theothergeoff

Soli said:

macxpress said:

I think Apple is simply working on creating an A-Series based Mac mini running macOS on their own chips.

Why assume it'll be an A-series chip when we've seen Apple using their ARM-based designs to make all sorts of chip categories? I'd lean toward Apple creating an entirely new chip designation that would offer a lot more RAM, better GPUs, and other features needed for a desktop OS.

I think you're both right.

Apple has probably several Mac's running on ASeries based chips now.  To help design the chipset that ships with the first production ARM mac.

radarthekat said:

MSFT seems to be going all in on the PC form factor.  

The world has changed around MSFT and its finding that there are more and more out there who get by entirely on tablets, and I’d imagine the great majority of such users, at least those who once used a Laptop, are getting by entirely on a tablet called iPad.  

That’s my story; I was in the software game for 26 years, designing software and building software companies. These days, and for the last two years, I drag my aging MacBook Air out of the closet only to run TurboTax Premier one day each year.  The other 364 days I manage my 7-figure self-directed stock and options portfolio entirely from my iPad and iPhone.  Most of my friends don’t even realize I own a laptop computer.  

So MSFT builds hybrids, which are more Laptop than tablet, and now laptops with longer battery life and perhaps a few ounces lighter.  Okay, sure... there’s still a market for such out there, and I’m sure they’ll hold back the tides for a few more years with this strategy.  While Apple consolidates iOS as the standard platform for a new more mobile world.  (see GE and Apple Form Deep Partnership).

While the world has changed, for the next 5 years, MSFT will still be marketing to sell into 500 corporate million legacy seats using the Apple model (owning the HW and the SW0, and letting ASUS and DeLL and Lenovo spiral to the bottom competing, against M$ bundling HW and seat licenses to Azure AD Premium.  

This will buy them another 10 years (MSFT's goal... get all Fortune 500 customers to migrate to Azure/AD (which at $2-$11 per head per month... that's printing high margin profit).  The microsoft gets out of the HW business all together.  They are just a cloud service, and the "MicroSoft Tax" will be imposed on every person a company requires to access their data, no matter what the device.


Apple's end game is to define the experience.  MSFT's end game is to charge everyone for the privilege of logging in.

GeorgeBMac said:

I can see where the iPhone X is the culmination of years of work and development on many levels.
But, as Ive's says, rather than being a revolution: 
....."the device represents a new chapter in the platform's history".

If you look at the device as 'just another computer' or a "platform", the truth of that statement becomes clear.   The possibilities of a computer you can carry in your pocket are as unlimited as the possibilities of a computer you can carry in your briefcase were in 1995 -- and maybe more so.

So often here on ai, I hear people speak of desktops, laptops, tablets and phones as being almost sacred where boundaries cannot be broached:  Their vision is limited to just more of the same -- just faster.   Yet, they are all just computers with the main difference being shape and size.  They all have input & output sources, CPUs, GPUs, storage, memory and some software...  

They're just computers...  
 

That's what Skynet wants you to think.

GeorgeBMac said:

I don't get it...
So, what is the big deal about AR?  Perhaps I am unimaginative, but just where and how will it be used?

I can see three uses:
1)  Games  (yawn...  Sorry, excuse me....)
2)  Driving maps that incorporate the view out your windshield to show you where to go...
3)  Help tutorials -- such has how to tear down and repair a computer or a lawn mower.

It creates an enormous burden on computer hardware and software, but I don't see any enormous benefit to society.  But, Apple is so fired up about it, that I realize that I may be missing something...  Hopefully I am.

the burden is going away.   the A11 has a neural engine built in. GPU's are 'cheap'   The software is the burden, and that's just evolving frameworks at this point.  Eventually, it will be  a couple lines of code to identify a curveball from a slider in a couple ms;-) 

as for 1)...  given you 'yawn' at this, I won't go there, but in the military, this is considered 'training.'   And then, we go all Terminator on the battlefield. (All technology is driven out of military or porn;-) ).

obviously self driving cars is the outgrowth of #2.  But then it moves into say, museums,  national park guides,  hiking trails interpretations, education, even shopping (overlaying a 3D map of the stores, and then on the employee side... stocking shelves, inventorying)

your 3 will evolve into 4) task quality augmentation.  
I just thought of a simple one:  Pharmacy QA.   If I'm 'wearing' AR glasses, and I visually scan the scrip label for drug dose and count. and the glasses verify the pill ('pink oval with 3|SG on one side'), and the count as I fill the bottle. Law says the pharmacist has to bottle these pills.  but in today's 'drug driven' medical market, that's a lot of scrip to fill a day (the 'pill mill').  The pharmacist of today is a high stress low pay job, so quality suffers.  Heckuva difference between 15 and 30mg of oxycontin, and putting 33 pills in a bottle is a federal offense.

I'm also thinking surgery, overlaying say, an MRI into your field of vision, to help augment and identify nerves and ligaments critical to avoid... 

rogifan_new said:

canukstorm said:

rogifan_new said:

sog35 said:

A $1000 Netbook?  LOKOOLOLOLOOLOOLOLOLOLOLOOOLLLLL!!!

These dreamers at Google think they can charge Apple level pricing 

Can app developers develop on this thing?

No. But then again, app developers can't develop on a 12.9" iPad Pro either, which is what this Pixel Book is competing with.

I wonder what’s preventing Apple from bringing Xcode to iPad Pro?

Steve Jobs Management 101.  "Focus on Saying 'No'"

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying "no" to 1,000 things.