Mac OS X Leopard on iPad Pro 2020

[tonymacx86]

Just ran into this on CultofMac. Whoa the iPad Pro is powerful enough to run Mac OS X Leopard in emulation! We don't have testing hardware but if anyone has an iPad Pro 2020 and can test let us know!

 

[MichaelBhea]

Is that the PPC version, or the Intel version? Either is impressive!

 

[Hokie]

PPC, it appears:

 

[Gogeta-Blue]

yes the ipad pro powerful enough to run a 13 year old version of mac os
that just shows you how far behind in raw power those portable devices really are

they are more than 10 years behind in computer power when you compared them to a high end desktop pc

to surf the net, for those who like social media, an iphone an ipad or portable mac will do
but for those who do real gaming, for people who do real work then a powerful computer is need it
unless the person don't mind waiting hours for the computer or device to finish

i laugh when people prefer ARM over a real CPU

ARM or any apple CPU is just for energy saving
while they might have a decent performance they are no where near the power of a high end desktop CPU

the desktop is dead, yeah sure thing buddy

i think it will have been really impressive if instead of leopard
if would it been a newer version of mac os
anything form the last 5 years

 

[iSan4eZ]

yes the ipad pro powerful enough to run a 13 year old version of mac os
that just shows you how far behind in raw power those portable devices really are

they are more than 10 years behind in computer power when you compared them to a high end desktop pc

to surf the net, for those who like social media, an iphone an ipad or portable mac will do
but for those who do real gaming, for people who do real work then a powerful computer is need it
unless the person don't mind waiting hours for the computer or device to finish

i laugh when people prefer ARM over a real CPU

ARM or any apple CPU is just for energy saving
while they might have a decent performance they are no where near the power of a high end desktop CPU

the desktop is dead, yeah sure thing buddy

i think it will have been really impressive if instead of leopard
if would it been a newer version of mac os
anything form the last 5 years

It's strange to call emulation of another CPU architecture as raw power. The reason it runs such a late OS is rather a CPU compatibility. Current ARM CPU's are definitely more powerful than current energy-efficient laptop CPU's. You can simply try to run Forntine (ha-ha) on your PC using emulated Android and verify that gameplay is perfectly smooth on like 120 fps or so (it sure isn't). That goes for any intensive app you can imagine.

Also, worth noting that the simulated CPU is a single core at 900Mhz instead of what A12Z actually is.

So, you can imagine the ARM processor with higher physical size and speed to be close to TDP that desktop CPU's have and compare results in execution time of similar instruction sets

 

[Gogeta-Blue]

excellent comment
i knew that most likely some one was going to bring in the emulation topic

i had it the whole time in the back of my head but i didn’t mentioned

but if we don’t go by emulation and we use benchmarks or real workload then we will get back to square one or in this case back to my comment about performance

yes those devices are good and very capable but they are not as fast as a high end pc. where you can put a video card and do gpu encoding, we all know what happened to nvidia and cuda in mac os thanks to apple

this is where i’m going
the comment that mr cook made about an ipad replacing a pc

well maybe an avg or below the avg pc but never a high end pc , specially one with many cores that can do encoding or reendering much faster than an ipad

please don’t get the wrong idea , i’m not a hater or anything like that
lol

is just that an old computer with and old cpu can run leopard just fine, the only impresive thing here is an ipad running mac os

but unfortunately leopard is a bit too old

it will be much better if the ipad is able to run a newer version of mac os, anything after yosemite

 

[Bansaku]

ARM or any apple CPU is just for energy saving
while they might have a decent performance they are no where near the power of a high end desktop CPU

Not just high end desktops. Even today's most powerful laptops couldn't pull an all night render session without being placed on a block of ice and the AC at full. Whenever I hear people saying that they put off buying a new MacBook because their iPad can run Final Cut Pro, I just laugh and think about my Father's 2012 iMac running circles around his iPad Pro and iPhone XR. But hey, whatever floats their boats eh?!

 

[ShortFormErnie]

excellent comment
i knew that most likely some one was going to bring in the emulation topic

i had it the whole time in the back of my head but i didn’t mentioned

but if we don’t go by emulation and we use benchmarks or real workload then we will get back to square one or in this case back to my comment about performance

yes those devices are good and very capable but they are not as fast as a high end pc. where you can put a video card and do gpu encoding, we all know what happened to nvidia and cuda in mac os thanks to apple

this is where i’m going
the comment that mr cook made about an ipad replacing a pc

well maybe an avg or below the avg pc but never a high end pc , specially one with many cores that can do encoding or reendering much faster than an ipad

please don’t get the wrong idea , i’m not a hater or anything like that
lol

is just that an old computer with and old cpu can run leopard just fine, the only impresive thing here is an ipad running mac os

but unfortunately leopard is a bit too old

it will be much better if the ipad is able to run a newer version of mac os, anything after yosemite

Emulation takes up a ton of processor power. It’s effectively re-rendering machine code in real time. If you were to emulate X86, it would be much slower. You need to have realistic standards here.

 

[iSan4eZ]

excellent comment
i knew that most likely some one was going to bring in the emulation topic

i had it the whole time in the back of my head but i didn’t mentioned

but if we don’t go by emulation and we use benchmarks or real workload then we will get back to square one or in this case back to my comment about performance

yes those devices are good and very capable but they are not as fast as a high end pc. where you can put a video card and do gpu encoding, we all know what happened to nvidia and cuda in mac os thanks to apple

this is where i’m going
the comment that mr cook made about an ipad replacing a pc

well maybe an avg or below the avg pc but never a high end pc , specially one with many cores that can do encoding or reendering much faster than an ipad

please don’t get the wrong idea , i’m not a hater or anything like that
lol

is just that an old computer with and old cpu can run leopard just fine, the only impresive thing here is an ipad running mac os

but unfortunately leopard is a bit too old

it will be much better if the ipad is able to run a newer version of mac os, anything after yosemite

And here we go again
Current A-series processors have enough raw power to somehow compete with 13" MBP. So, going back to my previous comment, you can scale this processor to reach the same TDP and then have a high-end CPU with enough power to do anything your CPU can.
x86 architecture is heavily overloaded with rudimentary instructions and it takes more time to perform the majority of the modern tasks than ARM that's much younger and has less unneeded stuff.

And again, Leopard is too old, but there are more difficulties with emulation than with the performing modern tasks on an ARM processor. Just to make it clear, A13 is 6W chip (according to some website I found on the internet ) and it's pretty powerful for anything you can imagine in terms of mobile tasks. When you go to the desktop performance with desktop-level cooling solutions, take this CPU, scale it to have much more transistors and cores so it matches your perfect high-end CPU. Even if it won't be as powerful (I doubt it wouldn't), you need to keep in mind that ARM is evolving with insane speed and in nearest future, I don't see a reason not to replace current architecture with a more modern one.

 

[Maxkraft]

Its nice to see PPC emulation on an iPad Pro. I remember when an iPad could barely render text and had to use images in it E-reader app. I would have to assume there is a lot of overhead for the iPad to run the PPC code. Based on the video I think it is fair to assume the performance low. There are a lot of apps from that period that could have given us an estate of its real performance. Why not run one benchmark.

Also ARM is evolving quickly but not in the way many people think. Apples A13 chip literally has 5 times the number of transistors as an Intels 9900k. There just throwing a lot of silicon at the problem and you can't do that forever. It also means Apples chips might cost more to make than Intels.