> the average user who is comparing this against a PC for AI stuff
If your primary use case is local AI on battery, you're probably into some small hundredths of a percent of the population here, who would be better served on some budget cloud compute (self deployed even) rather than heating up your lap.
> why would I take an iPad with a 30Wh battery...
Because it fits between the pages of the book in your backpack, has a nice pencil, and can *also* do ok with local AI.
> If your primary use case is local AI on battery, you're probably into some small hundredths of a percent of the population here, who would be better served on some budget cloud compute (self deployed even) rather than heating up your lap.
There is no other use case where the power efficiency of the NPU matters, so you should direct this criticism at Apple.
> Because it fits between the pages of the book in your backpack, has a nice pencil, and can also do ok with local AI.
So if the only avantage is the form factor, why did Apple decide to compare it against PCs?
> The average user who is comparing this against a PC for AI stuff would prefer a faster PC
I'm saying this would not be an average user. The average user would not be comparing AI capabilities, they open an app that uses AI, with a high chance of not even being aware of it.
> So if the only avantage is the form factor, why did Apple decide to compare it against PCs?
What should they have compared it to? There's only one other tablet on the market, with an old chipset and a fraction of the performance, that just received its first real video editor late last year [1].
I agree though, they could/should have made clearer comparisons, along with Intel, AMD, Samsung, Nvidia, and everyone else. But, as with all general audience marketing presentations from all tech companies, vested technically literate users will look to the benchmarks, after release.
> I'm saying this would not be an average user. The average user would not be comparing AI capabilities, they open an app that uses AI, with a high chance of not even being aware of it
What is the point here? If the average user doesn't care about comparing AI capabilities, then clearly Apple wasn't targeting that user in their AI capability comparison.
> What should they have compared it to? There's only one other tablet on the market, with an old chipset and a fraction of the performance, that just received its first real video editor late last year [1].
It's very clear that Apple is trying to make the case that the iPad Pro is a replacement for a laptop. In fact, that was their core marketing claim when it came out : "What's a computer?" [1], and arguably that's the point of their latest ads where they market it as a general purpose computer. Given the price point and the marketing, yes, they should be comparing it with a computer when making the case it's a good replacement for a computer. And when they do, they should not be misleading to the point of falsehood.
If your primary use case is local AI on battery, you're probably into some small hundredths of a percent of the population here, who would be better served on some budget cloud compute (self deployed even) rather than heating up your lap.
> why would I take an iPad with a 30Wh battery...
Because it fits between the pages of the book in your backpack, has a nice pencil, and can *also* do ok with local AI.