Economy, opportunity seen leading to $599 Apple netbook - Page 6

The iPhone is a second generation device, not a first generation device. Although it may suit the needs of some people, my experience with a 3G iPhone was that it is a poor device, indeed.

As to the ARM vs. Atom discussion, the point is not that the Atom is the be all, end all. (It most certainly will not be.) The point is that something like an Atom, be it an ARM, or something else, which has adequate power with low power consumption and a low price is possible. The Atom vs ARM vs ??? bit probably has as much to do with what software is supported natively, in other words the software vendors do not have to rewrite everything from scratch, than anything else. Although there probably is room for more than one architecture, at least in the short run, there appears to be a trend toward an increasingly "standard architecture" even if informally.

So what does your link to the Mac mini have to do with your post?
The Mac mini was released in January 2005 at $499. And the link you posted has one at $599 and one at $799.
In 2001, the iMac G3/500 was $799, the iBook was $1299 was and the PowerMac was $1699.

I'm not sure this is conventional wisdom now. I realize that was the thinking a year ago.

Good mobile apps need to written from scratch to work on a mobile device. Just porting an x86 app to a mobile device with an Atom chip won't work well on a smartphone.

I agree with most of your opinions here.

I recently went to a conference for 4 days and took only my iPhone. I left the laptop at home.

The iPhone worked better than I expected. I didn't miss my laptop at all.

If you're traveling and expect to do a lot of typing then the netbook might be better. But for quick email responses the iPhone works well, IMO.

Yeah, the difference between ARM and Atom is not much in terms of cost, power, or performance:watt. Even if the Atom is relatively inefficient, it's still really cheap and doesn't consume as much power as other components anyways.

The bigger issue is what OS platform Apple would use, which would probably have the largest influence on choice of CPU.

Okay, I have had the same exact experience as you. I bought a Wind for $350 after rebate, and it runs Leopard much better than I thought it would (and I had already read up on it beforehand so my expectations were not that low, just reasonable.) Keep in mind guys that these $300 netbooks come with Intel integrated 950 graphics which supports Expose and other OS X graphical touches just fine. It may have been a relative dog on a $1099 notebook, but is great on a $349 netbook.

So take that sub-$400 netbook, and increase the screen to 11 or 12 inches, increase the size of the keyboard, and upgrade the case materials somewhat. Now can you sell that machine for $599 and generate some profit margin? If so, that's where Apple should be. Maybe the margin still isn't there, if so then that's too bad.

I love my iPod Touch. But for all the talk about a tablet style iPod Touch/iPhone, the App Store, etc...it's still not a great notebook replacement. Sure it will do in a pinch. But keep in mind that the MSI Wind runs Leopard really, really well- unless you have tried it, I can't stress this enough. Safari is much faster on a MSI Wind than an iPod Touch. You can create and save office documents, COPY AND PASTE, etc. It even has a LED-backlit display for that matter (albeit a smaller one.) The only thing holding it back IMO is the keyboard (which is still touch-typable mind you.)

Apple could very well do a tablet or mini-notebook form factor with the Touch OS, but they would need to beef it up a bit if it's intended to be their take on the netbook category (which is entirely possible.)

I agree. I was suprised how well OS X ran on my Dell Mini. It runs Leopard a lot better than my old PowerBook G4 runs Tiger.

I think you're making this into a false dichotomy, where one machine is responsive and the other is not. And obviously, I wouldn't want to do "everything" on a netbook- but you never know when some esoteric app has to be run.

I'm trying to keep this hypothetical instead of about my needs, but you mention web/email/IM/music/movies - that's all most people ever use full-size laptops for (why give them the whole OS?). Shouldn't the apps, the experience and the knowledge required to use them, be the same wherever you go? Why force people to fit into predefined (by Apple, no less) usage?

People are assuming a 1.6GHz Atom netbook must necessarily be slow and plodding, when it is anything but.

Safari on a said netbook is actually significatly more responsive than Safari on a iPhone or iPod Touch. I'm just picking that as an example since a web browser is one of the most used apps. You shouldn't be running Adobe CS4 or Final Cut on it, but neither can you do that on an iPhone.

I like the concept of a Touch OS-based tablet/netbook, but based on my experience with the MSI Wind I like the idea of an Apple-fied $599 Atom netbook much more. It would also be easier in ways for Apple to quickly develop, as you still don't have some basic general computing features in the Touch OS (copy and paste, file transfer, USB host capability, heck even synchronization of Notes much less editing and syncing Office or Works documents.)

I'm not sure where you get the idea that iPhone is second generation. Even the three G iPhone would be best be considered first gen. as the only thing that changed was the radio.

I will admit that 3 G iPhone had some issues but that was and is software. Even with all the acknowledged issues though it is a very good and innovative machine. The fact that the software is steadily firming up only moves the platform into a unique category.

Power consumption is everything in a very portable device. It is why I don't see Apple using it on reasonable sized tablet like devices. Anything like an iPod Touch classed device will be ARM.

Clearly Apple has demonstrated that there are more important features than instruction set in this world. With modern tools it really doesn't matter if the instruction set is Core 2 or Cortex. In the end what counts are good compilers and frameworks at the top and low power hardware at the bottom.

Doesn't that statement above fly in the face of what we are seeing in the market. Everyone talks about Atom in cell phones and tablets yet we have yet to see a solid example that is usable. Even in the ARM world there is a lot of diversity. If anything a move to institute a processor standard in the mobile space is just way to soon. It is time for the evolution of optimal processors for this market not a wholesale move to one platform.

Besides that on the software front Apple has an ace in the hole with iPhone apps. All Apple needs to do is make sure the new hardware runs old iPhone apps reasonably well and the issue of delivering hardware without apps goes away. The way I see it any new hardware, of the portable tablet form, needs software that is iPhone compatible to some extent. At least until it reaches a physical size where regular Mac OS might have a chance in help of working.


Dave

Last I knew Atom was a he'll of a lot more power hungery than ARM. Of course that doesn't mean that ARM is the equal of Atom performance wise when looking at raw numbers. Just that ARM can't be beat on performance per watt.

That doesn't even take into account that ARM systems are often SoC while Atom at a minimal requires two chips to get a system up and running. Actually it is worst than that for Atom because other chips outside of the processor and support chip are required, thus a ARM solution takes up dramatically less space.

I don't see the OS as being the big influence here. What might be is that big store house of iPhone apps. I could see Apple taking care to make sure a good portion of those apps work on the new device. That assuming Apple comes out with a tablet like device that is to small to run a full windowing OS.


Dave

Apple has said nothing positive about Atom that I can recall. I think when viewed within the context of Apple's recent movement in this space it appears likely that they have no intention on going with Intel for their portable processors.


1. The purchase of P.A. Semi
2. The hiring if Mark Papermaster


I think Apple will be either using a custom design or probably looking at this potent combination.

ARM Cortex-A8 for processing

Imagination PowerVR for graphics

OpenVG support to go alongside OpenGL ES 2.0


Here's a chintzy version

www.openpandora.org

We're certainly on the precipice of a new class of hardware that really demands larger screens and more application flexibility than the current iPhone's form factor allows. Next year is going to be very exciting in this space..whether you call it a Netbook or not.

HM

I will definiately defer to you on that point. I guess what my main thought was that I don't know how much impact the difference between an Atom or roughly equivalent power ARM would have on overall battery life of a Mac netbook-class device (compared to screen, possible HD, etc.)

I do get your point that an ARM system can be SoC. But I wonder what the final effective difference would be for a full OS X system.


I think I meant the same thing- Apple will first decide which platform is more appropriate (OS + software library). If it is basically iPhone OS then ARM is a no-brainer. If they wanted a full OS X device then I was speculating it might be easier to develop an Intel-based system. Although I guess you are bringing up the possibility of App Store compatibility within something more like full OS X.

ARM may have an advantage in performance:watt and price, but I think the recent crop of netbooks shows that the Atom is a pretty good basis for a low-cost notebook computer.

Another larger strategic factor here would be which platform Apple wants to push more- I can see arguments for either. A $599 Mac netbook could be a great switcher type machine. Or Apple may decide that the Touch/iPhone OS has grown to become just as important to Apple as Mac OS, and push that with a new device. I think either could potentially be great devices and very successful.

That only matters if you insist on a device the size of an iPhone. A larger netbook will have a larger, higher capacity battery. Especially if Apple chooses prismatic cells rather than the inefficient cylindrical package. Six-cell battery packs can already give the MSI Wind five hours of battery life. Nine-cell batteries give close to eight hours and still keep weight to less than a Macbook Air. Moorestown is also going to be much more power-efficient at idle than Silverthorne. It should be able to get tasks done faster than ARM chips, then idle efficiently.


The iPhone 3G teardown shows a sizable number of discrete support chips, including power management, several power amps and USB controller, in addition to the GPS and phone chips. It's hardly the one-chip solution you make it sound like. The iPhone motherboard isn't especially compact. Intel says the Lincroft half of Moorestown is a system on a chip itself and Langwell provides a lot more capability than the ARM chips, including USB and PCIe support. They also predict a Moorestown mobo can be much smaller than a credit card.

Good to hear.

For the recent holiday I spent some time in Las Vegas, on 5 night but I was surprised just how useful the iPhone can be. This was a 3G unit and I ended up using many features. As highlighted it is the machine I turn to for reading and responding to most E-Mails. But I also used it for GPS, and web access. Web access was great for tickets and such.

The biggest problem I had with it is that there is no good way to store documents locally. I experimented a bit with Evernote but that isn't the best solution either.

Well I did bring my Laptop along but frankly only used it to down load some huge files on the hotels high speed network. Fedora 10 was out and I was able to avoid the problems with WiFi to download those DVD files.

Very well if you ask me, and much better now that the software is starting to firm up. Yeah it can be a pain if you need to compose large response or generate a new E-Mail but it is possible and frankly I don't have a need for long responses.

By the way none of the uses I put the iPhone through would have been enhanced by a netbook. In fact I can reasonably argue that a netbook would have made things more difficult. For example to locate myself on GPS it took like 10 seconds from the time I grabbed the iPhone in my pocket. E-mails where read on the go, at least one time propped up against a pole, something that would be more difficult with a netbook in my estimation. Not to mention where would you carry the thing, iPhone is no problem to carry at all. That is iPhone was literally with me every waking moment, and when not awake was acting as an alarm. I just don't see netbooks with the feature sets that make iPhone so useful on the go.

I'm pretty much convinced that to get me to give up the iPhone I currently have your only recourse would be a slightly larger device. Note much bigger mine you as I still want the device to go easily into a pocket, but a line or two of extra text height and an inch more width would be very nice (think land scape orientation).

Dave

Well there is a huge problem in that what and how you measure things have a big impact on how good ARM looks as a low power device. I've seen numbers anywhere from 10 to 20 times more power efficient for a given level of performance.

That is a good question and I guess the real answer here is I don't know because there are so many variables. If we take an ARM in throw it into a tablet it might actually perform much better than the Intel part simple because heat won't be an issue. You see what I believe Apple will come out with is a thin tablet device, possibly thinner than the current iPhone. IPhone is like 0.48" thick so if Apple comes in under that there simply won't be room for massive heat sinks. In fact passive cooling would be the likely choice and I would believe to be difficult on Intels chip.

Well if they where to go the full Mac OS route then yeah i86 compatibility would be important. I don't think they will go that route though. The reason being cramped is that Apple has pretty much proven that the desktop metaphor doesn't translate well to small devices.

As to Apps and app store there is a lot of potential in the current iPhone SDK. It is obvious that extensive design went into the SDK to support more devices than just iphone. The interesting question is where is the cut off point where the iPhone user interface becomes more of a liability rather than an asset.

Atom is certainly a good product don't get me wrong here at all. Its power usage is a problem though as is its foot print. But we aren't really talking notebooks here but rather the small netbooks and tablets that would compete with them, supplement them or simply establish new markets.

Personally I see the current crop of netbooks as dead ends. What the world really needs is a slightly larger iPhone like device in the mold of a tablet or Newton Two device. The overriding concerns here is a flat or thin device that has a large screen and performance at least twice the current iPhone. Thin is the most important feature here and Apple needs to shoot for less than 3/8".

Well having just lost my iMac G5 to a bad driver upgrade and now having to return the alum iMac 24", that replaced it, after 6 months of non stop faults, I'd like to debate that.

The technician who came out to "fix" my iMac knew exactly what the problem was almost as soon as I told him the symptoms. He is doing 2-3 a week and we are not a large town.

Well in general yes larger devices have larger batteries. But this is engineering and there are trade offs. If Apple does battle with the netbooks with a tablet and a design goal on that tablet is thin, then you might not have the battery space you might think you have.

Why would Apple take a step backwards with battery technology. All their recent hardware has moved away form cells. On top of that since when is five hours of battery time respectable for a portable device. Some of Apples iPods are pushing 24 hours of use. Apple is generous with an advertised 36 hours on the newest Touch but I don't have personal experience here.

The point is the optimal use of low power technology should produce an all day sucker. That is a modern tablet like device should be able to service the users needs for the entire day he is awake.

Things will get very interesting here as strange as it might sound the newest cores from ARM are actually out of order machines as opposed to intels in order Silverthorne. Until somebody gets real products on the market we won't know which is better in raw performance. However as you point to what s getting better in the new Intel hardware is idle performance which frankly is just about useless for devices that actually get used a lot.

Well it is not likely the power amps will ever go on chip, same for power management. However you do have a rather complete system on that chip outside of the flash storage. In any event this thread is in reference to future devices and the possibility of Apple competing against the netbooks. In that sense we are likely talking about a brand new SoC. PA Semi is fully capable of integrating all the core logic onto one ship and doing so at low power.

I'm not sure where you are getting your info but if you want built in USB of PCI express you can have it in an ARM SoC if you want it. One problem people have with ARM is that it is marketed differently than intel hardware. part of that difference is the fact that there are ARM cores and on chip I/O busses that can connect to the hardware of the customers choice. That is why there is a huge number of ARM variants out there. Even their simpler Cortex cores have provision for customization.

As to credit card size systems the whole point here is that ARM is already well under that size.

Dave

Although, I would love to see a tablet from Papa Steve, I don't think it would be addressing the booming netbook market.

A tablet would be revolutionary new product, like the iPhone, with a premium price (remember the initial iPhone pricing).

The netbook market seems to be all about low prices, probably not a market for Apple.

Best,

Daniel

Well after 6 pages, my response is that if Apple can't make a nice 30% margin, it aint playing in the netbook market. They happily don't produce a $700 laptop, a gigantic volume seller, and I'm sure they won't have any problems not participating in the netbook market either. The cheap desktop, the Mac mini, is barely an offering. They only participate if they can make a lot of money, and it hasn't been demonstrated to me that netbooks make a lot of money. It could be just like that $300 desktop margin, a near zero margins game, and as said before, Apple don't play that.

I really don't see how these analysts think that the economy give Apple an opportunity to produce a $599 netbook. If they do something, it'd be something like a $1099 12" MacBook. 1" thin, normal sized Apple laptop keyboard, 1.86 GHz Core 2 Duo, 1.8" HDD or SSD, Nvidia core logic with 9400M IGP, etc, to satisfy the need for the "small form factor" laptop market. Thinness counts a whole lot.

There's probably something Apple can do in the $499 to $699 space, and I think I agree with everyone who's saying iPhone "max" or "pro" and an iPod touch max/pro with a 4.5" screen or so. This means a PA Semi integrated ARM + 3D graphics, 256/512 MB memory, and probably 64 GB Flash storage. For the OS, they would have to turn on access to the filesystem, turn on clip-board and cut/copy-n-paste, turn on the virtual memory system, etc. I don't view something like this as a tablet, it's a handheld or a PDA.

Tablets (6 to 9 inch screens) fall into a rather frustrating in between consumer space where it's too big to be pocketable and too limited to be as useful as a small laptop. I don't think there is a consumer market for it.

Yea, somehow people have the mistaken idea that Apple only turns out high quality hardware. Just do some research on "Road Apples" and you will see that they are really not particularly different from other manufacturers.

I think that the move to Intel chips has helped Apple somewhat in this regard though as Intel has supplied a lot of engineering support. They frequently still cut corners though.

I don't get it.

For that money I can buy something like the Wind, which is perfectly capable of running OS X at speed. An Atom-powered netbook is significantly faster than the last generation of G4 laptops when running the full OS.

So why should consumers buy a less able device?

And if it *not* a lesser device. It becomes a worthy notebook replacement. And if it is, it will cannibalise sales of Apple's $1200 notebooks.

C.

Well, does a netbook really sell because consumers want a small laptop with a small screen, subscale keyboard, comparatively anemic performance; or, does it sell because it costs $400 or less?

I've got a sneaking suspicion that this is like when the eMachine desktops came out at $400 and how it undercut all other desktops. It essentially failed as there were too many compromises. (It would have worked if people stuck with Windows 98 or something though, but nope that can't work either). On top of this, what problem is a netbook solving or what convenience does a netbook provide? Then you have to ask how does it make Apple money.

If Apple were to do it, I think a 1" inch think, unibody MB 12" solves the problem a netbook purportedly solves, and does it with a larger screen, normal sized MB keyboard, twice the performance, if not 3 times, and it would make Apple money as it would sell for $1000 or more.

If the answer is that it sells because it costs $400 or even $600, well, Apple don't play that.

It will certainly have more battery space than any iPod/iPhone device. The larger footprint virtually guarantees that even if thinness was a priority.


Look inside battery packs from Apple laptops and you'll find cylindrical lithium cells. And all those figures are for playing music. Do anything else and the battery life plummets. Video playback at half brightness can net close to the claimed 6 hours, but I wouldn't want to watch six hours of video at half brightness.


Everything idles. No CPU is running full out all the time. It's stop and go, mostly stop.


Time will tell. ARM has found its niche, but I don't see it as a player outside of that niche.


http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/First-Lo...sDUm-large.jpg

Note the battery charger/USB controller chip. There are a lot of chips there, so Apple isn't putting a lot on that ARM CPU.


The point wasn't that the Atom could be smaller than the ARM, but that it could be plenty small enough for a small netbook.

I'd like you to be right about the timetable for economic recovery, but I've been studying markets and economics (and following Apple) for decades (since the beginning), and I'm mighty afeard you're wrong about your prediction about the markets. Everything I see tells me this will be at least the longest recession since WWII. As for most severe, I can't say -- nor can anybody, 'cos nobody still knows how much more funny credit paper is still waiting to surface like other noxious things that float to the surface of polluted waters.....

About netbooks, I can't say. Clearly there's a lot of space between the Touch and the Air in terms of device size/weight/screen estate, price points, functionality, UI metaphors and OS choices for new products. I simply don't understand people here saying Apple won't make $600 devices because they won't make money on them.

They make a freaking ton of money -- more than on computers, folks, TODAY -- selling sub-FOUR hundred dollar devices (I'm including the iPhone, for which I realize they probably get another hundred fifty plus from back from the cellcos) -- and another ton on content.

They already sell devices from $49 to $4000 plus, and in the iDevice line there's lots of nice fairly even steps as you move from Shuffles to Nanos, Touches, Classics, etc. And there's Apple TV in that low range. Once you hit iBooks and iMacs, the price-point blanketing steps start again. The only big gap from there is between the iMac and Mac Pro -- the point where now a second generation of fans is still clamoring for the mythical Mid-Range Mac, which WILL stay mythical until and unless Apple makes a serious run at the SMB market, given that tethered computers are more and more becoming niche products, so a whole new market is the only reason to venture there.

And now is not exactly the time to try and convince SMB's that more expensive desktops are in their best interest. Biz owners are more concerned with keeping their doors open for the next year -- not on the long-term TCO benefits of Macs that last five years in that environment and require less IT support -- nor the argument that their employees want Macs. Their employees are feeling lucky to have jobs at all more than about their OS's.

Back to the low end, then, there is a HUGE gap, i.e., between about $400 to $1000 there's nada but the aging Mini. And there's plenty of bux to be harvested $6-700 at a clip. Especially if each device sold generates large incremental add-on media revenues and app sales. And brings new classes of buyers into the A, Inc. integrated product eco-system.

Making something scaled up from the current iDevices, then, is a natural and much more likely than something scaled down from a full OS X computer, on which they'd have trouble making Apple-like margins.

And it would clearly be fast enough with available hardware -- the fastest internet access and smoothest streaming video in my house is neither on my Mac or my PC, but my Touch. and even at the Touch's size, the internet experience is really quite as satisfactory, and in some ways better. So I'm not much involved with all the Atom/Arm etc. talk in this thread.

It also most certainly won't be called a netbook - just as their first music box was not called the Apple MP3 player. Nor will it cover the same range of functions as an EEE running XP. And will probably create one or more new classes of things to do on a digital device that will get general interest magazine covers.

It will absolutely do a few cool and showy tricks netbooks don't to create marketing buzz in a new Reality Distortion Field.

I lusted, for example, for widgets, but haven't invoked one in over two years, and Spaces sound cool, but I have no real use for them and get by with my cluttered desktop space just fine.

Meanwhile, a free copy of SuperDuper plus a leftover copy of backup.app from my single and likely never again subscription to then .Mac meets all my backup needs as well or better than Time Machine would. Nor, while I learned them all, do I ever use Cover Flow nor a single iLife or iWork app (tho old, near featureless TextEdit gets plenty of invocations when I don't want to give all those CPU cycles, bytes and slow start-up times to Word, and while I'm always ready to use Numbers for the occasional temporary quick spread sheet, in real life I haven't really been making any).

And I suspect I am hardly alone in this general tendency.

But all these "innovations" have sold a ton of product for Apple. And once people have the products, their real strengths do create Apple fans who don't look back.

So a beautiful, unique new iDevice should have a ready and lucrative market. It will be marketed as solving problems or doing new things no current devices do, not as an Asus killer, even if it turns out to be one. I'm not sure what Apple will emphasize, but e.g., as a mobile sales tool, a 6x8 or 5x9 screen (more likely the latter to fit current Apple notions of what screen proportions should be) would bring a briefcaseable lightweight device to many new locations. And make for a more satisfying and shareable video experience. But these would not be reasons enough to create the device.

For example, there has also not been much talk of gaming in this thread. Given the brisk pace of Touch and Phone game sales, the clever use of accelerometers, etc., this seems like an obvious major use that today's netbooks can't touch. And would also impact PSP's, DS's, etc., and even steal some Wii sales.

As an iDevice, and a Jobs/Ivie shepherded creation, I also suspect it will lack a physical keyboard, even if in this case it might support a pluggable one. It won't be a huge iPhone, but Skype and video chat/conferencing are certainly possible (without really cannabalizing the iPhone market). And it might be a unique form factor camera/vidcam with a Huge Viewfinder and instant visual gratification at a nice size.

It will have to do light document and image processing - e.g., bring mobilized, even lighter weight versions of newish iLife and iWork type apps - and would have, likely, hooks for bloggers, facebookers, twitterers, youtubers - and absolutely MobileMe'ers. And must solve the puzzling/vexing copy/paste issue.

There are just so many ways to go here I can't imagine Apple not going in some of them. As well as they are selling, XP netbooks are still inherently small, slow, butt-ugly UI, compromised PC's with little cachet. This device might be designed as more of a Mac Companion - with unique strengths, but also with the ability to synch files, projects and more (maybe wirelessly) with Mac notebooks (and other Macs on an Airport network), where work brought to a certain level could be massaged further by Snow Leopard machines. Or even as the ultimate home theatre/network remote controller.

So, c'mon. Something's coming along some of these lines and if not by January, certainly by June. How can it not??

Apple make a machine like this already. It's thinner that 1"

C.

Nice post and you got a lot of stuff that are good. I agree not a NetBook for sure. How about iTablet for $599 with 120GB disk and $699 for 240GB (the new 1.8 inch toshiba sata drive). It will do all that iPod Touch will do. And great games as its CPU will be 900Mhz or 1Ghz PA Semi. Plus as a companion device its USB port will allow USD disk access from a Mac while it plays music and surf the web like the touch and iPhone. Plus there will be iWork sw for it for school and light note taking/ business use. It will take the wireless keyboard via bluetooth. This will be a compelling segment that students will absolutely love and get as a second device since their main Mac[B]ook cannot last the whole day taking notes and doing light surfing/research. Battery life got to be in the region of 6 hours minimum. This *WILL* sell like hotcakes to existing mac users and new students and younger folks as it will be the ideal Internet tablet with Wifi and good 7 or 8 inch wide screen. (1024X 600)

And it ain't a Netbook!!!.

Here is an interesting article about ARM development and speculation about employment by Apple in a tablet.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/apple...x_architecture

The problem I see with running ARM on a tablet is app development.

I would suspect that most software vendors would just want the current x86 OSX apps to just run on a new Mac tablet and not have to re-write from scratch.

For iPhone apps writing apps from scratch was necessary and beneficial. An x86 app wouldn't work well just being ported to an iPhone. Perhaps iPhone apps could be ported to the Mac tablet but iPhone apps, while generally useful, are a bit limited in function.

The nice thing about Atom is that the current apps would just run. Maybe a few changes would be necessary to take advantage of the hardware, but overall less work for software vendors.

I very much agree about the software vendors.

As was mentioned earlier, even if the vendors have to write a "lite" version of their apps to deal with the lower powered processors of a netbook (and I do not think all of them will have to do that much), it is familiar territory.

Apple may have legitimate reasons to have a custom ARM processor for the iPods & etc, but if they go proprietary simply for the sake of doing so I am concerned that they will be harming themselves and the platform.

In the late 1970s GM produced something in excess of 25 different versions of the same basic Quadra-Jet carburator simply for the purpose of making life difficult for aftermarket gasket manufacturers so that they could capture that market. Had they expended that effort on designing and making better automobiles, they might not have lost so many customers who went elsewhere and never returned.

Despite what some people think of Apple hardware, what makes Apple's computer products is the operating system, or more precisely, the UI for the free OS that Apple uses.

Cheers

With iTablet. You leave the iPhone alone . Use a wifi tetering a app to make it a modem.
iTablet will fix (1), it will work with all bluetooth keyboards including Apple wireless keyboard,
Have Copy past (it is not an iPhone, it has no phone in it).
Use VGA output port. heck we can compromise with mini-DP port, or min-DVI. Just buy the cable dongles...
It will have 120GB or 240GB 1.6 inch disk. Battery life > 6 hours. Want more ?. You kidding, enough already for $599/$699 price tag as Apple "wants" their 30% margin!.

Any Netbook class device from Apple is going to run on Snow Leopard's core. Targetting additional platforms would be done via LLVM/CLANG which would theoretically allow you to write to an Intermediary represenation and the apply JIT compilation at runtime or heavily optimized compilation.

WWDC 09 shoudl be very interesting. I don't think Apple will deliver any new class of portable device until after WWDC 09 because I think there's going to be some major implications to app development being unveiled.

I just want to say this out loud because I know at least some of you know this...

The secret device will not be a tablet or a netbook but something.....different.
How do you have a large screen in a device that must still fit in your pocket?

Steve has the answer.

Indeed!

Developers would prefer that - but that's the way to make the device work poorly. Forget whether it has enough power - if you have an app that's designed for a keyboard and mouse and you then try to make your OS convert those needs to work with touch screen, etc - you get a system that is only half baked.

When people say that there's no market for a tablet it's because the tablets so far were just a laptop with the keyboard removed (hell, the ModBook is EXACTLY that ). So the first thing a user notices when using the tablet is that it FEELS like it would work so much better with a keyboard & mouse. Even look at Windows Mobile with it's start menu and sub-menus - they took the current interface paradigm and said "sure, that'll work on a totally different screen size, orientation, and with a stylus instead of a mouse".

The only hope apple has of making a tablet a useful device is to rethink it as if nothing else existed. Then they can look at how to best take advantage of what already exists. But they also need to BREAK user expectations, which means forcing them to use the tablet as Apple wants rather than giving them esoteric work-arounds so that a power user can learn odd tricks to make old things work.

The iPhone did this and I lean towards using iPhone paradigms instead of OSX ones, since they really are designed for a touch screen. Of course that still isn't a 'break' from the past, but Apple's pda/tablet team were working on their interface before it was moved to the iPhone anyway.

I see your points.

That's a problem for the tablet. Its a new platform really which will require re-writes of software. Will the software vendors feel up to it?

I don't know enough about clang or llvm, which Murch refers to, to know whether they make the process easier or not.

If Mac developers have moved to Xcode (which Apple has forced them to do over the last couple of years), and are using Cocoa (which Snow Leopard is forcing for 64 bits), then they now have very portable code. Developers are also already writing in Xcode for iPhone, and Dashcode. So they are in a good place code wise.

The technologies to allow one app to run on multiple platforms also have the side effect of allowing "one size fits all" apps, so I think Apple will want to think differently.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon may provide an interesting alternative (and spur development of the other CPUs with multiple integrated functions. The Snapdragon is apparently a dual core 1.5 GHz processor with integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, mobile broadband and graphics. The linked article references a 4" screen in what would be classed as a MID, but Qualcomm apparently has intentions of moving into the netbook arena with Snapdragon.

The processor powering the Android phone is not in contention for Apple products.

I kind of skimmed this point of whether the vendors would do it, focussing instead on the programming environment.

I think this model (to rewrite) will work for 4 reasons
1) I assume a tablet would be fully functional without 3rd party apps. There's no chicken-or-egg problem of vendors not bothering until the tablet is successful, while the tablet can't be successful until 3rd party apps appear.
2) Vendors who wrote (or rewrote) for the iPhone seem to be pretty happy with the financial return.
3) A common programming environment for iPhone, Leopard, Dashboard, & Tablet
4) Tablets haven't been that successful in the past while running existing apps, but a new paradigm could redefine the platform. And I think Steve could sell that.

Back to the $599 topic... we were talking about Netbook not Tablet. If vendors need YET ANOTHER program for Netbooks I think we're in for problems. Unless Apple makes writing a single code base across all palatable (with different interfaces).