But now with these prices, I have no choice, I can't justify spending 2x1,000+ € for my household unless it is necessary. Apple has really managed to double the entry level pricing (from $500 for the first-gen iPhone after the price drop to $1000), and I think Apple has been getting a bit too greedy here for their own good. The next phone purchase would involve a bit of teeth gnashing and precise accounting.
Note that Apple is far from alone in this, as flagship prices have been creeping up all over. Phones have taken over the budget space previously occupied by laptops, and this is the result.

But I have to say, with the SE (which my wife owns and loves) Apple has shown that either people like us are such a small group to target (although if you multiply that by 100 million, I reckon there would be enough of us), and that the primary motivation is price. When the rumors of the iPhone X started, I was really hoping that Apple would take the iPhone 6/6s/7/8-sized screen and put a much smaller enclosure around it. I would have been all over that phone. Small size has nothing to do with price.
Oh yes. ++ on all of this. I was really hoping for a phone with the pixels of the 6/7/8 in an edge-to-edge design to shrink the outer case.

OTOH...what would such a phone bring that is new? The A9 SoC is plenty fast, so I don't need faster than that even though it would be fun. I would love that dual-lens camera, but Apple didn't fit that into the regular 6/7/8 (and now not in the XR), so maybe it won't fit. The main selling point is that it's smaller than an X, and that is a hard argument to make when the SE is even smaller.
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turtle777
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Sep 14, 2018, 11:35 AM
 
Originally Posted by P View Post
OTOH...what would such a phone bring that is new?
Uhm, same size screen in an incredibly small phone form factor.

OR

Same form factor as 7/8 but with 2+ days battery life.

The stupid thing is that even with the new, bigger phones, you still only get one day of use.

-t
     
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Sep 14, 2018, 06:25 PM
 
I had an iPhone 7+ and I really liked it. But I gladly got an iPhone X when it came out because I was able to get a larger screen in a smaller form factor. It's been great. But it's not like I had a problem with the size of the iPhone 7+. I could slip it in my front pants pocket or the inside pocket in a blazer. Just not as easily as I can with the iPhone X. So now I'm wondering if I should get an iPhone XS Max? I'd essentially be returning to the larger form factor of the iPhone 7+ which I was ok with before but get all the benefits of phablet sized screen. For me it'll be a choice between portability and my struggling eyesight which isn't getting any better. Then there is the wallet consideration and the fact that I'm way more interested in the Series 4 Apple Watch and the rumored Apple branded over the ear headphones than a new iPhone.

OAW
     
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subego
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Sep 14, 2018, 11:05 PM
 
It’s “60% more dynamic range when viewing HDR”.

That doesn’t make sense to me because the X and the XS/XSM have the same contrast ratio.

Conclusion: moar marketing bullshit.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Sep 15, 2018, 08:30 AM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
It’s “60% more dynamic range when viewing HDR”.

That doesn’t make sense to me because the X and the XS/XSM have the same contrast ratio.

Conclusion: moar marketing bullshit.
Contrast ratio != resolution.
     
subego
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Sep 15, 2018, 01:38 PM
 
Thank god I didn’t mention resolution anywhere in my post, then.
     
subego
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Sep 15, 2018, 02:11 PM
 


This is all the adjectives in a Jobs keynote versus this week’s.
     
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Sep 15, 2018, 03:48 PM
 
Originally Posted by P View Post
But this is utterly irrelevant for anything that isn't a specially designed application, because the kernel isn't psychic. It can't look at an incoming thread and say "this looks like it will run well on an in-order core, so I won't bother waking one of the big guys".
AFAIK the early big.LITTLE implementations did the switching in hardware, but nowadays the scheduler in the Linux kernel is doing just that in case of Android phones. And I assume Apple has implemented this on the kernel level as well after it brought the A11 to market. Don't ask me how such kernel schedulers actually work here in order to make the best use of the available computing resources, though.
Originally Posted by P View Post
Works, and keeps the big core from having to task switch, but are you going to keep the caches hot? Will it use machine learning to figure out which threads can run on an in-order core? That sounds like more trouble than its worth. Moving the thread from one core to another would be expensive (flushing registers and the first caches down to the LLC), and running it on the wrong core is slow and inefficient, so it seems like it doesn't make sense to take chances.
I have no idea how Apple has implemented this in their SoCs (and it seems that they have changed their approach over time), but at least ARM explains quite clearly how they plan to mitigate this: in their new big.LITTLE implementation called DynamIQ (more info can be found here), the ARM cores have a shared L3 cache and the cores are connected via a very fast interconnect. Again, I have no idea what Apple does here (probably nobody outside of Apple does), but there seem to be approaches to make this work in a power efficient and performant way.
Originally Posted by P View Post
OTOH...what would such a phone bring that is new? The A9 SoC is plenty fast, so I don't need faster than that even though it would be fun. [...] I would love that dual-lens camera, but Apple didn't fit that into the regular 6/7/8 (and now not in the XR), so maybe it won't fit. The main selling point is that it's smaller than an X, and that is a hard argument to make when the SE is even smaller.
I am lamenting that Apple seems to have no intention to keep a smaller sized phone as a staple of their line-up. The iPhone SE was a one-off product, and one that will be discontinued — look no further than the design language from the iPhone 5 era. When it came out the hardware specs were great, a rare unicorn. Even worse, when you want Apple's smallest phone, you need to go for the uber expensive one.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Sep 15, 2018, 05:16 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
Thank god I didn’t mention resolution anywhere in my post, then.
DYNAMIC resolution, ya bonehead. ;-)

Typical maximum volume of 115 dB doesn’t say anything about Signal resolution either, innit?
     
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Sep 15, 2018, 09:17 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post


This is all the adjectives in a Jobs keynote versus this week’s.
No one can ever match a Steve-note. Ever hear Elon Musk speak? It’s horrible but he is also a salesman.
     
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Sep 16, 2018, 02:11 AM
 
Well, but they can't innovate their asses any more...

-t
     
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Sep 16, 2018, 10:29 AM
 
The Verge is saying that the Apple Watch was the star of the show, which I kind of agree (but not really). It's the first Apple watch that I even consider buying as it looks more like a watch (rounded edges). Still undecided if I want a watch and probably won't buy one, as I dislike getting notifications everywhere I go. I didn't buy a cell phone (a dumb phone) for this very reason for the first few years.
     
turtle777
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Sep 16, 2018, 11:33 AM
 
Having to charge it every day is not worth the dazzle for me.
And I agree on notification, I don't need that. Nothing is that important. I turned off most notification on my phone as well.

The only things I'd be interested in on a watch is the fitness / medical tracking, and the ability to play music wirelessly to bluetooth headphones.

-t
     
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Sep 16, 2018, 02:54 PM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
AFAIK the early big.LITTLE implementations did the switching in hardware, but nowadays the scheduler in the Linux kernel is doing just that in case of Android phones. And I assume Apple has implemented this on the kernel level as well after it brought the A11 to market. Don't ask me how such kernel schedulers actually work here in order to make the best use of the available computing resources, though.
The point is that an in-order core is less efficient when actually active than an OoOE core. The gain in an in-order core is that you can turn it to a very low power mode whenever not executing by cutting power to all execution resources. This means that you can use it for background execution by making it stay “on” but with everything’s turned off and the registers and caches in some sort of low-power state, and use less power than it would take to wake up the OoOE core and do the task, because the cost of waking it up is too large for a small task.

So adding a small in-order core per OoOE Core for background execution can make sense. Having more than one, and having them be active for something while the OoOE cores are also active, is a little strange. It saves mm2 in the core, but Apple hasn’t worried about that before. I can only see one case where it makes sense - when there is specially tuned code that will work on the in-order core with minimal efficiency loss, and where having lots of cores is more important than one fast. Which is why I think that having an A11 or higher only matters for AR applications, not general code.

I have no idea how Apple has implemented this in their SoCs (and it seems that they have changed their approach over time), but at least ARM explains quite clearly how they plan to mitigate this: in their new big.LITTLE implementation called DynamIQ (more info can be found here), the ARM cores have a shared L3 cache and the cores are connected via a very fast interconnect. Again, I have no idea what Apple does here (probably nobody outside of Apple does), but there seem to be approaches to make this work in a power efficient and performant way.
LLC=Last Level Cache. I wrote it that way because I’m not sure Apple has an L3 right now, it varies between models. Yes, I’m sure that they have ways to move tasks from an in-order to an OoOE core. My question was why they have more in-order cores than OoOE cores, because the OoOE will be more efficient for general purpose computing. (Note: Apple’s OoOE cores as implemented may not be, because Apple may just be running them at very high clocks while they’re even active and power usage goes as the clockspeed cubed at these speeds, but in general, an OoOE core will use less power to get the task done if clocks and voltages are equal)

I am lamenting that Apple seems to have no intention to keep a smaller sized phone as a staple of their line-up. The iPhone SE was a one-off product, and one that will be discontinued — look no further than the design language from the iPhone 5 era. When it came out the hardware specs were great, a rare unicorn. Even worse, when you want Apple's smallest phone, you need to go for the uber expensive one.
I also don’t like that Apple didn’t launch a phone for me, and the SE being killed clearly means that there won’t be another phone in that case, but I’m trying to see the bright side here. Apple made three new phones here, as many as they have ever made. They probably couldn’t do four. What if these three were the ones where they could make real updates over the current model, and XR mini would be functionally very similar to an iPhone 8. I can understand them skipping it then.

Other than design, the advantages of these phones were all about AR. I don’t care about AR, at least not yet. If I don’t, I might as well stick with my SE.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
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Sep 16, 2018, 03:02 PM
 
Originally Posted by mindwaves View Post
The Verge is saying that the Apple Watch was the star of the show, which I kind of agree (but not really). It's the first Apple watch that I even consider buying as it looks more like a watch (rounded edges). Still undecided if I want a watch and probably won't buy one, as I dislike getting notifications everywhere I go. I didn't buy a cell phone (a dumb phone) for this very reason for the first few years.
Having owned an Apple Watch for 6 months by now, it does a few things well:

* Activity features.
* Notifications. This is mainly useful because they’re unobtrusive. I leave my phone on silent at all times and just get buzzed on my wrist for all things. It is also great to have the next conference room on my wrist while walking between meetings.
* Remote control, for playing music and podcasts. This is actually a really nice feature when the phone is in a pocket and some ad comes on in the podcast
* Weather display, as in “how hot is it out”. I have that temperature on my main watch face, and it actually gets used a lot.

What I would like is some context-sensitive things on the main watch face. For instance Siri suggests driving times for where it thinks you’re going next if you look on the phone, but there is no way to show that on a watch face. I get that doing location checks all the time is going to eat battery, but if you only show me the same thing you’re already doing on the phone, how can it eat more battery? I would also love some more customization in the watch faces, but I suspect that that is unlikely to happen.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
subego
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Sep 16, 2018, 03:03 PM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
DYNAMIC resolution, ya bonehead. ;-)

Typical maximum volume of 115 dB doesn’t say anything about Signal resolution either, innit?
1) The resolution of a digital display is its pixel density. What you’re talking about is bit-depth.

2) The dynamic range of a digital display does not mean bit-depth. It means the range between “brightest” and “darkest”. A 2-bit display and a 10-bit display can have the same dynamic range.

3) Contrast ratio means the ratio between maximum photons and minimum photons. For our purposes it’s the exact same as dynamic range.

The display on the X and the XS/XSM have the same contrast ratio, therefore they have the same dynamic range. They also have the same bit-depth. The displays are identical.
( Last edited by subego; Sep 16, 2018 at 04:17 PM. )
     
Waragainstsleep
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Sep 16, 2018, 04:15 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
Well, but they can't innovate their asses any more...

-t
You can only re-invent the wheel so often.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
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Sep 16, 2018, 04:19 PM
 
Originally Posted by mindwaves View Post
The Verge is saying that the Apple Watch was the star of the show, which I kind of agree (but not really).
The Watch is absolutely the star of that show. Within a few years every elderly care home resident in the western world plus China is going to have one plus every elderly person living alone who has a reasonably well-off kid or grandkid. With all the ageing populations, thats several million buttloads of money from a whole new market segment.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
 
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