I may be talking about of my butt here, but I don't think Rosetta had as much to do. To run Windows, an emulator has to emulate an entire machine in order to provide a guest OS access to virtual hardware. Rosetta simply had to translate some instructions.
And that's what we're talking about here. An A6 emulating x86 for backward compatibility.
And people have been panning Windows 8 for merging traditional Windows with touch screen capabilities claiming it can't be done successfully.
You are comparing merging the best OS, OS X and the best mobile OS, iOS with merging what? Microsoft crap? Sorry maybe you were being funny and I missed that.
I could see this working in a niche product, but for many users Intel CPU's are a must. The virtulisation market is getting bigger all the time.
That was my first though as one who does require VMs but I guess an MBP would still exist with Intel for VMs. Funny thing is I am thinking of getting a 13" Air 256 and would be running VMware, looks like if this rumor has legs it may the last year an Air could be used for that.
Rosetta and the 68K emulator on PowerMacs were quite good actually. I don't know how you can say they "sucked pretty hard."
Rosetta wasn't an emulator, it was a dynamic binary translator. And I agree that it was quite good.
On the other hand, emulating or translating x86 correctly is orders of magnitude more difficult than what Rosetta had to do with with power pc for lots of reasons including variable length instructions implicit instruction registers, correct interrupt handling, the sheer number of instructions, etc. Particularly as Apple continues to support and use complex extensions to the x86 instruction set.
Transmeta used custom hardware to accelerate x86 translation in their chips and they just couldn't keep up with Intel's process advances. Maybe Apple could graft on a hardware translation accelerator to the A6, but I imagine that Intel owns most of the patents that they would need, given that they purchased Transmeta's IP. Also, Apple wouldn't get an x86 license so probably couldn't do such a thing even if it were unencumbered.
All things are possible over a period of 10 years, but i doubt we'd see Apple trying to translate x86 on a lowish power ARM cpu.
Potentially, Thunderbolt offers Apple great flexibility into which devices they place CPUs, GPUs, RAM, HDDs, SSDs, etc.
+1
I'd add one more component to this list: Grand Central.
Is there a reason why a virtualization app has to run on your CPU (and not your GPU, or even an APU?).
In the modern world... how many people need endpoint virtualization? we know now that it's a very small fraction of iOS sales (assuming that app like Citrix Receiver indicate a requirement) use virtualization, and my guess that a similar fraction is on OS X. So why require EVERYONE to buy an Intel processor out of 80Million sales a year, if only 1 million require it at 'native clock' speeds.
Why not just an interface into a 'virtual' virtualization service (with your app and Grand Central deciding where best to home your code/virtPC... CPU, GPU, APU(via PCI or Thunderbolt), Cloud Virtualization).
So 'iOSX' has a x86 virtualization layer that GCs the code to the user's preferred virtualization environment. If you decide to buy an A6/Intel box (Mac Pro, or HE MBP), you're running at clock speeds... if you buy an A6 only box with a GPU... you're running an emulator..., unless you have a icloud Intel server that with your mirrored data 'up there' when you start to your x86 app, it messages into the iCloud and just airplays the interface back to your iPhone.
Again, If I can save $100 on a MBA by using an A6 chip vs a intel chip (and likely get better battery and performance envelope) That's worth it to me.
And for the 520 minutes a year (10 minutes a week) that I need to run that legacy windows app (and at this point, other than pentesting tools, it's IE8 for time keeping ;-), I either suck it up and emulate it with the A6/GPU driven by Grand Central, or I carve out a virtual chunk of the iCloud x86 farm and send all my compute cycles to that airplaying back to me (hey... it's X11 all over again.. where the display is a 'server'!")
And people have been panning Windows 8 for merging traditional Windows with touch screen capabilities claiming it can't be done successfully.
Windows 8 is a copy of Lion. It's a desktop OS with touch elements overlaid on top, but once you get into legacy apps (which, on the Windows side, will be virtually all programs) you're back to the cursor based UI.
Microsoft is only hailing it as a tablet solution because they don't have one.
Edit: Copy of the concept of Lion, it's implemented a little differently. Didn't mean to imply that they were directly lifting features from Lion (although I wouldn't put it past them).
Why do people assume a merger of iOS and OS X should automatically entail identical UIs? An OS is a lot more than the user interface - they can have a single OS with the same kernel, device drivers, file system, development environment, etc., with a different style of UI depending on device, in very much the exact same way that iOS handles both iPhone and iPad now. There's no reason they can't extend the idea of a universal iOS application to have a different UI for mouse/keyboard interactions too.
Exactly. For instance, the iPad doesn't have the same exact UI as the iPhone, but it is the same OS.
And they could make an iMac that swivels the display down, automatically switching to a LaunchPad-esque iOS interface.
As far as I understand it, under the hood iOS and OS X are not that different. But right now, you can't have a universal app that works across iOS and OS X. One reason is that OS X runs on Intel chips and is 64 bit, while iOS uses ARM chips.
This may make some sense, at least for an AIR model, but I don't see it spreading across the whole line anytime soon for the same reasons everyone's exhausted.
However it should be noted that Windows 8 will run natively on ARM architecture, which lends itself to all sorts of possibilities.
Funny thing is I am thinking of getting a 13" Air 256 and would be running VMware, looks like if this rumor has legs it may the last year an Air could be used for that.
Again, how many people need x86 to run VMWare (me, I'm Parallels) effectively? And how many of them (corp types), would probably have a better overall TCO if it was remotely virtualized (Citrix Receiver)?
I really do think the age of 'fat client' is driving to a sudden death with the 'app centric' personal devices.
if you can kill a DVD drive in 2011, maybe the x86 chip as _THE_ CPU in 2013 (apple and/or a 3rd party can always sell you a coprocessor that connected via a ThunderBolt interface a nice 2ghz, 2gbRam unit... the size of a wall wart, $149 no Win7License SheevaPlugPC)! Face it. For 6.9Billion people, WinTel isn't a requirement, it's just the most common way to deliver a text entry/ internet surfing system.
This may make some sense, at least for an AIR model, but I don't see it spreading across the whole line anytime soon for the same reasons everyone's exhausted.
However it should be noted that Windows 8 will run natively on ARM architecture, which lends itself to all sorts of possibilities.
We have this program on our iPads -- it's amazing!
Now, I wonder if something like this could help someone with autism use a desktop computer -- say, an iMac running Lion OS X interfacing an iPad running iOS
However it should be noted that Windows 8 will run natively on ARM architecture, which lends itself to all sorts of possibilities.
That's a fair point... but many users run Windows on a Mac so that they can run some custom Windows app or an app that doesn't have a good Mac counterpoint. Many of these small and custom apps may never get a Win 8 ARM port.
ARM chip for low power consumption with an x86-64 chip for more demanding tasks = winner.
ARM chip exclusively = meh.
In spite of the performance improvements in ARM chips, current x86 chips from Intel and AMD are still magnitudes more powerful. No matter what Apple does in the A6 I don't see how it could match the current Sandy Bridge processor, let alone Ivy Bridge and whatever else Intel improves. So I don't see it happening, ARM will stay in the iPad and iThings but not in the Macs, unless its the aforementioned switchable hybrid.
Err.. ya. Lion has a Finder. iOS doesn't. Lion lets you purchase, download and install software from anywhere. iOS doesn't. Lion lets you print to virtually any networked printer. iOS doesn't. Lion lets you manage your files and folders the way you want. iOS doesn't. Lion lets you create multiple user accounts and assign each different levels of access. iOS doesn't. Lion supports external drives and optical drives. iOS doesn't. Lion lets you encrypt your files. iOS doesn't. Lion gives you parental controls. iOS doesn't. Lion lets you use the keyboard and pointing device of your choice. iOS doesn't. Lion lets you decide whether or not you want to run Flash. iOS doesn't. Lion supports networking in a heterogeneous environment. iOS doesn't.
Other than that, I can't think of any differences whatsoever.
Lion lets you manage your files and folders the way you want. iOS doesn't.
Explain why you think screwing with the OS files is a good idea in iOS.
Quote:
Lion supports external drives and optical drives. iOS doesn't.
Optical drives. Good one.
Quote:
Lion gives you parental controls. iOS doesn't.
Guess Apple's lying about the parental controls in iOS, then. So you're saying that these switches won't do anything when I turn them on to restrict access to stuff? Huh. Strange. Wonder why they put them in there, then.
Quote:
Lion lets you use the keyboard and pointing device of your choice. iOS doesn't.
LOL at using a mouse on a touchscreen. Any Bluetooth keyboard works with iDevices. USB would be pointless.
Quote:
Lion lets you decide whether or not you want to run Flash. iOS doesn't.
It's not Apple's job to let you make idiotic, device-breaking decisions.
When the hardware is powerful enough, when mobile network connections are fast enough and cheap enough, when the cloud computing infrastructure is reliable enough:
You will own a single device, an iPhone 7, say. When you are out and about, it presents the iOS UI on its screen and it works pretty much as a smartphone. When you get home, you can connect it to your monitor, keyboard and other peripherals (perhaps wirelessly, perhaps not) and that opens up the Mac OS functions that you need for large-screen computing (video editing, word processing, software development, etc.). The iPhone becomes a smart trackpad. You can still access the iOS functions though, which is just a subset of the merged OS.
What's the advantage? One computer for all your needs. No need to synch across devices. No need to spend for two or more devices. All your computing needs are with you wherever you go. No such thing as "I left on my computer at home." You want an iPad? Buy the tablet accessory, essentially an LCD screen & battery with a slot where you slide in your iPhone 7. A laptop you say? Buy the laptop accessory and slide in your iPhone 7. You're at the airport and you need to update your keynote presentation but you don't have any of the accessories? Slide your iPhone into the computing kiosks set up for travelers' convenience.
And Apple made it seventeen years ago. They one-upped you by making a working device that did this. The DuoDock was awesome.
The problem with this dream is technology. It has never been good enough to make it a reality. And it still isn't and won't be for (I'll say) half a decade.
Comments
Emulators in the past have sucked pretty hard. Don't know how it would work this time around but I would be pretty worried.
Rosetta and the 68K emulator on PowerMacs were quite good actually. I don't know how you can say they "sucked pretty hard."
I may be talking about of my butt here, but I don't think Rosetta had as much to do. To run Windows, an emulator has to emulate an entire machine in order to provide a guest OS access to virtual hardware. Rosetta simply had to translate some instructions.
And that's what we're talking about here. An A6 emulating x86 for backward compatibility.
And people have been panning Windows 8 for merging traditional Windows with touch screen capabilities claiming it can't be done successfully.
You are comparing merging the best OS, OS X and the best mobile OS, iOS with merging what? Microsoft crap? Sorry maybe you were being funny and I missed that.
I could see this working in a niche product, but for many users Intel CPU's are a must. The virtulisation market is getting bigger all the time.
That was my first though as one who does require VMs but I guess an MBP would still exist with Intel for VMs. Funny thing is I am thinking of getting a 13" Air 256 and would be running VMware, looks like if this rumor has legs it may the last year an Air could be used for that.
Rosetta and the 68K emulator on PowerMacs were quite good actually. I don't know how you can say they "sucked pretty hard."
Rosetta wasn't an emulator, it was a dynamic binary translator. And I agree that it was quite good.
On the other hand, emulating or translating x86 correctly is orders of magnitude more difficult than what Rosetta had to do with with power pc for lots of reasons including variable length instructions implicit instruction registers, correct interrupt handling, the sheer number of instructions, etc. Particularly as Apple continues to support and use complex extensions to the x86 instruction set.
Transmeta used custom hardware to accelerate x86 translation in their chips and they just couldn't keep up with Intel's process advances. Maybe Apple could graft on a hardware translation accelerator to the A6, but I imagine that Intel owns most of the patents that they would need, given that they purchased Transmeta's IP. Also, Apple wouldn't get an x86 license so probably couldn't do such a thing even if it were unencumbered.
All things are possible over a period of 10 years, but i doubt we'd see Apple trying to translate x86 on a lowish power ARM cpu.
Look at it this way:
[...]
Potentially, Thunderbolt offers Apple great flexibility into which devices they place CPUs, GPUs, RAM, HDDs, SSDs, etc.
+1
I'd add one more component to this list: Grand Central.
Is there a reason why a virtualization app has to run on your CPU (and not your GPU, or even an APU?).
In the modern world... how many people need endpoint virtualization? we know now that it's a very small fraction of iOS sales (assuming that app like Citrix Receiver indicate a requirement) use virtualization, and my guess that a similar fraction is on OS X. So why require EVERYONE to buy an Intel processor out of 80Million sales a year, if only 1 million require it at 'native clock' speeds.
Why not just an interface into a 'virtual' virtualization service (with your app and Grand Central deciding where best to home your code/virtPC... CPU, GPU, APU(via PCI or Thunderbolt), Cloud Virtualization).
So 'iOSX' has a x86 virtualization layer that GCs the code to the user's preferred virtualization environment. If you decide to buy an A6/Intel box (Mac Pro, or HE MBP), you're running at clock speeds... if you buy an A6 only box with a GPU... you're running an emulator..., unless you have a icloud Intel server that with your mirrored data 'up there' when you start to your x86 app, it messages into the iCloud and just airplays the interface back to your iPhone.
Again, If I can save $100 on a MBA by using an A6 chip vs a intel chip (and likely get better battery and performance envelope) That's worth it to me.
And for the 520 minutes a year (10 minutes a week) that I need to run that legacy windows app (and at this point, other than pentesting tools, it's IE8 for time keeping ;-), I either suck it up and emulate it with the A6/GPU driven by Grand Central, or I carve out a virtual chunk of the iCloud x86 farm and send all my compute cycles to that airplaying back to me (hey... it's X11 all over again.. where the display is a 'server'!")
And people have been panning Windows 8 for merging traditional Windows with touch screen capabilities claiming it can't be done successfully.
Windows 8 is a copy of Lion. It's a desktop OS with touch elements overlaid on top, but once you get into legacy apps (which, on the Windows side, will be virtually all programs) you're back to the cursor based UI.
Microsoft is only hailing it as a tablet solution because they don't have one.
Edit: Copy of the concept of Lion, it's implemented a little differently. Didn't mean to imply that they were directly lifting features from Lion (although I wouldn't put it past them).
Rosetta and the 68K emulator on PowerMacs were quite good actually. I don't know how you can say they "sucked pretty hard."
Did you use Virtual pc for Mac back in the PPC days? I'm assuming you did given your history here.
You DIDN'T think that sucked?
Why do people assume a merger of iOS and OS X should automatically entail identical UIs? An OS is a lot more than the user interface - they can have a single OS with the same kernel, device drivers, file system, development environment, etc., with a different style of UI depending on device, in very much the exact same way that iOS handles both iPhone and iPad now. There's no reason they can't extend the idea of a universal iOS application to have a different UI for mouse/keyboard interactions too.
Exactly. For instance, the iPad doesn't have the same exact UI as the iPhone, but it is the same OS.
And they could make an iMac that swivels the display down, automatically switching to a LaunchPad-esque iOS interface.
As far as I understand it, under the hood iOS and OS X are not that different. But right now, you can't have a universal app that works across iOS and OS X. One reason is that OS X runs on Intel chips and is 64 bit, while iOS uses ARM chips.
However it should be noted that Windows 8 will run natively on ARM architecture, which lends itself to all sorts of possibilities.
Funny thing is I am thinking of getting a 13" Air 256 and would be running VMware, looks like if this rumor has legs it may the last year an Air could be used for that.
Again, how many people need x86 to run VMWare (me, I'm Parallels) effectively? And how many of them (corp types), would probably have a better overall TCO if it was remotely virtualized (Citrix Receiver)?
I really do think the age of 'fat client' is driving to a sudden death with the 'app centric' personal devices.
if you can kill a DVD drive in 2011, maybe the x86 chip as _THE_ CPU in 2013 (apple and/or a 3rd party can always sell you a coprocessor that connected via a ThunderBolt interface a nice 2ghz, 2gbRam unit... the size of a wall wart, $149 no Win7License SheevaPlugPC)! Face it. For 6.9Billion people, WinTel isn't a requirement, it's just the most common way to deliver a text entry/ internet surfing system.
This may make some sense, at least for an AIR model, but I don't see it spreading across the whole line anytime soon for the same reasons everyone's exhausted.
However it should be noted that Windows 8 will run natively on ARM architecture, which lends itself to all sorts of possibilities.
Bootcamp for iOS!
That's not fair to people with autism. My son has it and can still apply logic and reason far better than this analyst.
Have you seen this:
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/proloquo2go...ry?id=10497862
We have this program on our iPads -- it's amazing!
Now, I wonder if something like this could help someone with autism use a desktop computer -- say, an iMac running Lion OS X interfacing an iPad running iOS
However it should be noted that Windows 8 will run natively on ARM architecture, which lends itself to all sorts of possibilities.
That's a fair point... but many users run Windows on a Mac so that they can run some custom Windows app or an app that doesn't have a good Mac counterpoint. Many of these small and custom apps may never get a Win 8 ARM port.
ARM chip exclusively = meh.
In spite of the performance improvements in ARM chips, current x86 chips from Intel and AMD are still magnitudes more powerful. No matter what Apple does in the A6 I don't see how it could match the current Sandy Bridge processor, let alone Ivy Bridge and whatever else Intel improves. So I don't see it happening, ARM will stay in the iPad and iThings but not in the Macs, unless its the aforementioned switchable hybrid.
Er.....have you looked at Lion?
Err.. ya. Lion has a Finder. iOS doesn't. Lion lets you purchase, download and install software from anywhere. iOS doesn't. Lion lets you print to virtually any networked printer. iOS doesn't. Lion lets you manage your files and folders the way you want. iOS doesn't. Lion lets you create multiple user accounts and assign each different levels of access. iOS doesn't. Lion supports external drives and optical drives. iOS doesn't. Lion lets you encrypt your files. iOS doesn't. Lion gives you parental controls. iOS doesn't. Lion lets you use the keyboard and pointing device of your choice. iOS doesn't. Lion lets you decide whether or not you want to run Flash. iOS doesn't. Lion supports networking in a heterogeneous environment. iOS doesn't.
Other than that, I can't think of any differences whatsoever.
He wants to see if he can make Otellini cry.
Lion lets you manage your files and folders the way you want. iOS doesn't.
Explain why you think screwing with the OS files is a good idea in iOS.
Lion supports external drives and optical drives. iOS doesn't.
Optical drives. Good one.
Lion gives you parental controls. iOS doesn't.
Guess Apple's lying about the parental controls in iOS, then. So you're saying that these switches won't do anything when I turn them on to restrict access to stuff? Huh. Strange. Wonder why they put them in there, then.
Lion lets you use the keyboard and pointing device of your choice. iOS doesn't.
LOL at using a mouse on a touchscreen. Any Bluetooth keyboard works with iDevices. USB would be pointless.
Lion lets you decide whether or not you want to run Flash. iOS doesn't.
It's not Apple's job to let you make idiotic, device-breaking decisions.
You will own a single device, an iPhone 7, say. When you are out and about, it presents the iOS UI on its screen and it works pretty much as a smartphone. When you get home, you can connect it to your monitor, keyboard and other peripherals (perhaps wirelessly, perhaps not) and that opens up the Mac OS functions that you need for large-screen computing (video editing, word processing, software development, etc.). The iPhone becomes a smart trackpad. You can still access the iOS functions though, which is just a subset of the merged OS.
What's the advantage? One computer for all your needs. No need to synch across devices. No need to spend for two or more devices. All your computing needs are with you wherever you go. No such thing as "I left on my computer at home." You want an iPad? Buy the tablet accessory, essentially an LCD screen & battery with a slot where you slide in your iPhone 7. A laptop you say? Buy the laptop accessory and slide in your iPhone 7. You're at the airport and you need to update your keynote presentation but you don't have any of the accessories? Slide your iPhone into the computing kiosks set up for travelers' convenience.
I made this prediction at least a year ago.
I made this prediction at least a year ago.
And Apple made it seventeen years ago. They one-upped you by making a working device that did this. The DuoDock was awesome.
The problem with this dream is technology. It has never been good enough to make it a reality. And it still isn't and won't be for (I'll say) half a decade.