Apple places unusual flash memory order - Page 3

Yes, I have had about 6 or 7 today.

It sounds to me like they are expecting the same volume of sales, but for 16 GB and 32GB phones instead of 8GB and 16GB.

If you're a developer, you have somewhat different interests then the rest of us; the unwashed herd.

It would still be much too expensive for Apple to do.

If it costs 50 cents to do a DVD, and say, Apple can get the cost of an equivalent flash drive down to $2.00, and Apple has to send software out to the general public, so they would need to send 10 million copies, the difference is appalling!

It would cost $5 million to send it by DVD, sans mailing costs, and $20 million via flash drive, sans mailing costs.

I can't think of a single business reason why Apple would want to do that.

They would have to charge for it.

It would be just as bad for developers, being that Apple would have to send out several revisions.

Download is by far the best way to do this. Honestly, it's incumbent upon people to do their own backups. Apple can't be responsible for everything.

Is it happening in bunches, fine for a while, then a number of them happening one after the other? And slow load times?

Or, as has been stated by some analysts, twice as many phones.

I'm not following you on the revisions part of your post. Lets say it costs $5, not $2, for an 8GB flash disc containing the Mac OS X install for Macs shipped with no optical drive. How much are they saving in HW costs alone from not including an optical drive? How much engineering time are they saving by not having to design around this biggest (to nearly biggest) component in notebooks that has to be positioned along a sidewall of all notebooks?

Apple only has two choices for the next major notebook revision, either include Blu-ray (which I still can't find in 9.5mm sizes and are still cost prohibitive) or exclude optical drives altogether. that doesn't mean exclude them from their desktop lines as there is still plenty of room and port real estate or to not offer an external option, like they do for the MBA, but I think it's clear that CD/DVD drives as being a requirement for notebooks is dying and I think Apple will be the first to jump head first into that movement.

They left out the 12 in their post? 128Gb makes more sense for the iPhone since Apple might just produce a 16GB and 32BG iPhones to replace the current 8GB and 16GB iPhones. So 1 128Gb chip = 16GB and 2 128Gb chip = 32GB. Perhaps tomorrow they'll send out an edit saying, "We apologize for the misprint. We meant to say 128Gb and not 8Gb." Yeah?

usesd in SSDs, MLC and SLC. My understanding is that this order was of MLC chips, which are not good for boot SSDs.

You won't see a 128GB iPhone anytime soon. The NAND density doubled which will alllow for a 32GB iPhone and 64GB iPod Touch but the current package sizing and NAND density won't allow for larger storage unless the form factor changes.

Apple uses twice as many chips (16 I believe) in the iPod touch as they use in the iPhone.

I said—for developers, meaning Apple's OS revisions, like we have now with 10.5 updates, and 10.6 updates. According to your idea of no optical drive, and apparent horror at the thought of downloads, these would all have to be sent out on these sticks.

For everyone else, well, just a small number will have machines without optical drives.

You can't talk as though there aren't many things that will still need an optical drive, because there will.

No one will be saving any money from not having one, because the OS delivery system is, by far, the least important part of it. Most people will want an optical drive for many years to come, and then downloads will have taken over.


I don't understand how you can see those as THE two choices. Very few computers come with Blu-Ray support of any kind. Only a handful of models, and except for those with one drive slot, portables, they all have DVD drives as well.

I don't think it's clear at all. In a few years, maybe.

Most likely for the Mac Netbook. The Netbook would have the space and just like RAM it is good to have multiple banks of flash for performance.

I can't see these in iPods or iPhone as the article mentions. It has to be a new device. Again the Mac Netbook is a good candidate.

Is that very useful at all? How often do most people boot their systems? I only reboot mine after an OS or security update, once every few months. Otherwise, I put them to sleep when not in use. I suspect most people with modern (21st century) systems do the same.

Strangely this might be the closest call. The desktop machines do seem to be dwindling and a lack of design innovation intimate Mr Ive's talents are being used elsewhere. Taking the MacBooks with standard storage of 128GB+ to solid state goes too far against the market's downward cost trends and Netbook success shows something a little smaller is in order.

A shrunken MacBook has been dismissed & every Netbook I've seen seems to require goggles. What if on the 25th anniversary of giving us the PC as we know it today (& as a last hail to it's ailing leader) Apple re-invent the PC as we know it. Something for those 10" touch-screens?

McD

First, it's easily the right amount for the next rollout of touch devices. But, that's not what I want to make a point on. Let's talk about the Math of USB software distribution.

Cost to make and distribute a DVD:
$ - Master DVD
$ - Duplicate DVD
$ - Package DVD
$ - Distribute DVD
$ - Shelf Space DVD (retail)
$ - Ship DVD (online orders etc)

Cost to make and distribute USB solution
$ - Duplicate USB
$ - Package USB
$ - Distribute USB
$ - Shelf Space USB (retail)
$ - Ship USB (online orders etc)

So, you can fill in the blanks, because I do not know what apple pays for their solutions. Here is what I do know. Apple can save money with USB in the following ways:
- Duplication
- Packaging
- Distribution
- Shelf Space
- Warehouse Space

Then, as others said, Snow Leopard may be a bit thinner / more compact. Without the legacy PPC code, more native Cocoa code, and other optimizations, Apple can easily fit more on less.

Next, tagging a drive for some more security... keeping the hackers jumping through hoops... sure a lot of you are right and Apple would never do something like that.

Speeding up the install process, what point is there in that?

Mac Book Air? why would apple not want those people to buy another $100 device?

Well, here's the answer you have all been waiting for (probably not, but it's the thing you have to be thinking about). How long does it take to install Mac OS X on 1 computer, 2 computers, 3 computers 4....?

That's right folks, Apple has Big plans for these new little USB Installers. Plug one into your Airport Base or Time Machine Box, and you now have your network install. How do I know it will work? because I have set it up with other wireless routers, and the technology is old, tried, and true. The best part, now you can keep your install disk up to date along with your computers. Great thing is, now you can net boot your machine off the base. Great reason to buy another base. Oh, and a hardware key... Great way to add some other features but...

The rest we should leave for Steve or our friend from Alabama to show.

\

Hey guys, Its obviously for the new Apple iWatch being announced at WWDC.

The device has a 1GB flash storage and a small 1" high density display with single (not multi) touch screen. It also has a small speaker and microphone built in plus Bluetooth.

This is plenty for acting as an iPod/iPhone peripheral via bluetooth (as announced in iPhoneOS 3.0). A single finger swipe will change the currently viewed application. Applications are "Read only" status icons - like the buttons on the home screen of an iPhone/iPod Touch.

Apple has to showcase what the new peripheral functionality can do and implement the most common applications of it itself leaving the more "vertical" applications to third party developers. WWDC will see the API for the iWatch opened as part of IPhoneOS 3.0 so other developers can write their own applications for it.

Examples of the iWatch's applications include:

• iPod: Browsing playlists and changing currently playing song. (also volume/shuffle controls etc.)
  
• Calendar events: The watch can store your entire iCal calendar and trigger visual and audible alarms you have set. This functionality works wether or not the watch is currently connected to an iPhone/iPod.
  
• Push Messaging: Receiving and displaying push notifications such as new emails/text messages.
  

  
  The screen is not for displaying the full messages only notification - at most short SMS messages can be displayed. Apple's new push messaging service allows for three things:

  1. an icon badge (e.g. number of unread messages)
  2. a notifiction sound and
  3. a short text message only

  all three of these can be done on the watch. In effect it is like the home page of an iPod touch or iPhone except it can only display one icon at a time.
  

• Widgets: Common widgets such as "Weather" and "Stocks" will display in icon mode and be updated live when the watch is connected to an iPhone/iPod touch and the iPod/iPhone is connected to the internet via WiFi or the Cell network.
  
• Telephony: Receive incoming calls via the paired iPhone, but use the watch's microphone and speaker instead of the iPhone's
  
• Video Telephony: Like a voice call but the screen displays the incoming video of the caller (but only at a slow frame rate because Bluetooth cannot handle high frame rate video even of a small sized video)
  
• Voice commands: Like the new iPod shuffle the iWatch will allow simple voice commands for very limited interaction with apps.
  
• Time: Oh, yeah and it can display the time too - full world clock functionality
  

melgross, you should know by now. When has teckstud ever let the "fact", get in the way of his post?

This would be for all systems.

With teckstud no statement is a fact; every statement is just that, a statement.

What amazes me is that he somehow manages to rile people - even the veterans - enough that they feel compelled to respond.

And, in the meantime, he continues to relentlessly keep increasing the number of posts with utterly inane (and often oblique) comments, thereby signaling that he must somehow be a veteran himself, esp. to the newbies on the list. And they feel compelled to respond..... and on it goes......

Microsoft Did it... And it sucked, royally.

Notice in my original post, I said, "128Gb" meaning 128 gigaBIT. There are 8 bits in 1 byte, so divide 128Gb by 8, you get 16GB.

Go here if you wanna read about it. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-...and-a-byte.htm

So again, I think they left out the 12 in their post... unless this NAND memory is not for the iPhone or iPod touch, it cannot be 8Gb because 8Gb=1GB. and who'd put 32 of those in one piece of equipment? Unless they're the unfinished product that will be put together in stacks to make the final product. I doubt it, though. It'd be a pain to put 32 pieces together to make a 32GB block.

Is the essence of your comment : "because Microsoft can't do it therefore Apple can't" ? If so, what makes you think the maker of the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPod shuffle/nano can't do better?

You're right about Microsoft:

Microsoft did mobile phones (Windows Mobile) and they suck.
Microsoft did music players (Zune) and they suck.
Microsoft did game consoles (XBox 360) and they suck.
Microsoft did tablet computers (Windows for Tablet PCs) and they suck.
Microsoft did home media centers (Windows media center) and they suck.
Microsoft did watches (SPOT initiative) and they suck

Microsoft has lost billions of dollars on many of these failed hardware and platform initiatives while Apple has made huge profits in some of the same product categories.

There is one major failing with you equating the Microsoft SPOT initiative to iWatch:

SPOT watches are attempting to be the central computing device and communicate over a 100Mhz band to MSN Direct service. So firstly the watch won't do much if your not in an area covered by MSN Direct; secondly there's not enough processing power in there to do much anyway.

In comparison the iWatch uses the processing power of an iPhone/iPod Touch. You missed the point about it being an iPhoneOS 3.0 PERIPHERAL not a computer in itself like SPOT watches are attempting to be. Comparing wireless coverage; an iWatch inherits (via its Bluetooth connection) the same coverage as the host device (WiFi or cell network) unlike the limited MSN Direct service.

Thanks for bringing up the "Microsoft sucks" fact. I appreciate your insight into that.

Mastering a DVD costs $250. You think that's going to make a major difference?

As I said before, it costs about 50 cents to make a duped DVD. It will cost far more to do it with a USB flash drive.

This technology has been out for about three years now, I think. If it made so much of a difference for Apple, don't you think they would have already used it?

It's very possible that it doesn't work as well as thought.

This wouldn't be the first time something like that has happened.

Theoretically, it should have been gangbusters, but all it was was a bust.

It can be very difficult to predict how software will behave. I know we think that this is down to a science, but it's not.

For many years they've tried to cut software development costs and time down, by coming out with various software development concepts that were more "scientific". Supposedly those methods should have worked. But they haven't. These methods have been tried for mainframe and minicomputer development, where costs to customer are very high.

The problem is that writing software is still more than a bit of art.

So when they tried the Robeson tech, they got a whole 5% speedup, even though from the theory, it should have been more like 30 to 50%. So far at least, no one has been able to figure out exactly why, and what to do about it. Maybe it can't be done.

There's no reason to believe that Apple was any more successful in their own labs.

But a good SSD CAN make a difference. The question is whether it's really such a useful thing to have an expensive, but small, start-up drive to cut some seconds off startup, shutdown, and app opening. It won't help with files, as they should be off the drive if possible anyway.

Even if they can't, because it's a one drive internal system, these drives aren't very good for everyday use. Their write times are slow, they slow down as they fill up, and small file writes are really slow. Even small file reads aren't always as fast as they could be.

And that's for a good drive. The intel "M" series is a good drive, and costs $700 for 160 GB. But writes are only fair, and it slows down.

The intel "E" series has fast writes, but it costs $800 for an 80 GB drive.

Maybe in another year.

Meanwhile, for everyday use, other than for startup, and first time app opening in a session, getting as much RAM as possible will be much better. OS X does a VERY good job of caching in RAM. With enough memory, you may find that you aren't even needing the HDD for much activity.

An example is Photoshop. PS isn't yet 64 bit, and some people are getting in a tizzy about it, but it isn't that important in OS X. In Windows it makes a big difference because Windows isn't that good at caching, and spawns processes that prevent it being done well. But on a Mac the difference won't be that much. If you have, say 16 GB RAM, PS will run at about the same speed whether it's 32 bit 0r 64 bit because of the caching.

Forget about startup times, and buy more RAM.

Doesn't work for me, neither the cost nor the size of the target market demand an order of that scale. The amount of people who want multiple installs is minor & why would you deploy a principle copy of the OS on rewritable media?

McD

China, anyone?

I have absolutely no issues with DLs, in fact I think DLs are great, but when it comes to an OS you have to have main OS installation that is best done locally.. Apple's update files are big but I never implied that point updates and such would be better delivered via mail on USB flash drives, instead of delivered Software Update. My comment about putting OS X install dics that come with new Macs or being sold as upgrades in retail stores on USB flash drives. For instance, instead of buying a MBA with a couple DVDs that have to use another Mac in your household to install the OS, you can just pop in the USB drive and install it very fast locally. I'm surprised that the MBA doesn't already have this as standard because the other method is considerbly slower than even a local optical drive.


Considering that the next major Mac notebook revision is due in a couple years, based on previous major revisions, my posting was based on a couple years from now. DVD's just hold so little data, are so slow to read and write, use up considerable amount of power and take up so much room in the machine. If Apple doesn't move to BRD then I don't see how they will possibly be keeping a CD/DVD drive in their notebooks.

Remove the cost of the optical drive and then factor the savings from not having to engineer a huge component along port side real estate. Then assume that Apple doesn't lower the price but touts this as the future of computing and Apple actually makes more money out of the deal.

Even fir that, I don't see it as having much purpose. It will still cist much more to distribute that way. So, maybe, if Apple does this for JUST those machines without the optical drive, maybe it would work out, as a read only stick.

But for everyone else, the 85%, that are left, no.


Now you are talking about two years from today. No one knows what will happen in two years. But we are talking about now, about the memory Apple has been said to have bought. Let's stick to that.

Stop talking about removing the optical drive. You'll just get people angry at yourself.

Apple only removed the drive where they did because of the marketing required to show the lightest, and thinnest laptop. And most people aren't happy about a drive not being there either, as you know very well from all the discussion here about that.

Maybe in four or five years, if Blu-Ray doesn't make it here, there will be some alternative. But we've got a way's to go for that.

When you can back up 8.7 GB of data on a flash stick for 15 cents, then come back with your argument, because until then, its a poor one.

I still don't see how distributing Mac OS X on a flash drive instead of on a DVD is going to cost much more to distribute. Unless you are using distribute to also include production, in which I hav accounted for the additional cost there.


I hav always been talking about a couple years from now, even when the new unibody Mac notebooks appeared last year and optical drives were still there. I predicted that optical drives will not included in the next revision. This batch of NAND could only get more certain if Apple publicly stated that it is for iPhone. I think LTMP post is quite convincing on that front.

Sol, how many times do I have to mention the considerable difference in cost between a DVD and a flash stick? "Murch brought that up as well. It's as though you passed right over those numbers, and I was being generous about the flash pricing.


We're talking about this year.

I'm well aware of the price differences, but I think it's a very small part for the cost of the OS being shipped with new Macs notebooks if it allows for advances and cost savings in other areas.

In my past three Macs the only optical disc that has been in them have OS installation discs. I know I'm atypical at this point, but I can't help but think this is inevitable. How long has it been since the average person has purchased a CD for music to store onto their computer in iTunes? I haven't purchases a music CD in years and have long since moved them to digital and got rid of my CDs. I think that people that still do by CDs are going to be fine and that it doesn't mean that optical drives will be obsolete by removing them from notebooks. With Apple's new optical drive sharing utility it becomes even easier and seems to be the start of this trend I speak of. I really don't think that Apple wants to support Blu-ray movies in any form, even if the drives were available and priced well, but I'll wait until Snow Leopard's release before solidifying my feelings on that front.



Ireland has his Mac tablet, let me have my optical drive-free non-ultrathin Mac notebook. \

Well, how do you propose to do this?

As I said, it might make sense to send it with the Air, but what about all the other machines that don't need it?

If Apple shipped it with 13 million computers a year, that would be at least $26 million. Likely it would be more. The DVD's probably cost closer to $6 million to include.

I don't see Apple doing that, do you? Look at how they don't include cheap adapters and such that can be far more important to most people.


I don't want to squash your dream.

I would think it would cost them more like $5 a flash drive, not $2, but it doesn't have to be fast NAND or even super small to be a major improvement over an optical disc read times. But my cost saving isn't based on optical disc-to-flash drive, but mostly on optical drive-to-flash drive price comparisons.

There is also engineering cost savings too, as now Apple would have another side to setup ports. While this isn't a popular theory, I think that the removal of FW-400 without the inclusion of an additional USB port of FW-800 port was due to limited side real estate. removing that 6" long slot that is never* used would alleviate that and allow for some radical design changes in the size of batteries and the placement of other components.

I think it could mean for an even slimmer case design since that 9.5mm optical drive is the thickest item in the chassis that can be reduced. I don't care about thinner, but Apple does.

However, as previously stated, if this was a forward thinking idea for Apple and there plan for obsolescing the optical drive in their notebooks I would have thought that they would have included a flash drive installer in the MBA, and not the slow optical disc sharing solution that they use now.

* Hyperbole for hyperbole sake.

You're making a bad assumption though, which is that people are going to want what you want, which is no optical drive. That's a very bad assumption, and your concept of sending the OS on a flash drive must be constrained within the fact that Apple will be supplying optical drives for some time, likely several years, at least. Read times don't matter for the OS containing DVD. How often do you really need that? For most people, it's used maybe once, adding extra drivers, or other tools. Then it's put away for an emergency. Most of the time using it is for the install time, not the read time.

Once you recognize that, most of your reasons disappear.

People are simply not going to stand for not having an optical drive. It's been very clear from most posts on this subject about the Air, that people do want an optical drive, and that, if anything, they're annoyed about having to carry one with the machine.

Laptop or not, unless we're talking about some netbook, I would always want an optical drive.

Do you think that developers would be happy about having to move to flash rather than using CDs or DVDs? I don't think so.

And even though Apple is pushing downloads, there are plenty of people who still buy CDs, and lots who buy DVDs. They won't be going away for some time. If Blu-Ray arrives on the Mac, that will make your scenario even less likely to come any time soon.

Apple is also not going to make any changes of this magnitude to any of its line this year, and likely not next year either.

You really have to keep your comparisons of price solely to the flash and DVD. The rest is far too much speculation on something you would like, but likely won't happen.

I wasn't paying attention to details. thanks.

Okay, here's an idea:

What if, for some kind of security's sake, it was used as auxillary storage. In other words, you would now have a slate to store whatever you wanted on it. Accessed by the OS, but could be used to transfer data to another computer. So, when you plugged it into another computer, you would gain access to this dedicated storage but not the normal storage.

It seems like an inelegant solution when compared to something like Air Sharing, but I could see it some how make headway for security concerns.

I don't understand what you mean by dedicated vs normal storage.

Flash drives are used for the purpose of moving files from one computer from another. What is the difference in your scheme?

I was only half joking - I was thinking of a new iPhone that "ditched the phone" and was basically a bluetooth-synched earpiece/voice recognition dialing mobile phone.

But still, I'd be wrong even if I was right, because it would have turn by turn GPS built in somehow

A place where you control nothing and depend on someone you don't know with your data. No thanks. The cloud is over rated.