GeekyBear

"Some Guy" just doesn't cut it.

We've got five generations of Apple's Media Engine shipping in M series chips.

If things are as dire as you claim, one of the many hardware reviews in reputable publications over the years would have mentioned this unacceptable quality at some point.

If your claim is true, you won't have any trouble finding reputable tech publications saying that the video output from Apple M series hardware is substandard in some way.

I'll wait.

I would recommend you find a floor plan for Apple's M series chips and take a look at how big Apple's media engine is.

Samsung's chips use high end ARM stock cores, and are also ahead of Intel and AMD.

Nothing prevents a vendor from implementing a high quality hardware encoder, just as nothing prevents the creation of a low quality software encoder.

Video editing is an area that Apple dominates because PCs become a laggy mess on complicated high resolution edits.

AMD has started to copy the same strategy with the recent Ryzen AI chips. They include hardware video encode/decode units as well as unified memory.

> So basically, video encoding is bad show for Apple

Apple has dedicated hardware for video decode and encode for several video formats.

That's why the comparisons between PCs and Macs running video editing software favor the Macs so heavily.

An Nvidia GPU involves as much CUDA lock-in as Nvidia can manage, but it's also where the best performance is.

People care about performance.

The M1 is about 1700 on Geekbench 7 single core.

Remember all those years when people claimed Apple chips were "cheating" on benchmarks because they had crypto instructions that x86 lacked?

Apple chips don't have AVX-512.

They do have media engines (that don't support AV1 encode), so if you switch to H.265, it will pull way ahead.

For context, Intel has yet to ship a core that scores over 3000 on the same test.

AMD beats Intel, but only by a couple hundred points.

Qualcomm beats them both.

The word was that they weren't going to ship systems with the M6 Pro, Max or Ultra.

The M7 generation has updated the tensor instructions in the GPU cores and they want to ship that ASAP.

There are also leaks for the M5 Ultra & Base M6.

M5 Ultra CPU:

https://browser.geekbench.com/search?k=parkdale_cpu&q=mac17%...

M5 Ultra GPU:

https://browser.geekbench.com/search?k=grand_gpu&q=mac17%2C1...

Base M6 CPU:

https://browser.geekbench.com/search?k=parkdale_cpu&q=mac18%...

Base M6 GPU:

https://browser.geekbench.com/search?k=grand_gpu&q=mac18%2C5

The Base M6 CPU single core is averaging a bit over 4000 on Geekbench 7.

For comparison, the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 averages 3161 on the same test.

https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-9-9950x3d...

The Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus averages 2940 on the same test.

https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-core-ultra-7-...

Then Chrome will download an additional 4 Gig AI file just for itself.

Figuring out how the hardware works and how to interface with it to submit work is a significant step all by itself.

> The good news is there are some places where things are just better across the board. In general, iOS 27 feels peppy. I know, we always talk about snappiness, but given the time Apple has spent on improving performance and removing bugs with this release, it’s reassuring to see that it’s borne out by my experience. Apps launch quickly, photos sync faster via iCloud, AirDrop transfers are especially rapid, browsing my NAS via the Files app was downright speedy compared to earlier versions.

https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/09/ios-27-review-little-thin...

> The good news is there are some places where things are just better across the board. In general, iOS 27 feels peppy. I know, we always talk about snappiness, but given the time Apple has spent on improving performance and removing bugs with this release, it’s reassuring to see that it’s borne out by my experience. Apps launch quickly, photos sync faster via iCloud, AirDrop transfers are especially rapid, browsing my NAS via the Files app was downright speedy compared to earlier versions.

That's certainly not what the reviews say:

> I’ve been happily using the totally frosted look (slider all the way to the right) for a few weeks now. While I didn’t mind Liquid Glass as much as other folks, the frosted setting ensures I can read and see the text, menus and icons properly.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/ive-been-usi...

You can always read a review:

> The promise of iOS 27 is that it’ll not only unlock new capabilities but also make your existing workflows smoother and quicker.

https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/09/ios-27-review-little-thin...

An update that improves performance on even the oldest supported device is a win.

It improves performance on the oldest iOS device that is supported.

> I wish they would improve the extension support in Safari.

They added the ability to vibe code your own custom extensions in this version.

They literally give you a new slider to increase or reduce the Liquid Glass effect to align with your personal preferences.

I'm looking forward to trying out Safaris new ability to vibe code extensions that will modify websites to remove annoyances.

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2026/08/27/build-safari-extens...

For developers, there is a new framework (Core AI), that updates the decade old Core ML framework.

> Core AI allows your app to use the latest model architectures and inference techniques across the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreai

How they spy on people isn't the issue.

Spying on people without explicit consent (in a situation where you can say no without penalty) is the issue.

It's worth remembering that Apple is releasing a new framework (Core AI) this fall that goes beyond the Pytorch and Tensorflow workloads that the decade old Core ML framework allowed.

> Core AI allows your app to use the latest model architectures and inference techniques across the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreai

> As a general principle, as a user, I expect a file on one computer to be usable on another computer.

As a general rule, I expect a file on an encrypted disk to be unreadable for anyone who lacks the encryption key(s).

> if I need to obtain some other thing from the original computer to "unlock" that file, I should be able to do it.

You can export your passwords to a plain text CSV from the original computer.

At that price, it's competing against a cluster of M5 Mac Studios, which we don't have test data for yet.

> new foldables are surprisingly strong along the spine

Have you seen the video in question from two weeks ago?

> GOOGLE MADE A MISTAKE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUT3rUZGqLA&

After four years of watching the JerryRigEverything YouTube channel snap Google's foldable phones in half at the same spot along the antenna lines, I'm looking forward to seeing how well this holds up.

Something this expensive should not be that fragile year after year.

The AOSP does not run modern Android apps, since Google has been replacing the APIs those apps require with closed source versions (that only ship as part of Google Play) for over a decade.

> There is no alternative.

There have been several projects like Ubuntu Touch to create an open Linux for smartphones.

That would be an open alternative.

Android is not open.

Clang, OpenCL, MLX