Here's my dream device, and one I think Apple may actually release as a true 'game-changer' in the tablet/netbook space.
A 10" Wi-Fi/3G tablet designed for web, email and media
full multi-touch display
all the usual stuff you're reading about Apple's tablet...
BUT, here's the big feature. An accompanying 'receiver' that plugs into your TV/Stereo - A replacement for the Airport Express...This time with HD video.
The Tablet can 'pipe' a live stream of whatever it's showing in HD to your TV. You use the tablet to browse the web with friends on your big screen; you use it as a remote to order/control your iTunes content and movie rentals, you even use it as a universal remote to control your other gear. In addition, the OLED screen makes e-Book reading a pleasure (though still only 6 hours of battery).
Your Mac is your desktop device for work/life.
Your iPhone is your mobile device for work/life.
Your iTablet is your couch-side/bed-side device for work/life.
There is good reason to keep iPhone apps operating like iPhone apps. Number one is the issue of focus and associated keyboard. Second is that a iPhone sized keyboard in some instances will be a faster and better solution.
There is no way this is real. One of Steve's main criticisms of netbooks was the "cramped keyboard". There is no way he'd create an even more cramped keyboard by sticking to a 1-finger board.
There is no way this is real. One of Steve's main criticisms of netbooks was the "cramped keyboard". There is no way he'd create an even more cramped keyboard by sticking to a 1-finger board.
This isn't a solution for apps targeted to the tablet rather it is a way to run current iPhone apps. Think of it as a sandboxing of iPhone apps that may not go full screen for whatever reason.
[QUOTE=wizard69;1465562]If that bus doesn't conform to common standards it isn't much of a feature. When I think of expansion buses I think of plugging in standard cards with any I/O ports easily accessible. {/quote]
It was a PCI bus. There is no real "standard" for board length There are full sized boards, and short boards of any length. The same is true for the Express buss.
Quote:
Wait a long time then! It doesn't change the fact that the Cube was rejected by the community immediately upon it's arrival. That simply due to it's poor value.
Dave
Well, at least you admit, sideways at least, that you don't know much about it
I disagree with the Cube comments, it was functionally elegant if over priced. There were some minor problems with the power button and "cracks" but I didn't have any of those and new designs and technology often have at least minor problems as manufacturing works out the problems. Still there was a lot of effort and money put into keeping them going by Cube owners with new processors and "flashed" PC video cards.
For it's time it was a good machine with just enough internal expansion to fit most users needs. I say that because most users never put in a PCI card. Still internal expansion was there with the AGP slot and processor daughter card and many people kept them going for quite a while. It would have been nice to have 1 PCI slot as well, but I don't think that killed it.
The main problem with the Cube is that it was over priced. The low end PM was selling for $1499 or $1599 when the Cube was released at $1799 if I recall correctly. The Cube should have been priced at $1299, and if it were then it would have been a successful product. They may have even had success at $1499, but $1799 was too much. The economy had something to do with it as well, it was released in 2000 during the last recession and right after the big spending blitz for Y2K fears. I know my company was planning on ordering at least 10 for the design department in early 2001 that was put on hold that year and when the order went through a little over a year later they were no longer available. I believe that the production department had some as well which would have been for 20-40 cubes.
I'd like to get one thing out of the way. There were no cracks.
What some people didn't appear to understand was that as with all plastics that are molded, there are very fine lines where the mold parts meet. As one would expect, they are called "mold lines". Some people saw these, at the corners, I believe, and thought they were cracks. Apple did explain that they were mold lines.
Today, technology is better, and mold lines either don't appear, or are miniscule.
It was a PCI bus. There is no real "standard" for board length
Actually there are standards
Quote:
There are full sized boards, and short boards of any length. The same is true for the Express buss.
For the slots to be useful there needs to be an avenue for I/O to leave the box, if you can't do that then the slot might as well not be there.
As for PCI Express there are a number of card formats which have been standardized. Let's face it without standards for the physical size of the boards and the electrical interface there is no chance of high volume low cost boards.
Quote:
Well, at least you admit, sideways at least, that you don't know much about it
Seems to me I'm taking this modestly, there are all sorts of board formats for both PCI & PCI Express. Only a few of which are in common usage in PCs. Ask your self this; just how many PCI express boards where available for the Cube and what did they offer up?
I Also wanted to say that most of you are missing the point of the tablet. It's not just going to be a mobile computer; it's also a new input device. Take a look at the pro-tools controller on the ap store for the iphone and Imagine it working with every app apple makes and even other devices like the Apple TV. Game Controller, library browser etc. As proof of concept my crew and I created a really rudimentary app on the iphone to "replace" our Eclipse CX controllers. We did a bad job but we did prove the concept did work, but decided not to explore it any further because we knew apple already had this one in the bag.
Point is it's not going to be just a big ipod/ Iphone. DUHHHH! It's a multifunction device that will change how we use computers from here on out by introducing multi-touch years before that feature will ever be integrated into our displays. Further it'll be the mobile device that functions as a bridge between our office computers/ workstations and our home computers/ home media Appliances.
Other than maximum size, what standard is there for length? I've got PCI boards as short as 3" and up, in almost all lengths.
Can you show the part where length standards are given in the PCI spec?
Even if there were standards, the length for the boards for the Cube were longer than the minimum socket length.
Quote:
For the slots to be useful there needs to be an avenue for I/O to leave the box, if you can't do that then the slot might as well not be there.
Of course there was a method of doing that. How do you think the I/O in the device could work otherwise? How do you think the graphics card got the signal out? Or the Ethernet, Firewire, or USB, etc?
Why are you even saying this?
Quote:
As for PCI Express there are a number of card formats which have been standardized. Let's face it without standards for the physical size of the boards and the electrical interface there is no chance of high volume low cost boards.
Of course there are standards for the bus and sockets. There are always standards for that. We're talking about board length.
Quote:
Seems to me I'm taking this modestly, there are all sorts of board formats for both PCI & PCI Express. Only a few of which are in common usage in PCs. Ask your self this; just how many PCI express boards where available for the Cube and what did they offer up?
Dave
Dave, usually, when we disagree, I sense some knowledge in you of what you're speaking about.
But this time, I don't find any. You aren't even willing to learn something about the machine before going off and making erroneous statements.
Surely you know that the Express bus is a fairly new bus. It hadn't yet been invented when the Cube was available. Even the PCI X, which Apple's G5 Power Macs and Servers used hadn't been around then.
Because this machine was discontinued a fair number of years ago, much of what was available is no longer available, but a large amount still is.
Here's one company that supplies those components and upgrades:
I think it's interesting that there are still 23 different video cards or accessories for them still available, 16 cpu cards and such, an Airport card, and a bunch of other things, such as standard HDDs, memory, etc.
Here's a review of the computer from Ars Technica:
There is no way this is real. One of Steve's main criticisms of netbooks was the "cramped keyboard". There is no way he'd create an even more cramped keyboard by sticking to a 1-finger board.
Apple is an innovative company. I bet hey will do something about the cramped keyboard thingey.
...One of Steve's main criticisms of netbooks was the "cramped keyboard". There is no way he'd create an even more cramped keyboard by sticking to a 1-finger board.
A netbook with a 7" screen might be cramped, but I have no problem mashing out text with my fat fingers on any with a screen over about 10" (think Vaio TZ or P-series). The problem Apple has it that if they go the pure touch tablet route they have a product which will need to be held, and therefore any keyed input will be one-handed; this means that it'll be very similar most likely to the iPhone input (maybe a little larger will improve accuracy), this means it's going to be hard to market the device as much more than a bigger iPod Touch... unless they can come up with some really 'killer' features.
Whatever they launch will sell like hot cakes no doubt, but they're going to have to really pull something out of the bag to be truly impressive.
Personally I think that one killer feature would be to nail handwriting recognition, and have stylus input (also I'd imagination a great input method for illustrators and 'creatives'), but then Jobs will need to back-track his mocking of stylus input previously.
A netbook with a 7" screen might be cramped, but I have no problem mashing out text with my fat fingers on any with a screen over about 10" (think Vaio TZ or P-series). The problem Apple has it that if they go the pure touch tablet route they have a product which will need to be held, and therefore any keyed input will be one-handed; this means that it'll be very similar most likely to the iPhone input (maybe a little larger will improve accuracy), this means it's going to be hard to market the device as much more than a bigger iPod Touch... unless they can come up with some really 'killer' features.
Whatever they launch will sell like hot cakes no doubt, but they're going to have to really pull something out of the bag to be truly impressive.
Personally I think that one killer feature would be to nail handwriting recognition, and have stylus input (also I'd imagination a great input method for illustrators and 'creatives'), but then Jobs will need to back-track his mocking of stylus input previously.
A super-sized Touch costing more than competitors' full-bore laptops? I don't see a market for such a device and I doubt Apple does either. By the way, who says that input has to be via a hand-centric device? Voice is another option. It is, after all the route Apple has taken with the latest Shuffle.
In any case, Apple has been all about "pull(ing) something out of the bag" especially since Jobs' return a few years ago. I don't doubt that Apple could have brought to market a glorified Touch long before this point. If they haven't, it's because they, unlike most other companies, are not into releasing a product simply because they can. They carefully consider what the product's target audience will do with the device once out in the wild and leave it open-ended enough to allow for some customer-driven innovation.
I don't know if voice input will be part of the mix but I'm sure Apple has come up with some smart solutions that, once unveiled, others will think, "Why didn't we think of that."
Netbooks are how competitors do things, though I have to say I'm pleased with mine. They have built laptops only smaller that operate exactly like a laptop, though with a ton of limitations. They are fine, provided you consider those limitations and use the device accordingly. But such a solution simply lacks the imagination that Apple has brought to its products in recent years.
It's a thin tablet computer, running Mac OS X touch - end of.
Hardly. It will certainly run software based on Snow Leopard but it's highly unlikely that it will simply be running the OS from the Touch. Some of that software would simply not make sense with this form factor and there would be a lot of missing functionality using merely the Touch software.
My guess is that this device, if it comes as rumoured, will be running a version of Snow Leopard much closer to the full desktop/laptop version than the version of today's OS X currently running on the Touch.
Don't forget that one of the apparent advantages of Snow Leopard is that it will be much more efficient than the current version of OS X and take up a lot less space. Not only does that mean faster performance on laptops and desktops, it also means it will be much better suited to this rumoured device, requiring minimal tweaking. Don't think for a second that the decision to streamline OS X is driven strictly by a desire to make regular Macs more efficient. It's also about applying the revised software to other devices like the upcoming tablet.
Also consider that if developers can put out software compatible with both the tablet and Apple's other computers, it justifies making that product happen. If, on the other hand, the software would be tablet-exclusive, third-party developers would be reluctant to do the work for such a limited installed base. It's also the case that by giving the tablet pretty much full compatibility with Snow Leopard software, you could do a lot more with the tablet from the beginning. On the other hand, make the tablet compatible with App Store apps and you pretty much limit the device to running software that is a long way from exploiting what I'm sure will be far more capable hardware. Why pay more than double just for more screen real estate? Few would and the tablet would be a major flop. If you sacrifice the go-anywhere portability of the Touch/iPhone form factor, there have to be gains in other areas. A bigger screen alone isn't going to cut it.
...Voice is another option. It is, after all the route Apple has taken with the latest Shuffle...
Have they? I didn't even know the Shuffle had a mic. input; are you talking about VoiceOver? 'cause that isn't input.
As far as inputing goes, I see no real options other than by hand at present; voice input of anything like meaningful amounts of data would be terrible: Can you imagine dictating to you device on a train of plane? especially in a cabin where others are trying to do the same?!
Input by hand is still the only option, whether it be via a keyboard, touchscreen or mouse etc.
Hardly. It will certainly run software based on Snow Leopard but it's highly unlikely that it will simply be running the OS from the Touch. Some of that software would simply not make sense with this form factor and there would be a lot of missing functionality using merely the Touch software.
My guess is that this device, if it comes as rumoured, will be running a version of Snow Leopard much closer to the full desktop/laptop version than the version of today's OS X currently running on the Touch.
Comments
A 10" Wi-Fi/3G tablet designed for web, email and media
full multi-touch display
all the usual stuff you're reading about Apple's tablet...
BUT, here's the big feature. An accompanying 'receiver' that plugs into your TV/Stereo - A replacement for the Airport Express...This time with HD video.
The Tablet can 'pipe' a live stream of whatever it's showing in HD to your TV. You use the tablet to browse the web with friends on your big screen; you use it as a remote to order/control your iTunes content and movie rentals, you even use it as a universal remote to control your other gear. In addition, the OLED screen makes e-Book reading a pleasure (though still only 6 hours of battery).
Your Mac is your desktop device for work/life.
Your iPhone is your mobile device for work/life.
Your iTablet is your couch-side/bed-side device for work/life.
At your Desk.
In your Hand.
By your Side...Apple.
There is good reason to keep iPhone apps operating like iPhone apps. Number one is the issue of focus and associated keyboard. Second is that a iPhone sized keyboard in some instances will be a faster and better solution.
There is no way this is real. One of Steve's main criticisms of netbooks was the "cramped keyboard". There is no way he'd create an even more cramped keyboard by sticking to a 1-finger board.
There is no way this is real. One of Steve's main criticisms of netbooks was the "cramped keyboard". There is no way he'd create an even more cramped keyboard by sticking to a 1-finger board.
This isn't a solution for apps targeted to the tablet rather it is a way to run current iPhone apps. Think of it as a sandboxing of iPhone apps that may not go full screen for whatever reason.
Dave
It was a PCI bus. There is no real "standard" for board length There are full sized boards, and short boards of any length. The same is true for the Express buss.
Wait a long time then! It doesn't change the fact that the Cube was rejected by the community immediately upon it's arrival. That simply due to it's poor value.
Dave
Well, at least you admit, sideways at least, that you don't know much about it
I disagree with the Cube comments, it was functionally elegant if over priced. There were some minor problems with the power button and "cracks" but I didn't have any of those and new designs and technology often have at least minor problems as manufacturing works out the problems. Still there was a lot of effort and money put into keeping them going by Cube owners with new processors and "flashed" PC video cards.
For it's time it was a good machine with just enough internal expansion to fit most users needs. I say that because most users never put in a PCI card. Still internal expansion was there with the AGP slot and processor daughter card and many people kept them going for quite a while. It would have been nice to have 1 PCI slot as well, but I don't think that killed it.
The main problem with the Cube is that it was over priced. The low end PM was selling for $1499 or $1599 when the Cube was released at $1799 if I recall correctly. The Cube should have been priced at $1299, and if it were then it would have been a successful product. They may have even had success at $1499, but $1799 was too much. The economy had something to do with it as well, it was released in 2000 during the last recession and right after the big spending blitz for Y2K fears. I know my company was planning on ordering at least 10 for the design department in early 2001 that was put on hold that year and when the order went through a little over a year later they were no longer available. I believe that the production department had some as well which would have been for 20-40 cubes.
I'd like to get one thing out of the way. There were no cracks.
What some people didn't appear to understand was that as with all plastics that are molded, there are very fine lines where the mold parts meet. As one would expect, they are called "mold lines". Some people saw these, at the corners, I believe, and thought they were cracks. Apple did explain that they were mold lines.
Today, technology is better, and mold lines either don't appear, or are miniscule.
It's just too expensive to polish them out.
It was a PCI bus. There is no real "standard" for board length
Actually there are standards
There are full sized boards, and short boards of any length. The same is true for the Express buss.
For the slots to be useful there needs to be an avenue for I/O to leave the box, if you can't do that then the slot might as well not be there.
As for PCI Express there are a number of card formats which have been standardized. Let's face it without standards for the physical size of the boards and the electrical interface there is no chance of high volume low cost boards.
Well, at least you admit, sideways at least, that you don't know much about it
Seems to me I'm taking this modestly, there are all sorts of board formats for both PCI & PCI Express. Only a few of which are in common usage in PCs. Ask your self this; just how many PCI express boards where available for the Cube and what did they offer up?
Dave
Point is it's not going to be just a big ipod/ Iphone. DUHHHH! It's a multifunction device that will change how we use computers from here on out by introducing multi-touch years before that feature will ever be integrated into our displays. Further it'll be the mobile device that functions as a bridge between our office computers/ workstations and our home computers/ home media Appliances.
Actually there are standards
Other than maximum size, what standard is there for length? I've got PCI boards as short as 3" and up, in almost all lengths.
Can you show the part where length standards are given in the PCI spec?
Even if there were standards, the length for the boards for the Cube were longer than the minimum socket length.
For the slots to be useful there needs to be an avenue for I/O to leave the box, if you can't do that then the slot might as well not be there.
Of course there was a method of doing that. How do you think the I/O in the device could work otherwise? How do you think the graphics card got the signal out? Or the Ethernet, Firewire, or USB, etc?
Why are you even saying this?
As for PCI Express there are a number of card formats which have been standardized. Let's face it without standards for the physical size of the boards and the electrical interface there is no chance of high volume low cost boards.
Of course there are standards for the bus and sockets. There are always standards for that. We're talking about board length.
Seems to me I'm taking this modestly, there are all sorts of board formats for both PCI & PCI Express. Only a few of which are in common usage in PCs. Ask your self this; just how many PCI express boards where available for the Cube and what did they offer up?
Dave
Dave, usually, when we disagree, I sense some knowledge in you of what you're speaking about.
But this time, I don't find any. You aren't even willing to learn something about the machine before going off and making erroneous statements.
Surely you know that the Express bus is a fairly new bus. It hadn't yet been invented when the Cube was available. Even the PCI X, which Apple's G5 Power Macs and Servers used hadn't been around then.
Because this machine was discontinued a fair number of years ago, much of what was available is no longer available, but a large amount still is.
Here's one company that supplies those components and upgrades:
http://www.yourmacstore.com/shop/sho...=G4+Cube+Parts
I think it's interesting that there are still 23 different video cards or accessories for them still available, 16 cpu cards and such, an Airport card, and a bunch of other things, such as standard HDDs, memory, etc.
Here's a review of the computer from Ars Technica:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/4q00/...g4-cube-4.html
Really, you should look this up before making any more inane remarks.
There is no way this is real. One of Steve's main criticisms of netbooks was the "cramped keyboard". There is no way he'd create an even more cramped keyboard by sticking to a 1-finger board.
Apple is an innovative company. I bet hey will do something about the cramped keyboard thingey.
I love how Edsels and Cubes somehow became relevant to an Apple Tablet discussion.
lol there is a saying that says once a thread reaches 3 pages or more, it will surely go off topic..
...One of Steve's main criticisms of netbooks was the "cramped keyboard". There is no way he'd create an even more cramped keyboard by sticking to a 1-finger board.
A netbook with a 7" screen might be cramped, but I have no problem mashing out text with my fat fingers on any with a screen over about 10" (think Vaio TZ or P-series). The problem Apple has it that if they go the pure touch tablet route they have a product which will need to be held, and therefore any keyed input will be one-handed; this means that it'll be very similar most likely to the iPhone input (maybe a little larger will improve accuracy), this means it's going to be hard to market the device as much more than a bigger iPod Touch... unless they can come up with some really 'killer' features.
Whatever they launch will sell like hot cakes no doubt, but they're going to have to really pull something out of the bag to be truly impressive.
Personally I think that one killer feature would be to nail handwriting recognition, and have stylus input (also I'd imagination a great input method for illustrators and 'creatives'), but then Jobs will need to back-track his mocking of stylus input previously.
Apple is an innovative company. I bet hey will do something about the cramped keyboard thingey.
Bring back the butterfly!
(google butterfly and thinkpad if you have no idea what that means)
A netbook with a 7" screen might be cramped, but I have no problem mashing out text with my fat fingers on any with a screen over about 10" (think Vaio TZ or P-series). The problem Apple has it that if they go the pure touch tablet route they have a product which will need to be held, and therefore any keyed input will be one-handed; this means that it'll be very similar most likely to the iPhone input (maybe a little larger will improve accuracy), this means it's going to be hard to market the device as much more than a bigger iPod Touch... unless they can come up with some really 'killer' features.
Whatever they launch will sell like hot cakes no doubt, but they're going to have to really pull something out of the bag to be truly impressive.
Personally I think that one killer feature would be to nail handwriting recognition, and have stylus input (also I'd imagination a great input method for illustrators and 'creatives'), but then Jobs will need to back-track his mocking of stylus input previously.
A super-sized Touch costing more than competitors' full-bore laptops? I don't see a market for such a device and I doubt Apple does either. By the way, who says that input has to be via a hand-centric device? Voice is another option. It is, after all the route Apple has taken with the latest Shuffle.
In any case, Apple has been all about "pull(ing) something out of the bag" especially since Jobs' return a few years ago. I don't doubt that Apple could have brought to market a glorified Touch long before this point. If they haven't, it's because they, unlike most other companies, are not into releasing a product simply because they can. They carefully consider what the product's target audience will do with the device once out in the wild and leave it open-ended enough to allow for some customer-driven innovation.
I don't know if voice input will be part of the mix but I'm sure Apple has come up with some smart solutions that, once unveiled, others will think, "Why didn't we think of that."
Netbooks are how competitors do things, though I have to say I'm pleased with mine. They have built laptops only smaller that operate exactly like a laptop, though with a ton of limitations. They are fine, provided you consider those limitations and use the device accordingly. But such a solution simply lacks the imagination that Apple has brought to its products in recent years.
It's a thin tablet computer, running Mac OS X touch - end of.
Hardly. It will certainly run software based on Snow Leopard but it's highly unlikely that it will simply be running the OS from the Touch. Some of that software would simply not make sense with this form factor and there would be a lot of missing functionality using merely the Touch software.
My guess is that this device, if it comes as rumoured, will be running a version of Snow Leopard much closer to the full desktop/laptop version than the version of today's OS X currently running on the Touch.
Don't forget that one of the apparent advantages of Snow Leopard is that it will be much more efficient than the current version of OS X and take up a lot less space. Not only does that mean faster performance on laptops and desktops, it also means it will be much better suited to this rumoured device, requiring minimal tweaking. Don't think for a second that the decision to streamline OS X is driven strictly by a desire to make regular Macs more efficient. It's also about applying the revised software to other devices like the upcoming tablet.
Also consider that if developers can put out software compatible with both the tablet and Apple's other computers, it justifies making that product happen. If, on the other hand, the software would be tablet-exclusive, third-party developers would be reluctant to do the work for such a limited installed base. It's also the case that by giving the tablet pretty much full compatibility with Snow Leopard software, you could do a lot more with the tablet from the beginning. On the other hand, make the tablet compatible with App Store apps and you pretty much limit the device to running software that is a long way from exploiting what I'm sure will be far more capable hardware. Why pay more than double just for more screen real estate? Few would and the tablet would be a major flop. If you sacrifice the go-anywhere portability of the Touch/iPhone form factor, there have to be gains in other areas. A bigger screen alone isn't going to cut it.
...Voice is another option. It is, after all the route Apple has taken with the latest Shuffle...
Have they? I didn't even know the Shuffle had a mic. input; are you talking about VoiceOver? 'cause that isn't input.
As far as inputing goes, I see no real options other than by hand at present; voice input of anything like meaningful amounts of data would be terrible: Can you imagine dictating to you device on a train of plane? especially in a cabin where others are trying to do the same?!
Input by hand is still the only option, whether it be via a keyboard, touchscreen or mouse etc.
Hardly. It will certainly run software based on Snow Leopard but it's highly unlikely that it will simply be running the OS from the Touch. Some of that software would simply not make sense with this form factor and there would be a lot of missing functionality using merely the Touch software.
My guess is that this device, if it comes as rumoured, will be running a version of Snow Leopard much closer to the full desktop/laptop version than the version of today's OS X currently running on the Touch.
I never said iPhone OS, I said Mac OS X touch.