Need a more powerful computer? Buy a second box. Need more hard drive space? Buy a Thunderbolt RAID array. Need a more powerful computer after that? Plug the second box into the Thunderbolt RAID array.
This would basically be RAIDed CPUs. Just buy more and plug them in. And obviously knowing Apple, it wouldn't take any setup at all. Entire server rooms would be reduced to plugging in a new box when you needed more processing power.
Yes! And Apple has existing software that can manage this distributed power.
Fill a few holes in FCPX and the pro editors will trip all over themselves to buy this!
Edit: Here's a bit from the spec on the Apple Thunderbolt Display
Quote:
The ultimate docking station.
With just one cable, connect any Thunderbolt-enabled Mac and get 27 inches of high-resolution screen space, high-quality audio, a FaceTime HD camera, FireWire 800 and Gigabit Ethernet ports — and a Thunderbolt port you can use to daisy-chain additional high-performance peripherals such as hard drives and video capture devices.
One criticism leveled against the iPad is it is NOT a computer like a Mac or PC and cannot be used to create, but only consume. The iPad IS powerful enough to create, but the apps have to struggle through iTunes to sync with a mac, etc. The iCloud eliminates the syncing.
Consumers never really needed PCs to be so powerful as they seldom use them for anything but the internet and email. But slow PCs choke on video and awful flash animation.
Imagine a device that runs iOS and all iPad/iPhone apps, has 3G/4G/wireless, has a laptop form factor, can easily connect to your TV as a display, has 18 hours of battery life, costs under $1000, but can still be used like a regular computer to create documents, write SW, uses the cloud, but doesn't run an Intel processor. A dumbed-down PC with the all the power of an iPad and enough of the power of a Mac.
Apple isn't making the Mac more like the iPad, but preapring to make the iPad more like the Mac (without the whole desktop interface). Remember, it's all OSX underneath, just the GUI that makes iOS different.
That could be the new device. It exists only in my mind, right now.
They aren't *that* portable and they don't even come close to the power of a desktop. They also don't sync so you have to be "either-or" for your main computer. Using a desktop as well as a laptop is just awkward at best.
I like the idea of a powerful desktop (if you need it) and iPad for everything mobile. So far this is the perfect combo for me.
Great point. I'll simply take my 24" iMac with me on the plane next time I fly somewhere. :roll eyes:
And what's so hard about syncing a desktop and a laptop? iDisk does it very well. Unfortunately, with iDisk going away, I'll have to switch to Dropbox, but that will do just as well.
Yeah, I emailed a friend who is an exec in Broadcast TV -- about this, but more about the iPads as Personal TVs over WiFi, around the house. No rebroadcast, no PVR -- whatever comes out of the coax cable just WiFi to the iPads.
A got a short answer that the technology is there, but the politics are not.
We plan to speak later today so maybe I'll be able to flesh-out the answer.
But, based on the above, I don't believe an Apple HDTV/ATV solution fits the timeframe if this rumor:
It's coming I'm sure ... I for one am dumping any traditional TV feed from my FiOS. Using AE and ATV we watch lovely quality (OK maybe not the highest but good enough for us) HD TV from Netflix and CNN's iPad App shoots to the big screen with Airplay almost flawlessly. I expect more iPad apps like CNNs to follow soon (I love VEVO HD for Music vids). So it's getting there faster and faster. It would be nice to have these apps on the ATV itself as in an add your own to the ATV menu set up and avoid the need for iPad / Airplay scenario and I am hoping that's coming.
Apple may have found that they were able to produce that kind of next generation device ahead of their previously deterined schedule. This could have been driven by the wide acceptance of the iPad which they hadn't anticipated being as great as it proved to be - their commentary in the quarterly financial calls alluded to their (pleasant) surprise. If that is the case, and especially with the announced intention of HP out of desktop PC production, it is not, as noted above, beyond Apple to introduce something very disruptive and ride out the initial reaction to the radical departure in order to build out the foundation of what they see as the next generation of computing devices.
I think it has been mentioned before but bears repeating: the iPhone and the iPod Touch were the precursors to the iPad - even though the iPad was allegedly on the bench first. It made sense (in retrospect) to bring out smaller, "less threatening" devices first to gauge consumer reaction to the interface, and then introduce the iPad. Which in turn could be the predecessor to a whole new line of computing devices.
This is going to be a struggle first for those of us in technology, as we tend to be wedded to the existing technology paradigm, so look for strong negative reaction by pundits across the board to the new approach when Apple first announces it. Apple stock will inevitably take an initial hit as well (as it seems to do when Apple introduces a new product line). As the iPad demonstrated, if a straight line is drawn from one product to the next (interface-wise for example) consumers have demonstrated that they are willing to make that move much quicker than those of us who are heavily invested in the current technologies.
If this is true we are poised for yet another disruption.
Not so sure! Don't know you from Adam. Maybe you are too imbeded (rather than wedded) to technology to an extent that is foreign to my experience, or you may be thinking in too linear a fashion.
The iPad was a completely new (at least in terms of successful function - not to mention design) computing paradigm, yet, was wildly successful in a very short time. Now, in less than 2 years, tablet computing has replaced (or is at least in the process of changing) the paradigm and is a mega-billion dollar business. Which tells me radical change in form factor is possible, if 'it just works.'
Is that a funny typo, or did you mean it? (I know personally the type of damage mainframes and their associated ecosystems have done to certain people).
Well... It was a typo in a proposal we made in 1985 to sell 7 LANS (each with 20 MB HDD and 5-10 Macs , Omnis 2 DB, high-speed printer) to do claims processing/check printing in various Sequoia Insurance Branch Offices in California.
The customer pointed out the typo -- but we left it in. It piqued their interest and made them smile.
We got the business! The installations were a great success! We got a lot of follow-on and reference business.
So, maybe I'm superstitious... but to me, the word is maimframe! (regardless of what the Apple SpellChecker says).
Oh, GOSH. I didn't even THINK about being able to plug it into a LAPTOP!
Not just a bunch of RAIDed desktops but if you need more power for your laptop, plug in this new Mac Pro thingy and WHAM you're rendering with the big boys on your tiny MacBook Air!
Why on earth would your terabytes of source files be on a MacBook Air to start with? Did you edit and create all the 3D models and HD video, that now need a render farm, with a tiny Air? No, you would use a Mac Pro from the beginning.
Remember Taligent? I was quite involved with that, lived next door to Sunnyvale. Nobody expected Amelio to just go like that but it was another time of technological turmoil. Still some interesting technology came out of it that even java uses
To say that Steve is headstrong is an understatement, but then that's him. He does it his way! Looking back at NeXT and Pixar you can say in retrospect they were his early attempts at success. He really won (unlike Charlie Sheen who won in his own mind only)
Yeah, I remember Taligent -- but that was happening as we were leaving the industry (and Silicon Valley).
If you were around Sunnyvale in the 1980s, our Sunnyvale Computer Plus store was at Fremont and Mary. We sold the stores in 1989.
Headstrong?
In 1979, I was doing a demo of an Apple ][ in our store with a crowd of about 15-20 people behind me.
All of a sudden this loud voice calls out from the back -- "You're doing it wrong!"
Jobs pushed his way to the front and proceeded to give the best damn Apple ][ demo I ever saw (better than Woz or his younger brother Mark -- who I thought was the best).
Why on earth would your terabytes of source files be on a MacBook Air to start with? Did you edit and create all the 3D models and HD video, that now need a render farm, with a tiny Air? No, you would use a Mac Pro from the beginning.
True but to be fair he was following up on my post about this where I specified an i7 MBP and this exactly what I do do now. The conversation was about the addition of some new low cost Apple made CPU render box that worked on all compliant OS X apps. Which as I no longer have the Mac Pro I for one would love to see as an option ... all pipe dreams probably
It's an iMac that is skinny like an ipad... no optical drive, all SSD storage, and runs a multi-A(s) processor. Touch screen, and runs both iOS and OSX...
Great point. I'll simply take my 24" iMac with me on the plane next time I fly somewhere. :roll eyes:
Yep I need a MBP for air travel too but if you were never too far from your desktop location the Professor's plan would be acceptable. Really depends on the kind of work you do. If you do a lot of web and network configuration stuff you need a unix command line. If you do a lot of graphics you need a mouse and Adobe CS, but if you do mostly written communications an iPad might work as your only mobile computer.
BUT just maybe Steve follows you and I on AI for his next big idea
Seriously though, I wonder just how small and inexpensive Apple could make such an add on TB based CPU for? BTW not sure way RAID has to do with any of of this.
RAID is the storage for the computer ProBoxes -- all the ProBoxes have is Dual Thunderbolt, RAM, GPUs, CPUs and enough SSD to run the OS and whatever buffers for data.
Edit: The beauty of this is you can start small where the compute box is a Mini. The Mini has only 1 Thunderbolt port so it must be at one end of the daisy chain,
So the Mini is a ProsumerBox -- you upgrade by adding ProBoxes inboard of the Mini.
True but to be fair he was following up on my post about this where I specified an i7 MBP and this exactly what I do do now. The conversation was about the addition of some new low cost Apple made CPU render box that worked on all compliant OS X apps. Which as I no longer have the Mac Pro I for one would love to see as an option ... all pipe dreams probably
Realistically the Thunderbolt i/o actually is the best solution. You would need to move the source data from your 3D and video editing apps that are on your notebook to the RAID connected to the Mac Pro so that the memory, CPU, GPU, storage, app and OS are in close proximity to the main bus architecture in order to leverage the multicore power. You can't be sending all the CPU commands from a remote i7 notebook to the workhorse platform over the Thunderbolt connection. It just isn't fast enough. The Mac Pro needs to be running the app locally.
Comments
what a waste of an article. Where is the news in that. Someone predicts that something different will come out in the future. Wow
+1 :d
Nonsense. That's why the Mac Mini and iMac exist.
… WANT. NOW.
Need a more powerful computer? Buy a second box. Need more hard drive space? Buy a Thunderbolt RAID array. Need a more powerful computer after that? Plug the second box into the Thunderbolt RAID array.
This would basically be RAIDed CPUs. Just buy more and plug them in. And obviously knowing Apple, it wouldn't take any setup at all. Entire server rooms would be reduced to plugging in a new box when you needed more processing power.
Yes! And Apple has existing software that can manage this distributed power.
Fill a few holes in FCPX and the pro editors will trip all over themselves to buy this!
Edit: Here's a bit from the spec on the Apple Thunderbolt Display
The ultimate docking station.
With just one cable, connect any Thunderbolt-enabled Mac and get 27 inches of high-resolution screen space, high-quality audio, a FaceTime HD camera, FireWire 800 and Gigabit Ethernet ports — and a Thunderbolt port you can use to daisy-chain additional high-performance peripherals such as hard drives and video capture devices.
Ports
Three powered USB 2.0 ports
FireWire 800 port
Gigabit Ethernet port
Thunderbolt port
Kensington security slot
Consumers never really needed PCs to be so powerful as they seldom use them for anything but the internet and email. But slow PCs choke on video and awful flash animation.
Imagine a device that runs iOS and all iPad/iPhone apps, has 3G/4G/wireless, has a laptop form factor, can easily connect to your TV as a display, has 18 hours of battery life, costs under $1000, but can still be used like a regular computer to create documents, write SW, uses the cloud, but doesn't run an Intel processor. A dumbed-down PC with the all the power of an iPad and enough of the power of a Mac.
Apple isn't making the Mac more like the iPad, but preapring to make the iPad more like the Mac (without the whole desktop interface). Remember, it's all OSX underneath, just the GUI that makes iOS different.
That could be the new device. It exists only in my mind, right now.
?? Macs that are "absolutely different from current products? - Sounds like a product transition to me.
Hmmm, yeah, maybe you're right.
In that case could be the new MacBook Pros, the ones without drives. No Superdrive and no hard drive. SSD only. MBA-style.
And a battery twice as big for 12+ hour battery life...
I could never see the attraction of a laptop.
They aren't *that* portable and they don't even come close to the power of a desktop. They also don't sync so you have to be "either-or" for your main computer. Using a desktop as well as a laptop is just awkward at best.
I like the idea of a powerful desktop (if you need it) and iPad for everything mobile. So far this is the perfect combo for me.
Great point. I'll simply take my 24" iMac with me on the plane next time I fly somewhere. :roll eyes:
And what's so hard about syncing a desktop and a laptop? iDisk does it very well. Unfortunately, with iDisk going away, I'll have to switch to Dropbox, but that will do just as well.
Maybe it's that thing where the pad docks in the monitor.
Can you visualize Steve introducing something like that -- we call it the Apple bi-polar
Yeah, I emailed a friend who is an exec in Broadcast TV -- about this, but more about the iPads as Personal TVs over WiFi, around the house. No rebroadcast, no PVR -- whatever comes out of the coax cable just WiFi to the iPads.
A got a short answer that the technology is there, but the politics are not.
We plan to speak later today so maybe I'll be able to flesh-out the answer.
But, based on the above, I don't believe an Apple HDTV/ATV solution fits the timeframe if this rumor:
It's coming I'm sure ... I for one am dumping any traditional TV feed from my FiOS. Using AE and ATV we watch lovely quality (OK maybe not the highest but good enough for us) HD TV from Netflix and CNN's iPad App shoots to the big screen with Airplay almost flawlessly. I expect more iPad apps like CNNs to follow soon (I love VEVO HD for Music vids). So it's getting there faster and faster. It would be nice to have these apps on the ATV itself as in an add your own to the ATV menu set up and avoid the need for iPad / Airplay scenario and I am hoping that's coming.
Apple may have found that they were able to produce that kind of next generation device ahead of their previously deterined schedule. This could have been driven by the wide acceptance of the iPad which they hadn't anticipated being as great as it proved to be - their commentary in the quarterly financial calls alluded to their (pleasant) surprise. If that is the case, and especially with the announced intention of HP out of desktop PC production, it is not, as noted above, beyond Apple to introduce something very disruptive and ride out the initial reaction to the radical departure in order to build out the foundation of what they see as the next generation of computing devices.
I think it has been mentioned before but bears repeating: the iPhone and the iPod Touch were the precursors to the iPad - even though the iPad was allegedly on the bench first. It made sense (in retrospect) to bring out smaller, "less threatening" devices first to gauge consumer reaction to the interface, and then introduce the iPad. Which in turn could be the predecessor to a whole new line of computing devices.
This is going to be a struggle first for those of us in technology, as we tend to be wedded to the existing technology paradigm, so look for strong negative reaction by pundits across the board to the new approach when Apple first announces it. Apple stock will inevitably take an initial hit as well (as it seems to do when Apple introduces a new product line). As the iPad demonstrated, if a straight line is drawn from one product to the next (interface-wise for example) consumers have demonstrated that they are willing to make that move much quicker than those of us who are heavily invested in the current technologies.
If this is true we are poised for yet another disruption.
Not so sure! Don't know you from Adam. Maybe you are too imbeded (rather than wedded) to technology to an extent that is foreign to my experience, or you may be thinking in too linear a fashion.
The iPad was a completely new (at least in terms of successful function - not to mention design) computing paradigm, yet, was wildly successful in a very short time. Now, in less than 2 years, tablet computing has replaced (or is at least in the process of changing) the paradigm and is a mega-billion dollar business. Which tells me radical change in form factor is possible, if 'it just works.'
Can you visualize Steve introducing something like that -- we call it the Apple bi-polar
Complete with digital compass.
*rimshot*
to replace a laptop for some people,
to fit where a smaller iMac used to be,
give it a typing rack or whatever like the iPad or a docking station like that patent from a while back that looked like an iMac shell.
Just don't drop it.
Is that a funny typo, or did you mean it? (I know personally the type of damage mainframes and their associated ecosystems have done to certain people).
Well... It was a typo in a proposal we made in 1985 to sell 7 LANS (each with 20 MB HDD and 5-10 Macs , Omnis 2 DB, high-speed printer) to do claims processing/check printing in various Sequoia Insurance Branch Offices in California.
The customer pointed out the typo -- but we left it in. It piqued their interest and made them smile.
We got the business! The installations were a great success! We got a lot of follow-on and reference business.
So, maybe I'm superstitious... but to me, the word is maimframe! (regardless of what the Apple SpellChecker says).
If Apple wants to keep existing, they'll leave it alone.
Why can't I help picturing a muscled Tallest Skil with a rocket launcher shooting an Apple-emblazonned Hind helicopter... ?
Oh, GOSH. I didn't even THINK about being able to plug it into a LAPTOP!
Not just a bunch of RAIDed desktops but if you need more power for your laptop, plug in this new Mac Pro thingy and WHAM you're rendering with the big boys on your tiny MacBook Air!
Why on earth would your terabytes of source files be on a MacBook Air to start with? Did you edit and create all the 3D models and HD video, that now need a render farm, with a tiny Air? No, you would use a Mac Pro from the beginning.
So you've been around
Remember Taligent? I was quite involved with that, lived next door to Sunnyvale. Nobody expected Amelio to just go like that but it was another time of technological turmoil. Still some interesting technology came out of it that even java uses
To say that Steve is headstrong is an understatement, but then that's him. He does it his way! Looking back at NeXT and Pixar you can say in retrospect they were his early attempts at success. He really won (unlike Charlie Sheen who won in his own mind only)
Yeah, I remember Taligent -- but that was happening as we were leaving the industry (and Silicon Valley).
If you were around Sunnyvale in the 1980s, our Sunnyvale Computer Plus store was at Fremont and Mary. We sold the stores in 1989.
Headstrong?
In 1979, I was doing a demo of an Apple ][ in our store with a crowd of about 15-20 people behind me.
All of a sudden this loud voice calls out from the back -- "You're doing it wrong!"
Jobs pushed his way to the front and proceeded to give the best damn Apple ][ demo I ever saw (better than Woz or his younger brother Mark -- who I thought was the best).
Why on earth would your terabytes of source files be on a MacBook Air to start with? Did you edit and create all the 3D models and HD video, that now need a render farm, with a tiny Air? No, you would use a Mac Pro from the beginning.
True but to be fair he was following up on my post about this where I specified an i7 MBP and this exactly what I do do now. The conversation was about the addition of some new low cost Apple made CPU render box that worked on all compliant OS X apps. Which as I no longer have the Mac Pro I for one would love to see as an option ... all pipe dreams probably
Great point. I'll simply take my 24" iMac with me on the plane next time I fly somewhere. :roll eyes:
Yep I need a MBP for air travel too but if you were never too far from your desktop location the Professor's plan would be acceptable. Really depends on the kind of work you do. If you do a lot of web and network configuration stuff you need a unix command line. If you do a lot of graphics you need a mouse and Adobe CS, but if you do mostly written communications an iPad might work as your only mobile computer.
Why can't I help picturing a muscled Tallest Skil with a rocket launcher shooting an Apple-emblazonned Hind helicopter... ?
It's more of a Godfather-esque, "You don' take sides against da users?" idea, but I like that, too.
BUT just maybe Steve follows you and I on AI for his next big idea
Seriously though, I wonder just how small and inexpensive Apple could make such an add on TB based CPU for? BTW not sure way RAID has to do with any of of this.
RAID is the storage for the computer ProBoxes -- all the ProBoxes have is Dual Thunderbolt, RAM, GPUs, CPUs and enough SSD to run the OS and whatever buffers for data.
Something like:
RAID*---ProBOX*--DIsplay*===USB/Firewire peripherals
*You can add multiples of these as needed.
RYO Mac Pro!
Edit: The beauty of this is you can start small where the compute box is a Mini. The Mini has only 1 Thunderbolt port so it must be at one end of the daisy chain,
So the Mini is a ProsumerBox -- you upgrade by adding ProBoxes inboard of the Mini.
True but to be fair he was following up on my post about this where I specified an i7 MBP and this exactly what I do do now. The conversation was about the addition of some new low cost Apple made CPU render box that worked on all compliant OS X apps. Which as I no longer have the Mac Pro I for one would love to see as an option ... all pipe dreams probably
Realistically the Thunderbolt i/o actually is the best solution. You would need to move the source data from your 3D and video editing apps that are on your notebook to the RAID connected to the Mac Pro so that the memory, CPU, GPU, storage, app and OS are in close proximity to the main bus architecture in order to leverage the multicore power. You can't be sending all the CPU commands from a remote i7 notebook to the workhorse platform over the Thunderbolt connection. It just isn't fast enough. The Mac Pro needs to be running the app locally.