Apple Developer Transition KitSource: Axel Roest

What you need to know

  • Multiple Developer Transition Kit benchmarks appeared online.
  • Part of developers' agreement with Apple was that benchmarks wouldn't be run.
  • It's debatable whether these results even mean anything, too.

With some developers starting to receive their Developer Transition Kits (DTK) it was perhaps only a matter of time before benchmarks started to appear online. And, sure enough, it's happened. That's despite the fact every developer agreed not to run any benchmarks, let alone have them uploaded to the web.

Regardless, we're seeing multiple Geekbench runs online right now with scores in the ballpark of 800 for single-core and 2700 for multi-core. Those scores are decent and comparable to something like a MacBook Air. But really, does it even matter?

Apple DTK Benchmark ScoresSource: iMore

Geekbench running on a DTK – An Apple A12Z chip inside a Mac mini chassis – will be running under Rosetta emulation. With that in mind, combined with the fact Geekbench was never intended to be run in this way probably means we should take these results with a sizeable pinch of salt. That's perhaps underlined by the fact the app reports the A12Z as having four cores – it actually has eight four performance cores and four efficiency cores.

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I'll be much more interested when we get to see benchmarks that are designed to be run on these things, whether that's via Rosetta or natively. Until then, I'm more interested to see what Apple's stance on all of this turns out to be.

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