What is needed is a true a full Mac with just 400 to 600 g. The Mac in your pocket. Always. And I mean a true Mac with Intel x86 inside; not an ARM-based iOS device.
What is needed is a true a full Mac with just 400 to 600 g. The Mac in your pocket. Always. And I mean a true Mac with Intel x86 inside; not an ARM-based iOS device.
So is this brilliant, well thought out idea Mac OS X on a pocketable touchscreen or Mac OS X with a pocketable keyboard?
You know that its impossible with X86 to be power efficient? The architecture makes the CPU to large. Large CPU leads to heat, more cost and more energy.
X86 is many things. Not fastest, not most power efficient. X86 have always "won" since
Windows support it and that processor are cheap compared to RISC processors. Remember that RISC went 64bit in 1995 and that first with Win7 64bit is widespread in the X86 world. And that is with 64bit extensions, not true/pure 64bit.
The funny thing with X86 64bit is that programs runs slower with it. Programs that don't use more then 4 gig memory are in average 2% slower on 64bit then 32bit. This is something that never have happened before. From 16-->32bit dramatic performance increase. On real 64bit processors. Dramatic performance increase 32--->64bit.
Intel have the greatest manufacturing process in the world. The competition are 2 years behind. Even with this, Intel cant manufacture a decent low powered SoC that can be used in mobile devices.
The X86 phones that are introduced in 3-6 month have a singe core 1.3ghz that turbos to 1.6. In single threaded programs its faster then Cortex9. But Intel won't compete with Cortex9 in 6 month. They will have to compete with ARM15.
At the same power envelope as the Intel SoC at 1.3ghz you get a quod core 1.8-2ghz ARM15 core. We are talking 4 times the power.
Intel needs to uncripple its SoC and produce it with latest processing node for it to have a chance. But Intel wont do that. They don't want to compete with ARMs 6 cent per core strategy. Intel wants to sell expensive processors. A good, cheap Intel would just hurt Intel's bottom line.
Apple have a unique edge against Intel/X86/Android
Since Apple controls its platform and makes its own SoC they can design the SoC to their specification. This leads to that Apple uses NOVA SIMD acceleration. This is something Intel/Android never can use since they don't control the platform. Every single A4+ Apple product have SIMD. An educated guess is that iOS 6 will be A4+ only meaning that everything can be accelerated by SIMD since every device will support it. Google supriced me with their answer. Since not every Android device have SIMD, they accelerated stuff with GPU in Android 4. Apple can use both SIMD and GPU. Something that Apple have lots of experience with since OSX have been accelerated using Altivec and Quartz extreme since 2002.
Intel have never been good at SIMD extensions. RISC have always lead the way, probably since most RISC vendors control their OS/Hardware and can accelerate stuff.
Bookmark this:
Intel will be a niche processor in 5-8 years. They will have the "performance" market, gaming and "fast enough" servers.
Lowend ARM
Middle end ARM
Highend Intel/SPARC/POWER and all other exotic processors.
Intel will OEM ARM manufacturing with their great fabs.
People seems to believe that X86/Intel always have been/Will be the greatest. 15 years ago:
Lowend companies: Diskless clients to Xservers. Home computers X86
Middle end Intel
Highend SPARC/IBM/Alpha. (Intel had 10% market share servers in 2000)
Stuff changes fast in the IT world.
And last, to put things in perspective.
ARM license about 20 billion cores each year. That is what Intel have done in all its lifetime. ARM license more high end ARM cores then AMD have sold in its lifetime.
The averege Ipad costs more the the averege PC.
Phones and Tablets will replace almost all desktop computers within a couple of years. (many users will have faster Ipads then their PCs starting with A6)
I am not an expert on microprocessors, but the discussion reminds me the quote which is attributed to L Ellison, about the IBM PC "IBM has been mad to design something for which one third of the profit goes to Microsoft, and another third to Intel" (something like this). I am pretty sure Apple will also make a move in such a way that it also puts in its pocket the microprocessor profit, as they did for their mobile offering.
I think thats good for you but I write a lot of code and I can do it on an iPad but I won't. It's one of those cases of some thing that you can do but really shouldn't because it makes no sense. Writing hundred of line of code and writing research papers is what I do and it makes no sense to do it on an iPad no matter how big it is.
Just buy an Apple wireless keyboard if you do a lot of typing.
An iPad 3 with an attachable keyboard like the Transformer Prime would be great. Its nice to know they see it as a scaling up of the iPad and not a dumbing down of Mac's too. ARM chips are getting more and more capable but still are magnitudes behind what the chips in Macbook Pros and other laptops are. So no ARM based Macbook Air, not for a few years at least, but an iPad with a keyboard that can do basic laptop stuff decently.
They also have much more R&D capability than any ARM manufacturer, as well as having the most advanced fabs by at least a years margin. I believe they will face some tougher challenges with ARM than against AMD, but they certainly aren't becoming niche in 5-8 years, please bookmark this as well
Just like they lost the phone market because they kept a 3.5" screen. Or how they lost the PMP market by not supporting FLAC or WMA.
Wait?
It is funny. just five years ago Apple did not have even ONE device in the phone market, and now they are kicking butt with only a couple of iPhone models compared with many companies using many other smartphone devices! Actually Apple as a company is just dominating...
Like it or not, apple is an incredible marketing machine with great products..It was not the first one on the MP3 market, and now is killing it, then it was more than 20 years late on the wireless phone market and as individual company is killing it, and then they created a whole new category with the iPad, and it is killing it...
Then, Apple came with the Mac air...
And one more thing._________Just fill in the blanks, I call it innovation, not only technology but also marketing innovation.
As a marketer who has sold close to 200 million dollars in products (I am just a drop of water in the ocean when compared with apple) I say hail to the apple marketing machine...and Steve Jobs legacy, we have a lot to learn from them, and keep learning...
It doesn't matter, at all, how whatever chipset Apple puts into an iPad compares to whatever is the latest and greatest from Intel. What matters is how well that iPad runs the software that most people want to run.
Will the iPad 3 do 3D modeling or realtime simulation as well as a powerful desktop? No. Will it more than likely do most of what most people want their computer to do quickly and fluidly? Almost certainly, in that the current iPad already satisfies those conditions in most cases.
A lot of people seem to be taking Cook's remarks as indicative of new hardware or form factors, but I'm intrigued as to what it means for the next iteration of iOS.
Apple has addressed most of the nagging issues that seemed to be on most people's lists, now they can start to really flex the architecture's muscles and see what they can do about becoming the next, no-compromise computing platform. That means the OS and applications.
Right now there are a bunch of apps that feel a bit "dumbed down" in order to play nice on an iPad. Limited feature set, constrained file management, etc. Up till now, the fact that I can run some of these apps at all has seemed amazing, but we're quickly moving to the point that people are going to start wanting more out of their tablets.
This is also where Apple can absolutely bury the competition. Android manufactures and Google seem to have settled into a default "media consumption with lots of ties to social media" position for their tablets. Apple clearly has much loftier ambitions for the iPad and possible future iOS devices-- they really want to make it the next Mac. It isn't yet, but there's no reason it can't be. Google, OTOH, doesn't seem to aspire to much beyond an ad impression funnel, so there's no urgency around creating the kind of apps that can sharply demarcate the toys from the "real work" machines (ironic, I know, but it seems to be true). Just look at the Avid video editing app that just got released for iOS. I guess they might release an Android version at some point, but would anyone use it? You don't get the impression anyone is buying an Android tablet to actually do stuff, because they've already decided that "real work" is for laptops.
As for MS, who knows? I don't see the Metro environment as particularly conducive to real productivity apps, and it's looking as if Windows tablets will be more like Android tablets with a flatter UI, mostly intended as a window into your social doings. Will they ever build a Metro Office? Can they? Because you can bet Apple is working on major improvements to iOS iWork
Just buy an Apple wireless keyboard if you do a lot of typing.
A keyboard is hardly the only problem with doing serious code development on an iPad. To made anything other than a toy program you need to be able to open and edit lots of different files, and HAVE A COMPILER. The most you can use an iPad for is as a text editor where you would have to upload the files to another machine to compile and test (or back to the iPad if that is what you are targeting). So, for code development you would be shelling out $500+ for what is essentially a 10-inch dumb terminal. Plus, most coders I know prefer to develop on two or more large (20-inch or more) screens connected to as many processors with as much DRAM as you can afford for parallel compilation. The iPad is not a good platform for development. Even for writing large technical documents, the 10-inch screen is a limitation.
This in no way means the iPad is bad. It is great for a lot of tasks, probably even most day-to-day use, but there is a reason we still have conventional PCs, and for many uses (code development, 3D modeling and rendering, page layout, scientific and technical computing, etc...) tablets are just not a great fit.
I would argue that this is the real strength of Apple's strategy. Other than the very high end (servers and supercomputers) they are the only company which offers a unified set of devices from your pocket to your desktop. This allows someone to develop content on a device well suited for it (i.e. lots of processing power, memory, and screen space) and then present that content on a device that is portable and tailored toward media consumption. If Apple only focused on the mobile, it would be a much less compelling ecosystem.
But you can't type a degree symbol, or any Greek letter like micron symbol or theta which we use all the time in science. You can't type an m-dash or superscript or subscript, plus/minus or approx equal. For science the iPad sucks at typing. But then again all one really needs to do in life is post to Facebook.
You need to type out all those things, so you use an application that supports it. Not Notes. Find a notepad application with all of those things. Buy a stylus, draw them in. There's a couple ways you could do it.
Your complaint is like saying you can't make very good spreadsheets with Wordpad.
They won't need to transition the MBA to ARM because we'll probably see a 13" iPad next year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonso Perez
I don't know about 13", which seems a little big, but I sure do hope for a slightly larger iPad, about 11.8", 2048 x 1536 (double the current resolution), coupled with a good dock and a keyboard cover like the Zagg (but with full size keys like the 11" Air).
This would make it a more viable notebook replacement for more common use cases, it would make it a much better magazine and illustrated book reader (size does matter), and it would reduce eye fatigue for those older than 40.
I see the format as a complement, not a replacement. Just like today we have two sizes of Airs, there would be two iPad sizes.
By the way, if the above does not happen I would love to see an ARM based Air. The point is not to make it cheap or low end. The point would be the all-day, worry-free battery life. If you spend all day with email and basic office apps, you don't need the high performance of an Intel chip.
You need to type out all those things, so you use an application that supports it. Not Notes. Find a notepad application with all of those things. Buy a stylus, draw them in. There's a couple ways you could do it.
Your complaint is like saying you can't make very good spreadsheets with Wordpad.
Yes and instead of taking mass transit to my office each day I could do cartwheels, handsprings and back flips the entire way.
Seriously thanks for your suggestions but I need a much more robust system wide character chooser or keyboard layout to accomplish the needed tasks for all applications from texting to email, posting in web forms, to do lists etc.
Listening now to Deus Ex: HR soundtrack while reading this... I have to say youve got some good points.
The killer is this: User Experience for beginners with ARM devices are light years ahead of x86 devices at the moment... Intermediate users are already using ARM devices for "simpler" tasks. The bottom is about to drop out of the desktop PC market, and in five years I can't see ARM not kicking x86 ass for most beginner-intermediate tasks (whatever that may mean to someone).
I think Intel is too complacent to fab ARM in the next few years though, even though if they started tomorrow you know they will be laughing all the way to the bank throughout this decade. For the next few years Intel will be burning a lot of resources fighting ARM when they could be making lots off it.
I often wonder if Apple could contract Intel to fab Apple's ARM chips/packages.
Seems like a mutually-beneficial arrangement could be worked out -- and reduce dependence on Sammy.
I often wonder if Apple could contract Intel to fab Apple's ARM chips/packages.
Seems like a mutually-beneficial arrangement could be worked out -- and reduce dependence on Sammy.
Its theoretically possible, but Intel has historically resisted being a fab-for-hire. TSMC, UMC, and Global Foundries (and a little IBM) all work in that space and have the infrastructure for being a foundry.
Part of the reason Intel has resisted this path is the same reason that Apple killed off the clones and avoided licensing MacOS ?*by having vertical integration (HW & SW in Apple's case, Chip design and Fab in Intels) you capture more of the high margin activities and can differentiate yourself. If Intel became "just another foundry" they might not be able to maintain the profit margins they prefer.
Intel actually used to make ARM cores (I think there was some IP swap from DEC or something), but got out of that to focus on x86 - i.e. somewhere they could try and differentiate themselves.
Apple have a unique edge against Intel/X86/Android
Since Apple controls its platform and makes its own SoC they can design the SoC to their specification. This leads to that Apple uses NOVA SIMD acceleration. This is something Intel/Android never can use since they don't control the platform. Every single A4+ Apple product have SIMD. An educated guess is that iOS 6 will be A4+ only meaning that everything can be accelerated by SIMD since every device will support it. Google supriced me with their answer. Since not every Android device have SIMD, they accelerated stuff with GPU in Android 4. Apple can use both SIMD and GPU. Something that Apple have lots of experience with since OSX have been accelerated using Altivec and Quartz extreme since 2002.
Intel have never been good at SIMD extensions. RISC have always lead the way, probably since most RISC vendors control their OS/Hardware and can accelerate stuff.
...
Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox
It doesn't matter, at all, how whatever chipset Apple puts into an iPad compares to whatever is the latest and greatest from Intel. What matters is how well that iPad runs the software that most people want to run.
Will the iPad 3 do 3D modeling or realtime simulation as well as a powerful desktop? No. Will it more than likely do most of what most people want their computer to do quickly and fluidly? Almost certainly, in that the current iPad already satisfies those conditions in most cases.
A lot of people seem to be taking Cook's remarks as indicative of new hardware or form factors, but I'm intrigued as to what it means for the next iteration of iOS.
Apple has addressed most of the nagging issues that seemed to be on most people's lists, now they can start to really flex the architecture's muscles and see what they can do about becoming the next, no-compromise computing platform. That means the OS and applications.
Right now there are a bunch of apps that feel a bit "dumbed down" in order to play nice on an iPad. Limited feature set, constrained file management, etc. Up till now, the fact that I can run some of these apps at all has seemed amazing, but we're quickly moving to the point that people are going to start wanting more out of their tablets.
This is also where Apple can absolutely bury the competition. Android manufactures and Google seem to have settled into a default "media consumption with lots of ties to social media" position for their tablets. Apple clearly has much loftier ambitions for the iPad and possible future iOS devices-- they really want to make it the next Mac. It isn't yet, but there's no reason it can't be. Google, OTOH, doesn't seem to aspire to much beyond an ad impression funnel, so there's no urgency around creating the kind of apps that can sharply demarcate the toys from the "real work" machines (ironic, I know, but it seems to be true). Just look at the Avid video editing app that just got released for iOS. I guess they might release an Android version at some point, but would anyone use it? You don't get the impression anyone is buying an Android tablet to actually do stuff, because they've already decided that "real work" is for laptops.
As for MS, who knows? I don't see the Metro environment as particularly conducive to real productivity apps, and it's looking as if Windows tablets will be more like Android tablets with a flatter UI, mostly intended as a window into your social doings. Will they ever build a Metro Office? Can they? Because you can bet Apple is working on major improvements to iOS iWork
From reading in this and other threads, I am starting to get the impression that we may be looking at this
x86 vs ARM from the wrong perspective...
Many people say we must look at how ARM measures up to x86 -- running x86 apps in particular.
The earlier post referenced SIMD -- so I did a little research:
An application that may take advantage of SIMD is one where the same value is being added (or subtracted) to a large number of data points, a common operation in many multimedia applications. One example would be changing the brightness of an image. Each pixel of an image consists of three values for the brightness of the red (R), green (G) and blue (B) portions of the color. To change the brightness, the R, G and B values are read from memory, a value is added (or subtracted) from them, and the resulting values are written back out to memory.
With a SIMD processor there are two improvements to this process. For one the data is understood to be in blocks, and a number of values can be loaded all at once. Instead of a series of instructions saying "get this pixel, now get the next pixel", a SIMD processor will have a single instruction that effectively says "get lots of pixels" ("lots" is a number that varies from design to design). For a variety of reasons, this can take much less time than "getting" each pixel individually, as with traditional CPU design.
Another advantage is that SIMD systems typically include only those instructions that can be applied to all of the data in one operation. In other words, if the SIMD system works by loading up eight data points at once, the add operation being applied to the data will happen to all eight values at the same time. Although the same is true for any super-scalar processor design, the level of parallelism in a SIMD system is typically much higher.
Now THAT IS interesting!
AV editing involves effects (panning/zooming/distortion, colorization, etc.), retiming, changing octave/key...
It just may be that the ARM/SIMD solution is superior for these types of apps -- and it's the x86 that doesn't measure up.
Now, take that same concept to most display operations -- things like dragging a window across the display.
Also the size/cost/heat/power advantages might allow the ARM/SIMD "package" (including dedicated software) to be included in the display itself...
Wouldn't that be something -- a display (or TV Screen) that could intermitently receive and buffer a full complement of streamed data then perform manipulations on that data -- instead of constantly replacing it with attentional streamed data.
I don't know... maybe receive every 25th frame of a hires video -- then generate the intervening 24 frames... That could deliver a superior video at lower bandwidth.
I have used iMovie on the iPad... it's OK!
I recently bought Avid Studio on the iPad... more capabilities & I think I like it over iMovie.
But, whenever I fire up Final Cut Pro X on my iMac -- I just can't help wondering how well it would run on the iPad.
AV editing involves effects (panning/zooming/distortion, colorization, etc.), retiming, changing octave/key...
It just may be that the ARM/SIMD solution is superior for these types of apps -- and it's the x86 that doesn't measure up.
x86 has support for SIMD instructions, just like ARM. And both processors can offload heavy SIMD work to GPUs which are even better at them. You can argue which SIMD instruction set is better, but there is not much difference, and both are evolving rapidly. So we are not comparing x86 vs. ARM or x86 vs. ARM+SIMD, but x86+SIMD+GPUs vs. ARM+SIMD+GPUs.
Just buy an Apple wireless keyboard if you do a lot of typing.
When I first got the iPad I made an attempt to use it to replace my MacBook Pro. The same stuff, coding work and writing papers and email. It didn't work for me. I tried it again with the iPad 2. It still didn't work out. If you have evert used a wireless keyboard with the iPad the display keyboard is needed sometimes and you end up touching the screen a lot anyway. I ended up replacing my MBP with an MBA.
MSTONE had commented in a comical way regarding the use of an iPad but there merit to his comment. It really depends on the kind of work you need to do with an iPad but its utility is still limited if you do complex content creation, programming or require performance. I use a multicore PC to run several VMs 24/7 for testing. I would love to do it on a tablet but this of course doesn't work.
The majority of of people would be just fine with an iPad, but they are also just fine with a single core or dual core computer at the most. The activity on their computer is no more complex than FaceBook, web, email, messaging and light gaming. That's 90% of the people out there.
x86 has support for SIMD instructions, just like ARM. And both processors can offload heavy SIMD work to GPUs which are even better at them. You can argue which SIMD instruction set is better, but there is not much difference, and both are evolving rapidly. So we are not comparing x86 vs. ARM or x86 vs. ARM+SIMD, but x86+SIMD+GPUs vs. ARM+SIMD+GPUs.
Maybe I should have phrased it like the OP -- because Apple controls the platform, OS and hardware, they can take advantage of ARM/SIMD in iDevices.
It is doubtful that MS or Google can control this to the extent that Apple can.
Maybe I should have phrased it like the OP -- because Apple controls the platform, OS and hardware, they can take advantage of ARM/SIMD in iDevices.
It is doubtful that MS or Google can control this to the extent that Apple can.
Yes but again, a current gen discrete desktop GPU is blisteringly fast and can pump way more data than a current gen top end ARM GPU. So even if the CPUs stacked up managed to even out, the desktop would still have the advantage with the GPU compute capabilities.
Comments
What is needed is a true a full Mac with just 400 to 600 g. The Mac in your pocket. Always. And I mean a true Mac with Intel x86 inside; not an ARM-based iOS device.
So is this brilliant, well thought out idea Mac OS X on a pocketable touchscreen or Mac OS X with a pocketable keyboard?
You know that its impossible with X86 to be power efficient? The architecture makes the CPU to large. Large CPU leads to heat, more cost and more energy.
X86 is many things. Not fastest, not most power efficient. X86 have always "won" since
Windows support it and that processor are cheap compared to RISC processors. Remember that RISC went 64bit in 1995 and that first with Win7 64bit is widespread in the X86 world. And that is with 64bit extensions, not true/pure 64bit.
The funny thing with X86 64bit is that programs runs slower with it. Programs that don't use more then 4 gig memory are in average 2% slower on 64bit then 32bit. This is something that never have happened before. From 16-->32bit dramatic performance increase. On real 64bit processors. Dramatic performance increase 32--->64bit.
Intel have the greatest manufacturing process in the world. The competition are 2 years behind. Even with this, Intel cant manufacture a decent low powered SoC that can be used in mobile devices.
The X86 phones that are introduced in 3-6 month have a singe core 1.3ghz that turbos to 1.6. In single threaded programs its faster then Cortex9. But Intel won't compete with Cortex9 in 6 month. They will have to compete with ARM15.
At the same power envelope as the Intel SoC at 1.3ghz you get a quod core 1.8-2ghz ARM15 core. We are talking 4 times the power.
Intel needs to uncripple its SoC and produce it with latest processing node for it to have a chance. But Intel wont do that. They don't want to compete with ARMs 6 cent per core strategy. Intel wants to sell expensive processors. A good, cheap Intel would just hurt Intel's bottom line.
Apple have a unique edge against Intel/X86/Android
Since Apple controls its platform and makes its own SoC they can design the SoC to their specification. This leads to that Apple uses NOVA SIMD acceleration. This is something Intel/Android never can use since they don't control the platform. Every single A4+ Apple product have SIMD. An educated guess is that iOS 6 will be A4+ only meaning that everything can be accelerated by SIMD since every device will support it. Google supriced me with their answer. Since not every Android device have SIMD, they accelerated stuff with GPU in Android 4. Apple can use both SIMD and GPU. Something that Apple have lots of experience with since OSX have been accelerated using Altivec and Quartz extreme since 2002.
Intel have never been good at SIMD extensions. RISC have always lead the way, probably since most RISC vendors control their OS/Hardware and can accelerate stuff.
Bookmark this:
Intel will be a niche processor in 5-8 years. They will have the "performance" market, gaming and "fast enough" servers.
Lowend ARM
Middle end ARM
Highend Intel/SPARC/POWER and all other exotic processors.
Intel will OEM ARM manufacturing with their great fabs.
People seems to believe that X86/Intel always have been/Will be the greatest. 15 years ago:
Lowend companies: Diskless clients to Xservers. Home computers X86
Middle end Intel
Highend SPARC/IBM/Alpha. (Intel had 10% market share servers in 2000)
Stuff changes fast in the IT world.
And last, to put things in perspective.
ARM license about 20 billion cores each year. That is what Intel have done in all its lifetime. ARM license more high end ARM cores then AMD have sold in its lifetime.
The averege Ipad costs more the the averege PC.
Phones and Tablets will replace almost all desktop computers within a couple of years. (many users will have faster Ipads then their PCs starting with A6)
Stunning post.
Lemon Bon Bon.
I think thats good for you but I write a lot of code and I can do it on an iPad but I won't. It's one of those cases of some thing that you can do but really shouldn't because it makes no sense. Writing hundred of line of code and writing research papers is what I do and it makes no sense to do it on an iPad no matter how big it is.
Just buy an Apple wireless keyboard if you do a lot of typing.
Bookmark this:
Intel will be a niche processor in 5-8 years. They will have the "performance" market, gaming and "fast enough" servers.
Lowend ARM
Middle end ARM
Highend Intel/SPARC/POWER and all other exotic processors.
You realize Intel is getting onto ARMs target space soon too, right?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5365/i...or-smartphones
They also have much more R&D capability than any ARM manufacturer, as well as having the most advanced fabs by at least a years margin. I believe they will face some tougher challenges with ARM than against AMD, but they certainly aren't becoming niche in 5-8 years, please bookmark this as well
Just like they lost the phone market because they kept a 3.5" screen. Or how they lost the PMP market by not supporting FLAC or WMA.
Wait?
It is funny. just five years ago Apple did not have even ONE device in the phone market, and now they are kicking butt with only a couple of iPhone models compared with many companies using many other smartphone devices! Actually Apple as a company is just dominating...
Like it or not, apple is an incredible marketing machine with great products..It was not the first one on the MP3 market, and now is killing it, then it was more than 20 years late on the wireless phone market and as individual company is killing it, and then they created a whole new category with the iPad, and it is killing it...
Then, Apple came with the Mac air...
And one more thing._________Just fill in the blanks, I call it innovation, not only technology but also marketing innovation.
As a marketer who has sold close to 200 million dollars in products (I am just a drop of water in the ocean when compared with apple) I say hail to the apple marketing machine...and Steve Jobs legacy, we have a lot to learn from them, and keep learning...
George
Will the iPad 3 do 3D modeling or realtime simulation as well as a powerful desktop? No. Will it more than likely do most of what most people want their computer to do quickly and fluidly? Almost certainly, in that the current iPad already satisfies those conditions in most cases.
A lot of people seem to be taking Cook's remarks as indicative of new hardware or form factors, but I'm intrigued as to what it means for the next iteration of iOS.
Apple has addressed most of the nagging issues that seemed to be on most people's lists, now they can start to really flex the architecture's muscles and see what they can do about becoming the next, no-compromise computing platform. That means the OS and applications.
Right now there are a bunch of apps that feel a bit "dumbed down" in order to play nice on an iPad. Limited feature set, constrained file management, etc. Up till now, the fact that I can run some of these apps at all has seemed amazing, but we're quickly moving to the point that people are going to start wanting more out of their tablets.
This is also where Apple can absolutely bury the competition. Android manufactures and Google seem to have settled into a default "media consumption with lots of ties to social media" position for their tablets. Apple clearly has much loftier ambitions for the iPad and possible future iOS devices-- they really want to make it the next Mac. It isn't yet, but there's no reason it can't be. Google, OTOH, doesn't seem to aspire to much beyond an ad impression funnel, so there's no urgency around creating the kind of apps that can sharply demarcate the toys from the "real work" machines (ironic, I know, but it seems to be true). Just look at the Avid video editing app that just got released for iOS. I guess they might release an Android version at some point, but would anyone use it? You don't get the impression anyone is buying an Android tablet to actually do stuff, because they've already decided that "real work" is for laptops.
As for MS, who knows? I don't see the Metro environment as particularly conducive to real productivity apps, and it's looking as if Windows tablets will be more like Android tablets with a flatter UI, mostly intended as a window into your social doings. Will they ever build a Metro Office? Can they? Because you can bet Apple is working on major improvements to iOS iWork
Just buy an Apple wireless keyboard if you do a lot of typing.
A keyboard is hardly the only problem with doing serious code development on an iPad. To made anything other than a toy program you need to be able to open and edit lots of different files, and HAVE A COMPILER. The most you can use an iPad for is as a text editor where you would have to upload the files to another machine to compile and test (or back to the iPad if that is what you are targeting). So, for code development you would be shelling out $500+ for what is essentially a 10-inch dumb terminal. Plus, most coders I know prefer to develop on two or more large (20-inch or more) screens connected to as many processors with as much DRAM as you can afford for parallel compilation. The iPad is not a good platform for development. Even for writing large technical documents, the 10-inch screen is a limitation.
This in no way means the iPad is bad. It is great for a lot of tasks, probably even most day-to-day use, but there is a reason we still have conventional PCs, and for many uses (code development, 3D modeling and rendering, page layout, scientific and technical computing, etc...) tablets are just not a great fit.
I would argue that this is the real strength of Apple's strategy. Other than the very high end (servers and supercomputers) they are the only company which offers a unified set of devices from your pocket to your desktop. This allows someone to develop content on a device well suited for it (i.e. lots of processing power, memory, and screen space) and then present that content on a device that is portable and tailored toward media consumption. If Apple only focused on the mobile, it would be a much less compelling ecosystem.
But you can't type a degree symbol, or any Greek letter like micron symbol or theta which we use all the time in science. You can't type an m-dash or superscript or subscript, plus/minus or approx equal. For science the iPad sucks at typing. But then again all one really needs to do in life is post to Facebook.
You need to type out all those things, so you use an application that supports it. Not Notes. Find a notepad application with all of those things. Buy a stylus, draw them in. There's a couple ways you could do it.
Your complaint is like saying you can't make very good spreadsheets with Wordpad.
They won't need to transition the MBA to ARM because we'll probably see a 13" iPad next year.
I don't know about 13", which seems a little big, but I sure do hope for a slightly larger iPad, about 11.8", 2048 x 1536 (double the current resolution), coupled with a good dock and a keyboard cover like the Zagg (but with full size keys like the 11" Air).
This would make it a more viable notebook replacement for more common use cases, it would make it a much better magazine and illustrated book reader (size does matter), and it would reduce eye fatigue for those older than 40.
I see the format as a complement, not a replacement. Just like today we have two sizes of Airs, there would be two iPad sizes.
By the way, if the above does not happen I would love to see an ARM based Air. The point is not to make it cheap or low end. The point would be the all-day, worry-free battery life. If you spend all day with email and basic office apps, you don't need the high performance of an Intel chip.
Have a look at this:
Jeff Han Demos 82-inch & 27-inch Multi-Touch Display
You need to type out all those things, so you use an application that supports it. Not Notes. Find a notepad application with all of those things. Buy a stylus, draw them in. There's a couple ways you could do it.
Your complaint is like saying you can't make very good spreadsheets with Wordpad.
Yes and instead of taking mass transit to my office each day I could do cartwheels, handsprings and back flips the entire way.
Seriously thanks for your suggestions but I need a much more robust system wide character chooser or keyboard layout to accomplish the needed tasks for all applications from texting to email, posting in web forms, to do lists etc.
Listening now to Deus Ex: HR soundtrack while reading this... I have to say youve got some good points.
The killer is this: User Experience for beginners with ARM devices are light years ahead of x86 devices at the moment... Intermediate users are already using ARM devices for "simpler" tasks. The bottom is about to drop out of the desktop PC market, and in five years I can't see ARM not kicking x86 ass for most beginner-intermediate tasks (whatever that may mean to someone).
I think Intel is too complacent to fab ARM in the next few years though, even though if they started tomorrow you know they will be laughing all the way to the bank throughout this decade. For the next few years Intel will be burning a lot of resources fighting ARM when they could be making lots off it.
I often wonder if Apple could contract Intel to fab Apple's ARM chips/packages.
Seems like a mutually-beneficial arrangement could be worked out -- and reduce dependence on Sammy.
I often wonder if Apple could contract Intel to fab Apple's ARM chips/packages.
Seems like a mutually-beneficial arrangement could be worked out -- and reduce dependence on Sammy.
Its theoretically possible, but Intel has historically resisted being a fab-for-hire. TSMC, UMC, and Global Foundries (and a little IBM) all work in that space and have the infrastructure for being a foundry.
Part of the reason Intel has resisted this path is the same reason that Apple killed off the clones and avoided licensing MacOS ?*by having vertical integration (HW & SW in Apple's case, Chip design and Fab in Intels) you capture more of the high margin activities and can differentiate yourself. If Intel became "just another foundry" they might not be able to maintain the profit margins they prefer.
Intel actually used to make ARM cores (I think there was some IP swap from DEC or something), but got out of that to focus on x86 - i.e. somewhere they could try and differentiate themselves.
...
Apple have a unique edge against Intel/X86/Android
Since Apple controls its platform and makes its own SoC they can design the SoC to their specification. This leads to that Apple uses NOVA SIMD acceleration. This is something Intel/Android never can use since they don't control the platform. Every single A4+ Apple product have SIMD. An educated guess is that iOS 6 will be A4+ only meaning that everything can be accelerated by SIMD since every device will support it. Google supriced me with their answer. Since not every Android device have SIMD, they accelerated stuff with GPU in Android 4. Apple can use both SIMD and GPU. Something that Apple have lots of experience with since OSX have been accelerated using Altivec and Quartz extreme since 2002.
Intel have never been good at SIMD extensions. RISC have always lead the way, probably since most RISC vendors control their OS/Hardware and can accelerate stuff.
...
It doesn't matter, at all, how whatever chipset Apple puts into an iPad compares to whatever is the latest and greatest from Intel. What matters is how well that iPad runs the software that most people want to run.
Will the iPad 3 do 3D modeling or realtime simulation as well as a powerful desktop? No. Will it more than likely do most of what most people want their computer to do quickly and fluidly? Almost certainly, in that the current iPad already satisfies those conditions in most cases.
A lot of people seem to be taking Cook's remarks as indicative of new hardware or form factors, but I'm intrigued as to what it means for the next iteration of iOS.
Apple has addressed most of the nagging issues that seemed to be on most people's lists, now they can start to really flex the architecture's muscles and see what they can do about becoming the next, no-compromise computing platform. That means the OS and applications.
Right now there are a bunch of apps that feel a bit "dumbed down" in order to play nice on an iPad. Limited feature set, constrained file management, etc. Up till now, the fact that I can run some of these apps at all has seemed amazing, but we're quickly moving to the point that people are going to start wanting more out of their tablets.
This is also where Apple can absolutely bury the competition. Android manufactures and Google seem to have settled into a default "media consumption with lots of ties to social media" position for their tablets. Apple clearly has much loftier ambitions for the iPad and possible future iOS devices-- they really want to make it the next Mac. It isn't yet, but there's no reason it can't be. Google, OTOH, doesn't seem to aspire to much beyond an ad impression funnel, so there's no urgency around creating the kind of apps that can sharply demarcate the toys from the "real work" machines (ironic, I know, but it seems to be true). Just look at the Avid video editing app that just got released for iOS. I guess they might release an Android version at some point, but would anyone use it? You don't get the impression anyone is buying an Android tablet to actually do stuff, because they've already decided that "real work" is for laptops.
As for MS, who knows? I don't see the Metro environment as particularly conducive to real productivity apps, and it's looking as if Windows tablets will be more like Android tablets with a flatter UI, mostly intended as a window into your social doings. Will they ever build a Metro Office? Can they? Because you can bet Apple is working on major improvements to iOS iWork
From reading in this and other threads, I am starting to get the impression that we may be looking at this
x86 vs ARM from the wrong perspective...
Many people say we must look at how ARM measures up to x86 -- running x86 apps in particular.
The earlier post referenced SIMD -- so I did a little research:
Wiki: SIMD
From the linked article:
Advantages
An application that may take advantage of SIMD is one where the same value is being added (or subtracted) to a large number of data points, a common operation in many multimedia applications. One example would be changing the brightness of an image. Each pixel of an image consists of three values for the brightness of the red (R), green (G) and blue (B) portions of the color. To change the brightness, the R, G and B values are read from memory, a value is added (or subtracted) from them, and the resulting values are written back out to memory.
With a SIMD processor there are two improvements to this process. For one the data is understood to be in blocks, and a number of values can be loaded all at once. Instead of a series of instructions saying "get this pixel, now get the next pixel", a SIMD processor will have a single instruction that effectively says "get lots of pixels" ("lots" is a number that varies from design to design). For a variety of reasons, this can take much less time than "getting" each pixel individually, as with traditional CPU design.
Another advantage is that SIMD systems typically include only those instructions that can be applied to all of the data in one operation. In other words, if the SIMD system works by loading up eight data points at once, the add operation being applied to the data will happen to all eight values at the same time. Although the same is true for any super-scalar processor design, the level of parallelism in a SIMD system is typically much higher.
Now THAT IS interesting!
AV editing involves effects (panning/zooming/distortion, colorization, etc.), retiming, changing octave/key...
It just may be that the ARM/SIMD solution is superior for these types of apps -- and it's the x86 that doesn't measure up.
Now, take that same concept to most display operations -- things like dragging a window across the display.
Also the size/cost/heat/power advantages might allow the ARM/SIMD "package" (including dedicated software) to be included in the display itself...
Wouldn't that be something -- a display (or TV Screen) that could intermitently receive and buffer a full complement of streamed data then perform manipulations on that data -- instead of constantly replacing it with attentional streamed data.
I don't know... maybe receive every 25th frame of a hires video -- then generate the intervening 24 frames... That could deliver a superior video at lower bandwidth.
I have used iMovie on the iPad... it's OK!
I recently bought Avid Studio on the iPad... more capabilities & I think I like it over iMovie.
But, whenever I fire up Final Cut Pro X on my iMac -- I just can't help wondering how well it would run on the iPad.
From reading in this and other threads, I am starting to get the impression that we may be looking at this
x86 vs ARM from the wrong perspective...
Many people say we must look at how ARM measures up to x86 -- running x86 apps in particular.
The earlier post referenced SIMD -- so I did a little research:
Wiki: SIMD
From the linked article:
Now THAT IS interesting!
AV editing involves effects (panning/zooming/distortion, colorization, etc.), retiming, changing octave/key...
It just may be that the ARM/SIMD solution is superior for these types of apps -- and it's the x86 that doesn't measure up.
x86 has support for SIMD instructions, just like ARM. And both processors can offload heavy SIMD work to GPUs which are even better at them. You can argue which SIMD instruction set is better, but there is not much difference, and both are evolving rapidly. So we are not comparing x86 vs. ARM or x86 vs. ARM+SIMD, but x86+SIMD+GPUs vs. ARM+SIMD+GPUs.
Just buy an Apple wireless keyboard if you do a lot of typing.
When I first got the iPad I made an attempt to use it to replace my MacBook Pro. The same stuff, coding work and writing papers and email. It didn't work for me. I tried it again with the iPad 2. It still didn't work out. If you have evert used a wireless keyboard with the iPad the display keyboard is needed sometimes and you end up touching the screen a lot anyway. I ended up replacing my MBP with an MBA.
MSTONE had commented in a comical way regarding the use of an iPad but there merit to his comment. It really depends on the kind of work you need to do with an iPad but its utility is still limited if you do complex content creation, programming or require performance. I use a multicore PC to run several VMs 24/7 for testing. I would love to do it on a tablet but this of course doesn't work.
The majority of of people would be just fine with an iPad, but they are also just fine with a single core or dual core computer at the most. The activity on their computer is no more complex than FaceBook, web, email, messaging and light gaming. That's 90% of the people out there.
x86 has support for SIMD instructions, just like ARM. And both processors can offload heavy SIMD work to GPUs which are even better at them. You can argue which SIMD instruction set is better, but there is not much difference, and both are evolving rapidly. So we are not comparing x86 vs. ARM or x86 vs. ARM+SIMD, but x86+SIMD+GPUs vs. ARM+SIMD+GPUs.
Maybe I should have phrased it like the OP -- because Apple controls the platform, OS and hardware, they can take advantage of ARM/SIMD in iDevices.
It is doubtful that MS or Google can control this to the extent that Apple can.
Maybe I should have phrased it like the OP -- because Apple controls the platform, OS and hardware, they can take advantage of ARM/SIMD in iDevices.
It is doubtful that MS or Google can control this to the extent that Apple can.
Yes but again, a current gen discrete desktop GPU is blisteringly fast and can pump way more data than a current gen top end ARM GPU. So even if the CPUs stacked up managed to even out, the desktop would still have the advantage with the GPU compute capabilities.