Intel issues 'Ultrabook' reference specs with sub-$710 BOMs - Page 2

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Good observation. The two are parting ways. You can see this is coming by a variety of different moves by Intel. First, Intel and Google teamed up to compete against Apple and Microsoft to buy the Nortel patents. Second, Intel is actively encouraging Windows PC makers to copy Apple's designs when Apple is a customer of Intel.

I think Intel is afraid of ARM. Currently, iPads using ARM processors are making a dent in low end computer sales, which generally use Intel processors. Eventually ARM will be powerful enough to run desktop and notebook computers. Many think Apple will come out with an ARM based Macbook Air further taking sales from Intel.

On top of that, Windows 8 will support ARM processors. If Microsoft follows in Apple's steps and encourages hardware manufactures to use ARM processors in low end computers (a bulk of the market) Intel will really be hurting.

Apple isn't encouraging its customers to gain up on another customer.

I don't see Intel as launching an offensive toward Apple, but a defense against ARM.

So get an Apple laptop and run both OS's - or if you must only run Windows, do that.

Perhaps. Yet another platform shift from Intel to ARM would annoy developers (though it might make it easier to merge iOS and OS X). Look at the issues that dropping Rosetta support from Lion caused, and the PowerPC transition was 5 years ago. AMD might be a more immediate threat than ARM if they can start matching Intel's CPU power (their integrated GPUs are already a lot better). The success or failure of Windows on ARM remains to be seen. If it's just on tablets, it may not take off, and it has limited appeal on desktops since current Windows programs won't run on the ARM platform, either.

I'm guessing Intel doesn't want to find itself dependent upon any one manufacturer for its ULV mobile chips. Right now, Apple and Samsung are the two main companies using the 17W mobile chips (Dell and HP use primarily the 35W chips). The Ultrabooks would drive further demand for the 17W, which helps Intel pay for the research and development of Ivy Bridge and Haswell, which are designed on the premise of reducing energy consumption while increasing graphics and computing power.

Because they are all so hatable and Apple isn't?

http://www.bgr.com/2011/07/28/40-of-...ly-ridiculous/

This part is total crap.

Stats can be fun but you have to start with good data. Gizmodo makes stuff up. All the time. They are probably the furthest from a "good source" on anything to do with computers or gadgets.

Cheap yes, at least in terms of initial purchase price which is sadly all the average idiot thinks of when buying.

Value? Not so much.

Even before Mac products started to be aggressively priced within their particular segments, it was already true that Macs were cheaper than Windows computers if you considered the total cost of ownership.

It's been the smart move to buy a Mac (even if you are a poor jerk in a trailer in Arkansas or something), for many years now and will save you money in the long run over any Windows based PC however cheap.

The fact remains that in a corporate environment, they can buy PCs for $400-$500 with a monitor. And for most employees, who use nothing but email, Word, Excel and Powerpoint, it actually works fine. The Mac might be capable of so much more, but except in design departments, they wouldn't get much use anyway. And as apps move to the cloud, I think this will actually hurt Apple in the long run because there's less differentiation in browser-based software.

One can talk about total cost of ownership, productivity, etc., but when you have to buy 500 computers, executives are mainly concerned about the immediate capital costs and it's almost impossible to calculate the productivity increases because work expands to fill the time allotted to it anyway.

Not this.


But this.

The major sticking point for Universities, Schools, and other large organisations deploying the iPad on a large scale for instance, is the "stickiness" of MS Office. People write documents in Word and Excel and Microsoft is basically just ignoring iOS and Android in terms of Office support.

This is actually one of the big "battles" coming up that not many people have clued into yet. it will take MS a year or two (at best!) to make Windows Phone 7 Deluxe Edition with Web Extensions or whatever they are calling it now into a viable mobile OS, and that's only if it doesn't fail completely. Until that time (failure or success), they won't' be supporting the other mobile OS's at all for Office. There are a couple of third party solutions cropping up but while those may work for individuals, they are rarely deployed for organisations for a lot of obvious reasons I won't bother to get into here.

So for large-scale deployment of mobile devices in a large organisation, the choice will be either to wait for Microsoft and not deploy at all (stupid), switch the entire organisation to iWork or something similar (unlikely), or go with a third party solution (spotty, crappy, not really a "final solution.")

There is a gigantic software opportunity here for Apple in that if they actually developed iWork into a useable alternative to Office, they could take the brass ring. Sadly, they show no signs of working on this problem at all.

Despite what everyone says about Apple being a software company that makes it's own hardware, they are really the opposite of that. They develop software to the absolute minimum necessary to sell the hardware and often don't go any further than that. They have a history of developing some great piece of software (to sell some hardware product usually) and then letting it languish for years, because they have moved on or they just don't care. (iChat, iWeb, iAds, iWork, etc.)

I'd just like to point out that BGR saying something is "ridiculous" doesn't actually amount to a debunking.

"debunking" is detailed point by point analysis that turns a conclusion on it's head. The article linked to basically just says, "oh yeah, well we heard different!"

Not debunking.

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A lathe spins the part around a single axis (used to make parts round on 1 axis at a time. The machine Apple uses to make the unibody parts is a CNC mill. With a milling machine the part can move on the X and Y axis when needed. The mill can have many attachments that cut away material from the part.

I agree with what you say (including what I didn't quote). I would love to see Apple ramp up the development of iWork but I am not sure they see it as a battle worth fighting. You say its a giant software opportunity but there is no guarantee it will succeed. People don't switch easily and no matter what you say about Macs v Windows, for most people the best and easiest computer (software) is the one they know. For my needs iWork is fine but I had to make a concerted effort in order to become comfortable with it.
I think for iWork to replace Office it would need to be able to interact seamlessly with office docs, first and foremost. After that I think the Apple marketing team would need to work their magic, over a long period.

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I'm guessing $ 850 but that is totally pulled out of...(I'm not American; you fill it in) Based on the prices I see on the internet, the crap PC at work, the laptops friends have. Sure there are cheaper ones, but the consumer likes to gift themselves and corporate usually supplies its users with not the lowest of specs, just because the nerdy IT guys are telling Finance that they need this or that. Yep, I guess $ 850 ASP. Hope to see other people's views and guesswork.

He is giving us useful information that is not Mac related. Get him!
Jk.

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not to burst your bubble but that article is just as unsourced as the '30% android returns' article was - and since it was from back last year before the iPhone launched on verizon there's nothing there to substantiate a claim that it still has the lowest return rate from the article.

One unsourced rumour is no more useful than another.

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i'm going to assume your comment was not an attempt of trolling so i'm curious to know your reason(s) why, in your view, Intel has a feeling of intense or passionate dislike for Apple.

Are you aware of anyone who buys a MBP, formats the disk, and installs a fresh copy ow Windows? Is that even possible?

I'm unaware of any laptops which are nicer looking and feeling than the MBP, and so I assume that some people who need Windows feel the same way. Does anybody use a Mac as a Windows PC without a dual boot or VM solution?

Are all the necessary drivers available for that? Are there any other reasons why it could not be done? Could you use an external drive to boot Windows on a Mac?

It would be kind of like a Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde version of a Hackintosh looking in a mirror while standing on its head.

I'd not heard that. It seems like that is the first time that has ever happened. In the bad old days, a common reason for replacing a computer was that it didn't have the power to run the newest OS. It used to be that upgrading the OS would make an old system run more slowly.

I wonder what was done to make it happen differently this time around? General cleanup/tightening of code? Better ability to sense hardware variations combined with a more flexible architecture? This seems like a breakthrough to me, because I don't recall it ever happening before.



Edit: According to PCWorld, "Another thing we did is build intelligence into Windows 8 to adapt the user interface based on what hardware you have. So whether you're upgrading or buying a new PC, Windows will adapt itself for your hardware,"

That's pretty sweet.

The $850 PC ASP I guessed is most likely to be way lower than the ASP of Macs. 3 out of 4 Macs are laptops sold last quarter which is a good indication that the $999 (and up) pricetag overshadows the Mini, the only Mac under $999. Although the Mini is used large-scale in IT departements, cruise ships, cars etcetera won't make the ASP below $850.

Random pic:

Refusal to slather "intel inside" stickers all over the MacBooks?

Huh? Nobody here is the plaintiff. There are rumours swirling about both platforms all the time. I'm not claiming that the first article is true, I think it's a lousy piece of click-bait. But you don't beat lousy journalism by linking a ton of more lousy journalism.

Personally I think the real difference in terms of return rates is between 3G handsets and 4G, not between iOS and Android - but there's no hard data even for that.

i have one of the last 24" imacs and since i don't use os x anymore i set it up as windows only because the wife and kids don't like os x and it is too good a machine to let rot. so i did a minimal os x install to get boot camp, then gave the rest over to Windows 7. it only boots to win 7 and runs very well as far as windows goes except that you can't get 64bit win drivers for webcam from apple for the older chipset.
if Ubuntu (and linux in general) would ever have some decent power management i would install it on a MBA in favor of os x.
i am hoping ubuntu will work better with the ultrabook than it does with the mba. waiting to see if they ever show up....

A big point missed by Intel and others is that when people buy a mac laptop - they have either an expensive macbook pro or the mac air (or the craptastic soon to be discontinued macbook). The mac air is cheaper and comparable so you are saving money to have a sexier laptop - only pros needing finalcut pro or the screen real-estate are going with the 15" mac pro these days.

In contrast the PC market is mostly about price (a look at how poorly sony has done is case in point) - the PC competition for an ultrabook is a $300-$500 range PC laptop. Only a small segment of PC users are going to want to shell out $1k for sexier (2-3x more!) than the laptop they would normally get/ compare to.

Corporate users are going to get the cheap Dells, only well-healed consumer PC diehards or small well-off businesses are going to be in the ultrabook market.

I predict <20% max PC laptop market-share for PC ultrabooks.

But Intel can't trust Apple not going to ARM, and needs to get X86 in the portable market to keep future relevancy so it has to push this market segment. Intel knows it is in the biggest fight of it's corporate life.

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Back to HP and everyone else's tablets, I was in BB (Atlantic Center, Brooklyn NY) today replacing earbuds and couldn't resist checking out their finally set up displays of them, and an HP rep was there. Two big problems: Aside from the HP they were mostly running one of many versions of Android, literally the whole handful of them, with different names and version numbers. No one could explain to customers the difference between the Gingerbread, Froyo or Honeycomb, except which was the latest. That's a huge mess and I saw one woman's eyes glaze over at the convoluted (and probably wrong) explanation. No salesman could say which could be upgraded to the next version, they just grunted that it is what it is, so I just tooled around to see if any had a good response. Most weren't set up to function for a passerby. Found one or two that were but they weren't online. There were maybe 5 different kiosks of tablets with no one showing any interest in them. There was a crowd of fifteen at the Apple table on the iPads. Not because Apple had bamboozled anyone with hype, but because the other options were muddled and confused. They looked like they were guaranteed to be half price or obsolete by Christmas. Maybe not in truth but they gave that look.

And second, the new, higher quality releases are hitting the same price point as Apple, so people would walk up to one, see that it wasn't any cheaper (regardless of the features) and walked over to the Apple table. Apple is winning big by no one clearly saying "You want a $300 iPad alternative? This is it" and instead saying "Here's our version of the iPad, same price".

The only reason that I don't believe that Glenn Beck meme is that I'm quite sure that he cooks and eats his victims Actually I'm not really sure he cooks them.

As for the android story being preposterous, I don't think I would go that far, though the article that started it is lousy. Lets say there are 100 models of android phone, which seems in the ball park. Some are clearly going to be much better than others, a few could plausibly be total turkeys just thanks to the law of large numbers. Could there be one or two android handsets with really high return rates? I don't think it's hard to believe. But you're right, there's absolutely no evidence for it as yet - and given how reluctant any carrier will be to ever admit that it was pushing a turkey on its consumers, it's likely we'll never find out unless one of the customer satisfaction surveys releases model level data rather than just platform level aggregates. Since that level of granularity would need a far bigger sample, I doubt we'll ever have proof either way.

This website cracks me up. You apple fanboys just love pulling facts out of thin air.
"40% of androids are returned"
"2-3x markup cost after manufacturing cost"
"no ssd or cpu performance"

shouldn't your crapple users love this? healthy competition? you have no professional investment in the company, and it is not your intellectual property EVEN IF other companies are "copying" apple. more competition = better products at lower prices. I swear you people would just love it if only 1 cell carrier existed too

you think apple invented laptops this thin? the first one was a sony made about 5-6 years ago

these ultrabooks will be more cost effective than a MBA. you can find out for yourself when HP / Asus unveils the official MSRP. until then, stop pulling facts out of your asses.

Apple supposedly have tied up a lot of the existing NCM machine capacity used to manufacture their aluminum enclosures. One of the questions all along has been why they have not used a precision molding process which, according to some sources can be used to produce the same product less expensively with only a very small amount of, if any, precision machining. This would appear to be an opportunity for the PC manufacturers to find out.

Sure, but unfortunately that defense comes in the form of trying to basically clone the MacBook Air on behalf of Apple's competition, which comes off as at least dickish.

Remember when Intel was publicly enthusiastic about getting Apple on board, explicitly because they felt Apple brought innovative design chops to the table that might move PC platforms ahead? I don't think anyone assumed they meant "let's see what Apple can do with our silicon, and if it looks successful we'll reverse engineer it and sell it to PC manufactures."

Of course, once Intel gets Asus and HP and Lenovo et al selling Air class machines we can discover that it's actually really really smart to drop the optical drive and go with a sealed battery and use a big trackpad and SSD and backlit keyboard and reduce the number of ports (even, no doubt, Thunderbolt) etc., and the PC crowd can remind us that Apple didn't do anything special with the Air it was all just obvious and inevitable.

I think you are applying last generation's arguments to a newer generation (and a new market) sure OS X won't be a dominate OS any time soon but to rule it out completely is naive. MS has held on to their position for so long at the cost of innovation. At some point they will have to cut the cord for legacy support and offer a new core OS that can do work across all their platforms (desktop, mobile, gaming, entertainment, etc..) the NT underpinning of Windows can get them there but everything built on top of that has to go. It's 2012 and we shouldn't have to worry about 32-bit vs 64-bit OS and drivers or figuring out if an app isn't running because it needs administrative privileges or needs to be run in one of dozen or so compatibility modes.

Apple has managed to survive multiple underlying platform transitions with fewer issues than MS has had just keeping their stuff running on intel chips and adding web technologies and photo editing and prettier GUI elements every few years. Part of the reason is the difference in philosophies. MS caters to those that want to live in the past. They make millions of people suffer awkward interfaces and lack of seamless features just so they can squeeze one more sale out of some guy that refuses to update his MS access application with custom OLE hooks that he wrote in 1996.

Apple on the other hand doesn't design their OS for the past, they build it for the future. They draw a line in the sand and say after this your old stuff won't work. They give you a transition time for your vendors to get up to speed with updates but they rarely stop the train for anybody. The only notable exception being holding on to OS 9 for a while longer while Quark got their ass in gear. Apple is also not afraid to remove technologies they see as dead end or limiting, sure techies get in an uproar but my mom has no idea she doesn't have a JVM or rosetta installed on her Macbook now or even why she would need them.

Actually, Toshiba was first with the Libretto in 1996.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_Libretto

Anyway, competition is a good thing, but some people are questioning whether Intel (supposedly one of Apple's partners and biggest customers) is trying to undermine Apple. I don't think so, but it's a legitimate question.