Herbivore2

A computer on the wrist is a very compelling device. More convenient than a cell phone and far easier to carry. 

That being said, size and battery life constraints are far more limiting. 

Apple has far more engineering and technical expertise in manufacturing such a device than anyone else in the industry. And the S series CPU is the key. No one else will be able to compete over the long term. Especially when Apple moves the CPU onto TSMC's state of the art manufacturing processes. No one else will be able to compete with TSMC's 16 nm FinFet built with the Integrated fan out process. It would seem like a logical conclusion that Apple will release the S2 built on the process. The capabilities of such a watch will be much greater than the current Apple Watch. 

Pebble, Fitbit, Tag Heuer and like won't be able to compete. Intel's current mobile CPUs are not competitive not to mention a diminutive CPU for a smartwatch. 

Even Samsung is going to have trouble over the long term and they make the best smartwatch outside of Apple. 

Losing jobs is always painful, but logic would have helped to see this coming. If Apple is taking nearly all of the profits in mobile and making things difficult for companies like Google and Samsung, there was little Pebble could do to compete in smartwatches. 

A four digit passcode can easily be broken with a brute force attack with only 10,000 combinations. The FBI needed the automatic erase function deleted to mount the brute force attack. It is technically feasible. 

A true passcode with combinations of letters, numbers, symbols and sufficient length would render the brute force method meaningless. And terrorists will increasingly turn to this method. 

It also does nothing in the event that someone physically destroys the device like the shooter did with his own personal phone. It's exceedingly unlikely that anything of any benefit would remain on the work phone. 

The FBI, CIA and NSA need to start doing their jobs the hard way. It means putting people on the ground and physically investigating people. Not the wanton violation of the privacy of hundreds of millions of people just to find a few bad actors. Besides, not everyone who spouts vitriol will turn to violence. And not everyone who espouses peace won't turn to violence. Especially for random acts done individually.

 The FBI showed that they were inept when it came to the unabomber. And the guy hated technology. Maybe Mr. Kaczynski had a legitimate point?

What he did was wrong, but maybe his view of technology has some validity. After all, the tyranny of a government is far worse than random acts of violence. I would rather live in the Middle East as a free man despite the terrorism than totally subject to the government dictatorship in North Korea. 

jwestveer said:

I hope not. I continue to be embarrassed by the actions of the US Government.

The Obama administration continues to show its incompetence. And I voted for him as I believed he would champion individual rights and reverse the draconian policies enacted by the even greater incompetence of the previous Bush administration. 

Obama did not limit the NSA, he expanded their powers while attempting to incarcerate true defenders of the constitution like Eric Snowden. 

To make matters worse, there's no one in the upcoming election who will attempt to reign in the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc. Since both the Democratic elites and Republican elites have an unusually excessive degree of fear over the possibility of a Trump presidency, he will get my vote. If the country goes down, Trump will ensure that all of the politicians and wealthy elites go down too.  

Mutually assured destruction. Like in the Cold War. Maybe only then will a real discussion take place and the country move forward rationally. 

The current circus surrounding the iPhone encryption promoted by Obama has hardened me against the Democratic Party. I won't be voting for Hillary who will just continue the attempt to force Apple to perform the great iPhone hack. Trump probably will too.  But he will use that hack against the congressional members of both parties. He won't hesitate. And it will force congress to pass a law which allows Apple to keep its software secure. And by a large enough margin to ensure that it's veto proof. It might even usher in bipartisanship for the first time in many years. 

Trump gets my vote. Unless Obama does the right thing and calls off the dogs at the FBI. 

Apple has control over both the hardware and software. Google has partial control of the software. The Chinese and Amazon have forked Android. And there's nothing to stop the handset manufacturers from including software that can bypass Android's control to access the microphone directly. In such a case a hardware manufacturer might be able to monetize such a service apart from Google. 

Any handset manufacturer can do this and it does not necessarily have to run Android. This could easily be done to a basic handset, but it would need a CPU of some sophistication to turn on the microphone when desired. It is not impossible, but would be difficult to do on a basic handset. Android makes it far easier. For example, someone accesses a remote control application to change the television channel. The application could then turn on the handset's microphone and send the audio file over the web to anyone who might be interested. The programs being watched and the discussion would be of interest to a great many people including producers, network executives, advertisers, etc. A basic handset could do this, but would be limited. In many cases, it might need to continuously record and the file then searched for pertinent keywords. 

I am absolutely certain that this will be coming and that it will be feature exclusive to Android handsets. Apple has control of the entire widget and won't allow such practices. Google cannot stop it. They are at the mercy of the hardware OEMs. 

Android has some deeply flawed fundamental issues. The handset manufacturers now have the upper hand, especially Samsung who has a full working knowledge of the OS issues and can build the software functionality into their handsets allowing the app producers to access the hardware apart from Android and charge a fee in doing so. Such an arrangement could easily render Google's advertising model obsolete as the data obtained from the handset's camera and microphone directly would be far more valuable. 

Perhaps the FBI would not need to break into an iPhone. They can simply access the conversation itself directly. 

jameskatt2 said:

sockrolid said:

"We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution."
- Tim Cook,  January 2009 FQ1 2009 Earnings Call
Source: http://http//www.asymco.com/2011/01/17/the-cook-doctrine/

Maybe Apple can re-animate the Xserve project too. 
But this time with A9 SoCs instead of G4 chipsets, running RISC-enabled OS X.

That is wishful thinking. A9 SoCs are not built for the heavy duty data crunching and multitasking that Intel Processors are designed for. They won't work for XServes. Apple limits the A9 to 2 CPU cores since this is optimal for handset use to balance speed versus energy, and focus on single thread tasks. Intel Processors are built for brute force. The Xeon E7 for example can have up to 18 cores and 36 threads. In a server, a single Xeon kills the A9. The i7 can have up to 8 cores and 16 threads and runs up to 4 GHZ. Again, a single Xeon kills the A9. Horses for courses. As Steve Jobs said, some people need trucks (desktops and servers), and some people need cars (iPhones and iPads).

Have you looked at TSMC's roadmap? By 2018 they plan on two separate 7 nm node processes. One for mobile and one for high performance processors. It is outlined on the semiwiki web site. 

This begs the question, why is TSMC moving forward with a high performance node in addition to one for mobile CPUs. There isn't any true commitment from anyone else but Apple to justify TSMC spending the capital to produce a high performance node. 

While the A9 and A9X would be trounced by a Xeon, Apple could "easily" design a high performance CPU using the ARM ISA and built on the TSMC high performance 7 nm node. The CPU would cost Apple much less than what Intel would charge for a Xeon and Apple could custom design the CPU for its own workloads. 

The Xeon's days are numbered. The big question is whether Apple decides to sell cloud services to third parties. Their cost advantage would overwhelm Google, Microsoft and AWS. It is precisely the reason Microsoft desperately needs to move off of x86, but they have shown no ability to do so. And it is the likely reason that Google has been looking at designing their own ARM based CPU. 

I myself bought my last x86 CPU based machine 3 years ago. Until Apple comes out with an ARM based MacBook or Mac Mini, all my computing needs will be handled by my iPhone, iPad and current iMac which I don't plan on upgrading from until Apple releases an ARM based machine. 

The iMac is essentially used only as a print server as my iPad pro serves nearly all of my computing needs otherwise.