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Comment by magicalist | Hacker News Reader

This is a fine article for what it is, but isn't it really "Apple marketing walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip"? (at least I assume Anand wasn't hired as a SoC architect)

There's little technical detail that wasn't in the ipad review's benchmarks[1] and previous speculation on using apple chips in desktop machines[2].

Everything new they gave no details on, and the only in-depth answers were hard hitting questions like "you could have made a slow chip, why did you decide to make a fast one instead?" and "why is apple so good at teamwork?" (maybe not the questions that were asked, but they were the questions that were answered :)

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/2018-ipad-pro-review...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/04/apple-is-exploring-m...

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I haven't had a chance to read the article yet, but Anand Shimpi is hardly "Apple marketing." He was almost certainly hired because of his technical expertise, not for any marketing ability.

If I were to speculate, due to his decades of industry experience evaluating hardware platforms, his role in Apple is to provide strategic direction and guidance on how to build the best hardware platforms. I can't think of any other role they would have wanted him for... which could be a failure of imagination on my part.

So... no, it's not "Apple marketing". Anand Shimpi is involved!

> his role in Apple is to provide strategic direction and guidance

That's the feeling I got, as well as perhaps being a human abstraction layer between the engineers and the executives. If you can describe in relatively understandable terms something that is technically difficult to thousands of laypeople (well, that's unfair - Anandtech was for nerds but being a nerd doesn't make you an IC/EE engineer), you'd be an asset to both the corporate and engineering teams.

And that translation works both ways - understanding the direction of the company with regards to future products vs what you want to get out of your silicon teams (e.g. when Anand mentions thermal envelopes, that might include an understanding of the limitations stemming from the potential form/design and material of a future product).

> This is a fine article for what it is, but isn't it really "Apple marketing walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip"? (at least I assume Anand wasn't hired as a SoC architect)

I wonder how that colors the reviews - if the outlet is too critical about a device, they can quickly lose these special privileges.

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