Intel's new 'Ultrabook' design to compete with Apple's iPad, MacBook Air
Intel has unveiled design guidelines for a new category of thin-and-light laptops, dubbed "Ultrabooks," that take cues from Apple's iPad and MacBook Air.
Intel executives detailed the new designs at the Computex trade show, Engadget reports. Ultrabooks will marry the performance and capabilities of a laptop with "tablet-like features" in a "thin, light and elegant design," Executive Vice President Sean Maloney said in a statement.
According to Maloney, Intel aims to reach a 40 percent share of the consumer laptop market with the "no-compromise" Ultrabook by the end of 2012. The new class of mobile PCs will sport form factors less than 20mm thick and cost less than $1,000.
The first Ultrabooks will utilize the current-generation Sandy Bridge architecture, but, beginning in the first half of 2012, Intel plans to transition Ultrabooks to the next-generation "Ivy Bridge" processors.
In 2013, the chipmaker hopes to introduce products codenamed "Haswell" as the "third step toward achieving the Ultrabook and reinventing the capabilities of the laptop in ultra thin and light, responsive and more secure designs." Intel claims the Haswell processors will reduce microprocessor power to "half of today's design point."
The first Ultrabook laptops will arrive in time for the 2011 holiday shopping season, Intel said. ASUS will be one of the initial launch partners of the Ultrabook specification with the UX21 Ultrabook.
"At ASUS, we are very much aligned with Intel's vision of Ultrabook," said chairman Johnny Shih. "Our customers are demanding an uncompromised computing experience in a lightweight, highly portable design that responds to their needs quickly. Transforming the PC into an ultra thin, ultra responsive device will change the way people interact with their PC."
Pundits expressed skepticism at the new Ultrabook design, calling it a "makeover" of the struggling netbook category. They also noted that, several years ago, Intel attempted to introduce a thin-and-light specification called Ultra-Low Voltage, but the category failed to catch on. However, Intel says it has learned from its mistakes. "We really didn't get behind marketing [ULV]," said Thomas Kilroy, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's sales and marketing group. Ultrabooks will receive "a massive campaign by Intel in 2012," he said.
The new category closely resembles Apple's own vision for "the future of the MacBook:" the MacBook Air. CEO Steve Jobs said last year that the design team for the newly redesigned ultra-thin portable had drawn from popular features on the iPad, such as instant-on capability and battery standby time.
Intel also highlighted its accelerated roadmap for upcoming versions of the Atom processor, which is designed for tablets, netbooks and smartphones. According to the company's statement, "the Atom processor will outpace Moore's Law, accelerating from 32nm through 22nm to 14nm within 3 successive years."
In April, Intel launched a new Atom chip, codenamed Oak Trail, for tablet computers. At the Computex show, Intel showed off the next-generation of 32nm Atom processors for tablets, codenamed "Medfield," with a prototype running Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb.
Intel executives detailed the new designs at the Computex trade show, Engadget reports. Ultrabooks will marry the performance and capabilities of a laptop with "tablet-like features" in a "thin, light and elegant design," Executive Vice President Sean Maloney said in a statement.
According to Maloney, Intel aims to reach a 40 percent share of the consumer laptop market with the "no-compromise" Ultrabook by the end of 2012. The new class of mobile PCs will sport form factors less than 20mm thick and cost less than $1,000.
The first Ultrabooks will utilize the current-generation Sandy Bridge architecture, but, beginning in the first half of 2012, Intel plans to transition Ultrabooks to the next-generation "Ivy Bridge" processors.
In 2013, the chipmaker hopes to introduce products codenamed "Haswell" as the "third step toward achieving the Ultrabook and reinventing the capabilities of the laptop in ultra thin and light, responsive and more secure designs." Intel claims the Haswell processors will reduce microprocessor power to "half of today's design point."
The first Ultrabook laptops will arrive in time for the 2011 holiday shopping season, Intel said. ASUS will be one of the initial launch partners of the Ultrabook specification with the UX21 Ultrabook.
"At ASUS, we are very much aligned with Intel's vision of Ultrabook," said chairman Johnny Shih. "Our customers are demanding an uncompromised computing experience in a lightweight, highly portable design that responds to their needs quickly. Transforming the PC into an ultra thin, ultra responsive device will change the way people interact with their PC."
Pundits expressed skepticism at the new Ultrabook design, calling it a "makeover" of the struggling netbook category. They also noted that, several years ago, Intel attempted to introduce a thin-and-light specification called Ultra-Low Voltage, but the category failed to catch on. However, Intel says it has learned from its mistakes. "We really didn't get behind marketing [ULV]," said Thomas Kilroy, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's sales and marketing group. Ultrabooks will receive "a massive campaign by Intel in 2012," he said.
The new category closely resembles Apple's own vision for "the future of the MacBook:" the MacBook Air. CEO Steve Jobs said last year that the design team for the newly redesigned ultra-thin portable had drawn from popular features on the iPad, such as instant-on capability and battery standby time.
Intel also highlighted its accelerated roadmap for upcoming versions of the Atom processor, which is designed for tablets, netbooks and smartphones. According to the company's statement, "the Atom processor will outpace Moore's Law, accelerating from 32nm through 22nm to 14nm within 3 successive years."
In April, Intel launched a new Atom chip, codenamed Oak Trail, for tablet computers. At the Computex show, Intel showed off the next-generation of 32nm Atom processors for tablets, codenamed "Medfield," with a prototype running Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb.
Comments
If you look at that mock-up, its a full-blown copy.
If Asus and other OEMs resist the temptation to race to bottom (meaning they keep prices higher, and form factors sexy), then Ultrabook might just transcend the Netbook category and emerge as the next gen in premium thin-and-light notebooks (competition for Lenovo's ThunkPad X201, for example). Big if. If a price war breaks out, they be back down to the $499 razor thin margin machines again. And that's probably what will happen.
Good Lord! They're visionaries! However did they think up something like that???
No kidding. Can someone say lawsuit?
The computer industry's cutesy names annoy me.
That is all.
The MacBook Air has clearly set the bar though and that will continue to keep Apple on their toes. Being the leader, Apple has to work hard to stay there. What's amazing is that you never hear any trash talk due to Apple's lower market share (looking at the whole PC market) now. They are leaders and are clearly the ones to emulate. Apple will have competitors of all kinds nipping at their heels for years to come, and if history is a good guide, for decades to come.
Intel's just reasserted their relevance with this announcement. There's clearly room for multiple approaches. And I guess Atom is still making them money since they're clearly committed to that in a significant way. 14 nm. Wow. As if I could wrap my mind around 45 nm. But 14 nm.
In other words: Intel believes the best direction for the laptop market to pursue is to copy the MacBook Air.
If you look at that mock-up, its a full-blown copy.
Now they just have to copy themselves an OS and a developer ecosystem. Unless they figure the buying public won't know the difference, or that their market consists mostly of Apple-hater types whose only criteria are hardware specs and the lack of an Apple logo.
Oak Field. Honeycomb. Cocoa. Java. Mango.
The computer industry's cutesy names annoy me.
That is all.
Well, the Java Project was a result of several ex-NeXT engineers helping Gosling copy as much of ObjC/Openstep as possible.
Surprised? I'm not.
Cocoa was the perfect name to mock Sun for calling their project Java.
Intel has unveiled design guidelines for a new category of thin-and-light laptops, dubbed "Ultrabooks," that take cues from Apple's iPad and MacBook Air.
The WinTab will also be mucking up or be mucked up by the Ultrabook, So should Apple abandon Intel and go for a different chip? Maybe it's time for Apple to resume talks with AMD?
Good Lord! They're visionaries! However did they think up something like that???
The wedge design was from Sony back in 2004 with the Sony X505.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/airwave...n/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/airwave...n/photostream/
http://www.weblogsinc.com/common/ima...42647363857573
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djxLKQQEf34
Phones... OS... hardware design. Seriously.
Well, the Java Project was a result of several ex-NeXT engineers helping Gosling copy as much of ObjC/Openstep as possible.
Surprised? I'm not.
Cocoa was the perfect name to mock Sun for calling their project Java.
Really?
I've programmed loads of Java and I've programmed quite a bit of Objective-C and Cocoa, and they are nothing like each other. Nothing at all. Not the language itself (syntax nor language aspects), not the API breakdown, not the way you build user interfaces with them, not the technical aspects of the compiler and runtime, nothing. Java is a built-from-the-ground-up 100% pure object-oriented, interpreted/bytecode language with a huge set of platform-independent API's stacked on top of it that are part of the core language. Objective-C + Cocoa is a conservative extension to C, mixed imperative and object-oriented, compiled language, with a very clean and concise API and frameworks that are not part of the language and specifically engineered for creating OS X applications.
I'd even go as far as saying Java and Obj-C+Cocoa are almost diametrically opposed to each other in terms of their design philosophy and intended purpose. To a programmer or UI designer they have almost nothing in common. Java was created as a cross-platform solution based on the object-oriented programming hype that was at its fullest back then, and the whole language is a no-compromise implementation of these concepts. Objective-C and Cocoa were never supposed to be cross-platform, pure object-oriented, based on any other design philosphy then an opportunistic adaptation of existing technology. The name 'Cocoa' (which is about chocolate if I'm not mistaken, not about coffee or islands of Indonesia) has no association with Java.
Hopefully, a really ultraportable MacBook Air soon: 400 to 600 g and 7-inch. The Mac in your pocket. Always.
Unless it has 3G, maybe 4G, is powered by ARM and runs iOS apps, I don't see it happening.
Aren't competitors going to find it difficult to match the Air's lightness/thinness/strength ratio without the Unibody process?
Who cares about strength, you can take one of those thin Vaios and literally bend the screen. It's a feature! Bendability!
No kidding. Can someone say lawsuit?
"lawsuit"