Umm, Apple aimed low yet every single review I've seen praises the performance of the iPad? How does that work? Personally I'd rather have slightly less performance and fewer headline grabbing features I'm NEVER going to use (1080p output on a device with 16Gb of storage and a 720p screen.... yeeeeeeeees) and an extra hour of battery life.
@BOFH Because of the limited hardware combinations that run iPhoneOS, Apple is able to tailor the software for optimum performance.
While I don't like most of Apple's philosophies, this is one occasion when a closed platform really does shine.
It's a similar situation as to why consoles like the Xbox 360 are able to produce impressive graphics relative to their 'poor' hardware when compared to most modern PCs. Optimisation is king.
@BOFH You can fault Tegra 2 on a lot, not the least of which is its apparent time to market, but as far as power consumption, it's actually lower than the Hummingbird core that's in the A4. I don't know about the rest of the A4 SoC and how it compares, but dynamic logic is a hell of a power eater (750mW for a single 1GHz core).
@BOFH Oh, and I'm totally with you regarding the whole 1080p bull.
It's completely nonsensical to mention it when the iPad's screen doesn't even accommodate 720p.
I don't see how people can champion a feature that would only ever be used via an external display.
With devices like this you need to take into account the cost of having a technically impressive feature vs. the percentage of people whom will actually use it.
@FNi If you mean comparing the graphics capabilities to those of a comparably equipped graphics card in a pc, yes. But if you are comparing the better graphics cards out there PCs easily do better graphics than the xbox.
@JimmyBoy Oh I completely agree. I was simply trying to illustrate how taking the equivalent hardware of the Xbox to a relatively unoptimised platform (in this case, Windows), results in completely different performance.
Essentially, the Xbox/iPad is a known quantity and therefore reaps the benefits of being one.
@FNi Don't you think it's weird to justify one of the iPad's short comings (1080P video playback) with 3 other of its own short comings? Being that it has no expandable storage, no way to output video and a low res screen?
@ninetynine99 For one thing it can display external video albeit via VGA. But really that's beside the point. The iPad is what it is in this generation and Nvidia are saying that Apple should have gone with Tegra2 because of the lack of Flash and no 1080p output. Apple have made their position on Flash very clear (and judging by the initial FroYo results they may have had a point) and the iPad screen is 720p only with no interest in providing a HDMI port. In that circumstance it's not 'justifying the iPads shortcoming' it's pointing out that as it is designed there's no point in having that feature whatsoever.
@ninetynine99 I see your point, but again, I think it's about perspective. All those features you listed sound great, but you have to wonder if the increased cost/size/weight will actually benefit the vast majority of the consumers.
Obviously anyone reading this site will think those features are very important, but I have a feeling that the majority of the 1M+ iPad users simply don't care.
So 'short comings' is most definitely a relative term.
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Umm, Apple aimed low yet every single review I've seen praises the performance of the iPad? How does that work? Personally I'd rather have slightly less performance and fewer headline grabbing features I'm NEVER going to use (1080p output on a device with 16Gb of storage and a 720p screen.... yeeeeeeeees) and an extra hour of battery life.
@BOFH Because of the limited hardware combinations that run iPhoneOS, Apple is able to tailor the software for optimum performance.
While I don't like most of Apple's philosophies, this is one occasion when a closed platform really does shine.
It's a similar situation as to why consoles like the Xbox 360 are able to produce impressive graphics relative to their 'poor' hardware when compared to most modern PCs. Optimisation is king.
@BOFH You can fault Tegra 2 on a lot, not the least of which is its apparent time to market, but as far as power consumption, it's actually lower than the Hummingbird core that's in the A4. I don't know about the rest of the A4 SoC and how it compares, but dynamic logic is a hell of a power eater (750mW for a single 1GHz core).
@BOFH Oh, and I'm totally with you regarding the whole 1080p bull.
It's completely nonsensical to mention it when the iPad's screen doesn't even accommodate 720p.
I don't see how people can champion a feature that would only ever be used via an external display.
With devices like this you need to take into account the cost of having a technically impressive feature vs. the percentage of people whom will actually use it.
@FNi If you mean comparing the graphics capabilities to those of a comparably equipped graphics card in a pc, yes. But if you are comparing the better graphics cards out there PCs easily do better graphics than the xbox.
@JimmyBoy Oh I completely agree. I was simply trying to illustrate how taking the equivalent hardware of the Xbox to a relatively unoptimised platform (in this case, Windows), results in completely different performance.
Essentially, the Xbox/iPad is a known quantity and therefore reaps the benefits of being one.
@FNi
Don't you think it's weird to justify one of the iPad's short comings (1080P video playback) with 3 other of its own short comings? Being that it has no expandable storage, no way to output video and a low res screen?
@ninetynine99 For one thing it can display external video albeit via VGA. But really that's beside the point. The iPad is what it is in this generation and Nvidia are saying that Apple should have gone with Tegra2 because of the lack of Flash and no 1080p output. Apple have made their position on Flash very clear (and judging by the initial FroYo results they may have had a point) and the iPad screen is 720p only with no interest in providing a HDMI port. In that circumstance it's not 'justifying the iPads shortcoming' it's pointing out that as it is designed there's no point in having that feature whatsoever.
@ninetynine99 I see your point, but again, I think it's about perspective. All those features you listed sound great, but you have to wonder if the increased cost/size/weight will actually benefit the vast majority of the consumers.
Obviously anyone reading this site will think those features are very important, but I have a feeling that the majority of the 1M+ iPad users simply don't care.
So 'short comings' is most definitely a relative term.