Apple's time to stop comparing iPad to PC

Don’t feed the troll: Apple just announced that its budget iPad is twice as fast as a PC

Apple again trolls PC. What to do? Ignore the troll.



On product launch day, predictably occupied by iPhones, Apple also threw a stone at the PC garden, announcing that its latest budget iPad is “twice” faster than the most commonly sold Windows PC. And so you do not think that this is a reservation, Apple made this statement part of the seventh generation iPad advertising - see the screenshot.







An ordinary consumer is likely to see this and decide that the seventh-generation iPad is really “twice as fast” and will take it on faith without much skepticism.



But instead of taking marketing language at face value, ask yourself - what does that even mean? What is a PC: a desktop computer? Laptop? Transformer tablet running Windows?



This is probably not a desktop computer - otherwise it would mean that the 7th generation iPad for $ 329 (without a keyboard and mouse) is "twice" faster, say, than the Dell Inspiron for $ 695 with an 8-core Ryzen 7 2700 processor, and Radeon RX580 graphics card (now the best-selling PC on Amazon ). This PC also has 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB hard drive.



This Radeon RX580 has only 4 GB of memory, but most games should go at a satisfactory speed in 1080p resolution. Yes, of course, you won’t be able to play Frogger on Inspiron - which Apple announced as part of its Arcade service; but on the iPad you won’t be able to enjoy at least some Counter Strike or DOTA games.







But Apple can not seriously compare the iPad with a desktop PC, right? No - if you examine the disclaimer buried in the press release, there will be a clarification: "compared to the best-selling Windows PC in the US in the first half of 2019."



What kind of laptop this is, Apple does not report. PCWorld magazine contacted Apple for a comment on the specific model used for comparison, but received no response. It remains to be guessed.



We searched Amazon’s best-selling laptops a few minutes after the end of Tim Cook’s marketing report and found that it was an Acer Aspire 5 Slim. It has a dual-core Ryzen 3 3200U, Vega 3 graphics, 4 GB DDR4 memory, 128 GB SSD. He also has a FHD 15.6 "IPS display and costs $ 309.99. We don’t know if it’s the same“ best selling Windows PC in the US, ”which Apple refers to, but if you simply compare them in cost, then Acer Aspire 5 Slim wins, because it has a 128 GB SSD, keyboard and trackpad.



An iPad with an added keyboard will pull in $ 488, and with the addition of a stylus for better input control it will increase the cost of the kit to $ 588 for a budget iPad.







Of course, the Acer Aspire 5 Slim has one caveat - by default it has Windows S Mode installed. This limits you to using applications from the Windows store, but technically you can break out of these restrictions and run standard applications by performing a free upgrade to Windows 10.



As for the speed of the devices, in our opinion, it all depends on the context. Apple's A series ARM chips are impressive. I wrote about them in a recent article on trolling PCs from Apple, " Why is the iPad Pro really not faster than a laptop ."



For the most part, Apple's magic owes its closed ecosystem. The company creates hardware acceleration for, for example, encryption or encoding video, and then actively optimizes its software to use these functions. Since Apple is fencing its famous garden with barbed wire and watchtowers, applications that expose hardware are not in the best light can not be allowed there.



Undoubtedly, you can find such use cases in which even the older A10 will overtake the Ryzen 3 3200U. But here's the thing: you can also find many scenarios where the Ryzen 3 3200U will be much faster than the new iPad. They have their own strengths and weaknesses.



Direct performance comparisons these days are just a waste of time. If you can’t run the same application on both platforms, and do the same thing there - it makes no sense.



In other words: stop it, Apple. Praising the “post-PC” world, and then discovering that the PC wasn’t dead at all (and tablet sales are falling), can you not be sure of the benefits of the iPad and not compare it constantly with the PC?