Instant Gratification From Apple? Speculation about instant-...

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Link: Instant Gratification From Apple? Speculation about instant-boot Portables from Apple. (http://www.macbytes.com/link.php?sid=20051122234954)

Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)
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[sord]

Instant on? The closest thing I've seen to it (without extra hardware tech to do it) was BeOS...5 seconds I think to be done booting. Oh I miss BeOS

[Sun Baked]

Yay, the SWAGs are making a big comeback. :p

[Photorun]

Actually the technology has been there for awhile. Tests had been done in the late 90s even where there was a BIOS ROM and/or RAM chip that held the saved info on the screen, but though it seemed grand it wasn't technically boot, more like a hard sleep to wake. Honestly some of us would take speed games in performance over boot up times. My G5 is only about 21 seconds, still longer than I'd like but we've come a long way from G3 daze.

Instant on? The closest thing I've seen to it (without extra hardware tech to do it) was BeOS...5 seconds I think to be done booting. Oh I miss BeOS

Indeed my friend, indeed. First time I saw not one, two, or three but four videos playing at the same time... SMOOTHLY, was on BeOS using a PowerComputer 225 tower (Mac Clone). In fact I still think you'd be hard pressed to play four videos smoothly on one machine. BeOS is/was (still is) a breed apart. A little to far out of mainstream, high and dry with too few apps, but damn that was a promising OS if there ever was one.

[nagromme]

Sounds cool--I'll take it. Although only rarely would it be much better than the instant-on Macs have had for years: less than a second from sleep to waking. Lift the lid (or hit a key) and go!

This could make a complete reboot faster--but who reboots a Mac regularly? This isn't Windows. Sleep is reliable on Mac, and is the expected default action for Mac users.

And it could save battery in certain long-sleep situations, so that the new "save and sleep" isn't needed. But how often do I leave my PowerBook asleep AND unplugged for days at a time? So far, never.

[2GMario]

if anyone was gonna do it first - i would say its Apple

Apple is more or less known for trying something different (no floppy drives, firewire, etc...)

More important than instant on is a NAND hard drive

the iPod nano comes with 4gb of space and is all nand memory

the average size of a laptop hard drive is what, 30 or 40gb ? i dont need more than that on my laptop - thats what my desktop is for

40gb, especially if nand goes into mass mass production, shouldnt turn out to be more expensive than a stock HD especially if every program starts up almost instantaneously.

both are cool ideas, but i hope it comes out when the intel's first appear. id hate to buy a intel mac in jan and find out in june one with a nand hd or instant on is coming out.

-Mario

[shamino]

I've got a lot of things to say on this subject.

Flash-booting is nothing new

It is very common for industrial strength equipment. For instance, routers made by all the major players (Cisco, Juniper, Alcatel, etc.) all boot from flash. (You say a router isn't a computer? Think again. They have modern processors, hundreds of megabytes of RAM, and usually run some variety of UNIX. The fact that users aren't allowed to log in to a shell prompt doesn't change anything.)

They do this for one very simple reason - mechanical parts tend to break more often than solid-state parts. Eliminating the hard drive makes for more reliable hardware. Especially when it's installed in extreme environments.

Flash-booting doesn't speed much up

Even with flash-booting, these routers take several minutes to boot up. Sure, the software can load a lot faster than it would from a hard drive, but that's only a small part of the boot sequence. Memory still must be tested (and when you've got a gigabyte of RAM, this take a while.) The other devices also must run self-tests. And after the OS loads, the applications all need to start up, which can take a while if they need to load databases and establish network connections.

Typical instant-on systems (like PDAs and iPods) achieve their speed by never actually rebooting. When you switch off a Palm device or an iPod, you're really just putting it to sleep. It comes back instantly because it is simply waking from sleep. If you force an actual reboot (using the device's reset procedure), you'll find that the boot sequence takes between 30 seconds and several minutes to complete - not much different from a desktop computer (if you disable memory testing, that is.)

Boot speeds are meaningless for modern desktops

There is no need to shut down and reboot computers these days.

My main desktop computers (a Mac at home, a WinXP PC and a Linux PC at work) are never shut down. They run 24/7, and generally only require rebooting when a system update forces it.

My laptop (an iBook) also never gets shut down. When I'm done with it, I log off and close the lid, putting it to sleep. When I want to use it again, I open the lid - and get to a login prompt in a second or two.

The days when computers have to be shut off or rebooted in order to remain stable are (for the most part) gone.

True, there are people (like my parents) who choose to turn the computer off every night. But they also have no complaints about the few minutes startup time. And their computers all support suspend/resume, which they could choose to use if they really cared about it that much.

Flash-booting is still worthwhile

Despite this, flash-booting is still a good idea. Just not for the reasons specified. If the goal is to speed up the boot sequence, that's silly.

A much better reason for it is the same reason industrial equipment uses it - it's more reliable. If you don't need a hard drive to boot up, then your system won't be crippled when the drive dies.

Mind you, you wouldn't want to eliminate the hard drive altogether. Certain things (like swap files) must never be kept on flash, because doing so will slow down the system and wear out the flash at an accelerated rate. But with the OS and most apps in flash, the hard drive can (mostly) remain turned off, only spinning up when needed to access user documents.

This can greatly lower power consumption. This is good for the environment, good for the electric bill, and good for battery life.

[shamino]

More important than instant on is a NAND hard drive
These things already exist. SimpleTech (http://www.simpletech.com/webspeed/industrial/briefs/R1191.pdf) has been selling flash drives in standard hard drive form factors for several years. They are not cheap.
the average size of a laptop hard drive is what, 30 or 40gb ? i dont need more than that on my laptop - thats what my desktop is for
Lots of people disagree. There are many people who use their laptops instead of desktops, instead of in addition to them.
40gb, especially if nand goes into mass mass production, shouldnt turn out to be more expensive than a stock HD especially if every program starts up almost instantaneously.
Are you aware of how cheap hard drives are right now? A 40G laptop drive can be purchased retail for $50-70.

If you assume the same pricing that Apple pays for the iPod nano's flash (estimated at about $110 for the 4G), we're talking about $1100 for a 40G flash drive. (Plus packaging if you don't want to just have flash chips soldered to a motherboard.) Unless Apple manages to get a 90% discount beyond what they're spending now, those drives will not be anything close to what a HD costs.

If you look at commercial offerings, it gets even worse. A SimpleTech IDE flash drive costs about $400-800 for the 2G model. (I couldn't find any web stores selling the 4G and 8G models). Even if we assume 1/10 of this price/MB ratio, a hypothetical 40G drive is going to cost $800-1600.

If you assume the pricing used for USB keychains (about $70 for 1G), that 40G drive would still end up costing $2800!

A flash drive to replace a laptop's drive is a cool idea, but I wouldn't count on it. A small amount of flash (4-8G) to hold the OS is a distinct possibility, but as a complete hard drive replacement? No way. Not for a price people will be able to pay.

[macnulty]

This idea has been floating around for a while, "instant on" rumors have been floated before.

[mkrishnan]

As Shamino said, I'm not super thrilled about the time it saves me to reboot my computer, every two or three weeks, when I do it, because of an upgrade. :D

But using flash memory in a notebook could be interesting in other ways.... If it led to reduced size or longer battery life.