That is a very interesting point. I haven't heard anyone discuss the power consumption of RAM before. What is your anecdotal information on how much more quickly your batteries use power?
This is just my own estimate, but my recollection from when I bought my ibook was that the battery would last 4-5 hours. When I unpacked it (maxed out 768 RAM straight from Apple, I know I got ripped off there!), the battery life was more like 3 hrs. The answer Apple gave me was that the more RAM, the more battery performance would decrease...
All types of DRAM (SDRAM, DDR SDRAM, etc.) use millions upon millions of tiny capacitors to hold values. Since they're capacitors, they hold charge. Since they're tiny, they don't hold it for very long. As a result, DRAM has to be "refreshed" with electricity somewhere in the general neighborhood of 60-100 times per second (if memory serves), to "remind" the capacitors of the value they're supposed to be storing. The amount of electricity necessary is miniscule, but from the point of view of the battery it's a constant draw, and it will significantly affect battery life directly in proportion to the number of capacitors (i.e., the amount of RAM).
There are memory technologies being developed that can hold values more or less indefinitely without needing to draw current, but they're currently slow, costly, and mostly experimental. In the mean time, with the right memory and some very careful, very low level power management code, the OS can "shut down" banks of RAM (basically, a "bank" is one of the little chips on the side of each RAM module) that aren't being used, so that only those banks of RAM that are storing meaningful values are being refreshed. This plays against OS X's tendency to cache as much as possible in RAM, so this is something that Apple will have to refine over time.
On topic, define "feasible." I don't doubt that, if they were asked to, Apple engineers could whip out a svelte little number that would make everyone here forget all about VAIOs. The real issue is, does a subnotebook design exist that can get past Steve Jobs? Subnotes - especially at the sizes discussed here - involve tradeoffs in ergonomics, battery life (since batteries tend to be large and heavy) and basic built-in functionality (e.g. optical drives) that would be hard to juggle in a way that would satisfy what Steve has (in his keynotes) considered to be a good notebook.
All types of DRAM (SDRAM, DDR SDRAM, etc.) use millions upon millions of tiny capacitors to hold values. Since they're capacitors, they hold charge. Since they're tiny, they don't hold it for very long. As a result, DRAM has to be "refreshed" with electricity somewhere in the general neighborhood of 60-100 times per second (if memory serves), to "remind" the capacitors of the value they're supposed to be storing. The amount of electricity necessary is miniscule, but from the point of view of the battery it's a constant draw, and it will significantly affect battery life directly in proportion to the number of capacitors (i.e., the amount of RAM).
On topic, define "feasible." I don't doubt that, if they were asked to, Apple engineers could whip out a svelte little number that would make everyone here forget all about VAIOs. The real issue is, does a subnotebook design exist that can get past Steve Jobs? Subnotes - especially at the sizes discussed here - involve tradeoffs in ergonomics, battery life (since batteries tend to be large and heavy) and basic built-in functionality (e.g. optical drives) that would be hard to juggle in a way that would satisfy what Steve has (in his keynotes) considered to be a good notebook.
Thanks for the RAM overview. I didn't realize that the small size of the capacitors meant such a quick "refresh" rate or rather discharge rate. It is very interesting to think that RAM can be loading and off loading data a megahertz and above rates, while the "static' memory needs to be refreshed at the hundreds of hertz rates while it waits to be used.
Just for myself when I discuss or opine feasibilities of Apple products and technology, I don't bother trying to figure out STeve Jobs. I am more interested in the technology and the demand for products and how I would use them and less on how any one person thinks. His opinion is ultimately important for what gets made, but it is a dismal science, IMHO, to spend time speculating about the vaguarities of two things:
1. personal opinions that will change over time as necessary (ie Steve's view on the use of standards on the platform)
2. PR decisions that interfere with when and how things SHOULD be marketed. (ie that chips have to be hobbled on purpose to keep a distance between consumer and pro machines when the costs differences are not significant.)
I have a 6.x inch laptop (it's a Sony Vaio import).
The keyboard works alright (there aren't any control, shift, etc on the right side), and it's high quality, but unless you're VERY good at touch typing, it will be if not impossible, really frustrating. At least for now, I don't think this sort of thing would work well for a consumer market in America. Not only do I think the learning curve would annoy the target market of a Mac like this, but I also think that the market for sub-laptops is already saturated with Palm-like devices that can just about everything a small laptop can (with a pricepoint that is getting to be just about perfect).
For some size considerations, here's the Vaio:
originally posted by ElizaEffects
What's that called exactly, what are the specs and pricing on that?
If Apple is going to do anything smaller and more portable than an iBook 12", it will be much like the mockup that Escher posted, but with some notable differences:
1) The keyboard literally plugs in like a huge airport card, for the obvious necessity of having a second option, a tablet pad with necessary buttons on the side, which would use the Inkwell software.
2) A place to hold the stylus, likely in the tablet pad, and a connector to plug it in directly when using the keyboard. But when the keyboard is plugged in, the stylus moves the cursor by pointing it at the screen (but not applying pressure or writing to it).
3) It will have not have an optical drive. It will have a special firewire port for use with an upcoming feature of the os. It would also have airport and bluetooth, but not a lot more.
Such a device would have the ability to *log in* to any OS X computer and run one user on the computer, while another person is currently using a different user. But it would have to be a paired device to do so. It may also be able to interface with the iPod as well, and be able to run a very stripped down version of OS X, but it would be far from a fully featured computer.
If Apple actually thinks anyone would buy such a thing.
Just don't try and read this thread on it. Users would be horizontally scrolling to read each and every line.
Oh yeah... so blaim Escher. He's the one that made the above picture so damn wide that Steve canceled the 10" powerbook skunkworks.
dfiler: What kind of screen are you on? 800x600? Or even less than that? I think these days it's safe to assume that a majority of surfers run 1024x768 (or more), certainly here on AI. Anyway, sorry if I made you scroll unnecessarily. I intentionally kept the large background of the mockup to prove my original point that the first image, as well as the image which I posted, were from the same artist on SpyMac. Maybe I should shrink it now that most people have gotten my point?
With all this discussion about a 10-inch sub-PowerBook, where the heck are feature-bumped 12-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch PowerBooks?
Edit: I missed the smileyface at the very end of dfiler's post. Obviously, even a 10-inch widescreen PowerBook would have a horizontal resolution of 1024 pixels at the very least. So horizontal scrolling while reading this thread would not present a problem at all.
I'm just too uptight. It's not like there is much room for misinterpretation and subsequent confusion when you add a smileyface.
Quote:
Originally posted by dfiler
Seriously though, that image makes the page too wide too view at 1024x768. (in some browsers at least)
Totally, not your fault. I assume this is a UBB quirk.
Seriously, it looks more like it's an issue with the crappy Windows browser you are using. (Internet Exploder perhaps?) Your browser shouldn't add space to the right of the image (as shown in your screenshot).
On an unrelated but still related note, I have pondered purchasing a Windows subnotebook (and a cheap Windows desktop for my wife) many times. But so far I have resisted temptation time and again. When I see Windows screenshots like the one above, or actually have to use Windows, I quickly remember that the operating system is as important as hardware, if not more important. That screenshot made me gag, honestly, and reminded me why I have not bought a Sony Picturebook or other Windows subnotebook.
Funny how this worked around to being back on topic.
Small screens can cause trouble. When viewing large content, they must either make everything miniscule with high pixel density or limit your viewable area to relatively few pixels.
With the ubiquity of web use, small screen problems are compounded. Frequently, I run across web pages which must be horizontally scrolled in order to read the main content region.
Of late, it seems the AI fora have exibited width issues. Even the forum thread lists are frequently too wide for 1024 pixels. Anyone else notice this? Perhaps its specific to my AI account but it definately isn't limited to IE6 on winXP (as shown in the previous screen shot). Safari 1.0 has the same problem on 10.2...
Escher: I actually just recently did buy a used sony-picturebook and havent looked back (i recommend you try a used one). I have been waiting forever for apple to make a powerbook-C1 equivalent.
The keyboard is great. i can touch-type almost at speed...but that is coming from a person with average asian-sized hands.
But i can understand most of the arguments. I use this primarily as a "toy". If you stick with that mentality, you will be happy. The one i bought used has a 667mhz crusoe and integrated bluetooth. Now if i can ever find a cellphone in japan with bluetooth, iD be in heaven.
Main purpose of this machine. I watch movies (encoded in Divx) with VLC-player while riding the busy tokyo train, either standing or sitting. You shoulda seen everyone's faces when i was watching Animatrix on this thing!!! And trust me...I barely touch the external CD-rom drive and never bring it with me.
But i guess sony has answered all the complainers and have since discontinued all picture books and replaced it with the larger 10"TRs w/builtin combo drives. Personally, Id take a C1 any day for the sake of portability and convenience.
I love OSX and is #1, but win2000-pro is a clear second...even before os9. Sorry fellas.
(BTW...For any real work, I use my 15" 800DVI powerbook.)
Comments
Originally posted by MacGregor
That is a very interesting point. I haven't heard anyone discuss the power consumption of RAM before. What is your anecdotal information on how much more quickly your batteries use power?
This is just my own estimate, but my recollection from when I bought my ibook was that the battery would last 4-5 hours. When I unpacked it (maxed out 768 RAM straight from Apple, I know I got ripped off there!), the battery life was more like 3 hrs. The answer Apple gave me was that the more RAM, the more battery performance would decrease...
There are memory technologies being developed that can hold values more or less indefinitely without needing to draw current, but they're currently slow, costly, and mostly experimental. In the mean time, with the right memory and some very careful, very low level power management code, the OS can "shut down" banks of RAM (basically, a "bank" is one of the little chips on the side of each RAM module) that aren't being used, so that only those banks of RAM that are storing meaningful values are being refreshed. This plays against OS X's tendency to cache as much as possible in RAM, so this is something that Apple will have to refine over time.
On topic, define "feasible." I don't doubt that, if they were asked to, Apple engineers could whip out a svelte little number that would make everyone here forget all about VAIOs. The real issue is, does a subnotebook design exist that can get past Steve Jobs? Subnotes - especially at the sizes discussed here - involve tradeoffs in ergonomics, battery life (since batteries tend to be large and heavy) and basic built-in functionality (e.g. optical drives) that would be hard to juggle in a way that would satisfy what Steve has (in his keynotes) considered to be a good notebook.
Originally posted by Amorph
All types of DRAM (SDRAM, DDR SDRAM, etc.) use millions upon millions of tiny capacitors to hold values. Since they're capacitors, they hold charge. Since they're tiny, they don't hold it for very long. As a result, DRAM has to be "refreshed" with electricity somewhere in the general neighborhood of 60-100 times per second (if memory serves), to "remind" the capacitors of the value they're supposed to be storing. The amount of electricity necessary is miniscule, but from the point of view of the battery it's a constant draw, and it will significantly affect battery life directly in proportion to the number of capacitors (i.e., the amount of RAM).
On topic, define "feasible." I don't doubt that, if they were asked to, Apple engineers could whip out a svelte little number that would make everyone here forget all about VAIOs. The real issue is, does a subnotebook design exist that can get past Steve Jobs? Subnotes - especially at the sizes discussed here - involve tradeoffs in ergonomics, battery life (since batteries tend to be large and heavy) and basic built-in functionality (e.g. optical drives) that would be hard to juggle in a way that would satisfy what Steve has (in his keynotes) considered to be a good notebook.
Thanks for the RAM overview. I didn't realize that the small size of the capacitors meant such a quick "refresh" rate or rather discharge rate. It is very interesting to think that RAM can be loading and off loading data a megahertz and above rates, while the "static' memory needs to be refreshed at the hundreds of hertz rates while it waits to be used.
Just for myself when I discuss or opine feasibilities of Apple products and technology, I don't bother trying to figure out STeve Jobs. I am more interested in the technology and the demand for products and how I would use them and less on how any one person thinks. His opinion is ultimately important for what gets made, but it is a dismal science, IMHO, to spend time speculating about the vaguarities of two things:
1. personal opinions that will change over time as necessary (ie Steve's view on the use of standards on the platform)
2. PR decisions that interfere with when and how things SHOULD be marketed. (ie that chips have to be hobbled on purpose to keep a distance between consumer and pro machines when the costs differences are not significant.)
I have a 6.x inch laptop (it's a Sony Vaio import).
The keyboard works alright (there aren't any control, shift, etc on the right side), and it's high quality, but unless you're VERY good at touch typing, it will be if not impossible, really frustrating. At least for now, I don't think this sort of thing would work well for a consumer market in America. Not only do I think the learning curve would annoy the target market of a Mac like this, but I also think that the market for sub-laptops is already saturated with Palm-like devices that can just about everything a small laptop can (with a pricepoint that is getting to be just about perfect).
For some size considerations, here's the Vaio:
originally posted by ElizaEffects
What's that called exactly, what are the specs and pricing on that?
1) The keyboard literally plugs in like a huge airport card, for the obvious necessity of having a second option, a tablet pad with necessary buttons on the side, which would use the Inkwell software.
2) A place to hold the stylus, likely in the tablet pad, and a connector to plug it in directly when using the keyboard. But when the keyboard is plugged in, the stylus moves the cursor by pointing it at the screen (but not applying pressure or writing to it).
3) It will have not have an optical drive. It will have a special firewire port for use with an upcoming feature of the os. It would also have airport and bluetooth, but not a lot more.
Such a device would have the ability to *log in* to any OS X computer and run one user on the computer, while another person is currently using a different user. But it would have to be a paired device to do so. It may also be able to interface with the iPod as well, and be able to run a very stripped down version of OS X, but it would be far from a fully featured computer.
If Apple actually thinks anyone would buy such a thing.
Would anyone?
Jaedreth
Originally posted by Escher
[Edit: image removed from above quote]
10" Powerbook? Nice.
Just don't try and read this thread on it. Users would be horizontally scrolling to read each and every line.
Oh yeah... so blaim Escher. He's the one that made the above picture so damn wide that Steve canceled the 10" powerbook skunkworks.
Originally posted by dfiler
10" Powerbook? Nice.
Just don't try and read this thread on it. Users would be horizontally scrolling to read each and every line.
Oh yeah... so blaim Escher. He's the one that made the above picture so damn wide that Steve canceled the 10" powerbook skunkworks.
dfiler: What kind of screen are you on? 800x600? Or even less than that? I think these days it's safe to assume that a majority of surfers run 1024x768 (or more), certainly here on AI. Anyway, sorry if I made you scroll unnecessarily. I intentionally kept the large background of the mockup to prove my original point that the first image, as well as the image which I posted, were from the same artist on SpyMac. Maybe I should shrink it now that most people have gotten my point?
With all this discussion about a 10-inch sub-PowerBook, where the heck are feature-bumped 12-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch PowerBooks?
Edit: I missed the smileyface at the very end of dfiler's post. Obviously, even a 10-inch widescreen PowerBook would have a horizontal resolution of 1024 pixels at the very least. So horizontal scrolling while reading this thread would not present a problem at all.
Escher
Seriously though, that image makes the page too wide too view at 1024x768. (in some browsers at least)
Totally, not your fault. I assume this is a UBB quirk.
What it looks like at minimum window width...
Definately not viewable on the 10" powerbook
Originally posted by dfiler
Yeah, I was joking. Sorry for the confusion.
I'm just too uptight.
Originally posted by dfiler
Seriously though, that image makes the page too wide too view at 1024x768. (in some browsers at least)
Totally, not your fault. I assume this is a UBB quirk.
Seriously,
On an unrelated but still related note, I have pondered purchasing a Windows subnotebook (and a cheap Windows desktop for my wife) many times. But so far I have resisted temptation time and again. When I see Windows screenshots like the one above, or actually have to use Windows, I quickly remember that the operating system is as important as hardware, if not more important. That screenshot made me gag, honestly, and reminded me why I have not bought a Sony Picturebook or other Windows subnotebook.
Escher
Small screens can cause trouble. When viewing large content, they must either make everything miniscule with high pixel density or limit your viewable area to relatively few pixels.
With the ubiquity of web use, small screen problems are compounded. Frequently, I run across web pages which must be horizontally scrolled in order to read the main content region.
Of late, it seems the AI fora have exibited width issues. Even the forum thread lists are frequently too wide for 1024 pixels. Anyone else notice this? Perhaps its specific to my AI account but it definately isn't limited to IE6 on winXP (as shown in the previous screen shot). Safari 1.0 has the same problem on 10.2...
?
The keyboard is great. i can touch-type almost at speed...but that is coming from a person with average asian-sized hands.
But i can understand most of the arguments. I use this primarily as a "toy". If you stick with that mentality, you will be happy. The one i bought used has a 667mhz crusoe and integrated bluetooth. Now if i can ever find a cellphone in japan with bluetooth, iD be in heaven.
Main purpose of this machine. I watch movies (encoded in Divx) with VLC-player while riding the busy tokyo train, either standing or sitting. You shoulda seen everyone's faces when i was watching Animatrix on this thing
But i guess sony has answered all the complainers and have since discontinued all picture books and replaced it with the larger 10"TRs w/builtin combo drives. Personally, Id take a C1 any day for the sake of portability and convenience.
I love OSX and is #1, but win2000-pro is a clear second...even before os9. Sorry fellas.
(BTW...For any real work, I use my 15" 800DVI powerbook.)