Car Modern 2011

Talking about the cost of swtiching, I might just add� Stepping out onto the moon cost a pretty penny too. I guess beating the Soviets to bragging rights in space was more important than implementing common sense on the ground.


Common sense would dictate not fixing something that doesn't really need to be fixed

If corporations see the benefit of it to their bottom line...great. No one is stopping them from changing

Why you seem so adament that the Imperial system is horrible for the masses is quite befuddling to me to be honest

Yes, there are merits to the metric system. There are also merits to not changing. Regardless, if change happens, it will be because it just evolved that way.

I don't know if I buy this whole shortage thing.

If there is such a big shortage, why aren't people/businesses creating more production plants and capitalizing on the demand (which is only getting started from the looks of it). Where there is serious demand there is serious $$$ to be made!

It seems like basic economics to me but I've been wrong before...

Lg and Samsung both are completing multi billion $ plants mid 2011 for OLED panels that next gen iPhones and iPad's will use - Apple has already ordered over $7 billion $ of production to run on these lines.

I was excited about this at first but... this just seems like an incredibly stupid fad. Instead of spending time to put the music on my PMP, I sync to the digital cloud, then stream the music to said player. Yeah, in an era where unlimited data is becoming more not less scarce, that's just what I need, data surcharges. This just appears to be yet another fad intending to push consumer technology in the wrong direction.

You're making too much sense and will be branded a heretic. ;)

I doubt this, but here's why it could happen:

1. It's very likely that Apple is maintaining OS X (at a certain baseline of functionallity) on alternative CPUs -- including ARM. They clearly have a history of this and it has proven to be very valuable when they've had to switch.

2. ARM processors of 2013 or 2014 might be significantly more competative with intel than the ones being used in phones and tablets today. I think a lot of the disbelief on the idea of this switch is focusing on the idea that current ARM processors running full OS X, but that's not how it would be.

3. Apple has proven several times that they are willing and able to pull off this kind of architecture switch smoothly. When 68000 CPUs stagnated they moved to PPC. When PPC processors stagnated and intel CPUs jumped ahead they moved almost seamlessly to Intel. If any company can figure out how to do this without a hitch, it's Apple.

4. Cocoa-based apps will move over fairly easily. They're aren't too many important Carbon-based apps left, with some major exceptions. I think Office & iTunes will be Cocoa by then; Apple doesn't care about Adobe.


But realistically, Apple will only do this if there is a significant long-term win.

And I don't see it what that could be... certainly not by 2013.

If there is *anything* to this rumor (which I doubt -- how do a bunch of barely literate idiots get inside info on Apple's long term plans?), it's just Apple keeping their options open as usual.

First of all...it seems to me they should have offered a single dual core processor model...like a single 2.6Ghz model for something like $1599. Second why do you only save $300 when you opt for the 2Ghz model but the 3Ghz model costs $800 more???

This machine would be complete overkill for me, still it is fun to see what it will do. There is a huge gap in their line up between the iMac and Mac Pro now.

A lot of the comments on this thread is about competition. How Apple is stiffling the competion by scooping up all of the important parts, thus leaving nothing for the other OEMs.

I call BS.

If we all want Apple to have competition, then the HPs and Samsungs of the world need to step up and compete. They need to develop something that creates enough demand where they can buy up millions upon millions of parts.

Apple developed a product that has enough demand that warrants the purchase of millions of screens. If someone else developed a product that had such demand, then they should/could corner the market for a particular part. The fact of the matter is that none of the iPad competitors have anything novel enough to differentiate it from the iPad.

Here's what the competitors should do. Don't follow Apple into the tablet/slate market. You won't win. Instead, develop the next big thing. Invest millions of dollars into developing the next device and hope that you had the skills to hit it big. That's what they should be doing, not copying the iPad.

I'd be willing to bet that Apple has about 10 different things they're working on right now that will be replacing the iPad as the next big thing. They'll probably work on these items until they get them right. Then they'll polish it to a blinding sheen. And then they'll release it to great fanfare.

This is what Sammy, HP, LG, Moto, et al need to be competing against. They've already lost to the iPad. The war is over. Don't lose the next war against Apple's next big thing.

News Flash:

He's a Liar.

We may need a woman in charge, because Lord knows none of the men will ask for directions. ;)

But, yeah, I'm for exploring the room we are in.

The power supply is on top like the rumor sites said it would be. This seems like a stupid design decision to me. The power cord will hang over everything else. They probably did it out of necessity, but my dual G5 is still prettier.

simple, really - heat rises...;)

Yeah, and it would really put all those heat issues MB and MBP owners are complaining about in perspective...

HAHAHA!!! So true...

"And only 14 pounds and 3-inches thin!"

:p

I thought that would be the upgrade this year... nothing special like the 3gs update.
If I can't run iOS 5 then maybe but i'm sure I could run it on my iphone 4

This will definitely be the first iteration of the iPhone that I will pass on. It's certainly not much of an upgrade from the iPhone 4.

The iPhone 4 is already dated relative to other phones on the market. To have a phone on the market for 18 months without an update is insane.

what an overly dramatic confused statement

Always been confused as to why the menu bar across the top is slightly transparent but window title bars are grey. Doesn't really match, but I guess I'm just knit-picking...

I could care less about the Movie Store... or a video iPod... I just want to hear the following in the same sentence:

"Core 2 Duo"; "Macbook Pro" ;)

It likely will not happen on Tuesdsay, but I'm going to be very disappointed if it doesn't happen in the next few weeks... I'm not angry and I'm not a whiner - I'll just be a little disappointed, that's all.

Anyone think they won't call it the iPhone 5? I suspect, if they only update the speed, they'll call it the iPhone 4S and save the '5' for a mores substantial refresh.

Of course you need to bring a mount - you need a mount either way. When I say "carry" I don't mean I keep it in a fanny pack 24/7. I mean I bring it with me when I travel. So let's count for the slow people...

Mount + Garmin + iPhone = 3 items
Mount + iPhone = 2 items

Gee - 2 is less than 3! Yay.

OK so for the slower people why would you separate the GPS unit and mount when it is being used on a day to day basis? The TomTom mounts are so slim and there is no other use for the unit so there is no point to separate the two for storage. The iPhone is mainly a phone and i would need to separate the two on a regular basis.

iOS is neither, at the moment.

Depends on who you ask.

I'm not so much joining in the discussion as publicly recording what I think is going to happen in a few years based not really on this prediction, but the way things are going in general, so that I can point to this post in a few years and either say "I told you so" or "look how clueless I was."

I think this prediction is right, at least in general terms, and while to hardcore geeks it may sound like a terrible idea, I doubt it is, and it makes a great deal of sense to Apple. That said, I expect Apple will continue to sell "pro" systems of some sort based on Intel chips for the foreseeable future, to cover the developer/Photoshop-jockey/video-editor market. They're just not going to sell all that many of them.

This is why the ARM transition will not be like the Intel transition (and remember we're not talking about something happening tomorrow):

For one thing, two years is a lot of time at the rate the ARM architecture has been advancing. Predicting anything about how fast the chips will be in 2013 (or how much Intel will have advanced by then) is difficult.

In the quarter the G5 Power Mac first shipped, back in Apple earned $44M on $1.7B in sales, and shipped 787K Macs. In the quarter the first Intel iMacs shipped, in Apple earned $410M on $4.36B, and sold 1.1M Macs.

In the most recent quarter, Apple's profit was $6B--more than their gross in and almost as much as the entire company's gross for all of 2003--on gross income of close to $25B. They sold 3.76M Macs, and more notably 4.69M iPads and well over 20M small-screen iOS devices. They also have something like $65 billion sitting in the bank, which is ridiculous.

Contrast this with Intel, which in the last quarter was doing extremely well, with gross of $12.8B and net of $3.16B. Or, for that matter, IBM, which had revenue of $24B and earnings of $2.9B.

In Apple was a relatively small-time player that got IBM to design a wicked-fast custom desktop CPU. In 2006 they were a somewhat larger company mostly on account of selling a lot of iPods, and weren't in a strong enough position to get IBM to do what they needed with the PPC architecture to the point it could compete with Intel's upcoming Core architecture. Today their Mac business alone is three times what it was then, it's the only segment of the PC industry actually expanding, and the company is HUGE--twice the size of Intel, in terms of financials. Heck, they could buy a controlling stake in Intel based purely on that company's market cap with cash on hand.

Further, of all those 25M+ iOS devices last quarter, every single one was running an ARM processor. While nearly 4 million Macs is nothing to sneeze at, Apple's bread and butter is iOS and ARM-based systems. They know them, they control the whole package, and they have an in-house CPU team for the architecture. One that, based on performance comparisons with the Xoom, is doing its job quite well. They've also managed to sell these devices at prices so low other companies are having serious trouble matching them, while maintaing very healthy profit margins.

As far as Apple is concerned--and with good reason--iOS on ARM is their future. There's no reason to stop selling Macs, but the market for console-style computers is not likely limited to handhelds and tablets--there's almost certainly a lot of demand in the bigger-laptop-with-a-keyboard space as well as large-screen desktops. With the rate of CPU power increase in ARM chips, within a couple of years they're likely to be powerful enough to comfortably handle desktop tasks, particularly considering that the average user really doesn't have any use for anything more than a basic dual-core system--everything else is for pros and bragging rights.

So, by way of prediction, I'd assume that Apple will continue to beef up its in-house ARM team, and once the desktop-grade chips are in place leverage that to replace what we currently think of as consumer Macs with beefier, larger-screen iOS based devices (or perhaps some iOS/MacOS hybrid thing to better handle indirect input, since pointing at a 27" touchscreen is ridiculous for more than a few minutes).

After all, Apple could--and very will might--dump a few billion dollars of their hoard into advancing the ARM architecture in some way that competitors can't match, and/or building out chip fab capabilities to keep prices low and availability high. Intel's entire R&D budget for 2010 was in the range of $6B, AMD's wasn't much over $1B, and Apple likes to control their own destiny, so it's not out of the question if they can hire good enough people.

I also bet that they will keep some "pro" machines--perhaps even those that'll keep the "Mac" moniker--in the lineup, for people who want more traditional workstation software, since there's still a lucrative market for that. These will presumably use Intel chips, but then who knows--even Microsoft is working on a version of Windows for ARM.

And outside the gamer market or the relatively small number of people who need or want a virtualized Windows environment, I seriously doubt most people will care. After all, it hasn't stopped them from lining up to buy iPads, and I have NEVER heard even the most ardent Windows fanboy rant about Windows with the same fervor as a half-dozen non-technical people I know personally who love their iPad.

Geeks and old-school Macheads like myself will wail and moan, and Apple won't care. If they did, the iPad would have run the MacOS.

In related news, Microsoft is in trouble.

Apple is just trying to protect the user experience for their product.

Yes, it is ours to use and do with whatever we want once paid for, but.........
Every jailbroken iphone user will complain and tell somebody that their phone always freezes up or isn't working right.

They are not going to say in most cases it freezes, because I jail broke it!

That info makes it look as if it is Apples fault that things don't work.

:confused:My jailbroken iPhone 4 doesn't freeze on me. You shouldn't just make stuff up to defend Apple.

Just to add a little fuel to the fire - I found this on MacSurfer - likely another source, sounded a little different. The plot thickens...

http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Automation/Display_Panels?Article=/Automation/Display%20Panels/H9R6N2M2The original article here is based on this smarthouse article, and has a link to it :) So unfortunately, the plot stays the same :)

Excluding the pro and business market is what puzzles me. I can see photographers, artists and others taking advantage of a light pen to draw, anotate, and edit photos. I can see all sorts of people bringing them into meetings to write notes and do presentations connected to a projector. I do not see it being that useful in the home market (other than as a standard computer), but what the heck do I know.What the hell do any of us know :). Interesting to speculate though.

I'll have to ask my partner about the graphics stuff - she's a high end graphic designer and a painter. My first thought is "the touch screen can't mimic her hand tools"... I figure that the accuracy of where she's touching the screen, the pressure she's exerting etc, will not be enough for real work

If it provids full laptop functionality (-minus keyboard) and a light pen with solid hand writting recognition, I would certainly consider purchasing. But don't skimp on power, needs those 2GH Core2 duo's) and a decent 3d video card. Great on the airplane also.There is a market for this (not for me), but if they do this then developers will write for it as if it's a laptop... they'll keep thinking inside the box. And if the software is written for a laptop but works on a tablet, many people will simply buy a laptop.

I can't forsee the other applications possible, but if Apple forces a shift in user and developers thinking then there's room for some great stuff. So far I've assumed the way to do this is to not be full power but fill a different niche (at least to start)... I may be wrong.

Most home authomation if I remeber correctly is based on X10 or something like that. If it is different than X10, then they would need to also sell little devices that connects to lights and other electical devices so they can be remotely controlled.Yeah, hopefully Apple would pick one of the standards and work with that - even if they also sell little devices to plug into lights etc. It's useful to be able to put a different brand in occassionally.

Unfortunately, only 25% of the US market agrees with you. ;)

Market share and product quality is not always 1:1 relationship.

Because there is no operand between the 2 and the (9+3).

And I agree, this is the most nonsensical thread in some time.

God bless diversions. :D

lol but still, order of operations tells you that the parentheses is done first. Wanna bet how many pages this gets up to until it dies? lol

How is a cloud based system going to work when bandwidth limits for cell phone data is low, and overage fees are high?

I really hope wwdc is going to focus on computers rather than its IOS toys.

Coming from a fellow mobile smartphone enthusiast ... I'm with you on this comment. iOS has its place ... yet with declining revenues/profits from the Desktop/Laptop lineup - despite increasing sales - I have a bad feeling that LION will NOT increase laptop/desktop sales.

LION is just too ... iOS centric focused yet Apple has already stated that touch-screens for laptops just don't make practical sense and that the trackpad is the best interraction for such concepts. I'm worried that their hold and innovation for Education (K12/Universities = iTunes U) will suffer since Mac Server doesn't exist as a separate feature OS vs a combined one. We'll see but I really wonder if this iOS is currupting our computing environment and not accelerating.