Apple plans mystery "product transition" before September's end - Page 17

Well, since Motorola sold out their chip manufacturing to Freescale and doesn't manufacture chips that doesn't leave much but the mobil phone business and set top box business.

Did your friend used the tried and true method of obtaining info using alchohol?

What could Motorola possibly have that Apple would be remotely interested in buying or using.

Those fuckwits are dead in the water.

I'm still waking up and a bit weak at the moment. Can someone please backslap this dude with an impressive rebuttal please.

I've noticed your immature posting and ridiculous questions since you unfortunately came aboard AI last year. But seriously, what are you, twelve? Can't you discuss anything at all in a mature fashion?

I've noticed your tendency to critique the quality of the posts of others as though you were the bloody Speech Police. You have about as much authority and gravitas here as Alfred E Neuman.

Hey, don't be dissing Alfred.

The article I posted made some good points. If he (or anyone else) takes issue with certain points, that's fine.
But asking for people to be "backslapped" just for posting a contrary opinion is simply rude and immature.

Yes dang nabbit you have something against twelve year olds?
immature and ridiculous huh. So that means you've read everyone last one of my posts since last year right? Right.
Anyways it will be a new product or products plural. Let me have my lunch.

For da luv of gawd. Who are you people a bunch of suit and ties? No I don't literally mean for any of you to backslap anyone. *sigh*
Where are the tablet fans who have months worth of data to debate Frank. Geez! Fine I'll speak boring so there is no confusion. My boring is a bit rusty though. Where the hell is the :rollseyes: smiley.

Okay, but the article I posted specifically rebuts the idea that a new product would have any significant effect on gross margins. And gross margins was the whole reason the mystery transition was brought up in the conference call.

It's not a new product. It's increasing costs (for whatever reason) on an existing line of products.

Oops, this thread's gone down hill a bit.

It's so gob-smackingly obvious it's not a "new" product that it beggars belief anyone could think that it will be. It must be self delusion.

Look at what Peter Oppenheimer said. He said a "product transition" and talked about how Apple sometimes "introduce new technology at a high price, then bring the price down later" to prevent competitors being able to sell similar products at a lower price.

He was clearly talking about an existing product (containing the technology that Apple have already introduced to the market) and making it cheaper (product transition) that will result in lower margins.

The more I think about it, the more I believe this has to do with the iPod touch. It ushered in touch technology to the iPod line at a high price, and it is now time to reduce the price of the iPod touch; this will affect Apple's margins significantly because they sell a lot of iPods.

I think there's a high probablity that the iPod touch is going to come down in price and the iPod classic will be retired.

Possibly...but 32GB doesn't really cut it does it for folks that want a lot of space. I could see the classic gaining the touch interface and losing the click wheel.

$249 for iPod 8GB
$349 for iPod 16GB
$349 for iPod 160GB (hdd)
$449 for iPod 32GB

Drop the touch and classic moniker. Perhaps make the Nano touch enabled as well with the older Nano form factor as rumored.

The iPod Touch can't do audio recording like regular iPods, can it?

Yes, I should have made that clearer.

There was a debate about it a few pages back, but I reckon an HDD-based touch is technically feasible. However, I have this nagging feeling that Apple may consider 64 GB to be "enough" storage and intro a 64 GB flash-based touch as the high-end when getting rid of the classic.

What I hope will happen is something closer to what you've suggested above, except I think your flash-based prices are too high.

Many Mac users associate Motorola with some of Apple's darkest days. Be assured that Apple has no intention of ever again relying on the PPC architecture as a CPU.

Once you see the transition about to take place, the response will be "that was obvious, why didn't I think of that?" At least that's how I responded. Motorola currently has industry leading areas of expertise that Apple will leverage to create a novel but seemingly inevitable leap in the performance of Mac systems. The performance leap will utilize existing Intel CPUs, and Mac OS X is already uniquely engineered to exploit this new hardware technology, which will only be marginally more costly to produce than existing systems. I don't know anything about the business/marketing side of it, but presumably Apple expects increased volume to more than compensate for lower profit margins.

I don't think the iPod classic will be dropped yet, but I do think the touch will get a price drop. It's competing against the subsidized iPhone with the same capacity at a lower price.

So, the 8GB touch drops from $299 to $199, which also forces the 8GB nano to drop from $199 to ???. Or maybe the 8GB touch drops to $249, but that's still more than the iPhone.

I'm not going to read the oppenheimer statement again or post it here. But I thought it was understood by everyone that what he was talking about that was going to effect the margins was a combination of more than one thing. One being the slashing of prices on existing products (or revisions) that would decrease margins and to put pressure on competitors. And second, to introduce new products that would reflect an increase in spending on R&D and other cost factors.

Not one thing alone but several things. It seems plain to me and others that along with product revisions there will be new products introduced. Several with Multi-Touch and hopefully (and more than likely) a tablet like device of some sort.

Well every year sees new products introduced. That's almost a given.
But the "transition" referred to in the call (that sparked this thread) refers to existing products.

Thats not been confirmed! Nothing has been confirmed. It could be a tech transition based on the PA Semi unit making a whole bunch of custom internals (no not CPUs) for all their devices.
It could be on the type of products that they normally produce. You can make your arguments but I can say with dead assurance that it will not be just a product revision alone.

Sure it has. It's very simple. How can the words "product transition" involving "technology" already introduced to the market by Apple at a high price being reduced in price possibly refer to an entirely new product? Peter said that the "new" product will continue to have technology that competitors can't match. A brand new product cannot continue to have something from before, because "before" doesn't exist for a brand new product.

Actually, a brand new product can easily "continue" to have technology that competitors can't match. At that logical level we're vague enough to mean many things.

(eg: if they said "Apple will continue to release amazing products", that doesn't mean the next amazing product isn't entirely new)

But in general I agree that transition will mean a transition to existing products.


I personally rule out custom internals unless they make a change that competitors can't match... and simply faster doesn't do that for me. However, a tablet could be a transition from an iPod Touch (ie: bigger + pen input options), rather than a new type of Mac.

They didn't say Apple will continue to have technology others can't match, they said the product would continue to have technology others can't match. A brand new product cannot "continue" to have anything because it has no past from which to continue.

Ok, let's look at what Motorola Makes and see if anything fits what you're telling us...

Accessories - Battery Charger? I think not.
Bar Code Scanning - A MBP with a bar code scanner? Interesting, but thats a no.
Biometrics - Been there, done that.
Cable Broadband - No need.
Cellular Networks - uh, hello? They're giving up. Apple is killing them with the iPhone.
Dispatch - Oooh. A MBP with 911 Dispatch capabilities. Alas, the market for this wouldn't be very big.
M2M Wireless Modules - Possibly, but it isn't groundbreaking.
Micro Kiosks and Payment Terminals - No way in hell.
Mobile Computers - I think this goes without saying.
Private Broadband Networks - Again, nothing groundbreaking.
RFID - This helps mobile computing how?
SCADA Systems - No relevance whatsoever.
Services - This doesn't even compute.
Set-tops - I hate Motorola cable boxes.
Smartphones - LOL.
Software and Applications - Apple could shutdown their software division and let Motorola take over development of Snow Leopard. Or not.
Telco Broadband Networks - No.
TV Video Distribution - Again, I hate Motorola Cable Boxes and their distribution systems.
Two-Way Radios - Public Safety - Oooh. This could be groundbreaking!! (Pause) (Pause) (Pause) NOT!
Two-Way Radios and Pagers - Business - This is NOT groundbreaking.
Wireless Broadband Networks - When is this gonna end?
Wireless LAN - Almost there...


Done! Well, thats the list of everything Motorola offers, straight from their website. And again, there's nothing in there that could be of any value to Apple in their Macbooks. Maybe they could use some of the TV stuff to help out with the Apple TV, but I don't see that happening.

Conclusion: Motorola doesn't have an expertise. Thats why they suck.

And I apologize for my inclusion of Borat humor.

Seems more likely they'd drop the 8GB altogether and bring in a 64GB at the high end, making the new iPod touch lineup as follows:

16GB = $300
32GB = $400
64GB = $500

That would probably allow them to kill the classic. In the report, the shuffle and iPod touch were their best selling iPods, which isn't that surprising: the shuffle's only $50 and people buy it for listening during exercise while the iPod touch is an iPhone sans cellular contract. The MacBook Air's optional 64GB SSD just dropped from $1000 to $600, so considering the iPhone and iPod touch use straight up flash, rather than an SSD enclosure, $500 for a 64GB touch makes a lot of sense. Then just fill in the blanks for the rest. Apple rarely has more than two or three models.

The low-end 80GB iPod classic would then have only a negligible 10GB-15GB advantage (thanks to both the HDD and flash drives being formated) and nothing more, unless you think most people consider the click wheel better than a widescreen multi-touch display, not to mention all the touch's other advantages. The touch could drop its modifier to become the new iPod, then there'd still be the iPod nano (which may get a different kind of refresh as has been rumored) and the shuffle.

Apple needs to create another incentive for people to buy the iPod touch now that the iPhone is so cheap. The iPod touch can't be subsidized, so the $100 premium for the touch will likely not disappear. Giving people twice the storage for that extra $100 is almost a given. The main reason I believe they'll launch a 64GB model is to obviously appease those who never bought a classic, but also because the 16GB and 32GB models have been out for quite awhile.

Probably. The larger classic is definitely a niche product, and a 64GB touch would make the smaller classic unnecessary (albeit cost much more). As for cost, the flash used in iPods is the same kind of slow, cheap flash used in USB thumb drives; it's much cheaper than the fast flash used in computer SSDs.

It's been suggested that the next-generation iPod touch will also get a GPS receiver. Adding a feature like that would probably suggest that it won't get much of a price cut.

True. Since the iPod classic has been bought up by a much smaller number of people and the fact that most people interested in getting an 60GB, 80GB, or 160GB iPod already have one, if a 64GB touch comes out, while it would certainly be more expensive, it could still begin eating into 80GB iPod classic sales, or vice versa.

Oops, that's right. What am I saying? There's NAND and then there's the much faster DRAM. Yeah, so it should definitely be cost effective. While it may be slower than DRAM, it's still faster and more durable than the classic's current 1.8" HDD.

That'd be a little odd to me as it'd require some kind of partnership with a GPS provider and a subscription. The iPhone's GPS makes more sense and helps differentiate it from the iPod touch. Obviously Apple wants to sell a lot of both, but they make more money on the iPhone. I don't see them putting a GPS into what would essentially be their new flagship iPod, that could, as you said, increase the price and at the same time be rendered useless without a GPS subscription that couldn't be hidden by monthly cellular contract fees.

Yeah, I too can't see it. I tried to lookup whether motorola makes Intel chipsets (since there are other rumours that Apple is using non-Intel chipsets)... but didn't find anything. Motorola are working with Intel on WiMax standards, but I don't see that as a big leg-up Apple could have on its competitors.

Lets look at Junkyard Dawgs follow-up hint (assuming he is correct):


Okay
1) It makes a leap in Mac system performance - ie: it's not a phone thing, it's a Mac thing.
2) "OSX is uniquely engineered" = Windows can't copy?
3) Marginally more costly - that fits, if it's on EVERY Mac and Apple maintains existing prices, then a cost increase of about $12 is enough to make the margin change Apple described.
4) Novel leap in performance but obvious once seen.

Hmmm... The transition involves a leap in performance of Macs.... not functionality? And it's something Windows can't do.

I was wondering about mesh computing - but that's not a hardware bump. Resolution independence and Direct X... terminals? - doesn't really match. I guess the only thing I can think of is some sort of advanced multimedia subsystem - leveraging some advanced motorola video processing technologies (that I don't know about) and tying it into the future cocoa frameworks that take advantage of video cards?

Let me try to go further outside the box...
Okay rather than thinking of the iMac as a computer which does multimedia, what happens if you approach it as a multimedia system that is also a computer. PCs were made principally to send everything to the CPU. Then with multimedia we saw system buses increase speed and have ways of directly interfacing, but the system fundamentally still has the CPU at the core, with a few bypasses. So what happens if you design a system where the CPU is no longer "Central", but you have a new specialised "central" chip which interfaces everything, and perhaps where the decoding of multimedia becomes primary? You'd have to design your own chipsets? How different are the processing paths for handling video? Does it require some fundamental deep changes to the way the system understands itself (in the EFI vs BIOS) and OSX? Or can it run similarly? Does Motorola have something that Apple would gain from here?

Why would it need a partnership & monthly subscription to have GPS?
Why does Apple need to differentiate the iPod touch from the iPhone, except in its phone capabilities?

Serious questions - just wondering.

If I understand you correctly, Greg, it seems like you're talking about a h.264 decoding chip, or some IC that provides hardware decoding of various A/V codecs. This could be the only reason I can see Apple approaching Motorola, but using dedicated hardware for A/V processing isn't necessarily a huge leap forward.

Toshiba is already using the Cell processor in one of their laptops; and I'm positive that the cell is much more effective than anything Motorola has to offer.

One interesting thing you brought up however: the idea of the CPU bus. Note that Nahelem will do away with the FSB and introduce an "QuickPath" interconnect. This could allow for another dedicated chip to interact with the CPU, at much faster rates than is currently allowed by Intel's CPUs. The only problem is that laptops with Nahalem won't be coming out for >6 months.

Apple would not need a partership of subscription. GPS is a system available to anyone with a receiver.

As far as I know, there aren't even any monthly subscription GPS services available.

They could partner with TomTom or Magellan (Garmin probably won't since they're going to be introducing the Nuvi) to create a turn by turn GPS system. That would also get them access to better quality maps (TomTom buys maps that have information on how many lanes each road has, etc)

Well, doesn't it? Don't you pay something to someone for the GPS service?

Why does Apple need to differentiate the iPod touch from the iPhone, except in its phone capabilities?[/QUOTE]


Price and profit.

1) It'd cost more to put a GPS in the iPod touch. If they do as I say - drop 8GB touch, make 16GB $300, make 32GB touch $400, intro new 64GB at $500 - I question if they could also get a GPS unit and keep those likely price points.

2) They do make a larger profit off the iPhone 3G than they do with the touch, thus while they surely would like to sell as many of each, they obviously want people to buy more iPhones. GPS would be a possible differentiator, but that depends on the cost of the GPS and service (again, if GPS requires some kind of service fee).

EDIT

ARGH! I just realized what I was thinking of when I was suggesting that somehow GPS required service charges: 3G. I remember when people were saying the next MacBook Pros would come with built-in 3G cards, which I didn't believe.

Wow, I'm out of it today, or maybe it's this whole week. Got installed base and market share mixed up, NAND flash and DRAM-based SSDs mixed up, and now GPS and 3G? Well, they both have a G in them, I guess. Ok, to be honest, I swore GPS devices did require some kind of access fee, but that's obviously not the case.

No, I think that's something more likely to be added to a graphics card. I'm meaning more fundamentally moving the "central processing unit" away from the centre (as you say below)


Are they? In what way are they using it?
I agree that Im not sure what similar technology Motorola could bring to the party, unless they have some speical way of designing the set top box.... but it just doesn't seem to fit.


Interesting, it sounds like the kind of thing I was wondering about. I guess if you built a new intelligent interconnect (in a way like I was trying to think outside the box), you should be able to remove the "CPU" entirely and still have a working system.

No worries
So now that 3G vs GPS is sorted, does GPS for the iPod Touch make sense as an option?

Here's a article with a video showing the Cell Processor in action: http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39...9295004,00.htm

It's not super useful, although it does showcase the power of Cell processor quite well. Video encoding is what really impresses me. It apparently can encode 1080p video 8x faster than a Core 2 Duo can (of course, that's what Toshiba says, but even 2x faster would be amazing).


On a side note, I do think GPS on the touch makes sense. The chips cost them $3.60 each (from iSuppli) so putting them in won't be too much of a hassle, since they have the iPhone 3G PCB board already made. Then again, I'm not sure of the extent of changes to the PCB board going from iPhone to iPod Touch, but I assume they're reasonably similar.

Yeah, I guess it would. That would also explain the recent 2,1 iPod firmware references. That would certainly distinguish it, hardware-wise, from the current touch. Doing so, I believe, would put them in more direct competition with standalone GPS units, but perhaps Apple's comfortable with that. And perhaps Apple will be able to also meet my price/storage predictions at the same time. That would be a rather compelling product for someone like me, who can't afford any of AT&Ts service+data contracts. If they could take the original 2G iPhone's now defunct brushed-metal back, it'd be perfect.

I wouldn't be surprised if it is 8x. Encoding is very highly parallelizable, and Cell is more or less a vector processor, which is designed to chomp on parallelized tasks. It's probably not so good with non-parallel tasks though.



They would need to make some sort of arrangement of storing map data on the iTouch. iPhone doesn't need to store it because it just recalls maps from Google's servers. There may be rights issues preventing map data from being stored.

Ahhh. You're right. I didn't think of that. Without maps, GPS would be useless. I don't see the iPhone moving away from Google maps either. I guess we won't be seeing an iPod Touch with GPS (because GPS limited to areas with WiFi reception just doesn't make sense). But we're getting off topic. Thats another debate for another thread.

What is this mystery product transition?

Toshiba is using it for hand gestures, to control applications, etc (SpursEngine), the laptop is about $1600.


http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/14/t...ture-controls/

Can't say that a 16:9, 18" inch display is practical for a laptop however.

I really hope that they get new MacBook models this September because I want to get a MacBook for school but I don't want to wait until September is over... and I would hate to wait until December even more (since that's what I've heard).

And hopefully, if I do buy a MacBook before the new ones come out (because it's a necessity for me in school to have before the start of the year) then I hope that they'll figure a way to give the new models out to people who bought right before the new ones came out... I hope they do that instead of some store credit or something like that

I can't say that won't happen but I recommend that you not factor that possibility into your decision process.

Omg your going to make have to post some of Oppenheimer's statements here huh? Lemme have my breakfast and take care of some office chores first. BBL.