From what I heard in the presentation they are more prepared than you give them credit for. The photo app improvements are examples.The game developers they had on stage seemed genuinely excited to be working with the new processor.
Of course “most apps” aren’t going to see any change. Most apps don’t push the current configuration. Graphics heavy things will benefit immediately. Photography, games, video will benefit, but what do you need with that on a phone?
Of course the developers seemed excited, Apple wouldn’t have allowed them on stage otherwise. They’re excited about the GPU though, which has little to do with the width of the CPUs instruction set. There are some apps that can benefit, but they are a minority, and getting double the speed from them is also unlikely unless you’re doing atypical things with your phone.
Video encode/decode is typically handled by the GPU, so won’t see much benefit. Photography could benefit, but it’s going to require specific optimizations and may not matter since most of the stuff you do on the phone is pretty lightweight. It’s not like you’re running Photoshop on your phone. Even then, most photos are in 24 bit colorspace so it’s hard to squeeze benefit from a jump to 64 bits.
The biggest winner is probably cryptography. It’s math heavy and deals with very large numbers routinely.
All other things being equal, I think the the wider data path, ALU and registers can potentially double performance for certain operations. Address space is not the reason for going to 64 bit.
When I said they were genuinely excited I was, of course, taking into account 57 years of reading people. I’m not a dope just 'cause I don’t know all the implications of 64 bits.
The things they are doing with the photo app would not have to do with color, or only a limited slice is about color. They are doing facial recognition down to selecting the photo with the smile over the photo with the frown from a burst of photos taken of an action scene. Evaluating for sharpness, white balance, motion blur, over a burst of photos and finding the “best” (which I agree will need to be seen to be believed or judged.)
I’m saying those kinds of operations would benefit from bigger gulps. Lots of math going on there. Is it all GPU? I would think just moving all that data around would benefit from bigger bytes. But, in all honesty, I don’t know, and I appreciate your explaining it to me.
Its a tradeoff cause now your pointers are double in size and that change is very far reaching. Physical memory consumption goes up pretty much universally. Wider data path is a great point, certain optimisations can be a lot faster now.
and then there was this:
That was what prompted my remix. Thing is, travelers to the United States get already fingerprinted. Same with Japan. They proposed the same for the EU, but unfortunately, they didn’t follow through. Probably too much whining from Americans.
Passports worldwide contain biometric data, so the holders gave two fingerprints to their local governments. Yes, they promise to save only the hash. And If you believe that, I have a nice bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. At this time I also assume that the NSA infiltrated the relevant institutions and steals those fingerprints.
Apart form that, fingerprints are not really a big issue in mass surveillance. What’s their use? That “they” know it’s really you who used that iPhone? They already know that, because smartphones do not get that much passed around - they stay with their owners.
For tracking? The phones already do that, as long as they are logged into a cell tower.
Also, smartphones have fricking cameras and microphones, your picture IDs has, well pictures in it. Your landlines can be tapped also, so there’s nothing preventing the interested agencies to scan all “for your security cameras” at key positions in the city.
So all in all, the fingerprints means shit and “funny memes” like above just direct away from who and what is the real problem.
Hint: It’s not Apple and their measly chip or Google and Facebook with their profiling.
The weird thing is, I’m willing to believe that Apple is only going to store the fingerprint signatures hashed in the protected area of their chip. However, that’s only a thin veneer of protection, since all one has to do is hook the fingerprint reader itself and grab a raw copy of the fingerprint before all of the hashing and encrypting take place. Apple hasn’t created an automatic fingerprint collection device, but the NSA could very easily turn it into one with a minor hack.
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