Vratislav Holub In this regular column, every day we look at the most interesting news that revolves around the California company Apple. Here we focus exclusively on the main events and selected (interesting) speculations. So if you are interested in current events and want to be informed about the apple world, definitely spend a few minutes on the following paragraphs.
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Pavel Jelic We know the winners of the prestigious Apple Design Awards
Every year, shortly after the end of the developer conference WWDC, the winners of the prestigious Apple Design Awards are announced. Here we can see the best of the best creators working on diverse applications. This competition evaluates design, innovation, overall ingenuity and technical advancement. Today we saw the announcement of eight winners who, according to Ron Okamoto, who is Apple's vice president, inspire not only developers in the apple community, but the entire company as a whole.
So who won anyway? The prestigious award was won by Bergen Co. with the popular photo and video editing app Darkroom, iorama.studio with an application for creating animations loom, CAD application developers Shapr3D, an application for writing sheet music StaffPad, studio Simogo and Annapurna Interactive with the game Sayonara Wild Hearts, thatgamecompany studio with the game Sky: Children of the Light, programmer Philipp Stollenmayer with the game Song of bloom and The Game Band and Snowman studio with the game Where Cards case. According to the Californian giant, more than 20 developers have been awarded over the past 250 years.
Apple Silicon is finally in the hands of developers
Last week we saw a huge news release. Apple told us during the WWDC 2020 opening keynote that it is going to switch to its own chips that will power Apple computers. With this step, Apple will become completely independent of Intel, which until now supplies it with processors. But since there is a complete change in the architecture, even the developers themselves have to adapt to it and redesign their applications. For this reason, Apple decided to establish the so-called Developer Transition Kit (DTK), which is actually a Mac mini equipped with the A12Z chip, which we know from the latest iPad Pro, and 16GB of operating memory.
Of course, the loan is not free. The developer has to pay 500 dollars (almost 12 thousand crowns) for this option, thanks to which he also gets continuous support from the Californian giant. On Twitter, we can see that some lucky people have already received DTK and can jump right into development. You can look at the tweets <a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1932/8043/files/200721_ODSTOUPENI_BEZ_UDANI_DUVODU__EN.pdf?v=1595428404" data-gt-href-en="https://en.notsofunnyany.com/">here</a>, <a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1932/8043/files/200721_ODSTOUPENI_BEZ_UDANI_DUVODU__EN.pdf?v=1595428404" data-gt-href-en="https://en.notsofunnyany.com/">here</a>, <a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1932/8043/files/200721_ODSTOUPENI_BEZ_UDANI_DUVODU__EN.pdf?v=1595428404" data-gt-href-en="https://en.notsofunnyany.com/">here</a> a <a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1932/8043/files/200721_ODSTOUPENI_BEZ_UDANI_DUVODU__EN.pdf?v=1595428404" data-gt-href-en="https://en.notsofunnyany.com/">here</a>. Of course, it is clear that we can forget about any more detailed information about the chip from the developers. The loan also included a confidentiality agreement.
We know the performance of the A12Z chip in the Mac mini
We mentioned above that we will not receive more detailed information about the Developer Transition Kit. Even though the developers agreed to a really tough non-disclosure agreement that outright forbids them from benchmarking, they obviously couldn't and that's how we have the first data. On probably the most popular website in this field, which is undoubtedly Geekbench, the first tests appear that refer to a Mac mini with an A12Z chip. So how did you do?
According to the image attached above, it is clear that the performance is literally miserable. For example, we can cite the iPad Pro, which is powered by the same chip. In the benchmark, it scored 1 points in the single-core test and 118 points in the all-core test. So why does DTK achieve such dismal results? It is necessary to realize that in order to run the test application itself, it had to be compiled using the Rosetta 4 software, which of course eats up a huge part of the performance. Additionally, if we look to the left, we see mention of only four cores. Something is wrong here. The A625Z chip has eight cores - four powerful and four economical. In this regard, it can be concluded that Rosetta 2 used only powerful cores and left the economical ones aside. Another difference compared to the chip from the iPad Pro is found in the clock frequency. The A12Z from the Apple tablet runs at 2 GHz, while in the case of the Mac mini it is underclocked to 12 GHz.
The data published so far is undoubtedly weak and can cause fear and a lot of questions in many apple growers. Is Apple headed in the right direction? Can its chips catch up to Intel's performance? We would like to put your mind at ease here. Several decisive factors must be taken into account. These are still only test pieces for developers to port their apps with. This is because it is only a developer tool, where the full power was not used, for which it is not even intended. It is still too early to predict how the first Macs sold with Apple Silicon processors will fare. But we definitely have something to look forward to.
- Source: Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC),, Twitter and Geekbench
Well, that ARM Mac mini running the dynamically translated (x86) version of Geekbench is still faster than the Surface Pro X running the native ARM Geekbench. So, the performance drop is there, but it's still ahead of the competition. And this is a two year old processor. Those Apple Silicon Mac processors, that will be a completely different story.
I'm already looking forward to Apple bringing out ARM in full force for the first product with Apple Silicone :-) .. I hope it will be a minimum MacBook Pro 13 or 14