Apple seen merging iOS, Mac OS X with custom A6 chip in 2012 - Page 4

Originally Posted by 9secondko

which is why I clairifed what was meant by the term "niche."

No shortsightedness here.

mobile devices are not "taking over computing." they are simply used much more frequently for menial and casual tasks. Are they taking over the "little things?" sure. It's simply more convenient.

but for actual computing, be it typing a document, graphic design, video editing, audio work, financial systems, etc. a "real" computer is required.

Mobile devices with added power are great because of this fact: They are GAINING features.

Desktops and notebooks are great because they are also always GAINING capabilities, which they already have in spades over mobile devices.

Apple is currently on a trend of artificially introducing a convenience by dumbing down the Mac, which is ridiculous. They are missing the boat here. sure, there will be some things that makes sense to crossover. then do that. but don't cripple the mac, just so the marketing team can put the money making iPhone next to the MBP on the website homepage...

Mobile device will always be a device that we use for the convenient little things. It makes sense that we use them more and certain things are integrated. But they will never be a replacement for a desktop or notebook.

People buy a laptop and keep it for many years. People replace their phone every year or so. that's how Nokia sold so many handsets and it is also selling tons of iPhones.

the sales are not due to a better OS or a trend in taking over computing. They are due to different dynamics in how various devices, however integrated, are used, discarded, and purchased.

The Mac should always be the definitive, "you can do anything, do it right, and do it easily" platform. Mobile devices may be used a lot (especially where phone calls are concerned... - or casual gaming, or fun apps, etc, but they will always be a "niche" in terms of real computing.

there are some benefits to a hyper mobile platform and there are some to a station, mobile or otherwise. the point is that , while the mobile is being upgraded, it is a horrible thing to cripple the superior platform just to make the mobile platform look better, which is most certainly the trend here. And FCP X is just the beginning. "hey, let's take the iPhone version of iMovie, sell it on the Mac and call it Final Cut Pro!" no thanks.

(And yes, I am aware that FCP X is far greater than the iOS iMovie. LOL.. But it is an obvious bow to that software and it's platform and is also an obvious warning sign of what happens when apple engineers follow that philosophy.

Originally Posted by jukes

Rosetta wasn't an emulator, it was a dynamic binary translator. And I agree that it was quite good.

On the other hand, emulating or translating x86 correctly is orders of magnitude more difficult than what Rosetta had to do with with power pc for lots of reasons including variable length instructions implicit instruction registers, correct interrupt handling, the sheer number of instructions, etc. Particularly as Apple continues to support and use complex extensions to the x86 instruction set.

Transmeta used custom hardware to accelerate x86 translation in their chips and they just couldn't keep up with Intel's process advances. Maybe Apple could graft on a hardware translation accelerator to the A6, but I imagine that Intel owns most of the patents that they would need, given that they purchased Transmeta's IP. Also, Apple wouldn't get an x86 license so probably couldn't do such a thing even if it were unencumbered.

All things are possible over a period of 10 years, but i doubt we'd see Apple trying to translate x86 on a lowish power ARM cpu.

Originally Posted by tbsteph

And people have been panning Windows 8 for merging traditional Windows with touch screen capabilities claiming it can't be done successfully.

Originally Posted by 9secondko

which is why I clairifed what was meant by the term "niche."

No shortsightedness here.

mobile devices are not "taking over computing." they are simply used much more frequently for menial and casual tasks. Are they taking over the "little things?" sure. It's simply more convenient.

but for actual computing, be it typing a document, graphic design, video editing, audio work, financial systems, etc. a "real" computer is required.

Mobile devices with added power are great because of this fact: They are GAINING features.

Desktops and notebooks are great because they are also always GAINING capabilities, which they already have in spades over mobile devices.

Apple is currently on a trend of artificially introducing a convenience by dumbing down the Mac, which is ridiculous. They are missing the boat here. sure, there will be some things that makes sense to crossover. then do that. but don't cripple the mac, just so the marketing team can put the money making iPhone next to the MBP on the website homepage...

Mobile device will always be a device that we use for the convenient little things. It makes sense that we use them more and certain things are integrated. But they will never be a replacement for a desktop or notebook.

People buy a laptop and keep it for many years. People replace their phone every year or so. that's how Nokia sold so many handsets and it is also selling tons of iPhones.

the sales are not due to a better OS or a trend in taking over computing. They are due to different dynamics in how various devices, however integrated, are used, discarded, and purchased.

The Mac should always be the definitive, "you can do anything, do it right, and do it easily" platform. Mobile devices may be used a lot (especially where phone calls are concerned... - or casual gaming, or fun apps, etc, but they will always be a "niche" in terms of real computing.

there are some benefits to a hyper mobile platform and there are some to a station, mobile or otherwise. the point is that , while the mobile is being upgraded, it is a horrible thing to cripple the superior platform just to make the mobile platform look better, which is most certainly the trend here. And FCP X is just the beginning. "hey, let's take the iPhone version of iMovie, sell it on the Mac and call it Final Cut Pro!" no thanks.

(And yes, I am aware that FCP X is far greater than the iOS iMovie. LOL.. But it is an obvious bow to that software and it's platform and is also an obvious warning sign of what happens when apple engineers follow that philosophy.

Originally Posted by msimpson

Is it OK to call a fellow commenter a pompous windbag?

Originally Posted by JBlongz

Mac OSX will NEVER see anything weaker than Sandy Bridge!

Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody

More like 2020 for the culmination of these trends, and the idea that something will be running OS X on ARM next year is just silly.

Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody

And is it really worthwhile at all to speculate about something that might happen in the computer industry 10 years or more from now? No one in 1999 had any idea what the computer landscape of today would look like although I'm sure you could find lots of folks back then who would tell you they did.

Originally Posted by charley2

... If this prediction is correct, I can see Apple Producing touch screen computers and declaring the mouse era dead.

Originally Posted by jnjnjn

Something already does if you believe the rumors.



If you state that it is impossible to predict the state of the computer industry 10 years from now it's hard to argue against that. But I wonder, what paradigm shifts did I mis the last 10 years?

J.

Originally Posted by jnjnjn

The mouse era may be at an end, but like it's predecessor, the keyboard, it will survive for a long time.

J.

Originally Posted by Gustav

Rosetta and the 68K emulator on PowerMacs were quite good actually. I don't know how you can say they "sucked pretty hard."

Originally Posted by wizard69

The other thing people need to realize here is that when Apple went from PPC to Intel there was a huge jump in integer performance. It is no surprise that Intel could emulate/translate PPC code so well. The intel hardware had like 3x the performance of PPC.

Now with ARM everything is reversed, they simply don't have the performance.

Originally Posted by Doctor David

TL;DR
I was walking in the opposite direction during the revolution and now I can't even see it from here.

Originally Posted by jukes

Umm... say maybe the widespread (hopefully temporary) end of frequency scaling and the corresponding shift to parallel architectures like multicore processors and GPUs? Even though this wasn't exactly unpredicted in the research community it wasn't common AppleInsider-level knowledge.

Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum

Don't need none of that fancy-schmancy stuff...

A "real" computer pro can do anything with 8 bit switches and a toggle

Originally Posted by jnjnjn

It isn't difficult to emulate the x86 instruction set if there is no need for it.

J.

Originally Posted by rhyde

1) Maybe an A6 processor would contain both ARM and X86 ISAs and would be capable of running both instruction sets natively. That sort of thing has been done before and most of the transistors on a CPU these days are cache; adding an ARM ISA to an x86 chip wouldn't be that hard.

Originally Posted by Tails

Lion uses certain "ideas" from iOS. Other than that it's basically the same as Snow Leopard.

Merging iOS with OS X is more than changing the looks of scrollbars. iOS does not have a visible filesystem. OS X without a visible file system won't be usable even in 2016. And there are a million other things like that.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

"Apple is looking to merge its iOS and Mac OS X operating systems into one unified platform for applications and cloud services as soon as next year"

Exactly what problem is this attempting to solve? What is driving this?

Originally Posted by JBlongz

Mac OSX will NEVER see anything weaker than Sandy Bridge!

Originally Posted by jukes

This depends on Intel because a) Apple doesn't have a license to build x86 compatible processors and b) Intel owns all of Transmeta's IP which presumably covers most of the IP required to effectively do this sort of thing. If Apple can convince Intel to fab the A6 (as suggested by an earlier response) then maybe we could see this.

Originally Posted by tbsteph

And people have been panning Windows 8 for merging traditional Windows with touch screen capabilities claiming it can't be done successfully.

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil

He doesn't outline anything, so these are valid questions.

But a fully-multitouch desktop OS can easily be done. Its audience is everyone. It's the replacement of the mouse.

Originally Posted by rhyde

And therein lies the problem: there is a need for it. One of the main reasons the Mac has steadily gained in popularity over the past several years is its chameleon-like abilities to run *any* OS running on an Intel chip (for me, that's Mac OSX, Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD). Even if someone never *intends* to run Windows on the machine, knowing they can if they have to is a big safety blanket and convinces a lot of people to buy Macs rather than go with a Windows box.
...

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

And Apple made it clear that they've fully tested a touch interface for a desktop and deliberately split the UI into two camps.

Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum

If Apple were able to get Intel to build a custom package which included an A6-An chip as well as an I7-n...

All of Apple's laptops from the Air on up would gain instant on, low battery usage basic tasks (email, web, chat, etc.), and still have sufficient power to do heavy lifting.

They'd become kinda' a hybrid SUV -- somewhere between a post-pc mobile device and a "truck".

And one OS to run them all!

For Apple's more traditional and more powerful computers, like the MacBook Pro and Mac desktops, the analyst sees Apple sticking with Intel processors and the current Mac OS X software. But by 2016, he sees all of Apple's Mac devices running on an ARM-based processor like the ones found in the iPhone and iPad.

"Our preliminary view is that Apple can use a 32-bit ARM architecture to address the vast majority of the OS X ecosystem's needs in 2012-13 except for high-end professional devices," he wrote. "When 64-bit ARM is available in 2016, we believe Apple will have a single OS and hardware architecture."

Merging the iOS and Mac OS X platforms would allow users to have content be available and optimized on an even wider range of devices, Misek believes. He sees this strategy being more difficult for Apple to achieve if the company continues to keep its Mac and iOS operating systems separate.

Originally Posted by charley2

I can't believe that Apple is stupid enough to replace OSX with an IOS blend. I detest most of the IOS system to the point where i no longer use My iPod touch except as a GPS guidance system. Most of the IOS features in Lion are good only because they can be turned off.

I have arthritis in my hands and I am not alone. The multifinger motions are painful. I even use a mouse on my laptop.

Apple seems to be so fascinated by the success of IOS hardware that they have lost track of the fact that most computer users have big screens and don't need adaptations to run apps on a screen under 12 inches. If this prediction is correct, I can see Apple Producing touch screen computers and declaring the mouse era dead.

I cannot envision buying Mac software That is an IOS clone. When that day comes my OS will become Linux

Originally Posted by tundraboy

You will own a single device, an iPhone 7, say. When you are out and about, it presents the iOS UI on its screen and it works pretty much as a smartphone. When you get home, you can connect it to your monitor, keyboard and other peripherals (perhaps wirelessly, perhaps not) and that opens up the Mac OS functions that you need for large-screen computing (video editing, word processing, software development, etc.).

Originally Posted by z3r0

Yes Apple borrowed from iOS but example they could have added versioning and resume features without removing the Save As... item from the file menu.

Why they decided to do so? Just because of the way iOS apps work. Instant On.

Whatever you were working on reappears after closing. Thats fine and dandy but I want to be able to save a file manually for sharing or anything else. I want control.

Also, hate the command left click in a windows title bar no longer shows that document or folders path.

Launchpad I can live without.

Mission control SHOULD be separate, its a memory hog now. I don't want to be forced to use spaces or dashboard. If I only want to use expose, i should be allowed to do so. Aesthetically, Snow Leopard looked better. The login screen/window, the aqua buttons, ical, address book etc...

Originally Posted by popnfresh

Lion gives you parental controls. iOS doesn't.

Originally Posted by bigdaddyguido

That be a pretty substantial jump in processing power for just one year from the a5 to something competitive with the core i5. I don't see it unless it's a new product. Plus, there's really no reason to think a MacBook air would be more productive using ios6 than lion or that laptops will suddenly become comfortable to use as touch screens. Why would apple axe their most popular computer completely to make it significantly slower, less ergonomic, and less powerful?