Apple silicon

M2 iPad Air review: The everything iPad

Apple, Apple M2, Apple silicon, Features, ipad, iPad Air, iPadOS, Tech / Mike M. / May 14, 2024

breath of fresh air —

M2 Air won’t draw new buyers in, but if you like iPads, these do all you need.

Andrew Cunningham – May 13, 2024 9: 00 pm UTC

The new 13-inch iPad Air with the Apple M2 processor inside.

Andrew Cunningham
In portrait mode. The 13-inch model is a little large for dedicated tablet use, but if you do want a gigantic tablet, the $799 price is appealing.

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The Apple Pencil Pro attaches, pairs, and charges via a magnetic connection on the edge of the iPad.

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In the Magic Keyboard. This kickstand-less case is still probably the best way to make the iPad into a true laptop replacement, though it’s expensive and iPadOS is still a problem.

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The tablet’s USB-C port, used for charging and connecting to external accessories.

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Apple’s Smart Folio case. The magnets on the cover will scoot up and down the back of the iPad, allowing you a bit of flexibility when angling the screen.

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The Air’s single-lens, flash-free camera, seen here peeking through the Smart Folio case.

Andrew Cunningham

The iPad Air has been a lot of things in the last decade-plus. In 2013 and 2014, the first iPad Airs were just The iPad, and the “Air” label simply denoted how much lighter and more streamlined they were than the initial 2010 iPad and 2011’s long-lived iPad 2. After that, the iPad Air 2 survived for years as an entry-level model, as Apple focused on introducing and building out the iPad Pro.

The Air disappeared for a while after that, but it returned in 2019 as an in-betweener model to bridge the gap between the $329 iPad (no longer called “Air,” despite reusing the first-gen Air design) and more-expensive and increasingly powerful iPad Pros. It definitely made sense to have a hardware offering to span the gap between the basic no-frills iPad and the iPad Pro, but pricing and specs could make things complicated. The main issue for the last couple of years has been the base Air’s 64GB of storage—scanty enough that memory swapping doesn’t even work on it— and the fact that stepping up to 256GB brought the Air too close to the price of the 11-inch iPad Pro.

Which brings us to the 2024 M2 iPad Air, now available in 11-inch and 13-inch models for $599 and $799, respectively. Apple solved the overlap problem this year partly by bumping the Air’s base storage to a more usable 128GB and partly by making the 11-inch iPad Pro so much more expensive that it almost entirely eliminates any pricing overlap (only the 1TB 11-inch Air, at $1,099, is more expensive than the cheapest 11-inch iPad Pro).

I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call the new Airs the “default” iPad for most buyers—the now-$349 10th-gen iPad still does everything the iPad is best at for less money, and it’s still all you really need if you just want a casual gaming, video streaming, and browsing tablet (or a tablet for a kid). But the M2 Air is the iPad that best covers the totality of everything the iPad can do from its awkward perch, stuck halfway between the form and function of the iPhone and the Mac.

Not quite a last-gen iPad Pro

The new iPad Airs have a lot in common with the M2 iPad Pro from 2022. They have the same screen sizes and resolutions, the same basic design, they work with the same older Magic Keyboard accessories (not the new ones with the function rows, metal palm rests, and larger trackpads, which are reserved for the iPad Pro), and they obviously have the same Apple M2 chip.

Performance-wise, nothing we saw in the benchmarks we ran was surprising; the M2’s CPU and (especially) its GPU are a solid generational jump up from the M1, and the M1 is already generally overkill for the vast majority of iPad apps. The M3 and M4 are both significantly faster than the M2, but the M2 is still unquestionably powerful enough to do everything people currently use iPads to do.

That said, Apple’s decision to use an older chip rather than the M3 or M4 does mean the new Airs come into the world missing some capabilities that have come to other Apple products announced in the last six months or so. That list includes hardware-accelerated ray-tracing on the GPU, hardware-accelerated AV1 video codec decoding, and, most importantly, a faster Neural Engine to help power whatever AI stuff Apple’s products pick up in this fall’s big software updates.

The 13-inch Air’s screen has the same resolution and pixel density (2732×2048, 264 PPI) as the last-generation 12.9-inch iPad Pro. And unlike the 13-inch Pro, which truly is a 13-inch screen, Apple’s tech specs page says the 13-inch Air is still using a 12.9-inch screen, and Apple is just rounding up to get to 13.

The 13-inch Air display does share some other things with the last-generation iPad Pro screen, including P3 color, a 600-nit peak brightness. Its display panel has been laminated to the front glass, and it has an anti-reflective coating (two of the subtle but important quality improvements the Air has that the $349 10th-gen iPad doesn’t). But otherwise it’s not the same panel as the M2 Pro; there’s no mini LED, no HDR support, and no 120 Hz ProMotion support.

M2 iPad Air review: The everything iPad Read More »

Apple announces M4 with more CPU cores and AI focus, just months after M3

Apple, apple m4, Apple silicon, m4 / Ryan Harris / May 7, 2024

it’s one more —

Aggressive update schedule is a major departure for Apple Silicon.

Andrew Cunningham – May 7, 2024 2: 33 pm UTC

Apple's M4 chip in the new iPad Pro. It follows the M3 by just a few months. — Enlarge / Apple’s M4 chip in the new iPad Pro. It follows the M3 by just a few months.

Apple

In a major shake-up of its chip roadmap, Apple has announced a new M4 processor for today’s iPad Pro refresh, barely six months after releasing the first MacBook Pros with the M3 and not even two months after updating the MacBook Air with the M3.

Apple says the M4 includes “up to” four high-performance CPU cores, six high-efficiency cores, and a 10-core GPU. Apple’s high-level performance estimates say that the M4 has 50 percent faster CPU performance and four times as much graphics performance. Like the GPU in the M3, the M4 also supports hardware-accelerated ray-tracing to enable more advanced lighting effects in games and other apps. Due partly to its “second-generation” 3 nm manufacturing process, Apple says the M4 can match the performance of the M2 while using just half the power.

As with so much else in the tech industry right now, the M4 also has an AI focus; Apple says it’s beefing up the 16-core Neural Engine (Apple’s equivalent of the Neural Processing Unit that companies like Qualcomm, Intel, AMD, and Microsoft have been pushing lately). Apple says the M4 runs up to 38 trillion operations per second (TOPS), considerably ahead of Intel’s Meteor Lake platform, though a bit short of the 45 TOPS that Qualcomm is promising with the Snapdragon X Elite and Plus series. The M3’s Neural Engine is only capable of 18 TOPS, so that’s a major step up for Apple’s hardware.

Apple’s chips since 2017 have included some version of the Neural Engine, though to date, those have mostly been used to enhance and categorize photos, perform optical character recognition, enable offline dictation, and do other oddities. But it may be that Apple needs something faster for the kinds of on-device large language model-backed generative AI that it’s expected to introduce in iOS and iPadOS 18 at WWDC next month.

The wait between the M1 and M2 and the wait between the M2 and M3 were each about a year and a half. With as few technical details as Apple has announced, it’s tough to know what to make of the faster turnaround between the M3 and M4. It could be that the M3 was behind schedule and the M4 was on time or ahead; it could also be that the M4 is a relatively modest architectural update to the M3. We’ll need to test the hardware ourselves to determine exactly how the M3 and M4 stack up to each other.

The fast introduction of the M4 makes it a little clearer why Apple might choose not to update devices like the Mac mini with an M3 chip. Either the M3 processor generation will be uncommonly short, or Apple plans to sell a mix of M3 and M4 devices this year.

Apple announces M4 with more CPU cores and AI focus, just months after M3 Read More »

What to expect from Apple’s May 7 “Let loose” event

Apple, Apple M3, apple m4, apple pencil, Apple silicon, ipad, iPad Air, ipad pro, iPadOS, iPadOS 17.5, Tech / Blake Jones / May 4, 2024

A colorful Apple log with an Apple Pencil inside it, with the copy — Enlarge / The promotional image for Apple’s May 7 event.

Apple

On May 7, Apple will host a product announcement event at 9 am ET. Labeled “Let loose,” we expect it will focus on new iPads and iPad accessories.

We won’t be liveblogging the stream, but you can expect some news coverage as it happens. Below, we’ll go over our educated guesses about why Apple might be doing this.

Why hold an event now?

It’s unusual for Apple to host an event shortly before WWDC. New products debut at that event all the time, so if it’s just a faster chip and a nicer screen for the iPad Pro and iPad Air, why not wait until June?

We’re not completely sure what the answer is, but we can make educated guesses.

Apple has been criticized by commentators over the past few weeks for three things. First, iPads have not been selling well. Second: While the Vision Pro introduced a new product category that may grow over time, its initial launch didn’t sell that well. Lastly, Apple is perceived by many as way, way behind on generative AI tech, which is already transforming other companies. There have also been rumors that Microsoft might announce a new silicon that will be fiercely competitive with Apple Silicon for AI tasks, and Microsoft’s chips could be announced at a planned event between May 7 and the start of WWDC.

Given all that, our best guess is that Apple wants to focus its messaging—and the time window for that messaging—on the right targets without muddying the message by trying to address everything at once.

Talking about the iPad’s challenges while also preempting Microsoft with a new chip announcement could be Apple’s focus for this event. Getting those things out of the way now would allow WWDC and its new operating system announcements to focus heavily on AI, which is the bigger question the company is looking to answer.

What new iPads might look like

Given that an Apple Pencil is in the event’s promotional image—a much more explicit hint than Apple usually provides—there’s no question iPads will be a focus.

As is often the case these days, we have a plethora of leaks, supply chain reports, and, of course, insider reporting at sites like Bloomberg and The Information to give us a rough idea of what to expect from Apple’s new hardware.

iPad Pro

It’s likely that the star of the show will be a significant redesign of the iPad Pro for the 11-inch and 12.9-inch sizes.

Both are rumored to get OLED displays, a huge step up over the LCD display in the current 11-inch iPad Pro. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro has a MiniLED display, which competes directly with OLED in the consumer TV space, so it won’t be as big a leap for that device, but we can still expect better contrast and richer colors.

What to expect from Apple’s May 7 “Let loose” event Read More »

USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update

Apple, Apple M1, Apple M2, Apple M3, Apple silicon, Apple Silicon Mac, macOS, macOS 14, macos sonoma, Tech / Ari B / March 18, 2024

pobody’s nerfect —

Issues seem to be related to security fixes made in Apple’s latest OS.

Andrew Cunningham – Mar 18, 2024 8: 06 pm UTC

A couple of weeks ago, Apple released macOS Sonoma 14.4 with the usual list of bug fixes, security patches, and a couple of minor new features. Since then, users and companies have been complaining of a long list of incompatibilities, mostly concerning broken external accessories like USB hubs and printers but also extending to software like Java.

MacRumors has a good rundown of the list of issues, which has been steadily getting longer as people have run into more problems. It started with reports of malfunctioning USB hubs, sourced from users on Reddit, the Apple Support Communities forums, and elsewhere—USB hubs built into various displays stopped functioning for Mac users after the 14.4 update.

Other issues surfaced in the days after people started reporting problems with their USB hubs, including some instances of broken printer drivers, unexpected app crashes for some Java users, and problems launching apps that rely on the PACE anti-piracy software (and iLok hardware dongles) to authenticate.

At least some of the problems seem localized to Apple Silicon Macs. In fact, iLok recommends running digital audio software in Rosetta mode as a temporary stopgap while Apple works on a fix. According to iLok, Apple has acknowledged this particular bug and is working on an update, but “[has] not indicated a timeline.”

The USB hub issue may be related to the USB security prompts that Apple introduced in macOS 13 Ventura, asking users to confirm whether they wanted to connect to USB-C accessories that they were connecting to their Mac for the first time. Some users have been able to get their USB hubs working again after the 14.4 update by making macOS request permission to connect to the accessory every time the accessory is plugged in; the default behavior is supposed to recognize USB devices that you’ve already connected to once.

Scanning Apple’s release notes or security update disclosures for the update doesn’t reveal any smoking guns, but many of the security bugs were addressed with “improved checks” and “improved access permissions,” and it’s certainly possible that some legitimate accessories and software were broken by one or more of these changes. The Oracle blog post about the Java problems refers to memory access issues that seem to be causing the crashes, though that may or may not explain the problems people are having with external accessories. The blog post also indicates that these bugs weren’t present in the public developer betas of macOS 14.4.

My desktop M2 Mac Studio setup, which is connected to a 4K Gigabyte M28U with a built-in USB hub, hasn’t exhibited any unusual behavior since the update, so it’s also possible that these issues aren’t affecting every user of every Mac. If you haven’t updated yet, it may be worth waiting until Apple releases fixes for some or all of these issues, even if you don’t think you’ll be affected.

USB hubs, printers, Java, and more seemingly broken by macOS 14.4 update Read More »

Asahi Linux project’s OpenGL support on Apple Silicon officially surpasses Apple’s

Apple, Apple M1, Apple M2, Apple silicon, asahi linux, OpenGL, Tech, vulkan / Ari B / February 15, 2024

who needs metal? —

Newest driver supports the latest versions of OpenGL and OpenGL ES.

Andrew Cunningham – Feb 14, 2024 10: 00 pm UTC

Enlarge / Slowly but surely, the Asahi Linux team is getting Linux up and running on Apple Silicon Macs.

Apple/Asahi Linux

For around three years now, the team of independent developers behind the Asahi Linux project has worked to support Linux on Apple Silicon Macs, despite Apple’s total lack of involvement. Over the years, the project has gone from a “highly unstable experiment” to a “surprisingly functional and usable desktop operating system.” Even Linus Torvalds has used it to run Linux on Apple’s hardware.

The team has been steadily improving its open source, standards-conformant GPU driver for the M1 and M2 since releasing them in December 2022, and today, the team crossed an important symbolic milestone: The Asahi driver’s support for the OpenGL and OpenGL ES graphics have officially passed what Apple offers in macOS. The team’s latest graphics driver fully conforms with OpenGL version 4.6 and OpenGL ES version 3.2, the most recent version of either API. Apple’s support in macOS tops out at OpenGL 4.1, announced in July 2010.

Developer Alyssa Rosenzweig wrote a detailed blog post that announced the new driver, which had to pass “over 100,000 tests” to be deemed officially conformant. The team achieved this milestone despite the fact that Apple’s GPUs don’t support some features that would have made implementing these APIs more straightforward.

“Regrettably, the M1 doesn’t map well to any graphics standard newer than OpenGL ES 3.1,” writes Rosenzweig. “While Vulkan makes some of these features optional, the missing features are required to layer DirectX and OpenGL on top. No existing solution on M1 gets past the OpenGL 4.1 feature set… Without hardware support, new features need new tricks. Geometry shaders, tessellation, and transform feedback become compute shaders. Cull distance becomes a transformed interpolated value. Clip control becomes a vertex shader epilogue. The list goes on.”

Now that the Asahi GPU driver supports the latest OpenGL and OpenGL ES standards—released in 2017 and 2015, respectively—the work turns to supporting the low-overhead Vulkan API on Apple’s hardware. Vulkan support in macOS is limited to translation layers like MoltenVK, which translates Vulkan API calls to Metal ones that the hardware and OS can understand.

Apple’s OpenGL support has been stuck at the 4.1 level since macOS 10.9 Mavericks was released in 2013. Since then, the company has shifted its focus to its proprietary Metal graphics API, which, like DirectX 12 and Vulkan, is a “low-overhead” API meant to reduce the performance overhead sometimes associated with older APIs like OpenGL. But despite declaring OpenGL officially deprecated in 2018, Apple has left its existing OpenGL implementation alone since then, never updating it but also maintaining support even as it has transitioned from Intel’s processors to its own CPUs and GPUs.

Rosenzweig’s blog post didn’t give any specific updates on Vulkan except to say that the team was “well on the road” to supporting it. In addition to supporting native Linux apps, supporting more graphics APIs in Asahi will allow the operating system to take better advantage of software like Valve’s Proton, which already has a few games written for x86-based Windows PCs running on Arm-based Apple hardware.

Though there are still things that don’t work, Fedora Asahi Remix is surprisingly polished and supports a lot of the hardware available in most M1 and M2 Macs—including the webcam, speakers, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and graphics acceleration. Other features, like Thunderbolt, running displays over USB-C, the system’s built-in microphone, and the Touch ID fingerprint sensors, remain non-functional. Asahi’s most recent update blog post, published in mid-January, highlighted HDMI support, support for DRM-protected websites via Google’s proprietary Widevine package, Touchbar support for the handful of Apple Silicon Macs that use one, and more.

As for the newest wave of M3 Macs, Asahi developer Hector Martin said in October 2023 that basic support for the newest chips would take “at least six months.” Among other things, the team will need time to support the M3 GPU in their drivers; the team also relies primarily on Mac mini models for development, and the M3 Mac mini doesn’t exist yet.

Asahi Linux project’s OpenGL support on Apple Silicon officially surpasses Apple’s Read More »