Developer Transition Kit: EXCLUSIVE review and teardown!
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- čas přidán 19. 06. 2024
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Back in 2020 when Apple announced the transition to Apple Silicon, they released the Developer Transition Kit; basically it's an A12Z from an iPad Pro crammed into a Mac mini, but nobody has publicly tested one before. That is, until now. I managed to find a new*, *sealed DTK and today we're going to explore this and run world-first benchmarks as well as an exclusive teardown of the only Apple Silicon Mac you CAN'T buy!
Check out DongleBookPro's deep dive on this DTK! • The Developer Transiti...
Time stamps:
0:00 Intro
2:10 Unboxing
4:51 Powering up the DTK
6:28 World first benchmark tests!!
13:10 Exclusive DTK teardown
18:15 Closing thoughts
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#apple #mac #tech #ios - Věda a technologie
Definitely one of the coolest Apple products I've ever reviewed!!
ikr
Apple to Luke: "You've been served!" XD
Epic!
hopefully the cost will pay off for you
any chance the beta OS could help the community figure out how to get native MAC OS support on iPad Pro ?
I love how this pretty much confirms something we all knew: iPads could easily run macOS and desktop-level apps. I will never shut up about this until they actually do it 😂
No one is disputing that! It is just Apple that has a business model to survive the monopolistic Windows machine, not to make the iPad macOS and compete with their Macs, as that would be the dumbest and most stupid business model anyone could imagine.
@@andyH_England that makes sense but it would be very good surface replacement
Davinci resolve is a living example...
And there were tablets back then running Windows and they were hot garbage. Like Windows, Mac OS is not optimized for a touch interface.
I don’t think iPads should run macOS. But now they are using the same chips there’s no reason why they couldn’t run macOS apps, even if it was limited so that they would only run if a mouse and keyboard was connected, for example. Macs can run iOS apps despite the lack of touchscreen and it generally being a horrible experience to use them. iPads running mac apps would instantly make them way more useful.
Luke is about to get sued by Apple
More likely the eBay seller. Luke signed no agreement with Apple, the seller did.
@@alliejr that’s not how that works
Made a great video tho!
@L. G. you return them to apple
Think it's whoever put it up for sale that's getting sued? Assuming they were the developer that Apple originally gave this to.
Shortly after WWDC 2020, I got an email from Apple offering to get one of these for $500, as did every (or almost every) other registered developer. I ignored the offer because I didn’t work on Mac apps back then, but nevertheless, it never seemed like an exclusive offer for the select few 🧐
UPD: Reviewing, benchmarking, or disassembling them publicly was not allowed by the developer agreement, and you had to return your item in early 2021 in exchange for an Apple Store gift card, but I’m pretty sure many developers chose to keep the DTK.
just think you would have over 6x the money back right now lol
Apple did not give the chance to keep it. If I remember correctly.
@@archie7012 You’re right, it wasn’t a choice Apple gave you officially. Though it’s pretty murky, I haven’t found evidence of any actual legal action ever taken by Apple, and some developers were surely okay to sacrifice their accounts if they were to get terminated for violating the agreement.
I’m sure any developers who didn’t return the kit got their accounts terminated permanently.
@@kevinmcguinness Likely so, but since anyone could sign up for $100 and then get the DTK for $500, it basically was just a $600 Mac mini with a slightly different design and worse specs.
I had a DTK back in 2020, and I always wanted to know what was inside of it, so thank you for doing that for me haha
hi dangered :3
Hmm. I feel like I know both of you.
@@weatheronthe8s895 HI JACKIE
@@nanopone hello!
It would be a good idea to archive the beta OS on the devkit
I have a lot of them already.
I was scrolling to see the first comment where someone noticed he updated without saying he backed up the beta OS.
maybe some guy could port macos onto an iPad with it
Should have cloned the original system and bought a touch screen monitor. You would have had drivers to run the touch on any touch screen compatible monitor. Elo Touch monitors are the best. I have 2 32inch Touch Glass screens in my lab.
Already done along with every single update for it thanks to a apple archive discord I am in and we have about 10tb and growing worth of public and internal data and dev data too
Luke paid approximately $3,194.85 US according to the only sold ebay listing of this computer. Wild! thanks for all your time and effort spent into cool videos like this for us Luke.
Is the listing still listed? I can't find it.
12:16 It is very intriguing to imagine Mac hardware running iOS/iPadOS natively, and especially the other way around. Love how they share the same platform, same core kernel and are compatible with each other.
I'm sure somebody will manage to run iOS/iPadOS on Apple Silicon Macs and vice-versa in the near-future.
Vice versa requires the blessing of the apple install authorization server which lets just say isn’t exactly the most permissive
@@amarioguy If any jailbreak is ever found, this will probably be the first major goal to achieve 😁
Running iOS apps on Apple silicon macs is actual supported configuration. It’s just not all that useful, is why you rarely hear it discussed.
@@JasperJanssen Yeah, running actual iOS on Macs would also wouldn’t be very interesting from a usability standpoint, but to technically see it running would be great.
macOS natively on the iPad would be a different story though.
@@XeZrunner I suspect that there are almost no driver issues and the core code is just easily transportable. But they’ll never allow it unless they decide to allow it.
(The one set of drivers that might be an issue would be the touch interfaces and such, and that macOS basically requires either a mouse with hover and multiple buttons or a physical keyboard with modifier keys and a mouse with hover and one button. You could have it Tcha-kra-ka-ka transformer-noise *only* when mouse and keyboard are connected but that would be pretty limiting.)
Best video of the year! It's mind blowing to see of what the A12Z was capable of a few years ago!
Wow, title should have been "How to get blacklisted by Apple in a single video" but seeing the teardown is worth it. I was so tempted to crack mine open the whole time I had it.
For the amount of disruption the dawn of Apple Silicon / ARM on the PC market this thing was the ignition point for, it^s gonna be one pretty sought after one! Keep this at all cost, dude.
if only he didn't break the wrapper....
Even though I'm not as hyped about this video's content, it's cool to see how passionate Luke is about his tech. Really happy for you, mate!
I used the transition kit for school. And I’m so glad that I could use it and I learned so much from it.
OMG, I’ve waited years to see the teardown. Thank you so much.
I’ve ALWAYS wanted to see this I’m so excited to finally get a look
OMG, I've been waiting DTK teardown videos for years, glad Luke is the one posting it!!!!
Another great video! I love the way that you are documenting the history and making history! Keep up the great work!
But Luke I bought one, and even documented how awful the developer experience was on my channel. (im terrible at videos, but made it in 2021 right before they forced us to return them.)
I just had to make something demostrating how bad the DTK was for us devs. Seriously if you wanna talk Dev experience i got some stories to tell. Also worth mentioning all the docs/forum is still up. However you cannot get access to it unless you're dev account is provisioned for it.
I watched your video after Luke's.
I was about to get one in the summer of 2020 but looked at the price and noped right out of there. That said, I didn't expect it to be that bad.
Yah it was not pleasant.. The amount of time I broke my own DTK was at least 10+. No fault to my own, mainly because of apple updates. As each DTK had to be enrolled to which you be given a DTK certificate that will allow your DTK to receive OTA updates. However those were known to break a lot of DTK. After which using the recovery image to “update” was a way better option.
Luke, pin this!
Congratulations for being one of the few people to have a in depth look on one of these kits.
i wonder if someone could use the firmware from the DTK to put macos on a 2018 ipad pro logic board. (or maybe use a custom board with components used in the DTK)
Thanks for showing this. I've always been interested in seeing what it was about.
Personally this is one of your best videos Luke. It shows one of the start points for Apples Mac SoC. They knew the future
thanks this was very cool content glad you where able to get your hands on one
checked on eBay on sold and completed items tab, the listing was sold for around 3.2k for transitional developer kit
yikers
Man, that's really expensive, if only they were cheaper, maybe I would try installing Asahi Linux on it to play with.
Lol, I just did the same thing. And it was from Spain.
@@Ryanf550 that’s the same listing I saw
I also saw it. $3200 is a lot, but keep in mind many tech reviewers like MaxTech and Linus spend boatloads more on devices to review. Idk how much revenue Luke will make on this video, perhaps he’ll get that money back in ad revenue?
If he doesn’t, this is still one the most unique and special Apple videos we’ve seen and will see in a very long time.
You need to get your hands on the developer transition kit from when Apple switched from powerpc to intel
i always wanted one of these just to test… good vid
And this among other reasons is why you have fans even in Athens , Greece! Thank you Luke!
I always love getting a look into the mysterious world of Apple prototypes!
We need to backup this video in case Apple DMCEs it.
Also, Luke you need to be careful about its serial number because Apple could remotely deactivate it.
I saved a copy of this video
And this is why you’re my favourite geek. Thanks for sharing!🙏
The DTK is a reminder to me that iPads are perfectly capable of running macOS but Apple purposely decided to not let them run it
Sure if you attach a mouse and keyboard to it. Without both the unit would be non functional.
Oh wow, I knew I always wanted this, but I always thought we'd never get it. Great job!
Cool that you showed it to us. Was hoping that you would pull off the heat sink as well to reveal the SOC.
I like how sometimes Luke’s enthusiasm draws me into things I have no interest in yet I come away strangely fulfilled. 😊
This always interested me since I got my A12Z development kit and my M1 Mac Mini. However what I wondered from this is does this mean we could theoretically install Mac OS on an Apple TV A15. I mean... that would be a very good Mac Mini.
yes you could!
@@efwewfwef1549 it's beyod me I think however I hope someone does this. I travel a lot for work and having a little Mac MIni with me would be cool :) hate laptops lol
probably! just like in the early x86 macos days where you could put tiger and leopard on the first gen apple tvs.
Yes they could.
well to be honest...it would run easy on an a15 inside a apple tv.
ad 2 usb c ports tada new mac nano
Luke always keep on giving. Merry Christmas all 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄
Very special video Luke! Thanks!
Damn this is something I’ve been wanting someone to do, nice one luke
Oh. My. Lord. This is my first ever look at this unboxing tear-down video. I have litterally never seen it before I started watching it for the first. time. ever. 😉 Thanks for sharing 😁
Love this! Encore, please!
records show one was sold on 11/22/22 from Spain on ebay for 3000 euros
Definitely keep this for the sake of history! Wow. Very impressive especially for the time.
I'm glad I got to see this before Apple sends Luke a Cease and Desist Letter and the video becomes unlisted.
Excellent video Luke. That logic board is minimalist compared to the 2018. 😁
Sinoptik unboxed one two years ago, video is at the top of the list
Searching a video like this for AGES!
What a find. Outstanding. Well done.
Very cool video Luke!
ngl this is probably my favourite apple video in a while
Wow. It was so tempting like opening I gift box. Many many thanks to you for this video. Incredible piece of tech 🎉
9:33 I think you’re not fully understanding this… yes I’m sure M1 > A12x… but you’re ignoring that this DTK is running unoptimized MacOS on an iPad. Clearly few or none of the underlying “kits” (eg Metal) are optimized for this CPU so performance is no where near where it would be if Apple was on a “for production” development path. The DTK existed just to work out cross compiler issues with Intel software, not to optimize for performance.
Not really for individuals, hence the lack of comforts. You were supposed to use it to rebuild your stuff for ARM in advance of consumer launch. That way your software would be up to date as soon as M1 hw hit the store. So, it's mainly for running Xcode build bots and CLI tools, to be used by your whole team.
Nobody ever claimed otherwise.
Can’t believe he updated it when he had an unreleased internal version beta of big sur
This computer is so rare that it almost don't exists.. i want to know the story about how it still was unboxed, after all its a developers unit and someone was suppose to use it to develop things on it, great video Luke.
8:06, he says that the chip is from 2018 but its not. The A12X was launched in 2018 whilst the A12Z seen in the DTK was launched in 2020, first seen on the 2020 iPad Pro line-up.
I TRULY hope that you made a disk image or something of the ORIGINAL OS build that shipped on it. That’s some rare stuff considering it was listed as version 10.16
Luke, I was expecting to see the actual chip under the heatsink... Please show it, and then do some power consumption tests as well. Btw nice piece of hardware!
It would've been very interesting to see how much power the DTK draws in idle and under load.
Please say you took a copy of the drive before you updated it. Archiving this would be amazing.
Great vid! I have two things to say. First, are you able to update the dtk to the latest version of macOS? Does it even work? Or are you concerned that Apple may have bricked this product in later software?
Second, the implications of not having a temperature sensor in that thing are pretty interesting. If there’s no system temperature readouts, how’s macOS going to thermal throttle the dtk if the load gets too heavy and starts heating it up? While I don’t recommend it, it would be interesting to install something like TG Pro and ramp up the fan speeds to the max, and then see how far you can push this thing. I have a feeling it would hold up pretty well.
I’m using davinci resolve on the iPad Air right now. Been teaching myself on both the MacBook and iPad. But trying to test out how it goes on the iPad. There’s a bit of hiccups since I’m using the edit page which clearly isn’t ready but it definitely works. Apple needs to port Final Cut but Final Cut doesn’t use the finder so idk how they’d do it. Davinci uses finder to import so the switch to the files app was probably easier than apple porting Final Cut.
Thanks for taking one for the team.
So, you said it originally had drivers for camera Face ID and touch screen, then why not trying to put it in an iPad Pro ? Technically it should work and the first iPad running MacOS would be made !
This is so cool! I need a comparison of this to the Microsoft Volterra dev kit!
Watching this before the video mysteriously disappears!
Very Nice video!! Thanks luke!! In addition it seems that the cpu of this developer version is running at 2.4ghz, according to everymac, it is a downclocked version of the ipad pro cpu.
Awesome, but please be careful that you don’t get any kind of legal issues with Apple. Dev kits must be send back after a developer used them so I hope you don’t get in trouble, Luke. Respect ✊ for sharing this with us!
He's not going to be in trouble, he got this through backchannel and never signed an agreement with Apple over the unit. And it's not in their interest to pursue it over 2 years down the pike.
There are still Intel dev kits floating around from 2005. Apple may not even care. But last I checked, Apple can’t just go search his house. It’s a damn computer, not a car!
@@jakekreutzerIn 2010 Apple perused a writer for Gizmodo for buying a stolen prototype iPhone 4. The police literally seized his computer after searching his home. I understand this is a little older, but I would personally be worried that Apple would go after someone for purchasing Apple property this new.
I don’t think they should, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they attempted to get the computer back since it’s legally their property.
@@vindication84 yes, in 2010, *before* the iPhone 4 was officially even announced. That's why Apple clamped down on Gizmodo for showing it off. Meanwhile this device is 2 years old, was publicly announced so people already knew of its existence and its specs, and doesn't really contain any Apple secrets. Do you see Apple going after all those people showing off other old Mac, iDevice, etc, prototypes?
@@babyboomertwerkteam5662 well him doing this vid exposes for certain one secret, they be liars. The A12Z iPad Pros are way more capable than they say or allow and they purposely bricking features in the latest iOS in hopes we’d spend thousands to get the M1 iPad Pro which is just truly a minor update from the A12Z.
Was it running Cinebench natively or through Rosetta? I'd be interested to see more Rosetta A12Z vs Rosetta M1 testing, in theory the M1 should walk away with it because it has the logic on the chip to work natively with x86 memory addressing.
did you save the older OG build of the 10.16 before upgrading to render the FCP video?
Brilliant find 👍🏻
A12Z is actually a 2020 chip which came in the 2020 iPad Pro. The 2018 one had the A12X. But they’re more similar than different, so yeah
WHOA! This definitely got my attention! It sure shows the development trail!
BTW, is it limited in how many displays it has like the M1?
Maybe even more so since it's a jacked up iPad.
Great video! I wish you had shown where the 12z chip is.
Can you update it to a current version of Mac OS? Can you run iOS apps on it?
Is that a usbc header on the top right of the logic board? If so does it work? Also, would love to see an extended teardown to see the m1 chip itself!
Very nice Luke!
That preinstalled OS in the DTK might be the key to figuring out how to install macOS on iPads
To even consider this the bootloader would have to be unlocked which isn’t possible and even if it was possible Mac OS lacks drivers for the lightning port and any a series chips
@@alexmeek610 The iPad with the A12Z chip has type C, what does lightning have to do with it?
@@alexmeek610 Apple doesn't lock the bootloader, they just sign it with blobs, which won't be possible to get, and so install the OS without the bootrom exploit
I think this is the first time this was testet.. maybe you should have this emphasize that in the video 😂😂😂 Thanks for that 😊
Luke, please try to see if you can update this thing to Monterey or Ventura- I am guessing it will come across as unsupported but it would be so cool to get it working on the latest OS! Also, I wonder what would happen if you put the thing into DFU mode like an M1 Mac mini and tried to restore it with Apple Configurator- could you get an iPad Pro 4th gen restore IPSW file and shove it on there... Would love to see this stuff explored!
Only up to Big Sur 11.2.3 is signed for this, sadly
I would also love to see if he can flash this DTK's software onto a 4th gen iPad Pro.
He's very likely to kill it, attempting this sort of thing. I'd be vary wary of updates given Apple wouldn't be testing for DTK users at all anymore since they were meant to be returned.
Restoring isn't possible, Apple Configurator won't allow it, even if you have the IPSW
@@rostyc All DTK IPSW's are still signed by Apple. On M1+ devices, you can restore to any version you want without issues (Except downgrading to version that were never shipped with the device ofc). I also recently downgraded my Mac Mini from Ventura to Monterey using Apple Configurator.
just making a slight correction here: remember that the DTK is running an a12z bionic processor, which came out in march 2020. the a12x bionic came out in october 2018. so the chip inside the DTK and the intel mac mini did not come out at the same time.
Very interesting video, the Apple hardware engineers really worked to shrink everything down and make it compact.
This just adds fuel to the fire of why Apple doesn't want MacOS apps (FinalCut, Logic Pro X etc) on the iPad, there doesn't seem to be a reason not to add them to the iPads.
My guess is that Logic / Final Cut etc software wise talk to all sorts of frameworks and things which do not exist on iPad OS, and a great deal would have to be changed. Also it would make less people buy a Mac, which is bad for Apple. If the pros don't need a Mac for Final Cut and Logic, less Mac sales.
@@darwiniandude But the thing is Luke did run Final Cut on it and exported a video out of it. I do believe that it can run on the iPad, only that Apple does not want that to happen. I do agree that perhaps it might change what products are being bought from them, but to be honest, Apple knows how to get money from everyone, they removed the headphone jack and made a dongle.
@@tonylancer7367 yes it’s running on an iPad, but it’s running MacOS. IPadOS would likely need a bunch of updates to support those apps in iOS / iPadOS.
because Apple understands that tablets are tablets, and computers are computers. Yes, you could put Final Cut or Logic Pro on an iPad, but would you really want to use it for long periods of time on a touchscreen? Convergence just doesn't work. If you try to shoehorn a mouse-based application onto a touchscreen device, the user experience suffers and the reverse is also true. Did everyone forget about Windows 8 already?
Love this video good job
How cool was that! That sure was something different.
Hi Luke, if this DTK was running a version of MacOS with touch and display drivers... might it be possible to scoop up this OS, repackage it and flash it to a 2018 iPad Pro somehow?
Can you pop the heat sink off the board, so that we can have a better look at the A12Z and ram chips. I want to see if they are different from those on an iPad Pro.
I know this is somewhat destructive and will affect thermal performance. It’s better do that after all benchmarking.
Lol 😆 I'm like 99.9% not about to happen.
Something to mention.
Now, you should buy these machines on what they can do today, but, as more apps get native apple silicon ports, stuff that couldn't run before will run a lot better, even on the original M1 Macs.
Something that is very exciting to me as these machines start to make their way onto the used market.
Thanks for this! It gives quite a lot of insight how prototyping in a large company works. I would love to see how it was actually made by Apple from the iPad to this janky Mac. But I guess we will never know.
They didn't go converting iPads to DTK's they used the design technology form the iPad to modify the pre-existing intel Mac Mini motherboard to incorporate iPad chips and kitbashed what they needed.
Would be cool to see how cinebench and the blender test compare between the beta OS vs the final OS. Would portray how important software optimization is.
Keep in mind however that the hardware itself suffers compared to the actual M1 Mini.
I wonder if the 3 batteries are to emulate a 12v or 8.4v battery to allow it to boot
I didn’t know Newegg was still a thing. Thanks Luke!😂
I hope you frame the DTK board, it would make a great art piece
Oh this would be fun... wish I had one of the intel transition Macs!
The image works on similar computers. Since it doesn't use EFI.
@@themacintoshnerd I think he means the early Mac Pro DTKs for PowerPC to Intel transition
@@reputationtaylorsversion Yeah that's what I said. The image used on the Intel dtk doesn't use EFI and can be installed on similar computers that use just a BIOS. So you can kinda build your own.
They where actually pretty easy to get hold of. You just needed a Dev account.
Which you don’t need anything special to get. Just money.
It used to be only way to get access to beta’s till they launched public beta program but then then you are not getting the most recent features in beta unless you go dev.
One of the issues with the dev kit was some of the cores where disabled.
There where many reviews on it.
One catch was after a year of owning it you had to return it.
What is the software that you are using to check the cpu, processor, and other things on the computer? Can you give a link to that software please.
i kinda want him to dump the TouchScreen drivers so other people can implement them in hackintosh
Great fun!
I have a question for you; curious why as far as I know, you’ve not done any videos about OpenCore Legacy Patcher? I’ve watch many dealing with legacy computers that you’ve produced, improving them, upgrading CPU, GPU, SSD’s, etc
This video prompted me to ponder: "Can you put all of the M1 Mac Mini guts into a 2018 Space Gray Intel Mac Mini case, resulting in a Space Gray M1 Mac Mini?????".
Of course you could. Someone put an M1 Mac mini in a wii.
Just having that space grey chassis for an M1 mini is a pretty big deal! Hopefully the next gen Mini follows this color scheme?
This is fascinating and, strangely, shows how 'hands on' the engineers were in testing and prepping for the biggest computer milestone since SSDs. Will you disclose the exact words used by your fiancée when you told her what you had bought?
“Why the f is there a 10000 dollar charge for a Mac mini”
Have Tim’s snipers arrived yet?
It‘s a dream, nice Video!!