misa

AppleInsider said:

Eddy Cue, Apple's head of internet software and services, raised the idea of his company buying Time Warner in talks with the media giant late last year, a report said on Thursday.

Unwise. You do not want a money-sucking content generator mixed in with your money-making services. This has never worked once. What would happen is that Apple would buy Time Warner, and then Time Warner would find ways to suck away all of Apple's value with garbage films. Generating content is a risk, it's always a risk.

It would make far more sense to Apple to build a new Pixar if they really wanted to generate content, but then again it would make more sense for Apple to buy Nintendo if they really wanted to acquire content properties that have yet to be turned into films and cartoons. See where I'm going there? Apple buy Nintendo, create a new "Pixar" and create new 2D/3D films based on Nintendo properties, leaving Nintendo alone to continue to produce software for it's own Nintendo hardware and Apple hardware.

If anything, Apple would be better off buying out HBO's entire content library and making it exclusive to iTunes/AppleTV globally just to give it negotiation leverage over other global cable networks for their content while keeping HBO Now as a stand-alone service. Without content as leverage, all the cable companies who also own content can just refuse to negotiate at all.

patchythepirate said:

rogifan_new said:

What is an OLED display touch bar?

That question is 99% of the reason I opened up this thread. I can't think of a non-gimmicky reason to have that feature. And since I know Apple doesn't do gimmicks, I'm intrigued. And flummoxed!

Hmm, maybe somehow part of a gesture-based interface?

Every time you see OLED, close the news item, because it's full of crap. OLED's are rubbish technology for anything that isn't meant to be thrown away in a year. Everyone loves LCD's over CRT because of the increase of sharpness and LCD's weigh substantially less, so for that reason we can replace a TV.

But the push to replace LCD's with worse technology seems to be a profit-driven choice, without any concern for the e-waste. Apple is already bad enough with making things impossible to repair, so making laptop's have the lifespan of a cell phone isn't exactly a good direction for Apple to go. 

Everything should last 7 years without needing to be repaired or replaced

sflocal said:

But... but... basement-dwelling fanboys have been preaching to us that Flash is SO much more superior...

But..but..  awww... forget it...

For animations it was. Unfortunately Adobe turned it into a generic media player because the web browsers lacked video playback capability. And now those chickens have come home to roost. Animators still use it for cut-out animation, but game developers largely abandoned it around flash 9 (the last version that worked on the Wii and PS3), most flash animators are perfectly happy to use Flash 6 to Flash CS3, but these versions of flash can't export to HD resolutions. There is not enough precision in the flash format itself to create flash video, so mostly HD productions are using ToonBoom Harmony now. Conversion tools that use the flash plugin to render flash frame-by-frame to create h.264 versions max out at 4K, and the 4K versions tend lack enough sub-pixel precision to not look jumpy. It's "good enough" when the option is 4K or 400x300 flash files the size of a postage stamp.

Flash can't do 4K(p60) or 8K(p24/p30/p60) video. Technically you can make flash do 4K(p24/p30), but 8K it absolutely can not do, even with the 64-bit plugin because the maximum "canvas" size is exceeded

AppleInsider said:

A new supply chain rumor claims that Apple has increased orders for its new low-end iPhone SE, and plans to build more than 5 million units this quarter alone, as the company continues to struggle to keep up with demand for the 4-inch handset.
...
DigiTimes is known for having an unreliable track record in predicting Apple's future product plans, especially with regard to features and capabilities. However, its supply chain sources do frequently offer accurate outlooks on larger-picture factors for Apple, such as shipments and build trends.

Gee, it's like everyone was right and nobody wanted a larger smartphone, and those that were not buying the new larger models were hoping for this. Hell I would have waited for this too, but decided that I couldn't put up with an 9 year old cell phone any longer.

If I were Intel I'd scrap all the non-socket 2011 models and figure out how to produce parts that can be used in all verticals rather than making a hundred different parts that only differ in power consumption. If you could clock down a "server" class cpu to 1.9ghz and have it take 15 watts, that would be amazing, but no, servers are all 135 watt parts at 2Ghz instead of being able to scale to 4Ghz. Imagine being able to software-define which CPU configuration you want "higher single thread speed" eg 2 or 4 cores at 4Ghz, or "higher threading capacity" 16 cores at 2Ghz, or "Longest battery life" of running only 2 cores at 2Ghz and turning off the other 14 unless plugged in.

The Atom chip ends up in products that are too underpowered (eg NAS devices and "cheap" x86 laptops that can barely run windows), combined with the extremely weak GPU performance, these were never going to end up in mobile phones and tablets.

Apple's Ax series of CPU+GPU parts actually is close to Intel's laptop CPU (not Atom) parts in performance at much lower power usage. eg the A9 (1.85Ghz) = i5-4300U (1.9Ghz)

But that ignores two things, the CPU performance is not at parity with a desktop to begin with:
The i5-4300U is dual-core part running at 1.9Ghz
Passmark Rating: 3751
Passmark Single Thread Rating: 1606

Intel's strongest CPU is the Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.00GHz
Passmark Rating: 11205
Passmark Single Thread Rating: 2,529

And the GPU performance is garbage.
Both of those parts have a HD 4400 part, passmark GPU performance: 547
The minimum GPU you need to get "game console performance" is the nVidia Geforce GTX 960: 5941

Based on an image found here:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/02/26/apple-partner-imagination-technologies-unveils-new-powervr-super-gpu-with-512-alu-cores
The A9 is equal to an Xbox 360 GPU (vs PowerVR GT7600.) The next part up is compared to the Geforce 730m (vs PowerVR GT 7900) which has a GPU passmark of 800

So we're still a far cry from desktop performance, both on the CPU and GPU side for the A9, but Intel's own (Atom) parts are weaker than what Apple is using in their own A9 parts, and consumes less power in the process.

It could be reasoned that in the next two years Apple's A10 and A11 parts will leapfrog Intel's x86 offerings for all mobile devices, even the high end laptop parts. The A9 is already powerful enough to "beat the Xbox360", so it's reasonable to think by the A11 it could beat the PS4.