Apple readying production of smaller, lighter 11.6-inch MacBook Airs? - Page 3

1) The part you quoted is from June 2003. Mac OS X was still 10.2.6 Jaguar! Its quite possible that they had no skunkworks on those products in the works at that time.

2) Seeing a market and saying its crap, I think we can do better is something I admire and trying to capitalize on the ineptitude of these markets isnt Apple jumping in with a me too product so any such comments about the smartphone, tablet and netbook markets being crap I think he means wholeheartedly. Who knew how much better the entire cellular market could get in such a short time because of Apples emergence? Even Android fanatics need to thank Apple for entering this market.

3) He and all good showman use misdirection. I wouldnt classify this as bait and switch, as its the absence of bait. While still not bait and switch, closer to it is the vapourware we see from other companies making lofty promises they have no intention of following through on just to delay sales to other companies.

Look at the banners in the image. They clearly state “OS X iPhone” and “OS X Leopard”. Not to mention the press releases and videos of Jobs saying that they spent years creating iPhone OS from Mac OS X.


PS: Why are posts not being understood today. It’s too many people so it has to be me.

Apple's entire existence today is the answer to the netbook. The fallacy is assuming Apple needs a targeted "netbook killer". Apple will do what they always do - release superior products that are compelling in and of themselves. No need to target Netbooks - they aren't worthy of it.

And what a shock - with a nicer choice like the iPad, netbook sales are tanking. Probably to the relief of manufacturers who haven't yet figured out how to get meaningful revenue from them without ticking off bargain concious customers.

And people are honestly puzzled as to why Apple doesn't choose to "compete" in this space, along with the majority of all other high volume, low margin computers? For all their millions of sales of not only netbooks, but other low margin computers what has it gained PC manufacturers? Marketshare, sure - but you can't tell me they wouldn't rather have Apple's balance sheet.

I'm glad PC clone makers are there for those who need them. I'm also glad Apple is there with something better. I'm glad I have the choice to pay a small premium for a much better experience.

Choice - it's a wonderful thing.

[QUOTE=solipsism;1721099]Look at the banners in the image. They clearly state OS X iPhone and OS X Leopard. Not to mention the press releases and videos of Jobs saying that they spent years creating iPhone OS from Mac OS X.

os x IS iphone os. i understood where the engineer was coming from when he said that. it depends on what your defintion of IS is....

Its all OS X and under that generalized umbrella is Mac OS and iOS. A Tech Taxonomy if you will. From there we can further break Mac OS and iOS down in more sub categories.

its a fun, wonderful family tree to be sure!

[ Its you. No doubt about it... ]

When Sj introduced the original iphone he made a big point out the fact that they had managed to squeeze OSX into it.


I completely agree. This became clear to me when the iPad was launched. IOS is the first OS that can lay claim to being user friendly. I know there is a lot of resistance but once the pad was launched there really was no way back imo.

The fact that a new OS UI that is instantly familiar and usable to millions of users already familiar through the iPhone or iPad is a huge bonus but even without that IOS would point to the future. Apple has led us here and there is no way they will turn back. Their aim has always been to create a user friendly computer experience and IOS is it. CocoaTouch does not make sense for a mouse pointer, but I can't see anything about IOS that wouldn't work just fine with a mouse (from a user perspective - technically I would not know). No matter what complaints people throw at IOS as the new Apple OS there's always the answer that 'there'll probably be an app for that'.

Love my MacBook Air - Perfect laptop for life on the move. Easier to carry around than my iMac!! Screen is a good size, like the keyboard, speed is fine for Email, Word, Excel and Parallels. Wish for greater capacity SSD drive, but otherwise no complaints..

Add to the fact that Snow Leopard is almost completely the same UI that came with Leopard, which is nearly 3 years old, I have to wonder if Apple is planning to reinvent the PC UI once again.

It is clear that while the air has some fans, it has failed to find a larger market. A lower price never hurts a product. Redesigning it to be more netbook like won't hurt, either, as long as it has clearly superior hardware to netbooks (no Atom).

No company every really paired Intel CULV processors with the original Nvidia ION- but it's a year or two too late to launch that ship and call it high tech.

Very true. So they continually improve the MBP (potentially without a DVD as someone said), and it's got the internals in they want. Now they ask "can we make a lighter/smaller version of this?".

If the size is constrained by the screen only, then that's easy - smaller screen is slightly cheaper and everything else stays the same. You get a lighter/smaller Mac.

If the 13" MBP is already using every internal space it's got, then what are the options to make it smaller. There seem to be 3 options

1) Push the edge with the latest greatest small intel chips/prototypes, small drives, smaller batteries. More expensive, but you don't sacrifice capability when you get smaller
2) Go for a smaller Intel chip (like the Atom) which also draws less power, but is slower. This can be cheaper but it is less capable.
(oh - extra option... 1+2... slightly less capable and more expensive. The original MBA)
3) Do something entirely different. A4, iOS. Cheaper & still very responsive - a far less broad system but geared to its specific functions.


I haven't used the iPad+keyboard doc, that'd have the same issues - does it?. Also generally, would landscape mode make things better or worse, or the ability to fold the screen back far enough to make it flat with the keyboard?


True. I think the file system is a BIG issue - Apple needs to do something there anyway. I'm betting on our iOS login being intimately linked to a MobileMe account, so when you're logged in all your data is available (partially synced/cached).

On a different note - an iOS laptop would be a direct competitor to a Google Chrome OS Netbook.

http://gizmodo.com/5435350/chrome-os...h-ssd-and-more

Multitouch, 64GB SSD, ARM CPU....

By your logic, the weight difference between an Expedition and a Ferrari is negligible. There is never anything negligible about a 2-to-1 difference. The difference in weight between an iron atom and an aluminium atom is far from negligible in the context of atomic weights. In the context of mobile consumer electronic devices, the difference in weight between a MacBook Air and an iPad is not at all negligible.

Yea, when Air was first introd I thought it would become the 13 inch Macbook Pro. In its current state, there is really no point to getting AIR in my opinion. Macbook pro is really slim, and while a tad heavier it is by no means some unliftable burden. If you want to go smaller, I think iPad is a great option. Just doesn't look good for air in my view.

In your opinion, they sucked - lots and lots of people would disagree. Did they have the capabilities of today - no, but technology progresses and things become possible that were not. It is like saying the first cell phones sucked because they were not the size of phones today.


Some of your criticism is just wrong. The Palm OS (for the phones and the PDA's) had thousands of apps.

Secondly, you are projecting the present on the past - the "cloud" and high speed wireless connections did not really exist back in the 90's. You cannot fault a product for doing something that was not possible at the time - not that it was not widespread or useable, it was not reasonably possible.

I'm not so sure if it is as big a problem as all that. I remember when OSX was introduced the fact that the Finder was in fact an app on top of Unix was discussed at some length. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finder_(software)) I don't see why a similar type of app cannot be built for IOS.

Yep, technology progresses but he's comparing the iPhone then to smartphones then. You can say how great they were (and that's your opinion) but imperical data shows just how bad the entire inustry was before the iPhone and how Apple made it better for consumers even if you choose to hate the iPhone.

Let's examine some of the basics. The first iPhone didn't have fastest clocked CPU, didn't have highest megapixel camera, didn't even have 3G. Yet for some reason all eyes were on Apple trying to copy Apple from the HW to the GUI to the services. Despite all this Apple was able to take 40% of the handset market profits orbthe world (and I think the only handset vendor to have a higher valuation than it did in 2007). Yet the dissenters kept saying how great smartphones were then, how Apple was foolishly coming into a healthy, thriving, saturated, mature market. I can't for the life of me see how you can say those phones were so great when everything shows that they weren't, as proven swiftly and dessively by Apple.

I think Finder is an "Old World" app an don't expect Apple to ever add it to the iPhone. It goes against the simple, intuitive nature that has made iDevices so popular and I think Apple will try to resolve that for Mac OS X 10.7.

Does my mom need to have access to Library when she clicks on her name in Finder? Why can't she put her Audiobooks and iBooks in there, it's titled "Library"?

See what I'm getting at? I don't think users won't have access to their user settings, as well as think Apple will offer file access in iOS as the ecosystem and usage increases, I just don't think it will be a Finder type app.

I agree. The Finder - or filesystem as we know it is definitely outdated. It never really worked as it was intended anyway. For some it did but most people struggle with folders and files. I certainly do and always have done and I am definitely a power user. The best way to store and archive files / data is by using metadata. The trouble is that metadata is dull and boring and very few people can be bothered. Apple has tried a little with key words and a star system in iPhoto but I bet very few people are even aware of these functions.
I was speculating that in a world of a new, simplified file system, there could also be a file system app that would allow more advanced access. Not necessarily a Finder app, but something that can manage thousands of files.

Usually I can think of a few ways issues could be tackled but I'm drawing a blank on this one, for both iOS and the next version of Mac OS.

With iOS having a central depot all apps can access seems straightforward but infest this could be a security risk if one app could write to any all files that could then be accessed by all other apps.

For Mac OS hiding Library and System you could just make more folders invisible to the user, but make it easy to toggle for power users, but that doesn't solve the underlying problem with Desktop OSes.

If you or anyone else have some ideas I'd love to her them.

The essential problem with filesystems is that they are hierarchical and humans don't think hierarchically. There have been tonnes of academic and corporate research on how to replace filesystems with something non-hierarchical but putting the ideas into practice has been difficult perhaps in the greatest part due to compatibility issues. Here I think iOS has made progress and will continue to make progress. There is no shortage of ideas to draw from.

Yeah it's not easy is it. And every idea I can think of has downsides too.

The thing I dislike most about the file system is how disjointed it is.

• Our home directory has 4 or 5 folders a user might want access to (documents, desktop, movies(?), and lots of folders that don't do much for us)
• Our photos are really controlled by iPhoto
• Our music is controlled by iTunes
• Our movies are in movies folder, or iMovie, or iTunes
• We move files manually to the iPad, but sync photos & music etc.
• Our email is another kind of file system, and includes both mail & attachments
• Apps are a different beast really, but are often dealt with by users. They are not in the user folder.

We need a more accessible abstraction to the underlying filesystem. It should be clear to a user when we're trying to bypass that too. As an example, iPhoto (and old iMovie projects) force you to "show package contents" to see what is within, but the music folder lets you just browse straight through the iTunes folders of music.

Add to all that... iPhoto is our photo filesystem AND our photo app. iTunes does music & movies and syncs the iPhone , accesses the store etc. iPhoto creates slideshows which combine music & photos. And iMovie creates slideshows combining music & photos too, plus movies.

The delineation is not simple, but untangling it makes it look much worse before it gets better.

Ultimately I want a fully copy of my data at home, and a full copy of my data in the cloud (it doesn't matter which one you call "backup"). I want my iPad & laptop to sync a subset of that data, with access to the full data (either in the house or in the cloud). AppleTV should show all my music/photos similarly.

But like you, beyond that I can't see an easy answer to make it feel seamless.

edit: I left out something important. I think ultimately our data needs to be self contained under our AppleID. That means that the Apps I buy are used by me only, but on any of my devices. I can log into my friends new MacPro with my AppleID and have my desktop and all my data ready to access on his faster machine. The downside is that if my wife logged onto my computer she couldn't use my apps, she'd have to buy her own.

What GregAlexander said (several posts back)... wow. The Chrome OS notebook looks freakin sweet, and for under $300. Tegra 3D, ARM CPU, open source OS (something developers enjoy), rock solid linux core, industry best browser etc.

I might actually buy one.

Apps that are designed for touch, but used on a laptop is far from ideal.

I don't think this is necessarily a case of SJ hiding what they are working on, I think it's more him just honestly expressing his opinions on things. He was "dogging" PDAs with styluses at least as far back as the first WWDC after his return to Apple (when Amelio was CEO -- '96? 97?) in talking about killing the Newton and the possibility of Apple producing a Palm-like PDA. That was a time when I don't think Apple was working on anything but saving the Mac and Mac OS.

So, when he says things are crap, it's because he's stating why he thinks they suck. It may represent the germ of an idea of what would make it better (or maybe not) but I think it's more just an honest criticism of things he gets asked about (these comments are almost always in response to, "why isn't Apple making x?"), but doesn't necessarily mean they are actively working on improving that thing.

Good luck with the trackpad wish.

The entire point of iOS is to offer an alternative method to point and click. A trackpad would be a step backwards.

He's back! That didn't take long.

Id say its worse than that. In ~/Music I not only has music, but all audio. I dont consider audiobooks and soundbites as Music, but I cant change the name to a more generic Audio without some bizarre things happening. On top of that ~/Music/iTunes also have movies, TV Shows, apps, etc. Theyve made it nicer with the new filesystem within the iTunes folder, but its not wrong.

Then there is ~/Movies, which I use to store most video. Not just movies, but TV Shows, clips, etc.

I do like the way iPhoto shows up as a package in filesystem. Ive seen too many people mess that directly causing irreversible effects on their original images.

It seems a bit backwards how effort has been pushed to making programming more user readable and apps made to be as simple as possible, but the consumer end of the filesystem has changed much since its creation.


Im not a fan of that as this could give a false sense of security to your personal data. Also, it would mean a slow desktop and files setup as everything would be built from a WAN. Ive dealt with roaming user profiles over a wired LAN in the Enterprise that its never been very pretty. Plus, families seem to use one Apple ID, at least first, for iTunes Store/App Store so if all your account info was tied to a this one Apple ID a lot of unintentional damage could occur.

PS: I hope Apple will buy or copy Dropbox. Its a wonderfully clever and complex design that is mostly transparent to the user. Its so clever that even among technical people I know Ive have to explain it more than once before they realize what the service is actually doing.

This alias wont last long.

Dull is said to be bringing out a convertible slate/tablet with a keyboard. It is entirely likely that they may sell it for less than $1,500.

Yep, I only touched on the problems


The issues with iDisk are obviously one sign that it's just not that easy to have a fast remote system, same goes for AppleTV-1's slow down when it displays a merged list of synced & unsynced movies from a local iTunes. And I wouldn't trust iDisk as a backup.

I can't help thinking it should be possible to have a sync of a directory structure though, with or without the files, that would make it quite responsive. And if iDisk had a local backup like TimeMachine I'd feel much more comfortable.


For a full local sync of a remote source - isn't this a great example of getting sync AND speed? My laptop would probably sync almost everything to it in my example anyway.

I imagine to move very fast, you'd need to have a syncing system which
1) first syncs the basic outline of all files (the text descriptions) first, then thumbnails, and finally actual files if you have requested that
2) overrides #1 for immediate needs - checks the local (current) folder for changes
3) syncs local folder text descriptions, then thumbnails, then prioritises subdirectories
4) continues #1 overall sync

I recognise that making this actually work is a huge programming challenge, as well as a bandwidth issue.... but this is one thing I'm stuck on "it should be possible" (if you can break that belief please do!).


I think this is the biggest usability challenge. It's easy if the whole family shares everything (because then we just say it's a single user), but if you want separate email and files and pictures, and your own music library shared access to purchases from the store, my (rather incomplete) model doesn't work.

If the solution was easy we wouldn't be discussing it!

The fact remains AIR is way to expensive for what you get. I'm not saying that it needs to be priced like a Netbook, but certainly under the price of Apples other Notebooks. Mainly because of its low end performance and being short changed on I/O.


Back in early 2008, when I purchased my MBP, I looked very closely at the AIR and quickly came to the conclusion it was an overpriced joke. Sadly the unit got reved and only addressed a few issues. Basically it is a dog that doesn't hunt.


Dave

This is very much the case. The same kernel and in many ways the same libraries and APIs. The GUI its self is obviously different and iPhone has a much stricter security implementation but the reality is you are running a UNIX variant in your pocket.

For people familiar with Linux it is somewhat like the difference between KDE, Gnome or some of the other Linux GUI APIs. Roughly anyways.

I've have had the same issues myself, both in person and on the netforums. What is even worst you can reference documents like you did and people still don't get it. I'm not sure what the answer is, I guess some people have trouble doing 2 + 2 all their lives.

As a side note I think this is why Apple eventually settled on iOS as the operatings systems name. This after a couple of false starts. People just couldn't grasp that the core of the OS'es are the same. In part this is due to people associating the GUI and apps with the OS.

Yep and you can take that clip and show it to people and they won't get it.

iOS and the apps are far from perfect usability wise. I find it useful to use my iPhone and the iBooks app for work documents. Being able to reach into your pocket and grab a PDF is great. However organizing your library is virtually impossible.

I bring up iBooks and libraries here because people still can't find things in real libraries. Making software suitable for these sorts of people undermines the utility of the software for people with half a brain. IPones Mail app demonstrates a possible user interface to deal with the issue on iPhone.

I guess what I'm saying is that at some level you need to be able to manage your data in ways that are better than offered up with iOS and some of its apps. It is perplexing but by making some apps to simple they effectively make their use more difficult.

There are good points with respect to iOS that could be moved back into Mac OS/X. I don't think anybody disagrees there. However the lack of file system access on a desktop OS would be a huge blunder. Dumbing down apps in general wouldn't go over well either.

The approach that Apple has taken with iOS works there because of the environment and the target markets. Desktops & laptops by definition are more powerful platforms serving different needs. Dumb the OS down to much and it then becomes far less useful to more capable users.

since the iOS devices have come out I've though a bit about Touch in Mac OS. Frankly I think it is very doable with only a minor burden on developers. Since the Touchbscreen would be an alternative input device it would be fairly easy to switch code execution based on where the events come from. Mouse behaviours could remain the same. Touch screen events could be handled directly by the control in the same way or passed on to the app code.

In other words I suspect that extending Mac OS for Touch should be easy but likely wouldn't mirror CocoaTouch 100%.

Actually there isn't. At least in the past Apple never approved file managers. Further many apps such as the above mentioned iBooks, work great up to the point when you try to organize things to meet your needs. Some times the trade offs made don't lead to a good user experience.

Dave

Hate to argue with you and solip but.... for all intents and purposes iOS and OSX SL are two different OSs. At least from an end user perspective. From a developers point of view they probably do look like the same thing.

iOS doesn't rum on x86 processors and OSX doesn't, at least the most current iteration, run on ARM/PPC processors. OSX apps don't run on iDevices and iOS apps don't run on OSX SL (unless you're a developer). I think the linux analogy falls apart because linux apps run on all the different Linux distros AFAIK.

This is because the end user sees the GUI as the OS, which is only partly correct.

It is more than probably. If you are running GUI free apps, that is terminal apps they are basically the same. If you as a developer are building apps some of the libraries are exactly the same.

What does that have to do with the price of apples? You can't really say that iOS doesn't run on i86 anyways as build iOS apps for the emulator builds them as i86 apps. Besides we are talking about UNIX here which can be easily targetted at other hardware.

In any event this isn't a discussion about hardware, it is about software in this case the operating systems from Apple. I'm certain Apple could get either iOS or Mac OS running on Sparc if they really wanted to. IOS use of ARM technology is simply due to power requirements that these small devices have.

if available with the correct object code they do. Apps are nothing more than programs compiled to run on a machine, in a sense the source code is the app.

The Mac being a UNIX platform at its heart can run apps originally written for Linux or other UNIX platforms with a recompile in many cases. Even some GUI based programs using alternative toolkits compile (interpeted too) and run easily on the Mac. Sometimes there is a need to debug but a surprising number of apps can be easily built to run on a Mac. The point is the app is the source code, that can be built for a target. For iOS the reccomendation would be to check some of the jailbreak web sites to see just what iOS is capable of running outside of Apples Jail.

Actually it doesn't fall apart at all because the apps are built for a specific distribution. If you are hardcore enough you can get those apps to run on a Mac via X-Windows if you really want to. The Mac is extremely flexible in this regards as it can run a vast amount of open source code. Often the apps are built with alternative toolkits and in this respect are no different than iOS apps that are using Cocoa Touch instead of Cocoa.

Dave

Yeah, iOS and Mac OS X are two different OSes. Mac OS couldn't run on an ARM device for a plagues of reasons. Not just bevause of the CPU architecture, but it had to be made more efficient. This is all before you scrap the GUI and start over. I thought this was clear?

However, iOS was built from Mac OS, both come from OS X as the source. That should be clear.

Also, iOS is used in the AppleTV as it's an ARM-based version of OS X but the GUI is completely different. In fact, it looks like they simply potted BackRow from the Mac OS-based AppleTV to the iOS-based version.

You of all people should know that a 1.6GHz 18W TDP CULV C2D was going for about $350 in 2008 making it impossible for Apple to sell the MBA for $600. Furthermore, you should know that is this slower CPU costs more than the 2.4GHz 35W TDP C2D because of it's worse power efficency and larger size. How could that entire system be under $600 on just HW costs? It's literally impossible for what's included.

Saying it's an overpriced joke is as silly as saying an iPhone for $700 with an 800MHz CPU, 512MHz RAM, 32GB storage and 3.5" display are an overpriced joke when compared to pretty much any PC in the world when you compare specs. I'm using an extreme example to show that the MBA is a specialized satellite computing device, not designed to be you main computer like a MB or MBP.



Before the ipa release I predicted that Apple would change the name again to exclude iPhone as it obviously made little sense and could hurt the brand of their other devices if people think they simply install one into the other and call it a day. The iPad OS is clearly tailored for the HW, yet the trolls on this forums enjoyed saying how wrong I was in January when that didn't come to pass. Turns out I was just ahead of the curve by a few months.

It isn't clear, in fact it is wrong. OS/X is a portable operating system, Apple could easily build an ARM based desktop if they wanted to. This is no different than OS/X running on Power PC. Admittedly performance won't be there, but you wouldn't otherwise be able to see the difference between an ARM based Mac OS machine and todays i86 machines.

As to iOS and Mac OS/X being different that only applies to the GUI environment and the tighter security. The kernel and much of what lies underneath is exactly the same.

Yes!

Which in a sense is the whole point that I'm trying to get across here. The GUI is not the OS for the most part. They could run X-Windows on an iOS device and it would still be iOS underneath. Frankly the could have built the new Apple TV with aSparc CPU if they wanted to.