Apple places unusual flash memory order

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  • Reply 21 of 128
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2 View Post


    Couldn't this be the reason though?



    I haven't been able to find out the physical dimensions of 8 of these chips, but assuming they can be shoehorned into a current iPhone body, these would make excellent sense for the "third world" iPhone (8GB and no Wi-Fi) that's being floated as a possible product.



    This would be an excellent way to get the price down so it can be offered by cell companies almost as a give-away.



    Could dovetail with reports about cheaper monthly services. I hear iPhones are really expensive and luxury toys in parts of India. I imagine that's the case in many countries. Hell the data package is getting expensive here in good ole 'merica.
  • Reply 22 of 128
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by hmurchison View Post


    Or maybe Apple gets crafty and RAIDS four of them for

    data protection



    I would say that is unlikely since your PC's iTunes account is the backup for your iDevice.





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JustBenThanks View Post


    This has already happened



    (except the Airport, to the best of my knowledge)



    Airport, Time Capsule, nor any of the the iPods sans iPod Touch are using OS X.





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Ireland View Post


    Strangely, I think that was insightful. You could be right, as easy as you could be wrong.



    I think such a low amount would not be feasible for such a device. Even if it didn't use iPhone OS X so it didn't use 700MB just for the OS, I think that a capacity of 1/4 that of the new Shuffle would be unreasonable for any iPod, especially one that is a phone, too.
  • Reply 23 of 128
    trip1extrip1ex Posts: 109member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by xpc View Post


    It must be for the iPhone nano



    I think so too.
  • Reply 24 of 128
    olternautolternaut Posts: 1,376member
    Doesn't Apple already have a reserve of flash memory chips they could use to build iphones from?



    This recent order could just be to top off the stock they have now. Or perhaps they will be building these into other products. Or, like the original post suggested, they are not complete packages and can be layereed to others for higher density packages.



    ......is that correct?
  • Reply 25 of 128
    agaaga Posts: 42member
    It's for the next release of the OS, Snow Leopard. They are Shipping it on the Cheap NAND.



    Now you know.
  • Reply 26 of 128
    e1618978e1618978 Posts: 6,075member
    They are building a 100 petabyte solid state drive for the theater on SJ's new yacht.
  • Reply 27 of 128
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by aga View Post


    It's for the next release of the OS, Snow Leopard. They are Shipping it on the Cheap NAND.



    Now you know.



    I think that is the best guess I've read yet and shipping with very cheap NAND is more important than making the USB flash drive super small. burning a CD is certainly cheaper, but if you exclude the cost of the optical drive you are ahead.



    However, in all fairness I have been stating for awhile now that Apple wants to drop the internal optical drive from their notebook line and they would have to include external drives (which increase the cost of the machine). Plus, using a USB Flash drive will be considerably faster to complete an install. I can do an install of OS X from an external USB HDD in about 10 minutes from start to finish.



    Plus, 12.5M copies of Mac OS X seems about right for Snow Leopard sales in the first quarter. Anyone have any stats on Leopard 1st quarter sales?
  • Reply 28 of 128
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by hmurchison View Post


    Robson technology is useless.



    If you want faster bootup then simply replace your HDD boot drive with a SSD.



    This could be what Apple is doing -- Put the boot parts of OS X (kernel, bootloader, etc) on a flash drive -- ala the current XServe.





    Quote:

    These could be used in anything. They could be used in the nextgen AppleTV to buffer content. 1GB of NAND is more than enough to buffer a HD movie.



    They could be used in a storage device to cache frequently used data.



    Using Flash (with its limited # of viable read/write cycles) for a cache is not likely, though sticking the limited AppleTV OS in there is definitely possible.



    Re: buffering/caching, putting enough RAM in the AppleTV to buffer to RAM (or buffering to the hard disk) makes more sense, and spinning platters offer more than enough transfer bandwidth for watching movies at a much more competitive price point IMHO...
  • Reply 29 of 128
    porchlandporchland Posts: 478member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DestructoTex View Post


    These are for laptops. I bet there's something in the works with flash memory that contains the boot drive for quicker and more energy efficient power-on, similar to what they recently did in the new Xserve.







    I think so too. I could see Apple updating its entire line of laptops and desktops with at least a small amount of solid state memory in each model and possibly beginning a gradual phaseout of hard drives altogether.
  • Reply 30 of 128
    aaarrrggghaaarrrgggh Posts: 1,609member
    The USB drive theory works best in my book, but most cheap USB drives only have a single chip, and I don't think Snow Leopard would fit in 1GB. Was Leopard a CD or DVD?
  • Reply 31 of 128
    As I understand it, Samsung and others sell NAND primarily in 8Gb "chips" which are then stacked to form the high density slabs found in the iPhone and other handheld devices. Here's a quote from a PR back in 2006 which is still relevent in terms of process, though densities have obviously increased:



    Quote:

    Samsung plans to further utilize its 8-Gb NAND flash memory chip in Samsung’s high-density MLC NAND, called moviNAND, to produce a 2GB-level NAND market solution. The recently introduced moviNAND combines NAND flash memory and a NAND controller and can be embedded in mobile handsets to accommodate the high data storage requirements that accompany the increasing number of multimedia features on mobile phones.



    http://www.samsung.com/us/business/s...do?news_id=753



    The purchase volume also jibes with an Apple-sized product launch for a single high-capacity device or a few lower capacity devices. So I think the assumption that the 1GB (i.e, 8Gb) chips are "complete chip packages" is false.
  • Reply 32 of 128
    after a world wide flash memory shortage is announced by cnn s.j. will be shouting ( I'm the king of the world )
  • Reply 33 of 128
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by aaarrrgggh View Post


    The USB drive theory works best in my book, but most cheap USB drives only have a single chip, and I don't think Snow Leopard would fit in 1GB. Was Leopard a CD or DVD?



    DVD. In fact there are two DVDs. Apple would have to have an 8GB stick for Snow Leopard and another one for iLife. I don't think they could get it all down to a single 8GB chip, maybe 10 or 12GB for a specific machine model.



    Though, they can pair those chips in 1GB increments and they would be pretty damn cheap. They don't have the same rules to follow as USB flash drives that are sold to be carried with your personal data so size wouldn't be an issue. Even speed isn't an issue as it would be considerably faster to use slow NAND than the fastest optical drive to install OS X.
  • Reply 34 of 128
    walshbjwalshbj Posts: 864member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Ireland View Post


    An old Duke and Duke trick - corner the market.



    Best scene: Eddie Murphy turning to the camera after the Dukes explain what pork bellies are.



    This news has me puzzled.
  • Reply 35 of 128
    porchlandporchland Posts: 478member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by hmurchison View Post


    No it's stupid. Though I don't think that's what's happening. The movement is with higher density chips. Apple's probably fetching these for a song.



    Or possibly for actual songs. If Apple could get the hardware price point low enough, tiny USB flash drives would be a great way to distribute music, movies, TV episodes, software, etc., at places like Starbucks or for promotional use.
  • Reply 36 of 128
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Porchland View Post


    Or possibly for actual songs. If Apple could get the hardware price point low enough, tiny USB flash drives would be a great way to distribute music, movies, TV episodes, software, etc., at places like Starbucks or for promotional use.



    Even if the price was on par with other promotion types they've done (which I don't think is possible), wouldn't it still be better for them to push their iTunes Store and iTunes app through putting a special code?
  • Reply 37 of 128
    I've been thinking for a couple of years that Apple should do a non-convergence plain old digicam. Not everyone wants a crappy camera jammed into an ipod. This would open a whole new market for them, and they have the marketing department and the design team to succeed, especially with the ipod crowd.



    Anyway, built-in 1GB chips are a good choice for a 5MP camera...
  • Reply 38 of 128
    patsfan83patsfan83 Posts: 156member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Porchland View Post


    Or possibly for actual songs. If Apple could get the hardware price point low enough, tiny USB flash drives would be a great way to distribute music, movies, TV episodes, software, etc., at places like Starbucks or for promotional use.



    You would think Apple would move away from physical mediums to something more like, say the Internet?
  • Reply 39 of 128
    jinx101jinx101 Posts: 4member
    I don't know what they're making or what it costs but I HAVE to have it! I'm already giving this product two thumbs up, it's far more sheek and elegant than anything the competitors have come out with and it's so easy to use, "it just works".
  • Reply 40 of 128
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,092member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Ireland View Post


    An old Duke and Duke trick - corner the market.



    I didn't know they had Apple Juice (or medicated Koolaid for Teckstud) along with Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice on the stock exchange.



    Feeling good Billy Ray!
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