lots of configs available from SONY, interesting indeed, let us hope APPLE makes wide options as well
MacBook Pro - 17", 15.4"
MacBook - 13.3"
MacBook Nano - 11.1 or 10"
AND
iPod PDA - 5.0"
This would be a nice line up... Somehow Apple though is confident of it's current product range to deliver strong profits for the Jan-March quarter. The iPod product range is simple yet effective. The Mac desktop and laptop product range is actually really "limited" in many ways yet it continues to be simple and effective.
I think Apple has made it an art of delivering very focused product lines and this is the secret of their continually strong profits.
I love my iBook g4 933mhz for what I can do with it. But to be honest, I am totally bored with the white form factor. And the aluminium curved PowerBook/MacBook Pro is also quite old now. Looks like the real innovative product design has been on the iPod side \ ...and the iMac I guess...
The Intel switch offers a lot of potential to really rev up their portable line. As people have suggested, from new Celeron Ms to Pentium Ms to Core Solos and Core Duos. I think/hope we'll start to see a strong and diverse laptop product portfolio by the middle of this year. If I were a shareholder, I'd be demanding/hoping that this would be the case.
Out of curiousity, how many non-Apple computers use a slot loading drive? I'm not sure if I care which loading is used, but they seem rare if they exist at all. The tray loading drives generally do seem flimsy, though I don't know if they actually are any more or less reliable.
I've used laptops with a tray-loading drive in the past. IMHO, those are totally nasty. Definitely seems flimsy. Haven't looked back since I started using slot-loading drives (iBook G4, PowerBook G4).
I am in the same boat. I am going to use my tax return this year to buy a Mac portable. My advice is to do what I am doing: Hold out until the new iBook replacements come out, and wait to see what Apple will do in the way of a 12 or 13inch MacBook Pro... In the end, you will either get one of the Intel based portables and be happy, or you will get a better buy on one of the PowerPC portables that will drop in price due to the debut of newer machines.
At this stage it is starting to look like the PowerPC portables will not be as good a long-term investment as the Intel Mac portables. Given the aggressive nature of Apple's Intel transition.
This is my guess of consumer/pro demand, from high to low, of Apple Intel portables. Feel free y'all to rip my list to shreds:
1.Powerful mid-size laptop for pros [ok- MacBook Pro]
2.Powerful sub-notebook laptop for pros/business users [Macbook Pro Nano?]
4.Simple good value widescreen laptop [MacBook 15" wide?]
5.Powerful "desktop replacement" high-end laptop [MacBook Pro 17" wide with GOOD speakers for once?]
Hmm.... boy I can see Apple's predicament, if they have to design, test and market all these new laptops, they have to decide which demand is the highest and target these accordingly. And work out the profit margins
Looking at my 1-5 above I'm now feeling a bit confused -- how much demand is really out there for what kind of laptop? That'll be the really important market research I'm sure Apple has paid bucketloads for...
IMHO - with intel transition they have various CPUs for various sizes and prices
11.1" - Niche market - Business users - High Price
13.3" - Larger Market Share - Moderate Price
15.4" - Some what larger Market share - High Price
17" - Least among them - Very High Price
(since if one needs desktop replacement - with lesser mobility/higher power, they will consider iMac)
it is really between 13.3" and 15.4"
13.3" will be great if includes DVI Out or Duallink DVI out
I am ordering one 13.3" (hopefully dual booting and DVI out to drive my 20" ACD) or two of these if need to Boot OSX and windows in separete machines...
but MacBook Nano will be a great hit like iPod Nano, how many of the iPod video owners bought iPod nano as well ... but higher price
sunilraman, how about sub note book - 10" or 11" MacBook Mini - mock up? Black & White
hmm.. some ideas floating in my head. a 10" subnotebook would have to have both a keyboard AND some sort of tablet pen + touchscreen functionality.
imho apple needs to just skip the PDA market and go to the 10" or so subnotebook/ tablet market.
unless apple can also develop PDA/phone product lines \
all this stuff is more 2007 though, with intel low voltage high battery life "palmtop" computers... in which there might be a "mac palmtop"...
anyway the next PPC models on the chopping block are iBook and Mac mini, i say BRING IT ON!! YEAH -- remixed by intel, all with front row and iSight just for the hell of it
sunilraman, how about sub note book - 10" or 11" MacBook Mini - mock up? Black & White
hmm.. some ideas floating in my head. a 10" subnotebook would have to have both a keyboard AND some sort of tablet pen + touchscreen functionality.
imho apple needs to just skip the PDA market and go to the 10" or so subnotebook/ tablet market.
unless apple can also develop PDA/phone product lines \
all this stuff is more 2007 though, with intel low voltage high battery life "palmtop" computers... in which there might be a "mac palmtop"...
anyway the next PPC models on the chopping block are iBook and Mac mini, i say BRING IT ON!! YEAH -- remixed by intel, all with front row and iSight just for the hell of it
I'm thinking that this whole touchscreen thing is just the new video iPod. We may be reading too much into it.
I'm thinking that this whole touchscreen thing is just the new video iPod. We may be reading too much into it.
something about putting one's greasy fingers over a beautiful iPod screen is just not sitting right with me though \
well, the 10" tablet/subnotebook is just an idea knocking around at this stage... i still have no idea how i would mock up something like this though it is an interesting challenge. maybe more of something for the poster antione that did blackbook.mov. just when we thought our photoshopping was cool he comes in and blows us away with 3D animation stuff
a SMARTPHONE Symbian with touchscreen and stylus, 4GB of memory, "walkman phone" with dedicated graphic-rich walkman audio software which plays almost all audio formats, opera browser, 3D gaming, RDS radio, 2,6" screen, 30fps video playback ....etc, etc, etc
it has EVERYTHING. (except for a camera BUAAAAAH)
anyway, sony is now a serious menace IMHO
UPDATE: this model is still in development, will appear in the sommer, and a dual cameras are still considered. think about that.
HORRIBLE design. Simply horrible design. Pictures of the shell was leaked some time ago. The combination of the width and the placement of the lowest row of buttons makes it very difficult to operate.
Besides you have been able to buy Qtek phones that has similar functions for some time. They are not very succesful.
HORRIBLE design. Simply horrible design. Pictures of the shell was leaked some time ago. The combination of the width and the placement of the lowest row of buttons makes it very difficult to operate.
Besides you have been able to buy Qtek phones that has similar functions for some time. They are not very succesful.
Really? I quite like the W series design. Every man to his own I guess.
Doubt apple will ever come back to PDA's/Smartphones. Dont know why, is just a hunch.
You can really look at that ugly thing and consider THAT a challenge to any iPod???
If it was gloss black it'd be a dead ringer for an iPod design. I think it's quite an interesting design. Minimalist, pure. I'm not sure of the practicality of the touch sensitive buttons for texting but if it's like my p910 touch screen, you rarely use the buttons anyway as the handwriting recognition is very good, but then I use longhand not TXT SP3AK. I know kids who switch off T9 because it interferes with their spelling.
Quote:
Originally posted by dutch pear
And I'm not even mentioning that I am the unfortunate owner of a sony-ericson phone (k700i) and the usability of their UI is absolutely terrible!
The 950 runs Symbian UIQ 3.0 - completely different to the older SE phones. Personally I didn't have an issue with the old interface on my T610. Sometimes it was a little slow but it wasn't any worse than Nokia pre Series-60 and a lot nicer than Moto for usability.
Quote:
Originally posted by dutch pear
IMHO these phones are a standard example of the failure of the swiss-army-knife approach and will never catch on with any other group than teens.
Well, seeing as what you're getting there is essentially an evolution of the long established SE P800 phone, I'd imagine there's plenty of people out there that would think otherwise. UIQ3.0 also gets email push and 2.1 is pretty good at reading Office docs, PDFs and running Opera. And on my P910, running ssh, TomTom GPS and about 400MB of music.
You'll see a load more phones this year running Symbian because they've got the ARM processor and the 3G/GSM switching stack running on one chip now reducing the costs, size and increasing battery life.
Windows Mobile by comparison needs a signal processor for the radio end and a general purpose CPU for the OS still. They were recently quoted as saying they were 12 months away from a working reference design for a 1 chip Windows Mobile phone. Bear in mind Nokia/SE said the same 2 years ago and phones are only just being announced with 1 chip platforms.
And I'm not even mentioning that I am the unfortunate owner of a sony-ericson phone (k700i) and the usability of their UI is absolutely terrible!
IMHO these phones are a standard example of the failure of the swiss-army-knife approach and will never catch on with any other group than teens. [/B]
I also own a k700i and the UI works pretty good for me. This phone has allready an mp3 player incorporated, but playing music just eats the battery alive.
My next phone will be for sure one of the p9xx, however if apple gets it's own phone; who knows?
Catch up with what? Those are phones. AAPL has no competing product, nor is there a compelling reason for it to pursue one.
But, if you examine the cellphone market, with all its razor thin profit margins and brutal competition, you'll find a good many reasons not to.
Bearing in mind the W950 has 4GB of storage and quite a decent music player built in and more than likely will be free or near free on contract in Europe because of that brutal competition, Apple has a lot to worry about there.
'Free' phone or pay £179 for a Nano that does less?
Last year I had a similar dilemma. Buy a new PDA (£200+) and a phone or an SE p910i on 2 year contract for free.
You can really look at that ugly thing and consider THAT a challenge to any iPod???
And I'm not even mentioning that I am the unfortunate owner of a sony-ericson phone (k700i) and the usability of their UI is absolutely terrible!
IMHO these phones are a standard example of the failure of the swiss-army-knife approach and will never catch on with any other group than teens.
Agree with all your comments at this moment. My wife and I have iPods. We bought our daughter a Disney branded mp3 player which uses windows media center. UI on it sucks compared to iTunes today. Problem is that MS will continue to refine and make incremental improvements until it gets close IF apple stands still. What holds back convergence devices,IMHO, is the user interface. It is what makes the iPod great. The industial, minimalistic design is nice,but without iTunes it would mean nothing to me.
IMHO apple should try to develope a iTunes phone. It wouldn't appeal to me but I would bet there would be a huge market in teens and young adults. After all they buy a lot of iPods already.
On my SE p910, I just set a smart playlist up for the size of my card and then export the playlist direct from iTunes. Not as nice but good enough for me.
Comments
http://vaio-online.sony.com/sg/vaio/...son/popup.html
lots of configs available from SONY, interesting indeed, let us hope APPLE makes wide options as well
MacBook Pro - 17", 15.4"
MacBook - 13.3"
MacBook Nano - 11.1 or 10"
AND
iPod PDA - 5.0"
This would be a nice line up... Somehow Apple though is confident of it's current product range to deliver strong profits for the Jan-March quarter. The iPod product range is simple yet effective. The Mac desktop and laptop product range is actually really "limited" in many ways yet it continues to be simple and effective.
I think Apple has made it an art of delivering very focused product lines and this is the secret of their continually strong profits.
I love my iBook g4 933mhz for what I can do with it. But to be honest, I am totally bored with the white form factor. And the aluminium curved PowerBook/MacBook Pro is also quite old now. Looks like the real innovative product design has been on the iPod side
The Intel switch offers a lot of potential to really rev up their portable line. As people have suggested, from new Celeron Ms to Pentium Ms to Core Solos and Core Duos. I think/hope we'll start to see a strong and diverse laptop product portfolio by the middle of this year. If I were a shareholder, I'd be demanding/hoping that this would be the case.
Out of curiousity, how many non-Apple computers use a slot loading drive? I'm not sure if I care which loading is used, but they seem rare if they exist at all. The tray loading drives generally do seem flimsy, though I don't know if they actually are any more or less reliable.
I've used laptops with a tray-loading drive in the past. IMHO, those are totally nasty. Definitely seems flimsy. Haven't looked back since I started using slot-loading drives (iBook G4, PowerBook G4).
I am in the same boat. I am going to use my tax return this year to buy a Mac portable. My advice is to do what I am doing: Hold out until the new iBook replacements come out, and wait to see what Apple will do in the way of a 12 or 13inch MacBook Pro... In the end, you will either get one of the Intel based portables and be happy, or you will get a better buy on one of the PowerPC portables that will drop in price due to the debut of newer machines.
At this stage it is starting to look like the PowerPC portables will not be as good a long-term investment as the Intel Mac portables. Given the aggressive nature of Apple's Intel transition.
This is my guess of consumer/pro demand, from high to low, of Apple Intel portables. Feel free y'all to rip my list to shreds:
1.Powerful mid-size laptop for pros [ok- MacBook Pro]
2.Powerful sub-notebook laptop for pros/business users [Macbook Pro Nano?]
3.Mid-range compact/mid-size widescreen laptop [MacBook 13" wide?]
4.Simple good value widescreen laptop [MacBook 15" wide?]
5.Powerful "desktop replacement" high-end laptop [MacBook Pro 17" wide with GOOD speakers for once?]
Hmm.... boy I can see Apple's predicament, if they have to design, test and market all these new laptops, they have to decide which demand is the highest and target these accordingly. And work out the profit margins
Looking at my 1-5 above I'm now feeling a bit confused -- how much demand is really out there for what kind of laptop? That'll be the really important market research I'm sure Apple has paid bucketloads for...
11.1" - Niche market - Business users - High Price
13.3" - Larger Market Share - Moderate Price
15.4" - Some what larger Market share - High Price
17" - Least among them - Very High Price
(since if one needs desktop replacement - with lesser mobility/higher power, they will consider iMac)
it is really between 13.3" and 15.4"
13.3" will be great if includes DVI Out or Duallink DVI out
I am ordering one 13.3" (hopefully dual booting and DVI out to drive my 20" ACD) or two of these if need to Boot OSX and windows in separete machines...
but MacBook Nano will be a great hit like iPod Nano, how many of the iPod video owners bought iPod nano as well ... but higher price
sunilraman, how about sub note book - 10" or 11" MacBook Mini - mock up? Black & White
hmm.. some ideas floating in my head. a 10" subnotebook would have to have both a keyboard AND some sort of tablet pen + touchscreen functionality.
imho apple needs to just skip the PDA market and go to the 10" or so subnotebook/ tablet market.
unless apple can also develop PDA/phone product lines
all this stuff is more 2007 though, with intel low voltage high battery life "palmtop" computers... in which there might be a "mac palmtop"...
anyway the next PPC models on the chopping block are iBook and Mac mini, i say BRING IT ON!! YEAH -- remixed by intel, all with front row and iSight just for the hell of it
Originally posted by sunilraman
Originally posted by shanmugam
sunilraman, how about sub note book - 10" or 11" MacBook Mini - mock up? Black & White
hmm.. some ideas floating in my head. a 10" subnotebook would have to have both a keyboard AND some sort of tablet pen + touchscreen functionality.
imho apple needs to just skip the PDA market and go to the 10" or so subnotebook/ tablet market.
unless apple can also develop PDA/phone product lines
all this stuff is more 2007 though, with intel low voltage high battery life "palmtop" computers... in which there might be a "mac palmtop"...
anyway the next PPC models on the chopping block are iBook and Mac mini, i say BRING IT ON!! YEAH -- remixed by intel, all with front row and iSight just for the hell of it
I'm thinking that this whole touchscreen thing is just the new video iPod. We may be reading too much into it.
I'm thinking that this whole touchscreen thing is just the new video iPod. We may be reading too much into it.
something about putting one's greasy fingers over a beautiful iPod screen is just not sitting right with me though
well, the 10" tablet/subnotebook is just an idea knocking around at this stage... i still have no idea how i would mock up something like this though it is an interesting challenge. maybe more of something for the poster antione that did blackbook.mov. just when we thought our photoshopping was cool he comes in and blows us away with 3D animation stuff
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...threadid=61134
APPL, Hurry up. Sony IS catching up.
the model on the right is the forthcoming w950i.
a SMARTPHONE Symbian with touchscreen and stylus, 4GB of memory, "walkman phone" with dedicated graphic-rich walkman audio software which plays almost all audio formats, opera browser, 3D gaming, RDS radio, 2,6" screen, 30fps video playback ....etc, etc, etc
it has EVERYTHING. (except for a camera BUAAAAAH)
anyway, sony is now a serious menace IMHO
UPDATE: this model is still in development, will appear in the sommer, and a dual cameras are still considered. think about that.
bye bye nanos
Besides you have been able to buy Qtek phones that has similar functions for some time. They are not very succesful.
Originally posted by Anders
HORRIBLE design. Simply horrible design. Pictures of the shell was leaked some time ago. The combination of the width and the placement of the lowest row of buttons makes it very difficult to operate.
Besides you have been able to buy Qtek phones that has similar functions for some time. They are not very succesful.
Really? I quite like the W series design. Every man to his own I guess.
Doubt apple will ever come back to PDA's/Smartphones. Dont know why, is just a hunch.
Originally posted by jindrich
APPL, Hurry up. Sony IS catching up.
bye bye nanos
You are serious???
You can really look at that ugly thing and consider THAT a challenge to any iPod???
And I'm not even mentioning that I am the unfortunate owner of a sony-ericson phone (k700i) and the usability of their UI is absolutely terrible!
IMHO these phones are a standard example of the failure of the swiss-army-knife approach and will never catch on with any other group than teens.
Originally posted by dutch pear
You are serious???
You can really look at that ugly thing and consider THAT a challenge to any iPod???
If it was gloss black it'd be a dead ringer for an iPod design. I think it's quite an interesting design. Minimalist, pure. I'm not sure of the practicality of the touch sensitive buttons for texting but if it's like my p910 touch screen, you rarely use the buttons anyway as the handwriting recognition is very good, but then I use longhand not TXT SP3AK. I know kids who switch off T9 because it interferes with their spelling.
Originally posted by dutch pear
And I'm not even mentioning that I am the unfortunate owner of a sony-ericson phone (k700i) and the usability of their UI is absolutely terrible!
The 950 runs Symbian UIQ 3.0 - completely different to the older SE phones. Personally I didn't have an issue with the old interface on my T610. Sometimes it was a little slow but it wasn't any worse than Nokia pre Series-60 and a lot nicer than Moto for usability.
Originally posted by dutch pear
IMHO these phones are a standard example of the failure of the swiss-army-knife approach and will never catch on with any other group than teens.
Well, seeing as what you're getting there is essentially an evolution of the long established SE P800 phone, I'd imagine there's plenty of people out there that would think otherwise. UIQ3.0 also gets email push and 2.1 is pretty good at reading Office docs, PDFs and running Opera. And on my P910, running ssh, TomTom GPS and about 400MB of music.
You'll see a load more phones this year running Symbian because they've got the ARM processor and the 3G/GSM switching stack running on one chip now reducing the costs, size and increasing battery life.
Windows Mobile by comparison needs a signal processor for the radio end and a general purpose CPU for the OS still. They were recently quoted as saying they were 12 months away from a working reference design for a 1 chip Windows Mobile phone. Bear in mind Nokia/SE said the same 2 years ago and phones are only just being announced with 1 chip platforms.
Originally posted by dutch pear
[snipperdesnippers]
IMHO these phones are a standard example of the failure of the swiss-army-knife approach and will never catch on with any other group than teens.
i agree except for your last remark:
it will catch on with a lot of people because of the failed swiss-army-knife approach. especially between young male adults.
the teens will hate it, because it has no camera.
And I'm not even mentioning that I am the unfortunate owner of a sony-ericson phone (k700i) and the usability of their UI is absolutely terrible!
IMHO these phones are a standard example of the failure of the swiss-army-knife approach and will never catch on with any other group than teens. [/B]
I also own a k700i and the UI works pretty good for me. This phone has allready an mp3 player incorporated, but playing music just eats the battery alive.
My next phone will be for sure one of the p9xx, however if apple gets it's own phone; who knows?
copeland
Originally posted by jindrich
APPL, Hurry up. Sony IS catching up.
Catch up with what? Those are phones. AAPL has no competing product, nor is there a compelling reason for it to pursue one.
But, if you examine the cellphone market, with all its razor thin profit margins and brutal competition, you'll find a good many reasons not to.
Originally posted by jouster
Catch up with what? Those are phones. AAPL has no competing product, nor is there a compelling reason for it to pursue one.
But, if you examine the cellphone market, with all its razor thin profit margins and brutal competition, you'll find a good many reasons not to.
Bearing in mind the W950 has 4GB of storage and quite a decent music player built in and more than likely will be free or near free on contract in Europe because of that brutal competition, Apple has a lot to worry about there.
'Free' phone or pay £179 for a Nano that does less?
Last year I had a similar dilemma. Buy a new PDA (£200+) and a phone or an SE p910i on 2 year contract for free.
Originally posted by jouster
Catch up with what? Those are phones.
With 4GB of memory - incidentally, just what iPod nano's top at. And it has a phone.
You're damn right Apple has nothing to compete with it. Not that it should, anyway.
Originally posted by dutch pear
You are serious???
You can really look at that ugly thing and consider THAT a challenge to any iPod???
And I'm not even mentioning that I am the unfortunate owner of a sony-ericson phone (k700i) and the usability of their UI is absolutely terrible!
IMHO these phones are a standard example of the failure of the swiss-army-knife approach and will never catch on with any other group than teens.
Agree with all your comments at this moment. My wife and I have iPods. We bought our daughter a Disney branded mp3 player which uses windows media center. UI on it sucks compared to iTunes today. Problem is that MS will continue to refine and make incremental improvements until it gets close IF apple stands still. What holds back convergence devices,IMHO, is the user interface. It is what makes the iPod great. The industial, minimalistic design is nice,but without iTunes it would mean nothing to me.
IMHO apple should try to develope a iTunes phone. It wouldn't appeal to me but I would bet there would be a huge market in teens and young adults. After all they buy a lot of iPods already.
There's an addon utility program called Dreamsicle
http://ipsp.kaisakura.com/dreamsicle.html
On my SE p910, I just set a smart playlist up for the size of my card and then export the playlist direct from iTunes. Not as nice but good enough for me.