Andy Ihnatko's rumor might be true after all.. - Page 2

It depends what the hardware is.

Say what you want, but when I read this I thought, "this is something amazing, and new". He was told about something, not shown something. Someone can't tell you something about Snow Leopard and get that response. I'm expecting something big.

[QUOTE=Marvin;1362167]So does Apple unfortunately.
Apple decides to make its own chips either through a joint venture or going it alone.

That's not jaw dropping either. We all know they bought PA Semi for 350 million. Ihnatko clearly said this is something new, well he insinuated that. It doesn't matter who makes the chips frankly, what matters is the hardware, what wows is something revolutionary. A full Cocoa touch layer on top of Snow Leopard running on an Apple tablet, that would be wow. That would be "NO WAY!!!".

"NO WAY!!!" would be like the reaction the first iPhone got from people. "NO WAY!!!" isn't a chip. "NO WAY!!!" is something "really big", metaphorically. Maybe in Andy's world, no way is a great Mac mini, but that was the main rumor at the time when he said this is a new rumor.

All I know is I'm about to buy a MacBook Air soon, so if this tablet is coming, it better hurry up!

We know Apple 'rolls their own' soon for the iPhone / iPod ARM chips.

But what if they were to do the same with Intel chips? Hmm...
Instead of 6 cores on one CPU, stick with 4 but use that other area to incorporate a GPU, memory controller, etc. System on a chip, but high-end. Allows for really tiny (and cheap) motherboards...
Not sure though whether Intel or NVidia would rent out their designs for SOC.


I guess the only 2 big announcements that would elicit a 'NO WAY!!!' from me would be:
a) Apple abandon Intel and moving back to PowerPC / Cell CPUs.
b) Apple selling OSX Snow Leopard for non-Apple hardware, going head-on against Windows 7.

Neither of the 2 will happen likely. Won't they?

One thing we can rule out, I think, is some kind of employment of exotic new tech, like flexible or folding screens.

Why? Because Apple never does that. They take parts that are pretty solidly in the mainstream, figure out interesting ways to assemble them (with an emphasis on smaller and some clever engineering flourishes for the mechanicals), and marry that to genuinely innovative software.

The one place where they seem oddly fixate on pushing the envelope is when it comes to ports, endlessly dicking around with proprietary/not widely adopted connectors. Some weird quirk of Steve's, no doubt.

But as far as screens and drives and CPUs and whatever neat things are recently out of the labs? Forget it. We'll have seen whatever cool new stuff is around on that count in non-Apple machines for quite some time before Steve decides to incorporate it into one of his machines.

EDIT: I just remember Apple got Intel to slip them some CPU goodness a little early, a while back, so I guess they occasionally get a head of the curve.

Um...that was a tried and true with different packaging wasn't it?

Well Adobe's market cap ($12.6B) is under Apple's war chest in cash and about half when including short term investments.

Nah. But I'd guess there's be a good amount of fist pumping if it happened and it'd be "Mini who?"

Andy's conversation:

Informant: "Mini blah blah blah, MBP 17" blah blah blah, Snow Leopard blah blah blah. Oh, and we just entered negotiations to buy Adobe"
Andy: "NO WAY!". Happy Grin.

---

Amusingly, Sony's market cap is a mere 23B. That wouldn't elicit a Happy Grin as much as a WTF?

Hey, nVidia is a mere 4B. Kinda of a yawner though and not as good a match as Adobe.

jeez...Apple could buy Sun who's market cap ($3.3B) is only $1B more than their cash on hand ($2.5B). AMD is down to 1.53B.

Apple buys AMD and nVidia...cornering the market on GPUs.

Right, the smaller LV Merom Intel apparently produced for the Air. Still, Apple got a hold of (demanded?) it before it was generally available, so they're not always late to the CPU party if they have a compelling reason. Unfortunately for some users, that reason is almost never "more power" and almost always has something to do with "smaller", which is clearly why they switched to Intel in the first place.

If they can't update the Mini or deliver a decent headless Mac, nothing else matters.

I don't care if it's a Tablet MacPhone nano that shoots photon torpedoes. Screw Apple for ignoring its core competency.

Well, there was also that 3Ghz Xeon too for the Mac Pro. Was it 3Ghz or a little higher? Anyway for a month or two there were the fastest Xeon boxes made.

I don't know if he's accurate or not, but the sound of his voice (on the Macbreak Weekly podcast) makes me want to punch him.

That's a good post.

Yeah. They should do that more. Trouble is, even when they get out of the gate early, they tend to sit pat for so long they still end up with pretty long in the tooth components before they get around to refreshing.

You have to remember here, that we need to account for two things:

1. a 'NO WAY!!!' response, and also
2. 'fist-pumping excitement

While returning to PowerPC would produce the former, it won't product the latter. More like jaw-dropping astonishment.

Now that could account for both responses. I'm just guessing, that if this was in the works, they would not have gone after Psystar in court.


They won't. Apple will never...

If I know Apple, if they did ever decide to allow computer makers to run OS X, they would be selective. Say Sony etc. Very selective to start with. And they have a list of things these companies would have to stick to, only allowed on certain models, above a certain price etc. We'll see, I have my doubts, but I'd never say never.

Totally off the wall stabs at "no way"


OSX as an Ubuntu distro (i.e. as Kubuntu is one)*

i7 and Itanium chipsets taking over from Core2 and Xeon due to the 64bit direction

Apple plug-in hybrid powertrain or even full vehicle working with, say, Tesla or PML Flightlink?



* the iPhone might be the show stopper here

Oh, the iPhone's fantastic, but I'd echo the comments about the screen size.

I think integrated services and a slab o' glass of twice the size would be really getting there.

The question is whether buying adobe would be considered rumored or not. Certainly, plenty of folks TALK about it but actual rumor of Apple buying Adobe?

Borderline.

But I'd have a happy grin if it were true. Apple would lock in a critical market securely for the next decade.

Still, quite a bit of $$$ to do so. I prefer if they bought Sun but that's not a happy grin act.

"headless Mac" gets my vote, but it will never happen, ever.

But isn't someone always saying these things at some point or other? Remember the elaborate 'brick' rumor that merely turned out to be that the laptops were carved out of blocks of aluminium. We had all sorts of crazy rumors going on there.

It seems the less information people give, the more important it is to some. How about the Mac community starts implementing a policy whereby if we don't get any solid and meaningful information that we just ignore everything until we do.

Otherwise, the best that's going to happen is that all but one of the ideas will actually happen and it's been largely a waste of time talking about it. We keep talking about the same stuff year after year and Apple continue to churn out events ranging between lame and mediocre.

The following kinda sums up how I feel too:


Though their pro software needs a good seeing to as well.

The reality is that the Mini is nearing two years since an update, the tablet has taken so long that 3rd parties are buying machines from Apple and modifying them, Apple's pro software is growing mould and they have the audacity to put Phil Schiller in front of us and blab for an hour about iwork. I am already saying 'No way' because I can't believe how absolutely terrible their performance has been in the past few years.

Now I'm judging their performance from my own expectations not from how their company is performing financially and they may very well be working on something that will blow us away but I would say that I should damn well hope so because if they aren't then they will just move one more notch down the ladder towards irrelevance. Towards a company built on hype and no delivery. The iphone is the single exception of course.

I think an important part of a rumor is not so much what but when. I'd like to know when something big is supposed to be announced so that we know what is most likely to happen and whether it's worth waiting for. What if the thing he supposedly heard isn't being announced until WWDC?

All I have to say right here is I heard some info that Apple will deliver something amazing.

No timeframes, no suggestions and then when Apple does do something, I can sit back and say 'told you so'. People who do that don't deserve any recognition.

The real problem (for the Mac fan base, at least) is that Apple isn't judged by what they actually do but by how far they fall short of completely baseless imagining.

So we've got a bunch of "Apple enthusiasts" who are forever in a state of semi-outrage that Apple "refused" to make made up product x, or is "falling hopelessly behind" because they didn't jump into product segment y (despite the fact that we were very clear that we really wanted them to!), or is "resting on their laurels" because some product refresh hasn't occurred when the internet decides it should.

It happens over and over again, the rumor mills get cranking, nothing comes of it, Apple gets blamed for "letting us down", and there is much dark muttering about how Apple is losing its edge or Steve has gone senile or some nonsense. Apple has been losing its edge for as long as I can remember, according to the legions of pundits.

By any reasonable measure, Apple has been on an amazing run. The iPhone/Touch platform has seemingly limitless potential, Snow Leopard bodes to be a significant enhancement of OS X, with better performance and stability on existing hardware, the current laptops are the best Apple has ever made (barring some caveats about glossy screens and lack of firewire), and we can certainly expect refreshes of the iMac, Mini, and Powermac in the near future. There are also, no doubt, some really interesting, exciting new products that we don't know about in the pipeline, which at some point will be revealed.

No, Apple doesn't have a netbook, at the moment, and there are the usual concerns that they are "pricing themselves out of the market" in bad economic times, but when has that not been a rap on Apple? Doesn't seem to have cramped their style so far, and if sales plummet they have a lot of cash on hand to give themselves some wiggle room on margins.

Beyond the rumor sites. Way beyond...

This is all a bunch of crap guys... Andy probably get excited over the new iLife packaging. There is nothing here that hasn't been discussed before. Even if Apple does come out with something really cool, it will cost a bundle...

I respectfully disagree. Ebooks have very limited market penetration and newspapers are dying a slow, painful, agonizing death. Jobs and Apple are too forward looking to embrace old media.

An updated Mac Mini or other decent headless Mac is not baseless. It's the very definition of base. That's why I said, if they can't do it, nothing else matters.


This may have been the case with previous Macworlds, but significantly less so with this one. I haven't accused Apple of any of these things. They're clearly busy, creating tremendous value for people who like using mobile computers and devices. The IMacs are still decent and even the Mac Pros are not so bad after a year. Pro buyers usually find a way to get special configurations. The Mini on the other hand has not been updated during the length of time where now the same amount of money should buy two Mini's.

Set aside the nearly decade-long vacancy of any mid-range headless Mac, something that before Jobs was the company's bread and butter. When was the last one, the G4 cube? Maybe it doesn't have as a big a market as the iMacs. Maybe the market has changed since then, with the fact that now every HDTV is a computer monitor. Whatever. Whether it's low, mid, or hi range, the company doesn't seem interested in making headless Macs anymore. That used to be practically all they made.

If you ask me, Apple's crazier than your depiction of its fan base.

Oh my God! They've leaked to Marvin, too!

I wasn't specifically rebutting you, by any means.

And I would make a distinction between the perennial, and perfectly reasonable, things that a good number of long term Apple users pine away for (Xmac, a real replacement for the 12" Powerbook, an easy to upgrade Mini, etc.) and the kind of "I thought Apple was supposed to be releasing super cool new thing at this Macworld/WWDC/event, but they didn't, now I'm bummed, WTF, Apple?" thinking I'm talking about.

Hope springs eternal, and Apple may or may not get around to fulfilling the desires of some of its users. Whether or not Apple is making a serious mistake by not offering an Xmac is a long standing debate, and there will always be good arguments on either side as to why or why not that would be the right thing to do; but that's a different order of business from latching onto highly unlikely blue-sky thinking (which is what this thread is all about, after all) and then being mad at Apple when they don't amaze us with something completely new.

Which, after all, they only do once in a blue moon. The rest is incremental advancements on the existing product line, or largely cosmetic form factor changes. Which, outside of the demands of the semi-crazed, isn't really that bad a thing.

Yes, he's verbose, but he's also in tune with the Apple community.

Yeah but keep the zero information that I've given under your hat, what I was told was top secret. All I'll say is that you'll know when it comes. The way that you'll know when it's arrived is that something will arrive during the time you are expecting something.

Plus if it turns out to be what you've been waiting for then you'll be glad you waited for it.

I think I'm going to start writing horoscopes.


I think this is the problem though. Back then, they weren't doing so well. They made the changes and now they are doing much better. I don't think it's the strategy change that has made the difference but Apple can't seem to look past the sales figures. Perhaps they needed the gimmicks at first to get people on board but now they are well established with a stable product catalog. Right now, they don't need the gimmicks any more and people are starting to look for more value in the brand for serious work and find it lacking. Companies like Psystar know this and are trying to capitalize on it.

The iphone has similar issues. It had that initial wow factor like the iMac but people are trying to use it for business and they find no copy/paste, some sluggish performance. They are minor things by contrast but they are things that it's in Apple's best interests to improve and they haven't done it yet despite the simplicity.

Macs need to move into businesses at some point in time. It doesn't matter how slim they make the machines, AIOs with isight cameras aren't going to work and businesses cannot buy every worker a Mac Pro. As I've said before, the mini-tower Dell computers sell very well in businesses. Very easy to service and are cost-effective. The Mini is the computer to do it but it just needs to be designed better for this purpose. If that means a different model then that's what needs to be made.


I saw the aluminium Macbook recently and I'd almost strike that off the list. With a matte option like the 17" model, I'd be happy with one of those having owned a 12" powerbook.


That's what we've been expecting though and they haven't come through on that so the possibility is there for them to be listening to what we want. Our expectations likely won't be met as usual. I use an analogy:

Burns: I suggest you leave immediately.

Homer: Or what? You’ll release the dogs, or the bees, or the dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark they shoot bees at you? Well, go ahead—do your worst!

Homer: He locked the door! I’ll show him—rings the doorbell and runs away

Apple have shown that they will do what they want when they want no matter how underwhelming and annoying. If it's intentional then it's a stupid attitude to take as Sony have discovered. Fortunately for them, Apple seem to do things in such a way that people keep coming back for more pain and they just give a little boost of goodness every few years.

1984 Mac boost ...... fading ..... 1998 Jobs + iMac boost ..... fading ..... 2001 ipod boost ..... fading ..... 2007 iphone boost

Right now they are still riding the iphone wave but as technology reaches saturation point, the waves die down more quickly. Nowadays you can't just do one amazing thing every few years. Look at Sony's last expo. They've realized they need to start delivering the goods and they had loads of stuff to demo. Despite not having any intention of buying Sony products soon, my interest in them is higher right now than with Apple. I've reached a point where I'm bored waiting on them to do something without telling anyone.

One of my favorite exchanges on the Simpsons of all time.


Maybe, but you have to distinguish between internet buzz and sales. By sales measures, Apple appears to be doing everything right.

Now it's possible that they've peaked, or entered a period of slow decline, or have lost the mojo, or gotten arrogant and out of touch, or something. I guess we'll see over the next year or so. Lower sales overall won't be a good measure, though, because the entire industry is contracting, so we'll have to continue to watch market share.

My feeling, though, is that Apple is playing a long game, and that that sometimes runs counter to the expectations of tech enthusiasts, who always want the new hotness yesterday, or believe that manufacturers must adopt the features they want or face ruin.

I don't think most computer and CE consumers think in terms of being "bored" with a company that isn't constantly cranking out wonders. They go shopping for what they need or want when they need or want it, and see what's available. Apple has done a great job of increasing their mindshare, so more and more people are likely to check out what they have to offer.

What they don't do is say "well, this iMac here, or iPhone, or whatever, hasn't been radically changed in a while, how tedious, who else has something to sell?" Most folks don't even compare specs, beyond some basic buzz word compliance.

If you're already a Mac user, it's fairly unlikely that the lack of a refreshed Mini at the time you were looking to buy is going to send you PC-wards, although I'm sure that happens sometimes. I just don't think it happens enough to put a dent in Apples sales.

So bored you're a moderator on an apple rumor site with 4000 posts in a thread about a rumor so vague is could cover anything from Apple releasing a new pair of headphones (whatever makes Andy grin) to acquiring $12B worth of tech company.

"The mod doth protest too much, methinks."

AppleInsider Act 3, scene 2, line 230

There were a lot of reasons why they weren't doing so well, but compared to the following era, perhaps the biggest reason was that there was no such thing as a consumer laptop. When the iBook was released, that's when the Mac started appearing mainstream. Didn't Jobs say back in October that more low-end Macbooks have been sold than any other Mac in history? The other big volume sellers are also consumer mobile devices.

So maybe there's a paradigm shift in the way computing is done and Apple was able to grow by being there with the best products at the best price. Maybe jobs is suspicious of the headless Mac as being an older paradigm. In a world of mobile computing, the Mac was the digital hub, and digital hubs have to have their own dedicated monitors.

I don't know... I just want to be able to choose my own monitor. That's all. Why is that somehow more important to me and not to a bazillion other people.

Instead of physical mobility, I want "monitor-mobility." I want to be able to hook it up to whatever I want. A 12" Cintiq for when I'm working and then the 52" Samsung when I'm not. Why not just get a MacBook, you say. Why spend another thousand dollars for a display I don't need, I say.

I know, not everyone is a starving artist insatiable media enthusiast green product buyer living in a studio apartment, but however many there are in this world must surely be Mac users.

That does seem to be the case and it's quite obvious that computers will reach a point where the smaller computers are good enough. The current Macbook is probably good enough for most consumer use. The longer time goes on, the more that becomes true. For the past 2 years though, it hasn't been and the prices are still high.

Right now, PC towers make Apple's deals look terrible. Quad cores including display and dedicated graphics for 2/3rds the cost of a base dual core iMac. The only thing I've bought from Apple in 3 years is an iphone. I've been saving up for a mid-range desktop and they won't get the money until they offer one. So although I'm a Mac user, Apple are technically losing a sale.


I don't know because it's very hard to count a non-sale. If Apple don't offer the products that some people want, they won't buy them and Apple will never know the sales they lose.

The PC market will be making very cheap Core i7 desktop boxes, if they aren't already cheap. If all that comes out soon is Core 2 duo Minis with 9400M and Core 2 quad iMacs and Gainestown Mac Pros at the same price points as now, I will be looking at ways to buy an off-the-shelf Core i7 PC and put OS X on it. If they are too expensive like the Dell ones, I'll stick with the Mini and still pine for a quad version.


I've become bored over the past 3 years. My interest was at its peak when they made the Intel switch and finally delivered great hardware. For the past 2 years, I've been venting my frustration at them ignoring their best computer model.


Could be but they seem to love their Mac Pro. That's what I don't understand. They say it's an AIO world but their most premium machine is headless.


Most probably want to be Mac users but Apple doesn't cater for them.

The Cintiq is an interesting example. Another situation for someone who needs more power than the current Mini but without having to pay for the display bundled with the iMac as well as keeping the desktop clear. Those people can probably afford the Mac Pro but so can I. I've been saving up so long, I can afford to buy a Mac Pro and a 21" Cintiq and more. But I'm not going to because I don't want a workstation at home.

The Shuttle products are where I'd like to see Apple expand to but obviously much nicer looking. Their Core i7 Cube would be nice for Apple to match but a Core 2 quad would be enough.

Of course newspapers are dying, they have failed to grasp new technology and marketing methods. But that reality doesn't mean news its self will die. We will see something fill the void left by the old tech business. That may very well be news delivered on Apple tablets through subscriptions on app store.

The problem of course is that news isn't free, at least the delivery of such isn't. So to replace ordinary newspapers we need a business model that can continue to pay the reporters, and keep the infrastructure to handle that news in place. Local news is the area where the national operations like Yahoo really fall down, thus I believe this is where the opportunity is.

Dave

Its not uncommon for Apple to purposely throw out fake rumors. Its been done before...

I have figured out what the big secret is!

I'll bite. What is it?

I don't know if I should say, I'm only 95% sure. I think I'll wait to see how the Steve Jobs news plays out with the stock. Let's just say I'm going to be paying close attention to the stock first.

Iphone TINY

It works by employing gamma frequency emitted from the human brain.

So if you think about your mother for 10 sec, she will call. If you think your sister, she will call. Your ex and so on and so on.

This will massively reduce our phone bill and be jaw dropping. SMASHING BABY

It's not an iPhone.

New ITunes then....

Macbook Mini , Macbook Tiny......


All I can say is that our current predictions are all bogus.

Somehow Apple knew that we wrote this rumors and play it against us.


Called it Paranoia...We just become laughing stocks to Apple's team....