Future OLED iMac
This is my prediction for a future Mac.
We know that OLED displays can be made very, very thin. I can't imagine Apple wanting to ignore that - they will want to make that feature integral to an iMac design that uses OLED for the display. Which means slapping on a thick back to contain the DVD drive, hard drive, CPU, and other parts will just take away from the aesthetic.
My prediction is that Apple will move the CPU and other components from the display and into the keyboard. By the time an OLED iMac arrives, SSD multi-GB drives will be on the market, making the keyboard a likely successor to the display as the brains of the machine.
I also think Apple will use some sort of wireless tech to transmit the images from the keyboard to the display. So you will be able to hang the ultra-thin display across the room or on some cool piece of sculpture on your desk.
OLEDs are thinner than LCDs and use less power. SSDs are smaller and much faster than conventional hard drives. Plus they take less energy.
I can't want to see what Apple comes up with when new tech is practical. I hope they are thinking along these lines or, more likely, something much, much better.
We know that OLED displays can be made very, very thin. I can't imagine Apple wanting to ignore that - they will want to make that feature integral to an iMac design that uses OLED for the display. Which means slapping on a thick back to contain the DVD drive, hard drive, CPU, and other parts will just take away from the aesthetic.
My prediction is that Apple will move the CPU and other components from the display and into the keyboard. By the time an OLED iMac arrives, SSD multi-GB drives will be on the market, making the keyboard a likely successor to the display as the brains of the machine.
I also think Apple will use some sort of wireless tech to transmit the images from the keyboard to the display. So you will be able to hang the ultra-thin display across the room or on some cool piece of sculpture on your desk.
OLEDs are thinner than LCDs and use less power. SSDs are smaller and much faster than conventional hard drives. Plus they take less energy.
I can't want to see what Apple comes up with when new tech is practical. I hope they are thinking along these lines or, more likely, something much, much better.
Comments
LED still have a lot to go for. The demonstration from Sharp and Sony shows LED backlight have HUGE improvement to current technology. And they are commercially available now and take 2- 3 years before they drop down to consumer level.
So while OLED is great. It is still long time before it comes.
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3726
My prediction is that Apple will move the CPU and other components from the display and into the keyboard. By the time an OLED iMac arrives, SSD multi-GB drives will be on the market, making the keyboard a likely successor to the display as the brains of the machine.
I want to see this happen but it won't be an iMac if they do that. It will be a headless Mac.
It should be possible to do right now I would think. If you take the Macbook Pro base, remove the battery and possibly the optical drive, get an extended desktop keyboard and put them all together, it would be a very nice, powerful machine.
With an 8600M GT or better, it would drive a 30" display. Upgrades should be easy enough as it's all flat and you'd just lift up the keyboard.
I doubt that I'd buy an OLED or whatever display from Apple though. They will be way overpriced.
I also think Apple will use some sort of wireless tech to transmit the images from the keyboard to the display. So you will be able to hang the ultra-thin display across the room or on some cool piece of sculpture on your desk.
I reckon the bandwidth would be a bit much for wireless and there are security issues. Simply a display-port output, which is a thin cable would do.
"Making the keyboard [..] the brains of the machine" is not exactly a new idea; in fact, in the 80s' era of home computers, that was the default*. While it would be possible to make such a combination a lot thinner than the above photo these days, it would still be thicker than Apple's current keyboard. And why, exactly, would Apple do that? What's the benefit, and what about the downside that you can't easily replace your keyboard any more?
Due to their inherently mechanical nature, and how you kind of keep on putting your greasy fingers on them, keyboards tend to have far shorter lifespan than monitors do. They also need to take ergonomics into account a lot more than monitors do, so designers aren't as free to muck with them in an effort to fit computer components in.
And, again, I'm not seeing the benefit over the current iMac design.
*) Plus, you're essentially describing one half of today's typical laptop design, save the pointing device.
My prediction is that Apple will move the CPU and other components from the display and into the keyboard.
That's plausible at some point for 'notebook' component computers. Like the Mac mini. But I doubt it will ever happen for the iMac. Simply because the iMac is a consumer machine that uses cheaper desktop components (mostly) for a better price/performance/feature ratio. That's why it is larger than a Mac mini.
The Mac mini on the other hand would fit the bill of having its components moved into a keyboard, but because it is in the lowest price segment I doubt it will use SSDs any time soon, unless you want to go with a 8GB or 16GB storage option. Which is not very attractive.
Also OLEDs are going to be rather expensive initially and not very large in pixel resolution. We'd be seeing 13" and later 15" displays. Eventually 17". But it'll be a while before we see 20+" LCD resolutions (1600x1200 or more). So iMacs will have to wait probably another few years for that technology. 5 years might be realistic.
While reasonable for a Mac mini, again, initial OLEDs will be very expensive, and hence easily cost more than the whole Mac mini. And I doubt a lot of 'keyboard Mac mini' users wil buy a monitor that is more expensive than their computer...
"Making the keyboard [..] the brains of the machine" is not exactly a new idea; in fact, in the 80s' era of home computers, that was the default*. While it would be possible to make such a combination a lot thinner than the above photo these days, it would still be thicker than Apple's current keyboard. And why, exactly, would Apple do that? What's the benefit, and what about the downside that you can't easily replace your keyboard any more?
Due to their inherently mechanical nature, and how you kind of keep on putting your greasy fingers on them, keyboards tend to have far shorter lifespan than monitors do. They also need to take ergonomics into account a lot more than monitors do, so designers aren't as free to muck with them in an effort to fit computer components in.
And, again, I'm not seeing the benefit over the current iMac design.
The benefits are you can use your own display and upgrade the display and you can service it much more easily. Also send it away for repair more easily. You have easier access to ports, speakers can go right on the machine near you.
Although keyboards can fail, the part should be easily replaceable, and user serviceable unlike an LCD display. It keeps your hands warm too.
It may be more prone to coffee related spillages though so some extra design would need to be in place for that.
Plus, you're essentially describing one half of today's typical laptop design, save the pointing device.
Exactly and more people are buying laptops so it makes perfect sense to do things the way laptops work. Just look at the images of the Macbook Pro:
Take out the optical drive, move the HD round beside the motherboard and that's almost the same length as an extended keyboard. The height difference is minimal compared to the old one and this has an 8600M GT GPU, which can drive a 30" display. Not to mention, you can just slip it in a bag more easily than a laptop and take it with you and plug it into any other screen.
I was actually considering getting a MBP with a broken display off ebay, removing the broken screen and attaching a normal display as the main one and that would be a great upgrade from a Mini and better than an iMac.
Here's one here:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Macbook-Pro-2-16...QQcmdZViewItem
I'm not going to though, it's kinda stupid to have to resort to measures like that to make up for Apple's design shortcomings.
Ergonomics I don't think matter to most people. People tend to type on whatever junk is in front of them as long as it has a qwerty layout.
The benefits are you can use your own display and upgrade the display and you can service it much more easily. Also send it away for repair more easily. You have easier access to ports, speakers can go right on the machine near you.
Although keyboards can fail, the part should be easily replaceable, and user serviceable unlike an LCD display. It keeps your hands warm too.
It may be more prone to coffee related spillages though so some extra design would need to be in place for that.
Think of all the wires though, it is possible however, imagine trying to cram a power block into it, and what about all your peripherals? Can you imagine all the wires coming off that? Especially if its the main household computer or is networked in an office.
It sounds like a good idea, however it'll never replace the iMac, in terms of power etc.
No. No no no no. I would never buy a desktop computer that forces me to use a single keyboard. They break, and plus if you want a better/fancier/new layout, you're out of luck unless you want to use a USB port and have ANOTHER keyboard. Poo.
The iMac has a worse problem in that the display is fixed. More people like to choose their display size and style vs their keyboard. Almost every single Mac user I know sticks with the bundled Apple keyboard but they have a variety of screens - Samsung, Viewsonic etc.
The ideal is to have the choice of both but this is the iMac we're talking about and Apple seem to want to seal the computer onto something. Between the display and the keyboard, I'd rather it was the keyboard. Like I say, the design would have to be so that the keyboard was easily replaceable in case of damage and for multiple languages and this could lead to 3rd party designs if needed. It could even be upgradeable to a multi-touch panel in future.
The issue about the wires could be sorted in a similar way to laptops. The external display can have ports on it for fixed peripherals - this encourages purchases of Apple displays (I'm thinking Cinema displays which have both firewire and USB ports) but does not require it. You still have magsafe and two connectors to the display. I don't think displayport has enough aux bandwidth to carry fast data transfer as well as video so although 1 power + 1 data would be better, it might have to be 1 power + 2 data, which does seem a bit cluttered.
No. No no no no. I would never buy a desktop computer that forces me to use a single keyboard. They break, and plus if you want a better/fancier/new layout, you're out of luck unless you want to use a USB port and have ANOTHER keyboard. Poo.
How about a two piece system. A very thin keyboard and a separate unit containing the cpu, HDD, etc. The lower unit could have grooves that the keyboard could fit into to keep the two from moving apart. Would that work? That would solve the dirt problem and allow a change of keyboard. The lower part could also be put behind the monitor or in a drawer or on a desk hanger. Or does that sound too much like a reworked mini?
I think the iMac G4 (the sunflower iMac) is the best iMac form factor to date, but Apple has learned its lesson. They got more pragmatic with the iMac G5 and iMac Alu machines, which is probably the right choice economically, and perhaps even form factor wise, but the if I had my druthers, I'd like to see a hybrid form of the iMac G4 come back.
Drive the thickness of the screen+guts (CPU, GPU, HD, OD, power) to something like 1", definitely doable as seen in the MBP, use a nice articulated arm with 3 or 4 degrees of freedom, and have a heavy base. My kickers would be to have all the ports replicated on the base, and my favorite, employ a superwide 34" 8:3 aspect ratio, 3200 x 1200 screen or a 27" 8:3 2880 x 1050 screen. These won't be cheap machines.
I'm however, sold on the usability and increased productivity of super-wide screens (essentially dual monitors), so it'll be a good direction to go. The existing 20" and 24" iMacs (in an evolved form factor with more tapering and plastic) can be driven down to $900 to $1400 price points, and these super-wides can go take the $1700 to $2200 price points.
Anyways, coming back to reality, my bet is just a more curvy iMac, pretty much the same form factor, but with Montevina guts and mobile-Nehalem guts when it comes. It's good enough and the production cost benefits are just too good. Yeah, OLED screens are 5 years away. They haven't even shipped them with LED backlighting yet.
Now, the big hole they have is a consumer desktop machine. They simply choose not to ship the machine even though there is a market for them. They haven't really figured out how to produce a higher margin product with them yet, which is a shame.
Apple likes to sell the all-in-one solution and force users to upgrade their whole machine every few years rather than having them buy bits and pieces every year. A big chunk of their profits are in hardware sales.
This is going to become increasingly difficult for them once everyone upgrades to a modern mac. Most people don't use the full power of their computer anyway and w/ the future going towards web apps all you need is the ability to run a web browser and you're set. No need for a full desktop unless you're a pro user who's editing a ton of HD video or editing multi-megapixel images...