Mac touch FTW!! - Page 4

Actually, I've watched them go from slates to convertibles because typing on a real keyboard is preferred.

If you're going lug around an external keyboard a lot you might as well have a laptop. You could easily get a slightly thicker MBA as a convertible. You're adding a multitouch sensor (thin) and a digitizer (thin) and a swivel to the base MBA form factor.

As I have said many times already, I would settle for a convertible laptop/tablet from Apple, but with a few requirements…

I would like to see a 10" convertible with both multi-touch AND stylus (stored in the unit itself) capabilities. The internals from the MacBook Air would be good, and a screen with a high dpi (like the iPhone has) would be great. BlueTooth tethering to an iPhone nano on the go would be sweet, and a stereo BlueTooth headset/mic combo would be sweeter. This unit would sync with the new Apple Home Server/Media Center when in the house, and with MobileMe while on the go.

Boo!
Just gimme the man-sized iPhone/iPod touch HD already
5.25" x 3" x 1"
160GB HDD or more.
Better processor and d/a jack.
Dope high-res multi-touch screen
Charge me $749

seems a very narrow "fan-boy" view.

and if Apple brought out any other size than 10" you wouldn't buy it. I believe I said something to that effect in another thread to you already.

you have this dream of how it should look and act, I really think you'd be disappointed no matter what Apple bring out.

please, do tell me how I'm being presumptuous and you are not?

I'm not the one saying Apple WILL do this or WILL do that, am I? so pot, meet kettle.

I HAVE set out some problems that seem reasonable to have to overcome in order to reach as big a market as possible. If its not clear to you, I am capable of holding two ideas in my head at once
1. Apple has a lot of problems to over come in order to SUCCESSFULLY bring this type of product to market. so CAN we work them out?
and
2. that they wont be able to overcome them successfully any time soon.

I realise you are fairly new to Apple as a company and it seems like they can do no wrong, also that Steve is one of their biggest assets, yet you continually call him a liar. but Apple does have its faults, and it IS run by humans.

"any technology far enough removed, will seem like magic"

Apple only seem to have the magic fairy dust that falls upon their products, but it takes REAL hard work and thinking to arrive at those points, and I am simply trying to get a coherent rational answer as to what is the one single MUST have feature for this device that has MASS MARKET appeal? if it was easy the market would already be there, because its hard the market is tiny and converged on the scant few niche uses, that I'm trying to get away from and find out what would excite the masses
I agree with you in principal that MT computing will become more pervasive in the future* but in what form?
those of us that post on this board are not the average person on the street that now FINALLY uses an ipod /maybe. we are more likely to have or want the "bother" of a home server, docks and all the paraphernalia that might support a Mac Touch. but most people want simplicity, they want the device to have one clear advantage to their lives.

can you or anyone answer what that one clear advantage is?

not yet I see.

----

as an aside, and to try and move from your impasse, could I ask what your views are on a multitouch iMac are? are you for or against it? and why?



* "in the future" is rather vague, I believe it will take longer than you think, but if we don't see it in 4 to 5 years time, then I would be surprised, however it will TAKE 4 to 5 years, and then that will be dependant on how reliable VERY thin screen tech. moves forward. IMO. please note, that I am not being presumptuous in saying I KNOW, but that it is an opinion only, and also that I have given a REASON, I find it very presumptuous that someone should NOT show their "working out" and just arrive at the "FTW" answer. [smile]

That's hardly "settling" and far better than a 10" slate would be.

There's a problem right there. Using the internals from the MBA would instantly make it expensive. Adding more capabilities including MultiTouch screen and it easily becomes a $2k+ machine. No, they need to build it from the ground up with cheaper components, like Moorestown. With Intel implementing things like H.264 decoding in hardware for portable devices, we don't desperately need high-speed CPUs for a device that won't be doing things like Final Cut editing.

"I don't see one kind of interface, multi-touch or whatever it is, [replacing] the traditional keyboard and mouse. When the mouse came about, the keyboard didn't go away."

- Jeff Han
Perceptive Pixel

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/11/...all/index.html

No, it's not a problem and the Air is in no way a very fast machine. Why? Because unless it is VERY cheap (cheap netbook cheap...like $300-$400 or so) it's still too expensive unless it's a full notebook replacement. Otherwise you have to buy a MacBook/iMac AND a tablet AND an iPhone and that would just be annoying. Bad enough that you sync a phone to want to sync three ways even with a cloud somewhere as your common point.

You could use the MB sans optical drive as the base. I doubt that would be much thicker. But a MB based convertible tablet can serve as a desktop replacement (hooked up to a large ACD and keyboard/mouse), a notebook (since it has an integrated keyboard) and a tablet (because it's a convertible).

If you really really want a slate, then it should dock into a notebook form. But if folks thought a convertible hinge was hinky this is even more problematic. But possible. And of course there are the inevitable pictures of a tablet docked into an iMac from the patent office.

But you sure as hell don't want a Moorestown based iMac.

Maybe the 10" Mac touch will actually be the 10" MacBook touch, a convertible laptop/tablet…?!?

Slate tablet as desired, physical keyboard as needed…

Size of a netbook, but so much more…!

;^p

Again, taking a fairly expensive ($1299) machine and adding more capabilities (i.e. touchscreen) pretty much guarantees a computer that's too expensive to be popular.

Cost

It is cost that keeps me coming back around to the idea of a pure slate tablet over the flexibility of a convertible device.

Taking out the keyboard and simplifying the chassis without the clamshell lid (or the convertible hinge) is gonna knock something off the price. Dropping FlashRAM prices is gonna knock something off the price. Pulling from a standard parts bin (MacBook Air & MacBook internals), especially if those same parts bins are being used by a revamped Mac mini & possibly low-end iMacs, should lower prices with volume purchases.

All I ask is for enough compute power to reasonably run Mac OS X and it's bundled apps; Safari, Mail, iChat, iLife, etc.; and a few key apps, such as the iWork suite & World of Warcraft

For that matter, three free months of WoW with every purchase (must also purchase a year of MobileMe) would be a great sales incentive!

If Apple could offer a 10" Mac touch slate tablet with BOTH multi-touch & stylus capabilities for US$899 they would have a hard time keeping them in stock. Love it or hate it, everyone would want to at least try it

I am thinking

1.6GHz Core2Duo CPU/ 2GB RAM/ 64GB SSD/ nVidia 9400M GPU

?!?

The point is that a significant MT researcher does not believe MT replaces the physical keyboard. Therefore, for most users, they probably still WILL want a physical keyboard so a convertible makes more sense than a slate.

If you need to own another notebook or desktop, then that large a device will likely fail.

Besides, I certainly know that Han didn't invent MT. Not sure that Buxton can claim that title either but he was at UoT where a lot of early work was done. Univeristy of Toronto or Bell Labs likely claims that first. Maybe CMU.

I've suggested this before, thought I'd mention it again.

Once they are able to do "tactile feedback" multi-touch, the days of "physical" keys and physical mice will be numbered.

For example, the "desktop" keyboard is a glass/etc curved, organic surface. However, imagine if besides being multi-touch responsive, there is also some sort of "tactile" feedback.

Some sort of (non-damaging) nerve-stimuli to make you "feel the keys", or even say, "feel textures" as you use it. Should be possible with some sort of minor electrical discharge.

Am I the only one thinking about the awesome pr0n applications of this!!! I mean, let's just keep it focused on the finger stimuli first...

Jeez, I am a dirty bastard, aren't I...

Seriously though, tactile feedback.

As many of us know, when typing on the keyboard or even SMS-ing when we used to/ when we have/ Nokias and Sony Ericssons, tactile button response is very important.

I pretty much type now most of the time looking at the screen not the desktop keyboard at all. Bring tactile to multi-touch, make it as humanly-intuitive as possible, and voila! The death of the mouse and keyboard will *not* be exaggerated then...

Imagine first-person-shooter gaming. Would be wicked. I say, put virtual-reality and 3D and "feedback vests" aside. Make mainstream multi-touch electro-nerve tactile feedback, fully blank-slate input devices available within 5 to 10 years. Multi-touch meets Biotechnology meets UserInteractionDesign.

Oh, and of course tactile is very relevant for Mac Touch tablet down-the-line, and of course accessibility for deaf/blind/dumb* (not sure what the politically correct terms for those are) users.

*hearing, visual, etc. impaired... I mean.

*Tactile* multi-touch will be the biggest user input device revolution since the mouse came out of Xerox PARC (IIRC)...!

That's not "tactile." That's haptic.

We've seen this before in the Starfire concept except that the textured surface would allow you to discern desktop from "papers" on the desktop


One issue with losing a physical keyboard determination of what is a keypress and what is just resting on the keys. It depends on the typist how much they rest on the keyboard but today, physical keyboards can sense this difference because of key travel.

You'd want fairly discrete pressure sensing and you still have little travel which is an issue even with thin physical keyboards.


Notice that some phones are better than others for texting. One key factor is key feel and the flat keys on some phones have little travel.


Adding real tactile feedback is still a challenge for our industry. There are some approaches in the labs but none that I've seen (I'm about 6 months behind though in my journal reading and I skipped a conference or two this past year) but not very suitable to put on top of a LCD. The few Ive seen use projection onto a tactile surface.

So I don't disagree except that the challenge is difficult and the physical dimensions tend to preclude a lot of simulated key travel. At best you get a membrane keyboard kinda feel.

People often misuse the term. It's haptic. Google it.

No its not haptic. Why don't YOU google the patent in question.

*school kids in yard all say "ohhhhhhhhhhhhh" in unison*

So what now brown cow??!!

Whatever. Like patents always use the proper terminology. Believe what you want. I bet you're one of those people who talk about "heads-up displays."

Really guys lets get a grip there is no market for a device that runs Mac OS/X as its primary operating system. Apples best chance of success is the marketing of devices derived from the iPod line and its OS. They need a device that can drive volume in ways that Apples PC hardware can't.

That is why I suspect the next Touch device from Apple will be a true Video IPod. It will be an iPod in the same sense as the Touch and iPhone, with an OS that supports apps in the same way that the current Touch and iPhone do. Apples goal wold be to move ten million in the first year, this to handily cover the development costs at PA Semi.

As to Video IPod, well you can call it whatever you want but honestly I still think Newton 2 is just the nuts. As a Newton 2 though it will be much thinner and much higher in performance than the old Newton. Still portable but a much more compelling Game platform than Touch, a much more useful internet device than IPhone and hopefully something that packs a lot of solid state storage space.

Dave

Interesting... The thing I would say is that until the mouse came along, which most people thought was "WTF?" at first, human-computer interaction was based on an old technology, the typewriter, which was based I believe in part on an even older technology, the Guternberg press.

What I would propose to the boffins* is to explore the characteristics and benefits of the key travel itself. Key travel offers a feel of whether a key has been depressed or not. What it does *not* offer I feel is the knowledge of *which* key was pressed. That comes from the visual feedback of the letters displayed on the screen, as well as feeling the texture and bumps of the keys as one's fingers move across the keypad.

I suggest the approach whereby some nerve stimulation is discharged through the skin. Given touch is an electrical-nerve-stimuli thingy anyway.

It's the *nature* of the stimulation that may be important. I propose looking at the problem across three areas:

1.
Without actually "pressing" any of the keys on the tacticle/haptic multitouch surface, just "washing" your hands over the surface would need to give a multitude of nerve stimulation, as that's how we "feel" where the keys are.

2.
Which key is your finger over? That is an important stimuli. I have no bloody idea how Braille works but I think that's an intriguing area to draw a lot of information from. Currently, in modern keyboards, we guess what a key is only by relative positioning within the whole keyboard. What if different tactile/haptic keys gave a different kind of stimuli? That would be the idea of texture. With just the tip of our finger, we can feel metal, wood, earth, skin, etc.

Could a vowel key feel more metallic? Would a number key feel more "woody"? Can these be customised to the user? Perhaps this is the "Braille" for sighted people. An "A" might feel like paper, etc...

3.
Key travel : that is, the tactile/haptic sensation of the key actually being depressed. Yeah, perhaps the membrane feeling might be the best that is practical. However, being a Biology major (wasted dreams of doing Medicine ) I feel electrophysiology is still a nascent area. Biofeedback has always been an attractive and sellable area of research, within the scope of Neuroscience, Physiology and BioEngineering.

Again, I am no expert since I specialised in Genetics in my undergraduate years, but I think we really have to go back and look at the actual sensation of touch. How do we "feel" that a key has been pressed? Is it a nerve response of a shift in certain tendons due to the movement of the finger in a certain way? Can this nerve response be simulated so that one "feels" that one has "pressed" a key even though it never happened?

Yes.... Enter... the Matrix.



*Um... I don't think this word is used in the USA? Check it out.

Of course, what follows next is if this kind of touch stimuli can be delivered without touching, for example, if your hands are within a 3D magnetic field. In other words all that "Virtual Glove" stuff except you don't need no gloves, and as we know from playing Wii, it looks cool in Minority Report but it must be frickin exhausting to wave your arms just to see if a new email came in.

However, if you look at the cubic space which we type in currently, the "Y" axis is actually a few inches. So 3D magnetic tactile/haptic response need not be over a huge area, just the width (X axis) and depth (Z axis) of a regular keyboard, with the height (Y axis) as the "new" 3D keyboard sensation space.

Wow. This could really be a fascinating area of user interface research. Isn't MIT's Media Lab supposed to be doing this kind of stuff? Or are they overrated nowadays? I did have some sort of boyhood fantasy (besides going into space... which is just a matter of a million or so bucks nowadays)... about being at the MIT Media Lab some day. But I digress.

It may not sound so facetious to suggest somebody in Bangalore is working on this.

Edit: With regard to 3D gestures, it is pertinent to note that *detecting* the movements of the fingers is half the job. Is there a way to deliver (through an EM field) touch stimuli to the naked hands within such an EM field? Imagine if you could feel your hands around some sort of virtual joystick. Even though it is *just* your hands in that 3D EM field.

If iPhones and iPods had decent 250GB drives in them, and could do 720p output, boy that would be a Media Centre by itself. No need for no Apple TV or Microsoft Windows Media Centre.

Pop your iPhone in a simple dock (or just connect a cable), and voila, you're downloading 720p, or playing 720p you synced wireless or wirelessly a few hours ago, etc...

Probably within 5 years. Maybe within 2 years.

The only problem is the set top boxes are useful for just chucking it there and letting it download stuff in the background. If however compression tech and bandwidth was good enough, everything would just be on-demand streaming. So you wouldn't need as much storage even, because "the network is the content"... LOL to paraphrase a vision by a certain celestially-named company, a vision which did not quite come to pass... yet.

One thing I was extremely disappointed with when the new iPods came out, was a reasonable increase in storage. To me this means that Apple has an alternative device, in the wings, that would offer up much more solid state storage. What is obvious is that Apple made a decision not to support more Flash storage on Touch for better or worst.

If such a device offered video out all the better. A Display Port compatible output would be even better.

Have you invaded my dreams or what? My only difference would be the desire to see 1080P. Of course there are plenty of people out there that likely think we are crazy but I'd suggest they simply don't know what is possible with a highly integrated SoC at 45nm. Given the right process Apple should be able to place four ARM CPUs on a die along with the video and other interface hardware. We might end up seeing one CPU chip and X number of flash chips doing amazing thins on future machines. This isn't to say that current Touch devices aren't minimal in chip count but rather what those chips are able to do and at what power level will be shocking.


I'm actually thinking something new early next year.

As to streaming for the most part I see that as crap as you end up paying for every view. Of course the right pricing, broad band and good buffering could make that all very possible. If Apple was smart they would give everyone options between streaming and local storage.

In any event I see huge potential in the concept of a video iPod. If Apple isn't working on such they need to have their heads examined.

Dave

Nah, just tapping into them global-avant-garde-consciousness stream thingys.

Seriously though, Nvidia and others are working on a lot of mobile (as in handheld) chips that can do some serious sh*t.

Hopefully some stuff like this will come to iPhone/iPod over the next few years. We're talking moving up to console-quality gaming, Media-Centre quality 720p (and then 1080p) processing with 5 channel audio, etc. Give it a few years... or less.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/handheld.html

Nvidia's Tegra already promises a lot of the above.

The key is like you say mashing together a whole bunch of chips. The CPU, Nvidia Tegra/Chipset/Graphics/Etc and the Memory chips. It's close. That and battery tech is improving well but needs a bit of kick in the butt to keep up with today's power and 24/7 society demands.

I can bet my bottom dollar Nvidia is dying to get more into the mobile space, so they're pretty pleased about their implementation in Apple's *entire* portable line.

Next up: Nvidia gets into iPhone. There's a few angles here. Video, Gaming of course. 720p video output. Then, CUDA/OpenCL on the iPhone. Therefore, just like what we're close to on the desktop and laptop, we could have iPhone using both ARM CPU and NvidiaHandheld GPU/GPGPU.

It may or may not happen, but Nvidia is seriously trying to get into the Apple Tablet and Apple Handheld/Mobile space. My personal guess is where Nvidia has to bring it's A+ game is CUDA and OpenCL.

If the benefits of increased cost/space/etc. of a powerful GPGPU/GPU outweighs difficulties/cost of increasing ARM/Intel CPU power, then... They could tip the scales.

You could almost say Nvidia wants to be a "CPU" player of its own. It's got the manufacturing ability and so on, but architecture wise it's gotta go with what it has.

Of course an Intel-Nvidia merger may happen, but only if Nvidia is doing real bad, IMO, or if AMD and ATI start to get back strong into the mainstream, which I doubt.

NOthing outlandish.

I think the 'giant' iPhone/iPod/Touch/netbook slant is on its way. Something between the iPhone and the Macbook.

Basically a smaller iMac or Macbook with guts in the screen. Running the touch stuff ala iPhone.

...and...........you blow the 'nascent' netbook laptop market out the water. You could even add your own iMac style keyboard to a 'computer' like that.

*Looks towards the skies of SanFran 09. Not long ago we saw the revolutionary iPhone.

A 'giant' one? An evolutionary follow on...and then laptops are living on borrowed time...as anything other than a desktop replacement?

Lemon Bon Bon.

They should be and so should Apples customers. Even Apples low end notebook is now leading edge performance wise. Considering we are talking about what would have been desktop performance a couple of years ago. Plus the system is CUDA capable.

Well that to me is more of a stretch. Apple could have an agreement to use their IP in PA Semi developed chips but Apple has enough IP options there to build their own OpenCL optimized video chip. The big problem with handhelds of course is the battery and it's limited ability to drive high performance chips. That means compromises in performance.

One can't dismiss the importance of gaming in the handheld arena but for nvidia to play here they would have to drastically reduce power consumption with respect to the alternatives. Cuda is nice but is not required for OpenCL.


You might as well write Intel out of the equation. I don't believe they will ever be able to catch up with ARMs low power performance. The big mystery right now is PA Semi and what Apple is really doing with them. Apple may not have any interest at all in external SoC vendors. Of course the question is this: is PA really working on mobile chips?

Not at all they simply could license the CPU architecture of their own choosing. It could be MIPS or ARM or something else. The reality is they would need a general purpose CPU of some sort as GPUs come up very short for some tasks. Either way advanced programmers must be creaming at the thought of a CPU and GPU sitting so close together on a die. Especially if onboard video ram is provided for.

It is a question of wills, if Nvidia wants to remain independent they will. As to AMD/ATI in the graphics realm they are actually doing very well. AMD has been very successful at dealing with the driver issues and now has some impressive hardware to compete against Nvidia.

In any event I share your enthusasim for what the future holds. I'm just not to sure which way Apple is going here. I'd love to see that iPhone/Touch Maxi though. I just hope the economy is strong enough to make it successful.


Dave

There you people go again, stealing MS ideas!

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

http://gizmodo.com/5084147/umids-min...s-look-massive

The more I see netbooks, the more I want a tablet. As in Ireland's version.

I saw the Dell Mini today. Not that it isn't impressive, but I bet Jonny Ive could easily just sht1 out a Mac "netbook" that kicks its ass.

Profane but true...

I just got down to the local Apple store last week and took a quick glance at the new laptops, let me say they are even more impressive in person. So profane or not you are probably right.

In any event I do question the usability of those netbooks. This is why I see so much potential in Apples Touch technology on smaller tablets. The latest example I can give is a device that is about the size of a check.

I'm drawn to this because people carry check books around all the time in pockets, purses, jackets and the like. It is an acceptable size. More so it offers up one he'll of a lot more screen real estate than the current IPhone or Touch. Plus the concept is easy for people to experiment with, you just lay your check book on top of a Touch or Iphone to get a feel for size. Just imagine the increase in screen area especially if pixel density is kept the same. Notably it still fits into you pockets or easily on the belt and a device this size easily satisfies the Newton 2 crowd. More importantly the size remains very usable in portable mode something big laptops fail at.

Just what we need if you ask me.

Dave

I remain nonplussed by of tablet computers...

<wet blanket>
It isn't that there has been a technological shortcoming preventing tablets from becoming popular. But rather it is the very shape and size of tablets that make them non-optimal for most tasks. Unless humans suddenly become a different size and have a different number of arms, tablet computing will remain a niche market.
</wet blanket>

There's a story today that Apple will release Snow Leopard in Q1 2009.

I guess that would open up the door for introducing a tablet at MWSF 09. I certanly hope so.

/Daniel