That is the basis for my argument. It is not obvious it won't be OLED. I'm using the net to research the current up to the minute state of OLED technology. And currently there already exists methods of manufacture and material choices that would make flexible OLED displays very cheap in comparison to 1st gen OLED manufacturing and regular LCD manufacturing for that matter.
I think it is ready to debut to the mass public if Apple makes a push for it. But if it doesn't happen this year then it will be VERY soon. I'm just afraid with the tremendous pressure Apple is placing on the competition (the entire consumer tech sector) that Apple's competition will come out with a flexible product before Apple does.
Perhaps, just perhaps the product will be a slate but will also use an OLED screen.....albeit not of the flexible kind.
I'm telling you, if Apple comes out with a thin, very nice tablet (which I'm sure will sell) but uses regular LCD tech they are going to make themselves vulnerable to attack from another company that wants to make a splash on the market.
Look at Palm for instance.
Their backs are against the wall so they are pulling out all the stops on their next gen mobile OS and handset. It is basically a better iphone type of interface but uses full on hardcore multi-tasking. No "push" crap in site.
Alright, I admit that is not much of an example. But I'm just trying to impress upon you all the tremendous pressure Apple is placing on the market to either innovate or die. And if Apple even for one moment under estimates the competition or over estimate themselves then they are going to find themselves in trouble!
1-- I think you're overstating the competitive pressures on the iPhone. It's not at all clear the the Pre, for instance, is gong to make much of a splash in the market at all, much less put Apple in the position of needing to "innovate or die." And, to the extent that Apple does need to keep improving the iPhone to keep it competitive, I think that's going to come in the form of improved software riding on the coattails of incrementally improved hardware. Faster CPU, more memory, higher res screen, higher res camera, maybe a few other bells and whistles.
2--As far as a slate or tablet or whatever goes, it's not like Apple's competitors are making much headway there. Why does Apple have to do something radical and expensive with their hardware to compete in a market that barely exists?
3-- The Pre, specifically, does not have "full on hardcore multitasking." It has the WebOS, which trades a multitasking like environment for constrained app development. We'll see if that was a wise choice, but I'm astonished at how quickly "multitasking" has been taken up as the go-to code phrase for "iPhone falling behind." I realize "cut and paste" and "MMS" have been mooted, but it does seem a little silly that a lot of people that never gave two thoughts about "multitasking" on a phone have decided that it's this year's must have buzz word compliancy.
4-- I don't know what part of the internet you're looking at, but I really can't agree that flexible displays are poised to take off, awaiting only a company bold enough to make the move. Do you have any links, beyond proof of concept demos? Because being able to show something working at a trade show is quite a bit different from "ready to be incorporated into mass market, competitively priced products." If that's all it took, we'd all be watching our quarter of an inch thick, 52" OLED displays by now.
1-- I think you're overstating the competitive pressures on the iPhone. It's not at all clear the the Pre, for instance, is gong to make much of a splash in the market at all, much less put Apple in the position of needing to "innovate or die." And, to the extent that Apple does need to keep improving the iPhone to keep it competitive, I think that's going to come in the form of improved software riding on the coattails of incrementally improved hardware. Faster CPU, more memory, higher res screen, higher res camera, maybe a few other bells and whistles.
2--As far as a slate or tablet or whatever goes, it's not like Apple's competitors are making much headway there. Why does Apple have to do something radical and expensive with their hardware to compete in a market that barely exists?
3-- The Pre, specifically, does not have "full on hardcore multitasking." It has the WebOS, which trades a multitasking like environment for constrained app development. We'll see if that was a wise choice, but I'm astonished at how quickly "multitasking" has been taken up as the go-to code phrase for "iPhone falling behind." I realize "cut and paste" and "MMS" have been mooted, but it does seem a little silly that a lot of people that never gave two thoughts about "multitasking" on a phone have decided that it's this year's must have buzz word compliancy.
4-- I don't know what part of the internet you're looking at, but I really can't agree that flexible displays are poised to take off, awaiting only a company bold enough to make the move. Do you have any links, beyond proof of concept demos? Because being able to show something working at a trade show is quite a bit different from "ready to be incorporated into mass market, competitively priced products." If that's all it took, we'd all be watching our quarter of an inch thick, 52" OLED displays by now.
I said the pressure is on other companies to either innovate or die. The competition's move is to take the game to a different level making whatever platform Apple has irrelevant. Otherwise every time they incrementally do something better than Apple it wouldn't take much doing on Apple's part to catch up or exceed what anybody else is doing.
Watch for some company to do something radical either this year or next.
I said the pressure is on other companies to either innovate or die. The competition's move is to take the game to a different level making whatever platform Apple has irrelevant. Otherwise every time they incrementally do something better than Apple it wouldn't take much doing on Apple's part to catch up or exceed what anybody else is doing.
Sorry, I misunderstood you.
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Watch for some company to do something radical either this year or next.
Can you name me a time that a consumer electronics company leap-frogged the competition by deploying next-gen tech before anybody else was ready?
Two of the most disruptive CE products of the last 10 years, the iPhone and iPod, were a matter of clever packaging and software, not out-of-nowhere componentry.
Maybe I'm not thinking hard enough, but I honestly can't think of a single instance where a CE product was introduced with sufficiently advanced, cutting edge tech to leave the competition flat footed. Possibly because, almost by definition, such tech is expensive. So although you might be able to build something, it will likely be in the category of "cool, but way too pricey to affect the general market." For instance, Sony has their XEL-1 OLED TV, but at $2500 for an 11" monitor it's not shaking up the flat screen industry, or causing Sony's competitors to lose any sleep.
Whereas by the time such tech is mainstream enough to be priced at mass market levels, it is available to one and all.
The only way around this is to make some kind of fundamental breakthrough in-house, and in the modern world of consumer electronics, where products are assembled from dozens if not hundreds of established, specialized fabrication companies, that just doesn't happen.
Can you name me a time that a consumer electronics company leap-frogged the competition by deploying next-gen tech before anybody else was ready?
Umm hello........Apple in 2007? LOL
But yes I know....its not exactly what you are talking about here. Even so, I stand by what I say. The competition will be pushed into doing something radical either this year or next. And since all software and packaging is mostly similar at the moment between competitors the next move will be in the components themselves.
But yes I know....its not exactly what you are talking about here. Even so, I stand by what I say. The competition will be pushed into doing something radical either this year or next. And since all software and packaging is mostly similar at the moment between competitors the next move will be in the components themselves.
And I suspect that the strategic advances will all happen in software, but I guess we'll see.
1-- I think you're overstating the competitive pressures on the iPhone. It's not at all clear the the Pre, for instance, is gong to make much of a splash in the market at all, much less put Apple in the position of needing to "innovate or die."
I think you are a bit out of touch with how fast the industry is changing. Samsung gas stated that they expect to gave 50% of all their cell phones on OLED real soon now. That would be like 500 million a year.
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And, to the extent that Apple does need to keep improving the iPhone to keep it competitive, I think that's going to come in the form of improved software riding on the coattails of incrementally improved hardware. Faster CPU, more memory, higher res screen, higher res camera, maybe a few other bells and whistles.
What you fail to realize is that OLEDs are part of the incremental improvement process. OLEDs are more than bells and whistles as they would improve the iPhone in multiple ways.
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2--As far as a slate or tablet or whatever goes, it's not like Apple's competitors are making much headway there. Why does Apple have to do something radical and expensive with their hardware to compete in a market that barely exists?
Because it wouldn't take much on a manufactures part to come up with the right competitive feature mix.
Before the iPhone 3G came out I was looking at alternative pocketable devices and as such the Nokia N810 device. A great concept device that the manufacture just missed the boat on. If they where to respin the N810 into something more compelling people would take notice. An OLED screen and a hell of a lot more Flash would make for a very different device.
The point is there are devices already on the market that could compete aggressively with Apple hardware if the manufactures just had the right vision.
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3-- The Pre, specifically, does not have "full on hardcore multitasking." It has the WebOS, which trades a multitasking like environment for constrained app development. We'll see if that was a wise choice, but I'm astonished at how quickly "multitasking" has been taken up as the go-to code phrase for "iPhone falling behind."
Have you ever considered that there might be a lot of demand out there for multitasking because it can be leveraged positively? Further do you realize that many phones have supported multitasking for years now? Frankly the lack of facilities for user multitasking is one of the biggest blunders Apple has made on iPhone. Mainly because it eliminates solutions to problems that that can't be solved with push tech.
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I realize "cut and paste" and "MMS" have been mooted, but it does seem a little silly that a lot of people that never gave two thoughts about "multitasking" on a phone have decided that it's this year's must have buzz word compliancy.
That is simply BS as many of us where concerned from the release of the first SDK beta.
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4-- I don't know what part of the internet you're looking at, but I really can't agree that flexible displays are poised to take off, awaiting only a company bold enough to make the move. Do you have any links, beyond proof of concept demos?
Clearly you either don't know how to use the Internet or are just being combatitive for it's own sake. I mean really if you can't find links to info demonstrating the ramp in the usage of OLED then you aren't looking very hard. I don't mean to be unkind but the info is out there.
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Because being able to show something working at a trade show is quite a bit different from "ready to be incorporated into mass market, competitively priced products." If that's all it took, we'd all be watching our quarter of an inch thick, 52" OLED displays by now.
Clearly we are at a point where the industry is in transition and the smaller screens are leading the way. There is no big surprise there. As to those large TV sized screens they are expected this year as both Sony and CMEL have projected deliveries of large panels for this year.
Those large screens however are not important for the devices we are talking about. Frankly what is important here is the ramp in production line tech to allow for lower costs. If you believe that the 300 million investment Apple made in LG has anything to do with small OLED screens then you can see that Apple is agressively trying to get things on track for rationally priced hardware. It is the production process that makes OLEDs expensive but it is also something that can be engineered out of the process.
And I suspect that the strategic advances will all happen in software, but I guess we'll see.
Well it won't happen with iPhone OS 3.0 as we have seen what that will be already. Apple might have something up it's sleeves but for some reason I doubt this with respect to iPhone OS.
In anyevent I really think we are at a point where you really can't have one without the other. You simply won't have dramatically more powerful or innovative software on these devices without improved hardware.
Since I'm expecting larger more powerful tablets I likewise would expect more software innovation. As much as I like my 3G I'd be the first to admit to it's hardware limitations. Software can no more advance around the current iPhone than it did on the old 286 computers of yesterday.
I think you are a bit out of touch with how fast the industry is changing. Samsung gas stated that they expect to gave 50% of all their cell phones on OLED real soon now. That would be like 500 million a year.
How many of those will be 3.5" or larger touch screens?
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What you fail to realize is that OLEDs are part of the incremental improvement process. OLEDs are more than bells and whistles as they would improve the iPhone in multiple ways.
Um, I'm not arguing against the efficacy of OLED or its likely adoption in the future. I was making a specific argument regarding the likelihood of Apple including a 3.5" OLED touch screen in the next iteration of the iPhone. Not even ruling it out, just thinking out loud about the cost/benefit thing.
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Because it wouldn't take much on a manufactures part to come up with the right competitive feature mix.
That's easy enough to say, why haven't they done it?
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Before the iPhone 3G came out I was looking at alternative pocketable devices and as such the Nokia N810 device. A great concept device that the manufacture just missed the boat on. If they where to respin the N810 into something more compelling people would take notice. An OLED screen and a hell of a lot more Flash would make for a very different device.
The point is there are devices already on the market that could compete aggressively with Apple hardware if the manufactures just had the right vision.
This reminds me of the argument that Apple didn't really do anything that special with the iPhone because the design was sort of obvious and the other manufacturers were poised to do something similar, real soon now.
Except they didn't, Apple did, and the cell phone business looks very different than it did two years ago.
I'm sure if Apple does bring out a slate/tablet, and it's successful, other manufactures will immediately begin to adopt some of its conventions, and we'll be told that Apple just got lucky with their timing, or just repackaged parts until they were "pretty", or some variant.
It remains a fact, however, that the so-called "tablet" market hasn't gone anywhere, even while many people claimed that Apple "had to" have a response or be doomed to watch the Next Big Thing from the sidelines. Apple tends not to enter markets until they think they can do something interesting and different, so we'll see. I honestly don't have much faith in the PC industry's ability to innovate at any basic level, at this point, or to figure out how to make any product desirable beyond cutting the price or adding "features", so I doubt Apple has much to fear from a rival device that rethinks any of the basic assumptions that have driven the lackluster tablet market up till now.
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Have you ever considered that there might be a lot of demand out there for multitasking because it can be leveraged positively? Further do you realize that many phones have supported multitasking for years now? Frankly the lack of facilities for user multitasking is one of the biggest blunders Apple has made on iPhone. Mainly because it eliminates solutions to problems that that can't be solved with push tech.
And yet those very powerful phones never made any dent at all in the consumer market. Apple wanted to make a mass market device that they could sell to the "just a phone" crowd. Multi-tasking and process managers and inexplicable slow downs and asking the user to hunt down and kill misbehaving apps were never going to be part of that equation.
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That is simply BS as many of us where concerned from the release of the first SDK beta.
So? I was making an observation about the frequency with which certain "missing features" get trotted out in every discussion of why the iPhone is inferior to "the phone I've been using for years." Undeniably, after leaning heavily on cut and paste and MMS (and, to a lesser extent, video recording), certain folks have moved on to "multitasking", whether they have any idea of what that entails or not.
Apple made some very specific design trade-offs on the iPhone, valuing battery life, simplicity and user friendliness over the demands of "power users", because the market they were going for didn't give a shit about "multitasking", as long as the iPhone seemed to do what they wanted it to do with a minimum of trouble. Its enormous success would seem to suggest that Apple made the right call.
People behave as if Apple withheld multitasking out of perversity or laziness. That's just silly.
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Clearly you either don't know how to use the Internet or are just being combatitive for it's own sake. I mean really if you can't find links to info demonstrating the ramp in the usage of OLED then you aren't looking very hard. I don't mean to be unkind but the info is out there.
And clearly you cannot read, since I was referring to transparent and/or flexible OLED screens. I don't mean to be unkind, but you're being needlessly contentious and not really paying attention.
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Clearly we are at a point where the industry is in transition and the smaller screens are leading the way. There is no big surprise there. As to those large TV sized screens they are expected this year as both Sony and CMEL have projected deliveries of large panels for this year.
Those large screens however are not important for the devices we are talking about. Frankly what is important here is the ramp in production line tech to allow for lower costs. If you believe that the 300 million investment Apple made in LG has anything to do with small OLED screens then you can see that Apple is agressively trying to get things on track for rationally priced hardware. It is the production process that makes OLEDs expensive but it is also something that can be engineered out of the process.
Dave
And yet, I don't disagree with any of that, and if you'll try to read what I actually wrote you can see that I wasn't saying that OLED isn't happening, or won't happen, or isn't cool, or whatever it is you think you're objecting to.
I was, again, very specifically considering the likelihood that Apple would use a 3.5" OLED screen on the upcoming iPhone (which I consider possible but unlikely), and whether or not a mythical tablet thing from Apple would use OLED, or flexible OLED or transparent OLED screens, which I consider to be out of the question.
Well it won't happen with iPhone OS 3.0 as we have seen what that will be already. Apple might have something up it's sleeves but for some reason I doubt this with respect to iPhone OS.
In anyevent I really think we are at a point where you really can't have one without the other. You simply won't have dramatically more powerful or innovative software on these devices without improved hardware.
Since I'm expecting larger more powerful tablets I likewise would expect more software innovation. As much as I like my 3G I'd be the first to admit to it's hardware limitations. Software can no more advance around the current iPhone than it did on the old 286 computers of yesterday.
Dave
Huh. Because I think what we've seen of the iPhone 3.0 OS offers all kinds of advancements, not the least of which is developer access to the dock connector.
And, of course, there will be incremental hardware improvements that will make it all run better.
I mean, what's the idea here? That Apple has to completely rethink the iPhone with every major release, or get left behind? Because the problem with that is that it fucks up the software and peripheral ecosystem, which is, you know, bad.
I've always contended that Apple has gone slow on some of the things that people have been screaming for because they wanted to get the underpinnings right, from the get go. Which has allowed them to do what they are, in fact, doing: steadily improve the platform in an organized, coherent way.
The "cellphone market" got used to the OMFG Next Big Thing thinking, in which today's "it" phone was rapidly eclipsed by the new shiny. What that entailed was just bolting on "features" and "style", without much worry about usability or functionality.
The iPhone is a platform. Platforms don't come and go, or get radically reworked, like swatch watches. They get built out, a bit at a time. Just because the rest of the "cellphone industry" thinks a constant barrage of "new" UIs counts for "innovation" doesn't mean Apple has to play that game. So far, they seem to be doing pretty well with their plan, don't you think?
I think something big is indeed coming soon. While I'm not sure they would go with OLED screens for regular macbooks this soon. I do expect them to be implementing OLED tech in their iphones, ipod touches, and their new iTablet/mystery device.
Tick tock. Time is growing shorter. The MacTouch approaches!
I can almost feel the naysayers trembling and will soon be in awe and utter astonishment.
Here is another clue to what is possibly happening behind the scenes.
You all remember a couple pages ago the post I made concerning OLPC's XO-2 prototype hmm?
Well some guy from Pixel Qi will soon introduce to the marketplace a screen which is a combination of an e-ink screen and a high resolution color lcd screen. A screen which is 10" by the way. Something like that should make you point to your chin and say "hmmmmmmmm". http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/23/o...creen-will-de/
It didn't occur to me of the possibility of taking an LCD screen and combining it with other types of screen technology. Fascinating wouldn't you agree?
Here is another clue to what is possibly happening behind the scenes.
You all remember a couple pages ago the post I made concerning OLPC's XO-2 prototype hmm?
Well some guy from Pixel Qi will soon introduce to the marketplace a screen which is a combination of an e-ink screen and a high resolution color lcd screen. A screen which is 10" by the way. Something like that should make you point to your chin and say "hmmmmmmmm". http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/23/o...creen-will-de/
It didn't occur to me of the possibility of taking an LCD screen and combining it with other types of screen technology. Fascinating wouldn't you agree?
June approaches.
I dunno, man. Vaporware from the famously late to market, costs way more than we figured, pretty much got our asses handed to us by plain old netbooks OLPC people?
If you're rooting for OLED, I'd stick with crossing my fingers that Apple puts one in the iPhone/Touch this summer, rather than fishing around for exotic new product teases.
If exotic new product teases were the measure of what we were to see in soon to be shipping products, we'd all live on the moon in zero gravity bubbles by now.
I dunno, man. Vaporware from the famously late to market, costs way more than we figured, pretty much got our asses handed to us by plain old netbooks OLPC people?
If you're rooting for OLED, I'd stick with crossing my fingers that Apple puts one in the iPhone/Touch this summer, rather than fishing around for exotic new product teases.
If exotic new product teases were the measure of what we were to see in soon to be shipping products, we'd all live on the moon in zero gravity bubbles by now.
It doesn't have to be from them. Its just interesting to note what is currently possible. And perhaps their technique is a similar solution to what ...other...companies are already thinking about doing or implementing.
I think something big is indeed coming soon. While I'm not sure they would go with OLED screens for regular macbooks this soon. I do expect them to be implementing OLED tech in their iphones, ipod touches, and their new iTablet/mystery device.
There's two types of OLED panels being mixed up.
Smaller ones, 3" or 3 1/2" panels, are gearing up nicely and are currently used in quite a few mobile phones and PMPs already. Even the next Zune is rumored to have it. It's a no-brainer that Apple will use an OLED soon in either all iPod touch and iPhone models or at least a new high-end iPhone.
However, 8"+ sized OLED panels are still rather elusive.
LG itself said about their 15" OLED panel that it will be more than twice expensive as a LED backlit panel of similar size.
So I really don't see this panel go into the new rumored Mactouch. Unless we're talking about a $1,000+ device.
(Although if it is really an inspiring new device, I could see it being more expensive than the cheapest MacBook, going as high as $ 1,299. Even though this will make a lot of people unhappy...)
However, what IMHO is most likely is a new high-end MacBookAir using said 15" OLED screen.
For a $2,000+ device which wants to be light and thin it totally makes sense to offer an OLED display.
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That is the basis for my argument. It is not obvious it won't be OLED. I'm using the net to research the current up to the minute state of OLED technology. And currently there already exists methods of manufacture and material choices that would make flexible OLED displays very cheap in comparison to 1st gen OLED manufacturing and regular LCD manufacturing for that matter.
I think it is ready to debut to the mass public if Apple makes a push for it. But if it doesn't happen this year then it will be VERY soon. I'm just afraid with the tremendous pressure Apple is placing on the competition (the entire consumer tech sector) that Apple's competition will come out with a flexible product before Apple does.
Perhaps, just perhaps the product will be a slate but will also use an OLED screen.....albeit not of the flexible kind.
I'm telling you, if Apple comes out with a thin, very nice tablet (which I'm sure will sell) but uses regular LCD tech they are going to make themselves vulnerable to attack from another company that wants to make a splash on the market.
Look at Palm for instance.
Their backs are against the wall so they are pulling out all the stops on their next gen mobile OS and handset. It is basically a better iphone type of interface but uses full on hardcore multi-tasking. No "push" crap in site.
Alright, I admit that is not much of an example. But I'm just trying to impress upon you all the tremendous pressure Apple is placing on the market to either innovate or die. And if Apple even for one moment under estimates the competition or over estimate themselves then they are going to find themselves in trouble!
1-- I think you're overstating the competitive pressures on the iPhone. It's not at all clear the the Pre, for instance, is gong to make much of a splash in the market at all, much less put Apple in the position of needing to "innovate or die." And, to the extent that Apple does need to keep improving the iPhone to keep it competitive, I think that's going to come in the form of improved software riding on the coattails of incrementally improved hardware. Faster CPU, more memory, higher res screen, higher res camera, maybe a few other bells and whistles.
2--As far as a slate or tablet or whatever goes, it's not like Apple's competitors are making much headway there. Why does Apple have to do something radical and expensive with their hardware to compete in a market that barely exists?
3-- The Pre, specifically, does not have "full on hardcore multitasking." It has the WebOS, which trades a multitasking like environment for constrained app development. We'll see if that was a wise choice, but I'm astonished at how quickly "multitasking" has been taken up as the go-to code phrase for "iPhone falling behind." I realize "cut and paste" and "MMS" have been mooted, but it does seem a little silly that a lot of people that never gave two thoughts about "multitasking" on a phone have decided that it's this year's must have buzz word compliancy.
4-- I don't know what part of the internet you're looking at, but I really can't agree that flexible displays are poised to take off, awaiting only a company bold enough to make the move. Do you have any links, beyond proof of concept demos? Because being able to show something working at a trade show is quite a bit different from "ready to be incorporated into mass market, competitively priced products." If that's all it took, we'd all be watching our quarter of an inch thick, 52" OLED displays by now.
1-- I think you're overstating the competitive pressures on the iPhone. It's not at all clear the the Pre, for instance, is gong to make much of a splash in the market at all, much less put Apple in the position of needing to "innovate or die." And, to the extent that Apple does need to keep improving the iPhone to keep it competitive, I think that's going to come in the form of improved software riding on the coattails of incrementally improved hardware. Faster CPU, more memory, higher res screen, higher res camera, maybe a few other bells and whistles.
2--As far as a slate or tablet or whatever goes, it's not like Apple's competitors are making much headway there. Why does Apple have to do something radical and expensive with their hardware to compete in a market that barely exists?
3-- The Pre, specifically, does not have "full on hardcore multitasking." It has the WebOS, which trades a multitasking like environment for constrained app development. We'll see if that was a wise choice, but I'm astonished at how quickly "multitasking" has been taken up as the go-to code phrase for "iPhone falling behind." I realize "cut and paste" and "MMS" have been mooted, but it does seem a little silly that a lot of people that never gave two thoughts about "multitasking" on a phone have decided that it's this year's must have buzz word compliancy.
4-- I don't know what part of the internet you're looking at, but I really can't agree that flexible displays are poised to take off, awaiting only a company bold enough to make the move. Do you have any links, beyond proof of concept demos? Because being able to show something working at a trade show is quite a bit different from "ready to be incorporated into mass market, competitively priced products." If that's all it took, we'd all be watching our quarter of an inch thick, 52" OLED displays by now.
I said the pressure is on other companies to either innovate or die. The competition's move is to take the game to a different level making whatever platform Apple has irrelevant. Otherwise every time they incrementally do something better than Apple it wouldn't take much doing on Apple's part to catch up or exceed what anybody else is doing.
Watch for some company to do something radical either this year or next.
I said the pressure is on other companies to either innovate or die. The competition's move is to take the game to a different level making whatever platform Apple has irrelevant. Otherwise every time they incrementally do something better than Apple it wouldn't take much doing on Apple's part to catch up or exceed what anybody else is doing.
Sorry, I misunderstood you.
Watch for some company to do something radical either this year or next.
Can you name me a time that a consumer electronics company leap-frogged the competition by deploying next-gen tech before anybody else was ready?
Two of the most disruptive CE products of the last 10 years, the iPhone and iPod, were a matter of clever packaging and software, not out-of-nowhere componentry.
Maybe I'm not thinking hard enough, but I honestly can't think of a single instance where a CE product was introduced with sufficiently advanced, cutting edge tech to leave the competition flat footed. Possibly because, almost by definition, such tech is expensive. So although you might be able to build something, it will likely be in the category of "cool, but way too pricey to affect the general market." For instance, Sony has their XEL-1 OLED TV, but at $2500 for an 11" monitor it's not shaking up the flat screen industry, or causing Sony's competitors to lose any sleep.
Whereas by the time such tech is mainstream enough to be priced at mass market levels, it is available to one and all.
The only way around this is to make some kind of fundamental breakthrough in-house, and in the modern world of consumer electronics, where products are assembled from dozens if not hundreds of established, specialized fabrication companies, that just doesn't happen.
Sorry, I misunderstood you.
Can you name me a time that a consumer electronics company leap-frogged the competition by deploying next-gen tech before anybody else was ready?
Umm hello........Apple in 2007? LOL
But yes I know....its not exactly what you are talking about here. Even so, I stand by what I say. The competition will be pushed into doing something radical either this year or next. And since all software and packaging is mostly similar at the moment between competitors the next move will be in the components themselves.
Umm hello........Apple in 2007? LOL
But yes I know....its not exactly what you are talking about here. Even so, I stand by what I say. The competition will be pushed into doing something radical either this year or next. And since all software and packaging is mostly similar at the moment between competitors the next move will be in the components themselves.
And I suspect that the strategic advances will all happen in software, but I guess we'll see.
1-- I think you're overstating the competitive pressures on the iPhone. It's not at all clear the the Pre, for instance, is gong to make much of a splash in the market at all, much less put Apple in the position of needing to "innovate or die."
I think you are a bit out of touch with how fast the industry is changing. Samsung gas stated that they expect to gave 50% of all their cell phones on OLED real soon now. That would be like 500 million a year.
And, to the extent that Apple does need to keep improving the iPhone to keep it competitive, I think that's going to come in the form of improved software riding on the coattails of incrementally improved hardware. Faster CPU, more memory, higher res screen, higher res camera, maybe a few other bells and whistles.
What you fail to realize is that OLEDs are part of the incremental improvement process. OLEDs are more than bells and whistles as they would improve the iPhone in multiple ways.
2--As far as a slate or tablet or whatever goes, it's not like Apple's competitors are making much headway there. Why does Apple have to do something radical and expensive with their hardware to compete in a market that barely exists?
Because it wouldn't take much on a manufactures part to come up with the right competitive feature mix.
Before the iPhone 3G came out I was looking at alternative pocketable devices and as such the Nokia N810 device. A great concept device that the manufacture just missed the boat on. If they where to respin the N810 into something more compelling people would take notice. An OLED screen and a hell of a lot more Flash would make for a very different device.
The point is there are devices already on the market that could compete aggressively with Apple hardware if the manufactures just had the right vision.
3-- The Pre, specifically, does not have "full on hardcore multitasking." It has the WebOS, which trades a multitasking like environment for constrained app development. We'll see if that was a wise choice, but I'm astonished at how quickly "multitasking" has been taken up as the go-to code phrase for "iPhone falling behind."
Have you ever considered that there might be a lot of demand out there for multitasking because it can be leveraged positively? Further do you realize that many phones have supported multitasking for years now? Frankly the lack of facilities for user multitasking is one of the biggest blunders Apple has made on iPhone. Mainly because it eliminates solutions to problems that that can't be solved with push tech.
I realize "cut and paste" and "MMS" have been mooted, but it does seem a little silly that a lot of people that never gave two thoughts about "multitasking" on a phone have decided that it's this year's must have buzz word compliancy.
That is simply BS as many of us where concerned from the release of the first SDK beta.
4-- I don't know what part of the internet you're looking at, but I really can't agree that flexible displays are poised to take off, awaiting only a company bold enough to make the move. Do you have any links, beyond proof of concept demos?
Clearly you either don't know how to use the Internet or are just being combatitive for it's own sake. I mean really if you can't find links to info demonstrating the ramp in the usage of OLED then you aren't looking very hard. I don't mean to be unkind but the info is out there.
Because being able to show something working at a trade show is quite a bit different from "ready to be incorporated into mass market, competitively priced products." If that's all it took, we'd all be watching our quarter of an inch thick, 52" OLED displays by now.
Clearly we are at a point where the industry is in transition and the smaller screens are leading the way. There is no big surprise there. As to those large TV sized screens they are expected this year as both Sony and CMEL have projected deliveries of large panels for this year.
Those large screens however are not important for the devices we are talking about. Frankly what is important here is the ramp in production line tech to allow for lower costs. If you believe that the 300 million investment Apple made in LG has anything to do with small OLED screens then you can see that Apple is agressively trying to get things on track for rationally priced hardware. It is the production process that makes OLEDs expensive but it is also something that can be engineered out of the process.
Dave
And I suspect that the strategic advances will all happen in software, but I guess we'll see.
Well it won't happen with iPhone OS 3.0 as we have seen what that will be already. Apple might have something up it's sleeves but for some reason I doubt this with respect to iPhone OS.
In anyevent I really think we are at a point where you really can't have one without the other. You simply won't have dramatically more powerful or innovative software on these devices without improved hardware.
Since I'm expecting larger more powerful tablets I likewise would expect more software innovation. As much as I like my 3G I'd be the first to admit to it's hardware limitations. Software can no more advance around the current iPhone than it did on the old 286 computers of yesterday.
Dave
I think you are a bit out of touch with how fast the industry is changing. Samsung gas stated that they expect to gave 50% of all their cell phones on OLED real soon now. That would be like 500 million a year.
How many of those will be 3.5" or larger touch screens?
What you fail to realize is that OLEDs are part of the incremental improvement process. OLEDs are more than bells and whistles as they would improve the iPhone in multiple ways.
Um, I'm not arguing against the efficacy of OLED or its likely adoption in the future. I was making a specific argument regarding the likelihood of Apple including a 3.5" OLED touch screen in the next iteration of the iPhone. Not even ruling it out, just thinking out loud about the cost/benefit thing.
Because it wouldn't take much on a manufactures part to come up with the right competitive feature mix.
That's easy enough to say, why haven't they done it?
Before the iPhone 3G came out I was looking at alternative pocketable devices and as such the Nokia N810 device. A great concept device that the manufacture just missed the boat on. If they where to respin the N810 into something more compelling people would take notice. An OLED screen and a hell of a lot more Flash would make for a very different device.
The point is there are devices already on the market that could compete aggressively with Apple hardware if the manufactures just had the right vision.
This reminds me of the argument that Apple didn't really do anything that special with the iPhone because the design was sort of obvious and the other manufacturers were poised to do something similar, real soon now.
Except they didn't, Apple did, and the cell phone business looks very different than it did two years ago.
I'm sure if Apple does bring out a slate/tablet, and it's successful, other manufactures will immediately begin to adopt some of its conventions, and we'll be told that Apple just got lucky with their timing, or just repackaged parts until they were "pretty", or some variant.
It remains a fact, however, that the so-called "tablet" market hasn't gone anywhere, even while many people claimed that Apple "had to" have a response or be doomed to watch the Next Big Thing from the sidelines. Apple tends not to enter markets until they think they can do something interesting and different, so we'll see. I honestly don't have much faith in the PC industry's ability to innovate at any basic level, at this point, or to figure out how to make any product desirable beyond cutting the price or adding "features", so I doubt Apple has much to fear from a rival device that rethinks any of the basic assumptions that have driven the lackluster tablet market up till now.
Have you ever considered that there might be a lot of demand out there for multitasking because it can be leveraged positively? Further do you realize that many phones have supported multitasking for years now? Frankly the lack of facilities for user multitasking is one of the biggest blunders Apple has made on iPhone. Mainly because it eliminates solutions to problems that that can't be solved with push tech.
And yet those very powerful phones never made any dent at all in the consumer market. Apple wanted to make a mass market device that they could sell to the "just a phone" crowd. Multi-tasking and process managers and inexplicable slow downs and asking the user to hunt down and kill misbehaving apps were never going to be part of that equation.
That is simply BS as many of us where concerned from the release of the first SDK beta.
So? I was making an observation about the frequency with which certain "missing features" get trotted out in every discussion of why the iPhone is inferior to "the phone I've been using for years." Undeniably, after leaning heavily on cut and paste and MMS (and, to a lesser extent, video recording), certain folks have moved on to "multitasking", whether they have any idea of what that entails or not.
Apple made some very specific design trade-offs on the iPhone, valuing battery life, simplicity and user friendliness over the demands of "power users", because the market they were going for didn't give a shit about "multitasking", as long as the iPhone seemed to do what they wanted it to do with a minimum of trouble. Its enormous success would seem to suggest that Apple made the right call.
People behave as if Apple withheld multitasking out of perversity or laziness. That's just silly.
Clearly you either don't know how to use the Internet or are just being combatitive for it's own sake. I mean really if you can't find links to info demonstrating the ramp in the usage of OLED then you aren't looking very hard. I don't mean to be unkind but the info is out there.
And clearly you cannot read, since I was referring to transparent and/or flexible OLED screens. I don't mean to be unkind, but you're being needlessly contentious and not really paying attention.
Clearly we are at a point where the industry is in transition and the smaller screens are leading the way. There is no big surprise there. As to those large TV sized screens they are expected this year as both Sony and CMEL have projected deliveries of large panels for this year.
Those large screens however are not important for the devices we are talking about. Frankly what is important here is the ramp in production line tech to allow for lower costs. If you believe that the 300 million investment Apple made in LG has anything to do with small OLED screens then you can see that Apple is agressively trying to get things on track for rationally priced hardware. It is the production process that makes OLEDs expensive but it is also something that can be engineered out of the process.
Dave
And yet, I don't disagree with any of that, and if you'll try to read what I actually wrote you can see that I wasn't saying that OLED isn't happening, or won't happen, or isn't cool, or whatever it is you think you're objecting to.
I was, again, very specifically considering the likelihood that Apple would use a 3.5" OLED screen on the upcoming iPhone (which I consider possible but unlikely), and whether or not a mythical tablet thing from Apple would use OLED, or flexible OLED or transparent OLED screens, which I consider to be out of the question.
Do you disagree with any of that?
Well it won't happen with iPhone OS 3.0 as we have seen what that will be already. Apple might have something up it's sleeves but for some reason I doubt this with respect to iPhone OS.
In anyevent I really think we are at a point where you really can't have one without the other. You simply won't have dramatically more powerful or innovative software on these devices without improved hardware.
Since I'm expecting larger more powerful tablets I likewise would expect more software innovation. As much as I like my 3G I'd be the first to admit to it's hardware limitations. Software can no more advance around the current iPhone than it did on the old 286 computers of yesterday.
Dave
Huh. Because I think what we've seen of the iPhone 3.0 OS offers all kinds of advancements, not the least of which is developer access to the dock connector.
And, of course, there will be incremental hardware improvements that will make it all run better.
I mean, what's the idea here? That Apple has to completely rethink the iPhone with every major release, or get left behind? Because the problem with that is that it fucks up the software and peripheral ecosystem, which is, you know, bad.
I've always contended that Apple has gone slow on some of the things that people have been screaming for because they wanted to get the underpinnings right, from the get go. Which has allowed them to do what they are, in fact, doing: steadily improve the platform in an organized, coherent way.
The "cellphone market" got used to the OMFG Next Big Thing thinking, in which today's "it" phone was rapidly eclipsed by the new shiny. What that entailed was just bolting on "features" and "style", without much worry about usability or functionality.
The iPhone is a platform. Platforms don't come and go, or get radically reworked, like swatch watches. They get built out, a bit at a time. Just because the rest of the "cellphone industry" thinks a constant barrage of "new" UIs counts for "innovation" doesn't mean Apple has to play that game. So far, they seem to be doing pretty well with their plan, don't you think?
I suggest you read it if you haven't and also read 9to5mac's reporting of the story and the forum responses there.......including mine.
http://www.9to5mac.com/LG-OLED-Macbook
I think something big is indeed coming soon. While I'm not sure they would go with OLED screens for regular macbooks this soon. I do expect them to be implementing OLED tech in their iphones, ipod touches, and their new iTablet/mystery device.
Tick tock. Time is growing shorter. The MacTouch approaches!
I can almost feel the naysayers trembling and will soon be in awe and utter astonishment.
You all remember a couple pages ago the post I made concerning OLPC's XO-2 prototype hmm?
Well some guy from Pixel Qi will soon introduce to the marketplace a screen which is a combination of an e-ink screen and a high resolution color lcd screen. A screen which is 10" by the way. Something like that should make you point to your chin and say "hmmmmmmmm". http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/23/o...creen-will-de/
It didn't occur to me of the possibility of taking an LCD screen and combining it with other types of screen technology. Fascinating wouldn't you agree?
June approaches.
Here is another clue to what is possibly happening behind the scenes.
You all remember a couple pages ago the post I made concerning OLPC's XO-2 prototype hmm?
Well some guy from Pixel Qi will soon introduce to the marketplace a screen which is a combination of an e-ink screen and a high resolution color lcd screen. A screen which is 10" by the way. Something like that should make you point to your chin and say "hmmmmmmmm". http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/23/o...creen-will-de/
It didn't occur to me of the possibility of taking an LCD screen and combining it with other types of screen technology. Fascinating wouldn't you agree?
June approaches.
I dunno, man. Vaporware from the famously late to market, costs way more than we figured, pretty much got our asses handed to us by plain old netbooks OLPC people?
If you're rooting for OLED, I'd stick with crossing my fingers that Apple puts one in the iPhone/Touch this summer, rather than fishing around for exotic new product teases.
If exotic new product teases were the measure of what we were to see in soon to be shipping products, we'd all live on the moon in zero gravity bubbles by now.
I dunno, man. Vaporware from the famously late to market, costs way more than we figured, pretty much got our asses handed to us by plain old netbooks OLPC people?
If you're rooting for OLED, I'd stick with crossing my fingers that Apple puts one in the iPhone/Touch this summer, rather than fishing around for exotic new product teases.
If exotic new product teases were the measure of what we were to see in soon to be shipping products, we'd all live on the moon in zero gravity bubbles by now.
It doesn't have to be from them. Its just interesting to note what is currently possible. And perhaps their technique is a similar solution to what ...other...companies are already thinking about doing or implementing.
I think something big is indeed coming soon. While I'm not sure they would go with OLED screens for regular macbooks this soon. I do expect them to be implementing OLED tech in their iphones, ipod touches, and their new iTablet/mystery device.
There's two types of OLED panels being mixed up.
Smaller ones, 3" or 3 1/2" panels, are gearing up nicely and are currently used in quite a few mobile phones and PMPs already. Even the next Zune is rumored to have it. It's a no-brainer that Apple will use an OLED soon in either all iPod touch and iPhone models or at least a new high-end iPhone.
However, 8"+ sized OLED panels are still rather elusive.
LG itself said about their 15" OLED panel that it will be more than twice expensive as a LED backlit panel of similar size.
So I really don't see this panel go into the new rumored Mactouch. Unless we're talking about a $1,000+ device.
(Although if it is really an inspiring new device, I could see it being more expensive than the cheapest MacBook, going as high as $ 1,299. Even though this will make a lot of people unhappy...)
However, what IMHO is most likely is a new high-end MacBookAir using said 15" OLED screen.
For a $2,000+ device which wants to be light and thin it totally makes sense to offer an OLED display.