I'm very skeptical. Why would they waste silicon and power on a second core when the OS doesn't support multi-tasking?
As others have pointed out, the iPhone OS *does* support multitasking, albeit in a very limited way. What's even more important is that it supports multi-threading.
Each app can and probably should have multiple threads. Example: If you don't spin off a thread for network access, the user interface will lock up until it is complete, making the user wonder if it crashed.
Granted the background thread waiting for the network isn't exactly hogging the CPU, and on a single-core CPU isn't really an issue. But if you have an app with two or more computationally intensive threads, a multicore CPU can give that one app real performance gains.
.. I'm sorry, but this thing just baffles me. I felt seriously sorry for Jobs, watching the keynote and seeing all those webpages load with the missing Flashplayer icon. I see he's totally into it, and honestly seems to believe in it, but no camera? iPhone OS? It sucks on the iPhone, why wouldn't it suck more on a 9" screen? I guess i could see this thing being kinda cool in a classroom, for rented textbooks, etc.. but, how about a little OLED clamshell, real keyboard, 16:9 screen, blu-ray support or even an internal blu-ray drive (Shoot, while their at it, how about an HD-DVD/Blu-Ray drive for all us suckers who adopted HD-DVD) Did Apple actually do any customer market research on this thing? Because i know if apple asked ANY of us about it, they'd have made something very different (or at least incorporated desired/functional features). I'd pay $900 for something like that. They've mastered overseas manufacturing for pennies on the dollar, made billions in the last few years. How about giving people a price break and offering something seriously killer??? I'm optimistic they could make up the profit loss in volume??? I love Apple, don't get me wrong, i've been fully Apple from the get-go, but this thing just seems like a rich guy's toy, about 3 years behind the times.
Ugh.. my rant is over.
Flash is being replaced by Web 2.0 - it has served its need, but there are better technologies now.
The iPhone OS is brilliant - full OS X inside and Cocoa Touch cleans up on Cocoa a lot (although I'm still bemoaning the lack of GC).
Any DVD player would such the batteries - load your movies onto iPad in other ways, via iTunes and then play them on the road for much better battery use. Not only would a drive be a drain on the battery, but also extra weight to lug around.
Remember Apple replaced 5 1/4" floppies with 3 1/2" ones and the PC people cried foul for years. Then Apple dropped floppies altogether - more outrage. Most technologies are just hold overs - the new paradigm is full time network connection over wireless. This is not a general desktop/laptop replacement - it's another device that works with your family of computers.
It's a small device - don't bog it down with heavy and battery-draining features.
I'm glad Apple are designing this with a "what is really needed" mentality, rather than the kitchen-sink approach of many of those on the news groups.
.. I'm sorry, but this thing just baffles me. I felt seriously sorry for Jobs, watching the keynote and seeing all those webpages load with the missing Flashplayer icon. I see he's totally into it, and honestly seems to believe in it, but no camera? iPhone OS? It sucks on the iPhone, why wouldn't it suck more on a 9" screen? I guess i could see this thing being kinda cool in a classroom, for rented textbooks, etc.. but, how about a little OLED clamshell, real keyboard, 16:9 screen, blu-ray support or even an internal blu-ray drive (Shoot, while their at it, how about an HD-DVD/Blu-Ray drive for all us suckers who adopted HD-DVD) Did Apple actually do any customer market research on this thing? Because i know if apple asked ANY of us about it, they'd have made something very different (or at least incorporated desired/functional features). I'd pay $900 for something like that. They've mastered overseas manufacturing for pennies on the dollar, made billions in the last few years. How about giving people a price break and offering something seriously killer??? I'm optimistic they could make up the profit loss in volume??? I love Apple, don't get me wrong, i've been fully Apple from the get-go, but this thing just seems like a rich guy's toy, about 3 years behind the times.
Ugh.. my rant is over.
Iphone OS sucks? Are you kidding? Which mobil OS is clearly superior without a debate? Enlighten us all. Touch OS benefits greatly simply by adding more screen real estate for bigger buttons, more room for the GUI etc.
Blu-ray? OLED clamshell and a real keyboard? I think you're talking about the Macbook AIR and you should get ready to pay about $1,000 more than the tablet and still $500 more than your $900 price point. Not to mention the fact that you haven't even paid for the touch screen, magnetometer or 3G modem yet.
Get over it. I was a disappointed that the Ipad didn't have certain features, but after I saw the price and Iwork, I knew it was time to STFU, enjoy using it and look forward to buying another one when rev. 2 hits the streets.
I think we'll see multi tasking in Iphone OS 4 update shortly after the arrival of the pad at stores and announced with the newest Iphone.
BTW their 3G plan with AT&T was genius. I'll probably buy a 3G version and enable it whenever I'm on the road, turn it off when I'm not. Great price and the freedom to use it when you need it without a contract or even a visit to the AT&T store.
Multitasking in the UI is nice on a smartphone, because it lets you listen to one app while viewing another, as well as allowing background monitoring for e.g. chat messages. It's not essential for most users though, since the screen on a smartphone is only big enough to let you view one app at a time, apart from pop up alerts. I would like to see multitasking in OS4 for the iPhone, but I can live without it. The iPad is a different story, the screen is large enough to let you view multiple apps at once, so multitasking makes perfect sense. The demo of iPhone apps running at true resolution, with a big black box around them, was a little embarrassing. Consider, for contrast, if the UI allowed multiple iPhone apps to be running in their own windows, so you could have several on the screen at once. That would be kind of nice. I wouldn't be at all surprised if OS4 allowed 3rd party multi-tasking, even if only on the iPhone.
Having said that, there is absolutely no relationship between multi-tasking and the number of processor cores the device has, except that more power is better for multi-tasking set ups. You can multi-task on one core, and you can run a single multi-threaded app on multiple cores. Of course the iPhone is always multi-tasking, because in the background you've got the daemons that listen for phone calls, text messages, emails etc. As repeated over and over again, the only limitation on multi-tasking in iPhone OS is that the UI doesn't provide a mechanism for opening multiple applications simultaneously. (I would guess that the OS forces 3rd party apps to quit when the home button is pressed, whereas most of the built in apps are allowed to continue when the home button is pressed, the iPod app being the obvious example.) Hard to see how you could get an elegant interface for multi-tasking on iPhone OS, though I'm sure Apple will manage it eventually. Perhaps replace the tray at the bottom of the screen with something more akin to the MacOS dock. The Palm WebOS solution relies on the fact that WebOS apps are web pages at heart, so the card metaphor works okay. It would be a different level of complexity for native compiled apps. Android relies on the availability of a task manager app to force quit rogue applications, hardly the Apple way.
That BSN article is specious bollocks, frankly. Of course the A4 is an ARM based chip, it couldn't run iPhone apps otherwise - unless it's massively more powerful than any other chip of the same size and is able to do virtualization, which I think we can discount. Beyond that BSN have got nothing. To quote their update:
Quote:
We were told that the ARM licensed its CPU and GPU technology to Apple. That's it.
My guess is that the A4 has four ARM CPU cores, and that they'll produce an A2 with two cores for the next iPhone. However, that's pure speculation and about as badly informed as the BSN article. I would say though that the iPad is going to have somewhat higher processor demands (CPU & GPU) than the iPhone, to allow software like Pages and to drive that five times bigger display. A plain dual core Cortex A9 probably wouldn't show the kind of speed that everyone is attributing to the iPad.
The prospects of MacOSX running on an A4 type chip any time soon are slim to none. To do so, and to allow people to run their existing OSX apps - the only point in doing it - would require virtualization. Apple have done this twice before, with the move from 68K to PPC and from PPC to Intel, but it requires the new processor to be somewhat more powerful than that being emulated. Impressive as the A4 sounds, it's going to be somewhat less powerful than the Intel Core families. Running OSX on it would feel like wading through treacle I should imagine
iPad and iPhone are not old style computer, they are mobile device which have small display and limited resources especially memories. We just need long battery life and performance, not multi-task.
.. I'm sorry, but this thing just baffles me. I felt seriously sorry for Jobs, watching the keynote and seeing all those webpages load with the missing Flashplayer icon. ...
Try not exaggerating so much and people might take you seriously.
*One* webpage during the presentation *briefly* showed a missing plug-in icon (presumably but not certainly flash), during the keynote.
Personally, I took that as a purposeful move by Jobs. He certainly must know that there is Flash on the New York Times homepage. The first thing I thought was that he was letting everyone know that there was no Flash, without making a big deal about it.
In any case it depends on your browsing habits. I have never missed Flash on the iPhone, and never even seen the missing plug-in icon in all the time I've used the iPhone. Maybe if you go to pages with a lot of pornography, or pages with a lot of advertisements, or play Flash games, you might see it. I have literally never had a problem with Flash being gone. Ever.
What exactly do you need to multitask? People keep saying that but take a moment and think about it in a practical sense. Are you going to play a game while listening to music... editing a document and watching porn.... all on a 9.3" touch screen. From what I've watched... I see all the Apps open instantly on tap. Within a micro second you are doing whatever you want to. If you need to multitask in the true sense you use a laptop or a desktop. I'd rather have 10 hours of battery life than multitasking on the iPad. I'm sure eventually true multi-tasking will arrive on such a mobile device but defiantly not to sacrifice battery and performance.
from what people say (i do not know this first hand), you can multitask with its native apps (mail, photos, itunes) but wouldn't be able to do it with third party apps you've downloaded...
we'll see...my prediction is that is will sell like hotcakes, i'm definitely getting one...although in a later revision...16 gb is too little...
Multitasking in the UI is nice on a smartphone, because it lets you listen to one app while viewing another, as well as allowing background monitoring for e.g. chat messages. It's not essential for most users though, since the screen on a smartphone is only big enough to let you view one app at a time, apart from pop up alerts. ... The iPad is a different story, the screen is large enough to let you view multiple apps at once, so multitasking makes perfect sense. ...
The screen may be larger, but the iPad uses the OS-X mobile UI where all apps run full screen by default.
Unless it's hacked, there will never be two apps on the screen at the same time on the iPad.
So while your argument makes some sense in the abstract, it's not a valid argument for multi-tasking on the iPad because there is never going to be two apps on the screen together, even if multi-tasking is added in. You will always have the full screen for each app and switch between the two. This is one of the main features of the UI design.
What exactly do you need to multitask? People keep saying that but take a moment and think about it in a practical sense. Are you going to play a game while listening to music... editing a document and watching porn.... all on a 9.3" touch screen. From what I've watched... I see all the Apps open instantly on tap. Within a micro second you are doing whatever you want to. If you need to multitask in the true sense you use a laptop or a desktop. I'd rather have 10 hours of battery life than multitasking on the iPad. I'm sure eventually true multi-tasking will arrive on such a mobile device but defiantly not to sacrifice battery and performance.
Reading a book and using a IM program at the same time.
Please be honest, the very fans are screaming that they don't need multitasking. But as soon as Apple will introduce multitasking in its products the same people will scream that they can't live without it.
What exactly do you need to multitask? People keep saying that but take a moment and think about it in a practical sense. Are you going to play a game while listening to music... editing a document and watching porn.... all on a 9.3" touch screen. From what I've watched... I see all the Apps open instantly on tap. Within a micro second you are doing whatever you want to. If you need to multitask in the true sense you use a laptop or a desktop. I'd rather have 10 hours of battery life than multitasking on the iPad. I'm sure eventually true multi-tasking will arrive on such a mobile device but defiantly not to sacrifice battery and performance.
Why multi-tasking: because I might want to. It is that simple. I could be working on a document and need to go to the web to look something up. Save the document, close it out, open safari, get my info and somehow copy it to a clip board, close safari, open iwork, open my document..... ahh, what was I doing??
.. and I might want to be listening to music, reading an ibook, and watching a movie all at the same time.
It ain't going to happen because multitasking on mobile devices simply don't make sense and there is NO logical argument to support that it does.
Considering how quickly you can change apps multi tasking is just a crap idea made by people who don't understand portable devices.
The design of OS X ensures that multitasking isn't needed so there's no reason to add it. I mean how many apps do you NEED to run on a portable device at one time?
.. I'm sorry, but this thing just baffles me. I felt seriously sorry for Jobs, watching the keynote and seeing all those webpages load with the missing Flashplayer icon. I see he's totally into it, and honestly seems to believe in it, but no camera? iPhone OS? It sucks on the iPhone, why wouldn't it suck more on a 9" screen? I guess i could see this thing being kinda cool in a classroom, for rented textbooks, etc.. but, how about a little OLED clamshell, real keyboard, 16:9 screen, blu-ray support or even an internal blu-ray drive (Shoot, while their at it, how about an HD-DVD/Blu-Ray drive for all us suckers who adopted HD-DVD) Did Apple actually do any customer market research on this thing? Because i know if apple asked ANY of us about it, they'd have made something very different (or at least incorporated desired/functional features). I'd pay $900 for something like that. They've mastered overseas manufacturing for pennies on the dollar, made billions in the last few years. How about giving people a price break and offering something seriously killer??? I'm optimistic they could make up the profit loss in volume??? I love Apple, don't get me wrong, i've been fully Apple from the get-go, but this thing just seems like a rich guy's toy, about 3 years behind the times.
Ugh.. my rant is over.
I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic. You want OS X, a keyboard and an optical drive? You just described a laptop. That's like saying... this new motorcycle sucks... it would be way better if it had 4 wheels, a body, 4 doors and a trunk.
I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic. You want OS X, a keyboard and an optical drive? You just described a laptop. That's like saying... this new motorcycle sucks... it would be way better if it had 4 wheels, a body, 4 doors and a trunk.
Why multi-tasking: because I might want to. It is that simple. I could be working on a document and need to go to the web to look something up. Save the document, close it out, open safari, get my info and somehow copy it to a clip board, close safari, open iwork, open my document..... ahh, what was I doing??
.. and I might want to be listening to music, reading an ibook, and watching a movie all at the same time.
If the capability is there, activate it.
Why save the document before opening safari?
So let me get this straight u can actually read and watch a movie at the same time and actually make sense of both?
I would've thought A4 was referring to a sheet of paper, and Apple meant it for the iPad, so it fits perfectly. But I could be wrong...
In the USA paper isn't A4 it's US Letter. the A B etc. paper sizes are European and not used here, we still have inches and F° Temp and no decent Health care
What happened was that IBM exited the embedded PowerPC business in 2004/5 --- Qualcomm hired a big portion of that embedded PowerPC design team and created a 50 person CPU team. Then Qualcomm got themselves the ARM architecture license to create their clean room implementation of the ARMv7-A architecture.
It has been RUMORED that Apple took the same route --- getting a ARM architecture license. Apple didn't have the opportunity to poach CPU designers, so they bought PA Semi (and its 150 engineer team).
ARM has their reference implementations of their ARMv7-A architecture (Cortex A8 and A9 cores). Qualcomm has their clean room implementation of the ARMv7-A architecture (Snapdragon chip with Scorpion core). Apple LIKELY RUMORED to have their own clean room implementation of the ARMv7-A architecture (A4).
The difference is manpower --- Qualcomm's 50 person team needed 4 years to create Snapdragon and Apple's 150 person team needed only 2 years to create the A4.
Comments
I'm very skeptical. Why would they waste silicon and power on a second core when the OS doesn't support multi-tasking?
As others have pointed out, the iPhone OS *does* support multitasking, albeit in a very limited way. What's even more important is that it supports multi-threading.
Each app can and probably should have multiple threads. Example: If you don't spin off a thread for network access, the user interface will lock up until it is complete, making the user wonder if it crashed.
Granted the background thread waiting for the network isn't exactly hogging the CPU, and on a single-core CPU isn't really an issue. But if you have an app with two or more computationally intensive threads, a multicore CPU can give that one app real performance gains.
.. I'm sorry, but this thing just baffles me. I felt seriously sorry for Jobs, watching the keynote and seeing all those webpages load with the missing Flashplayer icon. I see he's totally into it, and honestly seems to believe in it, but no camera? iPhone OS? It sucks on the iPhone, why wouldn't it suck more on a 9" screen? I guess i could see this thing being kinda cool in a classroom, for rented textbooks, etc.. but, how about a little OLED clamshell, real keyboard, 16:9 screen, blu-ray support or even an internal blu-ray drive (Shoot, while their at it, how about an HD-DVD/Blu-Ray drive for all us suckers who adopted HD-DVD) Did Apple actually do any customer market research on this thing? Because i know if apple asked ANY of us about it, they'd have made something very different (or at least incorporated desired/functional features). I'd pay $900 for something like that. They've mastered overseas manufacturing for pennies on the dollar, made billions in the last few years. How about giving people a price break and offering something seriously killer??? I'm optimistic they could make up the profit loss in volume??? I love Apple, don't get me wrong, i've been fully Apple from the get-go, but this thing just seems like a rich guy's toy, about 3 years behind the times.
Ugh.. my rant is over.
Flash is being replaced by Web 2.0 - it has served its need, but there are better technologies now.
The iPhone OS is brilliant - full OS X inside and Cocoa Touch cleans up on Cocoa a lot (although I'm still bemoaning the lack of GC).
Any DVD player would such the batteries - load your movies onto iPad in other ways, via iTunes and then play them on the road for much better battery use. Not only would a drive be a drain on the battery, but also extra weight to lug around.
Remember Apple replaced 5 1/4" floppies with 3 1/2" ones and the PC people cried foul for years. Then Apple dropped floppies altogether - more outrage. Most technologies are just hold overs - the new paradigm is full time network connection over wireless. This is not a general desktop/laptop replacement - it's another device that works with your family of computers.
It's a small device - don't bog it down with heavy and battery-draining features.
I'm glad Apple are designing this with a "what is really needed" mentality, rather than the kitchen-sink approach of many of those on the news groups.
.. I'm sorry, but this thing just baffles me. I felt seriously sorry for Jobs, watching the keynote and seeing all those webpages load with the missing Flashplayer icon. I see he's totally into it, and honestly seems to believe in it, but no camera? iPhone OS? It sucks on the iPhone, why wouldn't it suck more on a 9" screen? I guess i could see this thing being kinda cool in a classroom, for rented textbooks, etc.. but, how about a little OLED clamshell, real keyboard, 16:9 screen, blu-ray support or even an internal blu-ray drive (Shoot, while their at it, how about an HD-DVD/Blu-Ray drive for all us suckers who adopted HD-DVD) Did Apple actually do any customer market research on this thing? Because i know if apple asked ANY of us about it, they'd have made something very different (or at least incorporated desired/functional features). I'd pay $900 for something like that. They've mastered overseas manufacturing for pennies on the dollar, made billions in the last few years. How about giving people a price break and offering something seriously killer??? I'm optimistic they could make up the profit loss in volume??? I love Apple, don't get me wrong, i've been fully Apple from the get-go, but this thing just seems like a rich guy's toy, about 3 years behind the times.
Ugh.. my rant is over.
Iphone OS sucks? Are you kidding? Which mobil OS is clearly superior without a debate? Enlighten us all. Touch OS benefits greatly simply by adding more screen real estate for bigger buttons, more room for the GUI etc.
Blu-ray? OLED clamshell and a real keyboard? I think you're talking about the Macbook AIR and you should get ready to pay about $1,000 more than the tablet and still $500 more than your $900 price point. Not to mention the fact that you haven't even paid for the touch screen, magnetometer or 3G modem yet.
Get over it. I was a disappointed that the Ipad didn't have certain features, but after I saw the price and Iwork, I knew it was time to STFU, enjoy using it and look forward to buying another one when rev. 2 hits the streets.
I think we'll see multi tasking in Iphone OS 4 update shortly after the arrival of the pad at stores and announced with the newest Iphone.
BTW their 3G plan with AT&T was genius. I'll probably buy a 3G version and enable it whenever I'm on the road, turn it off when I'm not. Great price and the freedom to use it when you need it without a contract or even a visit to the AT&T store.
Having said that, there is absolutely no relationship between multi-tasking and the number of processor cores the device has, except that more power is better for multi-tasking set ups. You can multi-task on one core, and you can run a single multi-threaded app on multiple cores. Of course the iPhone is always multi-tasking, because in the background you've got the daemons that listen for phone calls, text messages, emails etc. As repeated over and over again, the only limitation on multi-tasking in iPhone OS is that the UI doesn't provide a mechanism for opening multiple applications simultaneously. (I would guess that the OS forces 3rd party apps to quit when the home button is pressed, whereas most of the built in apps are allowed to continue when the home button is pressed, the iPod app being the obvious example.) Hard to see how you could get an elegant interface for multi-tasking on iPhone OS, though I'm sure Apple will manage it eventually. Perhaps replace the tray at the bottom of the screen with something more akin to the MacOS dock. The Palm WebOS solution relies on the fact that WebOS apps are web pages at heart, so the card metaphor works okay. It would be a different level of complexity for native compiled apps. Android relies on the availability of a task manager app to force quit rogue applications, hardly the Apple way.
That BSN article is specious bollocks, frankly. Of course the A4 is an ARM based chip, it couldn't run iPhone apps otherwise - unless it's massively more powerful than any other chip of the same size and is able to do virtualization, which I think we can discount. Beyond that BSN have got nothing. To quote their update:
We were told that the ARM licensed its CPU and GPU technology to Apple. That's it.
My guess is that the A4 has four ARM CPU cores, and that they'll produce an A2 with two cores for the next iPhone. However, that's pure speculation and about as badly informed as the BSN article. I would say though that the iPad is going to have somewhat higher processor demands (CPU & GPU) than the iPhone, to allow software like Pages and to drive that five times bigger display. A plain dual core Cortex A9 probably wouldn't show the kind of speed that everyone is attributing to the iPad.
The prospects of MacOSX running on an A4 type chip any time soon are slim to none. To do so, and to allow people to run their existing OSX apps - the only point in doing it - would require virtualization. Apple have done this twice before, with the move from 68K to PPC and from PPC to Intel, but it requires the new processor to be somewhat more powerful than that being emulated. Impressive as the A4 sounds, it's going to be somewhat less powerful than the Intel Core families. Running OSX on it would feel like wading through treacle I should imagine
.. I'm sorry, but this thing just baffles me. I felt seriously sorry for Jobs, watching the keynote and seeing all those webpages load with the missing Flashplayer icon. ...
Try not exaggerating so much and people might take you seriously.
*One* webpage during the presentation *briefly* showed a missing plug-in icon (presumably but not certainly flash), during the keynote.
Personally, I took that as a purposeful move by Jobs. He certainly must know that there is Flash on the New York Times homepage. The first thing I thought was that he was letting everyone know that there was no Flash, without making a big deal about it.
In any case it depends on your browsing habits. I have never missed Flash on the iPhone, and never even seen the missing plug-in icon in all the time I've used the iPhone. Maybe if you go to pages with a lot of pornography, or pages with a lot of advertisements, or play Flash games, you might see it. I have literally never had a problem with Flash being gone. Ever.
What exactly do you need to multitask? People keep saying that but take a moment and think about it in a practical sense. Are you going to play a game while listening to music... editing a document and watching porn.... all on a 9.3" touch screen. From what I've watched... I see all the Apps open instantly on tap. Within a micro second you are doing whatever you want to. If you need to multitask in the true sense you use a laptop or a desktop. I'd rather have 10 hours of battery life than multitasking on the iPad. I'm sure eventually true multi-tasking will arrive on such a mobile device but defiantly not to sacrifice battery and performance.
from what people say (i do not know this first hand), you can multitask with its native apps (mail, photos, itunes) but wouldn't be able to do it with third party apps you've downloaded...
we'll see...my prediction is that is will sell like hotcakes, i'm definitely getting one...although in a later revision...16 gb is too little...
Multitasking in the UI is nice on a smartphone, because it lets you listen to one app while viewing another, as well as allowing background monitoring for e.g. chat messages. It's not essential for most users though, since the screen on a smartphone is only big enough to let you view one app at a time, apart from pop up alerts. ... The iPad is a different story, the screen is large enough to let you view multiple apps at once, so multitasking makes perfect sense. ...
The screen may be larger, but the iPad uses the OS-X mobile UI where all apps run full screen by default.
Unless it's hacked, there will never be two apps on the screen at the same time on the iPad.
So while your argument makes some sense in the abstract, it's not a valid argument for multi-tasking on the iPad because there is never going to be two apps on the screen together, even if multi-tasking is added in. You will always have the full screen for each app and switch between the two. This is one of the main features of the UI design.
What exactly do you need to multitask? People keep saying that but take a moment and think about it in a practical sense. Are you going to play a game while listening to music... editing a document and watching porn.... all on a 9.3" touch screen. From what I've watched... I see all the Apps open instantly on tap. Within a micro second you are doing whatever you want to. If you need to multitask in the true sense you use a laptop or a desktop. I'd rather have 10 hours of battery life than multitasking on the iPad. I'm sure eventually true multi-tasking will arrive on such a mobile device but defiantly not to sacrifice battery and performance.
Reading a book and using a IM program at the same time.
Please be honest, the very fans are screaming that they don't need multitasking. But as soon as Apple will introduce multitasking in its products the same people will scream that they can't live without it.
What exactly do you need to multitask? People keep saying that but take a moment and think about it in a practical sense. Are you going to play a game while listening to music... editing a document and watching porn.... all on a 9.3" touch screen. From what I've watched... I see all the Apps open instantly on tap. Within a micro second you are doing whatever you want to. If you need to multitask in the true sense you use a laptop or a desktop. I'd rather have 10 hours of battery life than multitasking on the iPad. I'm sure eventually true multi-tasking will arrive on such a mobile device but defiantly not to sacrifice battery and performance.
Why multi-tasking: because I might want to. It is that simple. I could be working on a document and need to go to the web to look something up. Save the document, close it out, open safari, get my info and somehow copy it to a clip board, close safari, open iwork, open my document..... ahh, what was I doing??
.. and I might want to be listening to music, reading an ibook, and watching a movie all at the same time.
If the capability is there, activate it.
I think iPad is a nice start. And its $499. That's insane for an Apple Product with such screen and OS.
I think this is very smart move from Apple. I'm sure next iPhone will have its own chip too. This might slow down the jailbreak process though.
I think iPad is a nice start. And its $499. That's insane for an Apple Product with such screen and OS.
i think whether we like it or not, apple has reinvented the computer, like they did when they invented the laptop (sj referenced it in his keynote)
i honestly looked at laptops today, and the presence of a physical keyboard makes them look dated...i hadn't had that feeling before
But I have to be able to play Mobsters online, while I wait for a girl to maybe message me on Facebook!"
My guess is you would be waiting for that message a very long time....
There are many valid reasons for a multitasking environment, especially on the ipad.
It ain't going to happen because multitasking on mobile devices simply don't make sense and there is NO logical argument to support that it does.
Considering how quickly you can change apps multi tasking is just a crap idea made by people who don't understand portable devices.
The design of OS X ensures that multitasking isn't needed so there's no reason to add it. I mean how many apps do you NEED to run on a portable device at one time?
Here is how many....
>1
I wonder if we'll see an iMac or MacBook running on an ARM chip in the next 10 years.
I wonder if we'll see an iMac or MacBook running on an ARM chip in the next 6 months.
.. I'm sorry, but this thing just baffles me. I felt seriously sorry for Jobs, watching the keynote and seeing all those webpages load with the missing Flashplayer icon. I see he's totally into it, and honestly seems to believe in it, but no camera? iPhone OS? It sucks on the iPhone, why wouldn't it suck more on a 9" screen? I guess i could see this thing being kinda cool in a classroom, for rented textbooks, etc.. but, how about a little OLED clamshell, real keyboard, 16:9 screen, blu-ray support or even an internal blu-ray drive (Shoot, while their at it, how about an HD-DVD/Blu-Ray drive for all us suckers who adopted HD-DVD) Did Apple actually do any customer market research on this thing? Because i know if apple asked ANY of us about it, they'd have made something very different (or at least incorporated desired/functional features). I'd pay $900 for something like that. They've mastered overseas manufacturing for pennies on the dollar, made billions in the last few years. How about giving people a price break and offering something seriously killer??? I'm optimistic they could make up the profit loss in volume??? I love Apple, don't get me wrong, i've been fully Apple from the get-go, but this thing just seems like a rich guy's toy, about 3 years behind the times.
Ugh.. my rant is over.
I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic. You want OS X, a keyboard and an optical drive? You just described a laptop. That's like saying... this new motorcycle sucks... it would be way better if it had 4 wheels, a body, 4 doors and a trunk.
I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic. You want OS X, a keyboard and an optical drive? You just described a laptop. That's like saying... this new motorcycle sucks... it would be way better if it had 4 wheels, a body, 4 doors and a trunk.
Yeah - and would you like fries with that?
Why multi-tasking: because I might want to. It is that simple. I could be working on a document and need to go to the web to look something up. Save the document, close it out, open safari, get my info and somehow copy it to a clip board, close safari, open iwork, open my document..... ahh, what was I doing??
.. and I might want to be listening to music, reading an ibook, and watching a movie all at the same time.
If the capability is there, activate it.
Why save the document before opening safari?
So let me get this straight u can actually read and watch a movie at the same time and actually make sense of both?
I would've thought A4 was referring to a sheet of paper, and Apple meant it for the iPad, so it fits perfectly. But I could be wrong...
In the USA paper isn't A4 it's US Letter. the A B etc. paper sizes are European and not used here, we still have inches and F° Temp and no decent Health care
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10123149-64.html
It has been RUMORED that Apple took the same route --- getting a ARM architecture license. Apple didn't have the opportunity to poach CPU designers, so they bought PA Semi (and its 150 engineer team).
http://www.eetimes.com/209900392
ARM has their reference implementations of their ARMv7-A architecture (Cortex A8 and A9 cores). Qualcomm has their clean room implementation of the ARMv7-A architecture (Snapdragon chip with Scorpion core). Apple LIKELY RUMORED to have their own clean room implementation of the ARMv7-A architecture (A4).
The difference is manpower --- Qualcomm's 50 person team needed 4 years to create Snapdragon and Apple's 150 person team needed only 2 years to create the A4.