In a nut shell I don't think Apple wants to give up i86 compatibility in any thing it slaps the Mac label on. That doesn't mean that Intel is the only choice either as both AMD and Via offer hardware that could wedge into a Nano. Well Via does, AMDs solution is shrouded right now.
I agree. I just don't think that a "mac nano" will ever exist. It will be called an AppleTV, Timecapsule, Airport Extreme, or whatnot. Possibly there will be one device that can do all three. OS X already runs on the iPhone's ARM, and we can see with our own eyes that even an ARM platform can be quite extensible, with users loading on software. Expect the next wave of Apple devices to use ARM and capitalize on the App Store concept, as well.
Of course you haven't seen anything from PA Semi on the shelves yet. It takes one to two years to get an ARM SoC like the kind Apple will want from project start to 1st silicon. But, PA Semi absolutely will make an impression in the Apple product line, soon. I expect that PA Semi was working on something like this prior to the purchase, so add 1 year to the date of purchase and then start to get curious around that time.
It is not MacMini, and it is not AppleTV. This is AppleConsole: a new combination of game console and Apple TV. Think about it:
1. Apple MUST get into games, it's the fastest growing segment worth $billions.
- There is no clear leader in game consoles. Big Boys PS3 and X-Box get trounced in sales by Wii! Apple can to do a better "iWii" than Nintendo, just like they did a better phone than Nokia/Motorola/RIM.
- iPhone became a huge mini-gaming console success through AppleStore.
2. Apple MUST be a leader in living-room set-top-box media entertainment. That is the ultimate next consumer appliance/application.
- AppleTV is pretty powerful already with link to iTunes for music, film, serials, as well as photos, YouTube, etc.
So what they will introduce at CeBIT (largest consumer show in Europe) is AppleConsole:
- MacMini/AppleTV form-factor, small and neat;
- BlueRay drive (sure, not nice to iTunes store, but necessary for games and non-iTunes movies);
- 5 USB ports to connect various user devices (multi-player fun);
- processor (Atom) and graphics (NVidia) for HDD films/games/music/photos, cost-effective but very capable for the job, on OS X.
- large HDD (rumors were of up to 1TB, sounds too much, but with HDD at 30Gb this will fill quickly, perhaps a 500Gb/1TB options?)
- sold at current AppleTV price $239- (that would be subsidized, but did not Apple say in Q3 earnings call they plan to release a product at low margin? Apple would not release a low-margin product unless they bid on something big. Such as the living room $$$ plus money from iTunes/AppleStore downloads later).
- Are they not looking for a senior web design guy? For the new AppleLive (iLive) perhaps, an extension of AppleStore?
- Have they not invested $b in Apple Retail Stores, completely counter-intuitive to current distribution of PCs, unless you are selling community/experience/feeling, not PCs... living room entertainment.
- rumour of the jaw-dropping new thing, that did not make MacWorld?
And one last thing:
- iPhones as user controls for the games?
- iPhone games play immediately on big screen?
- iPhone nano rumour perhaps the remote control?
Now that would be awesome... but:
- no HDMI interface on the box. Hmm... unless one of those 2 ports will in fact be HDMI. 1 x HDMI and 1 x AppleDisplay makes sense…
Pretty great idea having Apple TV- and -game console-in-one. This could compete PS3 and XBox and Wii.
But Apple TV is not that popular as the Apple CPUs and Notebooks. This should have a heavy marketing strategy. Come to think of it, they have pulled-off the iPhone/iPod touch market, they can do these on their new products as well.
PFFT 300 mil is nothing in the Tech industry. Microsoft spent that in what, a few months of garbage ads?
Seriously though, I agree mostly with the comments on this thread. <falls asleep at desk due to long, long days working>
I know but Apple is notoriously cheap when it comes to acquisitions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by uglyjerk
Pretty great idea having Apple TV- and -game console-in-one. This could compete PS3 and XBox and Wii.
But Apple TV is not that popular as the Apple CPUs and Notebooks. This should have a heavy marketing strategy. Come to think of it, they have pulled-off the iPhone/iPod touch market, they can do these on their new products as well.
Can they make money? Apple doesn't really like the loss leader approach to consoles and gaming plus they don't own any game publishers. Where's the financial play?
I would buy this, I was looking at getting a PS3 and turning it into a crazy home entertainment system, but if a $199 nano appeared on the market, you can bet I'd grab that instead
It is not MacMini, and it is not AppleTV. This is AppleConsole: a new combination of game console and Apple TV. Think about it:
This could see quick adoption if they move to ARM and can run existing Touch games and apps. Otherwise I see big risk in the gaming industry.
Quote:
1. Apple MUST get into games, it's the fastest growing segment worth $billions.
- There is no clear leader in game consoles. Big Boys PS3 and X-Box get trounced in sales by Wii! Apple can to do a better "iWii" than Nintendo, just like they did a better phone than Nokia/Motorola/RIM.
They really don't have to do anything. The problem as mentioned above is the risk. Apple can avoid that risk by taking the focus off games. That is if Games became another AppleTV feature Apple does not put itself in the position of relying on the success of a game machine. This is as much the same as hoe the Touch devices became successful.
Quote:
- iPhone became a huge mini-gaming console success through AppleStore.
Yep and if you could run those same games on an Apple TV you would have a nice head start.
Quote:
2. Apple MUST be a leader in living-room set-top-box media entertainment. That is the ultimate next consumer appliance/application.
That I'm not convinced of at all. It would be nice if they did latch onto this market but success isn't a given.
Quote:
- AppleTV is pretty powerful already with link to iTunes for music, film, serials, as well as photos, YouTube, etc.
So what they will introduce at CeBIT (largest consumer show in Europe) is AppleConsole:
- MacMini/AppleTV form-factor, small and neat;
- BlueRay drive (sure, not nice to iTunes store, but necessary for games and non-iTunes movies);
- 5 USB ports to connect various user devices (multi-player fun);
- processor (Atom) and graphics (NVidia) for HDD films/games/music/photos, cost-effective but very capable for the job, on OS X.
- large HDD (rumors were of up to 1TB, sounds too much, but with HDD at 30Gb this will fill quickly, perhaps a 500Gb/1TB options?)
- sold at current AppleTV price $239- (that would be subsidized, but did not Apple say in Q3 earnings call they plan to release a product at low margin? Apple would not release a low-margin product unless they bid on something big. Such as the living room $$$ plus money from iTunes/AppleStore downloads later).
That is pretty agressive for the price. A couple of things though. 1. Apple TV isn't currently that powerful. 2. I believe they need to leverage iPhone and the game developers already there, thus the use of ARM hardware.
Quote:
- Are they not looking for a senior web design guy? For the new AppleLive (iLive) perhaps, an extension of AppleStore?
- Have they not invested $b in Apple Retail Stores, completely counter-intuitive to current distribution of PCs, unless you are selling community/experience/feeling, not PCs... living room entertainment.
- rumour of the jaw-dropping new thing, that did not make MacWorld?
I've been wondering myself what happened there. Now is " rumor" the right word here, I seem to remember Apple fanning the issue a bit themselves.
Quote:
And one last thing:
- iPhones as user controls for the games?
- iPhone games play immediately on big screen?
- iPhone nano rumour perhaps the remote control?
Now that would be awesome... but:
- no HDMI interface on the box. Hmm... unless one of those 2 ports will in fact be HDMI. 1 x HDMI and 1 x AppleDisplay makes sense?
- It seems Apple has not stand at CeBIT. Hmm...
You seem to have confused pics of a rumored Mini with those of a prototype AppleTV. If Apple goes with an Atom based set top box / Mac / AppleTV / Game box I suspect it will be smaller than the current Mini. I don't see an optical disk drive for one. Like it or not there won't be a lot of ports on the device either. The problem of course is cost, to hit the right price point they will need to limit hardware where they can. At the same time they need to set the part apart from the rest likely via lots of RAM and maybe a higher clock rate. In other words they need to focus on hardware that will set the device apart from XBox and PS3.
That's far enough back that he could very easily contradict it. Steve doesn't look backward. Not even when he should. Point taken, though, my timing was off.
My larger point, however, stands: Apple makes a lot of computers for under $400, and they did last year. None of them, however, are Macs. And that's where his statement doesn't apply to something like an AppleTV or an iPhone-platform tablet.
This could see quick adoption if they move to ARM and can run existing Touch games and apps. Otherwise I see big risk in the gaming industry.
Ditto. If they build on the market they have they might have a chance. But for as much as Tim Cook talks trash about the console industry, Apple is still a bit player there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
That I'm not convinced of at all. It would be nice if they did latch onto this market but success isn't a given.
The biggest obstacle to the constantly hoped-for living room multimedia everything device is the industry that will be providing a lot of the content. No TV or movie producer is ever going to permit their content to run on a machine that can also run, say, Snapz Pro. Big Content likes their devices dumb and locked down, thank you very much. That only makes it more likely that AppleTV will move away from the Mac platform, which makes ARM more likely. In fact, I predict that AppleTV will not truly take off until the jittery studios are satisfied that their content won't be streaming into a machine running Final Cut Pro.
Believe me, the studios are absolutely terrified of their content being viewed on the platform it's created on, because they know how powerful that platform is for manipulating content: That's why they use it. And that's one of the major forces keeping the Mac from being the real center of your digital hub.
Steve Jobs said it himself when he said that they don't know how to make a product under 500 dollars that wasn't crap. They don't ship crap and that's what the Atom processor is.
They used to make a Mac mini for $499.
What the hell happened there?
I would rather buy the Mac mini from last year for $499 than the Mac mini from this year for $599. I almost always think they're not getting it when they up specs and up price, on the consumer lines (iMac, MacBook, Mac mini). The MacBook should be 899 and 999...iMac at lowend 999 or less perhaps. Mac mini 499. Some say 399, I don't know if that's possible but definitely 499. I mean, especially in this economy.
Comments
This is cool and i think this could be cheaper than the Intel Core 2 Duo.
Apple didn't spend $300 million dollars for PA Semi to make better time capsule chips folks....
PFFT 300 mil is nothing in the Tech industry. Microsoft spent that in what, a few months of garbage ads?
Seriously though, I agree mostly with the comments on this thread. <falls asleep at desk due to long, long days working>
In a nut shell I don't think Apple wants to give up i86 compatibility in any thing it slaps the Mac label on. That doesn't mean that Intel is the only choice either as both AMD and Via offer hardware that could wedge into a Nano. Well Via does, AMDs solution is shrouded right now.
I agree. I just don't think that a "mac nano" will ever exist. It will be called an AppleTV, Timecapsule, Airport Extreme, or whatnot. Possibly there will be one device that can do all three. OS X already runs on the iPhone's ARM, and we can see with our own eyes that even an ARM platform can be quite extensible, with users loading on software. Expect the next wave of Apple devices to use ARM and capitalize on the App Store concept, as well.
Of course you haven't seen anything from PA Semi on the shelves yet. It takes one to two years to get an ARM SoC like the kind Apple will want from project start to 1st silicon. But, PA Semi absolutely will make an impression in the Apple product line, soon. I expect that PA Semi was working on something like this prior to the purchase, so add 1 year to the date of purchase and then start to get curious around that time.
1. Apple MUST get into games, it's the fastest growing segment worth $billions.
- There is no clear leader in game consoles. Big Boys PS3 and X-Box get trounced in sales by Wii! Apple can to do a better "iWii" than Nintendo, just like they did a better phone than Nokia/Motorola/RIM.
- iPhone became a huge mini-gaming console success through AppleStore.
2. Apple MUST be a leader in living-room set-top-box media entertainment. That is the ultimate next consumer appliance/application.
- AppleTV is pretty powerful already with link to iTunes for music, film, serials, as well as photos, YouTube, etc.
So what they will introduce at CeBIT (largest consumer show in Europe) is AppleConsole:
- MacMini/AppleTV form-factor, small and neat;
- BlueRay drive (sure, not nice to iTunes store, but necessary for games and non-iTunes movies);
- 5 USB ports to connect various user devices (multi-player fun);
- processor (Atom) and graphics (NVidia) for HDD films/games/music/photos, cost-effective but very capable for the job, on OS X.
- large HDD (rumors were of up to 1TB, sounds too much, but with HDD at 30Gb this will fill quickly, perhaps a 500Gb/1TB options?)
- sold at current AppleTV price $239- (that would be subsidized, but did not Apple say in Q3 earnings call they plan to release a product at low margin? Apple would not release a low-margin product unless they bid on something big. Such as the living room $$$ plus money from iTunes/AppleStore downloads later).
- Are they not looking for a senior web design guy? For the new AppleLive (iLive) perhaps, an extension of AppleStore?
- Have they not invested $b in Apple Retail Stores, completely counter-intuitive to current distribution of PCs, unless you are selling community/experience/feeling, not PCs... living room entertainment.
- rumour of the jaw-dropping new thing, that did not make MacWorld?
And one last thing:
- iPhones as user controls for the games?
- iPhone games play immediately on big screen?
- iPhone nano rumour perhaps the remote control?
Now that would be awesome... but:
- no HDMI interface on the box. Hmm... unless one of those 2 ports will in fact be HDMI. 1 x HDMI and 1 x AppleDisplay makes sense…
- It seems Apple has not stand at CeBIT. Hmm...
But Apple TV is not that popular as the Apple CPUs and Notebooks. This should have a heavy marketing strategy. Come to think of it, they have pulled-off the iPhone/iPod touch market, they can do these on their new products as well.
PFFT 300 mil is nothing in the Tech industry. Microsoft spent that in what, a few months of garbage ads?
Seriously though, I agree mostly with the comments on this thread. <falls asleep at desk due to long, long days working>
I know but Apple is notoriously cheap when it comes to acquisitions.
Pretty great idea having Apple TV- and -game console-in-one. This could compete PS3 and XBox and Wii.
But Apple TV is not that popular as the Apple CPUs and Notebooks. This should have a heavy marketing strategy. Come to think of it, they have pulled-off the iPhone/iPod touch market, they can do these on their new products as well.
Can they make money? Apple doesn't really like the loss leader approach to consoles and gaming plus they don't own any game publishers. Where's the financial play?
It is not MacMini, and it is not AppleTV. This is AppleConsole: a new combination of game console and Apple TV. Think about it:
This could see quick adoption if they move to ARM and can run existing Touch games and apps. Otherwise I see big risk in the gaming industry.
1. Apple MUST get into games, it's the fastest growing segment worth $billions.
- There is no clear leader in game consoles. Big Boys PS3 and X-Box get trounced in sales by Wii! Apple can to do a better "iWii" than Nintendo, just like they did a better phone than Nokia/Motorola/RIM.
They really don't have to do anything. The problem as mentioned above is the risk. Apple can avoid that risk by taking the focus off games. That is if Games became another AppleTV feature Apple does not put itself in the position of relying on the success of a game machine. This is as much the same as hoe the Touch devices became successful.
- iPhone became a huge mini-gaming console success through AppleStore.
Yep and if you could run those same games on an Apple TV you would have a nice head start.
2. Apple MUST be a leader in living-room set-top-box media entertainment. That is the ultimate next consumer appliance/application.
That I'm not convinced of at all. It would be nice if they did latch onto this market but success isn't a given.
- AppleTV is pretty powerful already with link to iTunes for music, film, serials, as well as photos, YouTube, etc.
So what they will introduce at CeBIT (largest consumer show in Europe) is AppleConsole:
- MacMini/AppleTV form-factor, small and neat;
- BlueRay drive (sure, not nice to iTunes store, but necessary for games and non-iTunes movies);
- 5 USB ports to connect various user devices (multi-player fun);
- processor (Atom) and graphics (NVidia) for HDD films/games/music/photos, cost-effective but very capable for the job, on OS X.
- large HDD (rumors were of up to 1TB, sounds too much, but with HDD at 30Gb this will fill quickly, perhaps a 500Gb/1TB options?)
- sold at current AppleTV price $239- (that would be subsidized, but did not Apple say in Q3 earnings call they plan to release a product at low margin? Apple would not release a low-margin product unless they bid on something big. Such as the living room $$$ plus money from iTunes/AppleStore downloads later).
That is pretty agressive for the price. A couple of things though. 1. Apple TV isn't currently that powerful. 2. I believe they need to leverage iPhone and the game developers already there, thus the use of ARM hardware.
- Are they not looking for a senior web design guy? For the new AppleLive (iLive) perhaps, an extension of AppleStore?
- Have they not invested $b in Apple Retail Stores, completely counter-intuitive to current distribution of PCs, unless you are selling community/experience/feeling, not PCs... living room entertainment.
- rumour of the jaw-dropping new thing, that did not make MacWorld?
I've been wondering myself what happened there. Now is " rumor" the right word here, I seem to remember Apple fanning the issue a bit themselves.
And one last thing:
- iPhones as user controls for the games?
- iPhone games play immediately on big screen?
- iPhone nano rumour perhaps the remote control?
Now that would be awesome... but:
- no HDMI interface on the box. Hmm... unless one of those 2 ports will in fact be HDMI. 1 x HDMI and 1 x AppleDisplay makes sense?
- It seems Apple has not stand at CeBIT. Hmm...
You seem to have confused pics of a rumored Mini with those of a prototype AppleTV. If Apple goes with an Atom based set top box / Mac / AppleTV / Game box I suspect it will be smaller than the current Mini. I don't see an optical disk drive for one. Like it or not there won't be a lot of ports on the device either. The problem of course is cost, to hit the right price point they will need to limit hardware where they can. At the same time they need to set the part apart from the rest likely via lots of RAM and maybe a higher clock rate. In other words they need to focus on hardware that will set the device apart from XBox and PS3.
Dave
He said that last year.
That's far enough back that he could very easily contradict it. Steve doesn't look backward. Not even when he should. Point taken, though, my timing was off.
My larger point, however, stands: Apple makes a lot of computers for under $400, and they did last year. None of them, however, are Macs. And that's where his statement doesn't apply to something like an AppleTV or an iPhone-platform tablet.
This could see quick adoption if they move to ARM and can run existing Touch games and apps. Otherwise I see big risk in the gaming industry.
Ditto. If they build on the market they have they might have a chance. But for as much as Tim Cook talks trash about the console industry, Apple is still a bit player there.
That I'm not convinced of at all. It would be nice if they did latch onto this market but success isn't a given.
The biggest obstacle to the constantly hoped-for living room multimedia everything device is the industry that will be providing a lot of the content. No TV or movie producer is ever going to permit their content to run on a machine that can also run, say, Snapz Pro. Big Content likes their devices dumb and locked down, thank you very much. That only makes it more likely that AppleTV will move away from the Mac platform, which makes ARM more likely. In fact, I predict that AppleTV will not truly take off until the jittery studios are satisfied that their content won't be streaming into a machine running Final Cut Pro.
Believe me, the studios are absolutely terrified of their content being viewed on the platform it's created on, because they know how powerful that platform is for manipulating content: That's why they use it. And that's one of the major forces keeping the Mac from being the real center of your digital hub.
Steve Jobs said it himself when he said that they don't know how to make a product under 500 dollars that wasn't crap. They don't ship crap and that's what the Atom processor is.
They used to make a Mac mini for $499.
What the hell happened there?
I would rather buy the Mac mini from last year for $499 than the Mac mini from this year for $599. I almost always think they're not getting it when they up specs and up price, on the consumer lines (iMac, MacBook, Mac mini). The MacBook should be 899 and 999...iMac at lowend 999 or less perhaps. Mac mini 499. Some say 399, I don't know if that's possible but definitely 499. I mean, especially in this economy.