Intel Demos Future Ultrabook Designs, 4th Generation Core Processor Family

Eidorian said:

Why do that when you can use Intel's x86 SoC? Or even AMD's. This year...

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The presumed Apple SoC wouldn't be x86 based, it would be ARM based.

MacRumors said:

Intel has previously said that power efficiency is one of its top priorities in chip design going forward.

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They've been saying this for at least the past decade. The don't have a reasonable low power offering to compete with the likes of ARM, but they know people are a reluctant to leave x86, so if they can keep claiming that a lower power x86 is right around the corner, people will wait one more generation at a time...

I think we're due to see a major realignment in the PC market. People are realizing they don't need 16 3GHz cores to check their email, but they'd like something light and low power. iPad finally broke open a tablet market that Android helped fill out. Intel and Microsoft are pushing their own platforms now, competing with their own customers, hoping to retain as much of their legacy market as possible.

They might describe these as "concepts", or "platforms", but if they aren't trusting their customers to be able to design to their own markets, then it looks like the start of the blame game. Of course the problem from their perspective isn't that x86 can't modernize, or that Windows is badly bloated, but that Toshiba can't design.

Something's got to give.

While I'm looking forward to seeing how this shakes out, my concern is that I do need 16 3GHz cores at times, and I'm starting to worry that it's going to become more difficult to do serious work in a market aimed at Facebook checkins...

Krauser said:

Not that I don't agree with you, but implying that using an iPad's touchscreen when propped up with the keyboard dock is actually comfortable, let alone the ideal way to use a touchscreen (as many manufacturers who are putting touchscreens on laptops seem to be implying), can't be a legitimate statement.

I've used many a Windows 8 laptop with touch screens and I just prefer mousing through the silly tile interface so I can get to the desktop and do things the right way. It's counterproductive and annoying. Unless you're holding it like a tablet or laying the screen flat on the ground, floating your hand and arm just to use a touchscreen on a laptop that already has a keyboard is not only unintuitive, but incredibly gimmicky.

Just my $.02.

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I agree... in my limited experience with touchscreen laptops, I found it awkward as well. I was just wondering with the OP was bashing win8 laptops when this use scenario existed well before win8 came out (ie, this scenario existed with the iPad + separate keyboard combo).

unobtainium said:

I wish there was a bit more clarification in this article. I've heard previously that standard mobile Haswell chips are coming in June, now apparently it's "late 2013 or 2014"? Is that only for ULV varieties? Where exactly are these dates coming from?

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From the real market.

wilycoder said:

"With the company putting its efforts behind touch-capable ultrabooks, there could be increased pressure on Apple to release a touch-enabled notebook -- something it has resisted thus far"

Just because MS takes a dump and gives us win8 means we all want gorilla arm syndrome and touch screen laptops? No.

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I've been getting used to Windows 8 touch (I've been doing some Windows App Store development). I got used to it a lot quicker than I would have thought... To the point where I began stabbing and swiping at my 27" iMac's screen with my finger, only to realize that, of course, I was stuck with my mouse.

Now, Apple's mouse on OS X is a lot nicer than using a regular mouse with Windows, so there's less urge for sreen-touch there. And I wouldn't want to go 100% touch with a 27" iMac, by any means. But I can definitely envision dumping the mouse in favor of a touch screen.

There will be no Gorilla arms!

I personally think touch screens will naturally be used flat or at a bit of an angle, like a drafting board. In fact, my guess is that the ideal would be where the screens are mounted like a good drafting board, where you can easily tilt the screen to the angle most useful to the task at hand... for interactivity, it would be tilted mostly flat while for reading or other passive modes it could be tilted up for comfortable viewing.

Then again, painting artists have long been used to working with horizontal canvases (if it was good enough to produce the Mona Lisa, surely, it is good enough for me, right?) Leonardo wasn't a gorilla-man, was he?

This is what I hate about CES (or any trade shows really). You hear about something and don't see it for 6-9 months (or sometimes don't see it at all). Glad Apple doesn't participate in them.

Marx55 said:

Apple should make a light (400 to 600 g) Mac as small as possible (7 to 9-inches or so). Whatever form factor (clamshell, slider or tablet). Not for heavy work. Great for Keynote and PowerPoint presentations. The Mac in your pocket. Always.

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They did. It's called iPad.

Exotic-Car Man said:

What will these be called? Power Bridge?

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Where's that confounded ______ Bridge name?

As someone who uses my iPad and 15" rMBP primarily for making music I would absolutely love my Macbook to have a touchscreen and the ability to run iPad apps.

iPad instruments are a revolution. They are highly functional and superior to typical virtual instrument plug ins like those in Logic in
many important ways.

The only issue with them is that it's difficult to integrate them with professional recording software and midi controllers. If I could have Animoog on both my MBP and iPad, I could do the bulk of the performance on the iPad, and then tweak it at any time during the final mix in Logic using the 's touch screen.

While I understand that OSX should be optimised for keyboard and mouse input, there's no reason it shouldn't also have a touch screen and be able to open iOS apps.

Technology is just amazing. It's funny we are talking about this stuff when just ten years ago this was so crazy to be something everyone could afford. Something for just a few hundred dollars that is portable, has a battery large enough you don't have to worry about much for the day and can edit HD video you just took using it. Seriously incredible.

All that being said, even if it is uncomfortable and people get 'gorilla arm', touch screens are coming because that is what the market wants and they want it enough that they will deal with discomfort. I don't think touchscreen laptops are very nice. I personally like my MacBook trackpad with my BetterTouchTool app over any touchscreen. Nice and comfortable and effective. But as they say, "Give the people what they want!!!"

The lablets (or taptops... That actually sounds kinda like a fun name) convertible tablets/laptops... I guess we will see what they will do. I still think they are a year or two early (processor power to battery and portability ect.) but we shall see.

haswell macbook airs with retina display.

for those out there that know what they are talking about,

can these be made with reasonable battery life and cost

As far as touch on the Mac goes I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see a Magic Trackpad with a display or iPad companion apps for iMovie, Aperture etc...

Available for everyone in late 2013 or Apple in late 2013?

Exotic-Car Man said:

What will these be called? Power Bridge?

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Haswell. That info has been publicly known for years......

The Die shrink "Tock" will be Broadwell the following year........

Which will be followed by Skylake......

Then Skymont........

ls1dreams said:

What kills me is that apple doesn't offer any products in the sweet spot!

Laptops - for me, around 14" is just right. 13.3 on the MBP13 is too small, and the 15" is just too large.

iMac - why the hell do they jump from 21.5" to 27"? There are tons of 24" screens out there that would be way more affordable and are a great compromise.

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Buy a Mac mini and attach one of those 24" screens. Sweet!

ArtOfWarfare said:

Have you actually used a laptop running Windows 8 or are you just making guesses about what the experience would entail? (I haven't even seen one running Windows 8 in person, yet.)

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For another view on this, I have barely used my Windows 8 laptop since I got my Surface RT, but when I have briefly done so, I have found to my surprise that I do try to touch the screen ... hell I even found myself doing that on an XP machine this morning. And yet it just doesn't happen on my SL MBP; I guess OS X really doesn't want to be touched, and as such I don't know how much longer laptops with it are going to be around. It's too hard to go back from touching.

MartiNZ said:

For another view on this, I have barely used my Windows 8 laptop since I got my Surface RT, but when I have briefly done so, I have found to my surprise that I do try to touch the screen ... hell I even found myself doing that on an XP machine this morning. And yet it just doesn't happen on my SL MBP; I guess OS X really doesn't want to be touched, and as such I don't know how much longer laptops with it are going to be around. It's too hard to go back from touching.

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Take that metro GUI off the Win8 laptop and you probably wouldn't be wanting to touch it. Since the surface has the same GUI as Windows 8 that's probably why you tend to want to .

That's the difference between Apples view and Microsofts view.

MacRumors said:

With the company putting its efforts behind touch-capable ultrabooks, there could be increased pressure on Apple to release a touch-enabled notebook -- something it has resisted thus far.

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No. I do not understand why companies think a touch screen laptop makes sense — it doesn't. The prospect seems cool, but it's a gimmick. Steve Jobs explained it himself:

Steve Jobs said:

“We’ve done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn’t work. Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical.

It gives great demo but after a short period of time, you start to fatigue and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. it doesn’t work, it’s ergonomically terrible.

Touch surfaces want to be horizontal, hence pads.”

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Touch screen laptops are a bad move. Cool at first, pointless later (or when your arm gets tired).

EDIT: I could, however, see Apple doing a touchscreen iMac that swivels down to a level, horizontal surface. Like they patented, here:

Aluminum213 said:

well looks like I'll be waiting till next for a new macbook then

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yup me too... my 13 inch MBP is still serving me very well

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ziggyonice said:

Touch screen laptops are a bad move. Cool at first, pointless later (or when your arm gets tired).

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you need to remember that these touch laptops will have removable key boards for touch tablet mode and laptop keyboard mode

I'm excited. "True all day battery" in Apple notebooks, which already have excellent battery, would be awesome.

I don't see Apple going to touch screen notebooks. Steve Jobs made it clear at the iPad keynote (and I think it was a mutual feeling for the engineers at Apple, at least the way he made it sound), that OS X on a touch screen is a bad idea. Desktop operating systems are not meant to be used with a touch screen. Windows is the first x86 OS of note that is made for touch screens, but there is still an issue, the software isn't made for touch screens!

With the iPad, everything is designed for touch, and since the Apps will need to be re-written anyway with an all new UI, is re-coding them for ARM really a big deal?

No, the iPad doesn't have the power of OS X, but users who need that aren't interested in touch anyway. At least, not for those uses. With the iPad getting more and more powerful, I really don't see a need for a touch enabled Mac OS product.

With launchpad and the like, I COULD see OS X being tweaked for touch, such an an 'Air tablet', but again, the Apps wouldn't be as compatible with touch (can you imagine navigating the menu on a non-touch-enhanced app?), Apple hates the stylus with a passion, I just don't see Apple pushing touch enabled notebooks anytime in the future.

QCassidy352 said:

How could they improve battery life by that much? Isn't the screen the main draw anyway?

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No, the screen is just the main draw that you can drastically change!

The CPU uses a LOT of juice.

Late 2013 or 2014? Wow...if you guys are thinking about buying MacBooks, I would say just get the current model, instead of waiting for the next one which could very well not be released until 2014.

Peace said:

2013 or 2014 ? wow.

Maybe that rumor about the Air using Apple SOC's might come true. We will know in June at the WWDC I'm guessing.

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Only if you want a 10th of the performance. ARM may barely outperform the single core atoms but its not anywhere close to anything else x86. Even 6-7 year old chips are still faster.

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Analog Kid said:

The presumed Apple SoC wouldn't be x86 based, it would be ARM based.



They've been saying this for at least the past decade. The don't have a reasonable low power offering to compete with the likes of ARM, but they know people are a reluctant to leave x86, so if they can keep claiming that a lower power x86 is right around the corner, people will wait one more generation at a time...

I think we're due to see a major realignment in the PC market. People are realizing they don't need 16 3GHz cores to check their email, but they'd like something light and low power. iPad finally broke open a tablet market that Android helped fill out. Intel and Microsoft are pushing their own platforms now, competing with their own customers, hoping to retain as much of their legacy market as possible.

They might describe these as "concepts", or "platforms", but if they aren't trusting their customers to be able to design to their own markets, then it looks like the start of the blame game. Of course the problem from their perspective isn't that x86 can't modernize, or that Windows is badly bloated, but that Toshiba can't design.

Something's got to give.

While I'm looking forward to seeing how this shakes out, my concern is that I do need 16 3GHz cores at times, and I'm starting to worry that it's going to become more difficult to do serious work in a market aimed at Facebook checkins...

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Medfield competes absolutely fine with arm.

blackhand1001 said:

Only if you want a 10th of the performance. ARM may barely outperform the single core atoms but its not anywhere close to anything else x86. Even 6-7 year old chips are still faster.

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Maybe we are on the crux of a new paradigm ?

ls1dreams said:

What kills me is that apple doesn't offer any products in the sweet spot!

Laptops - for me, around 14" is just right. 13.3 on the MBP13 is too small, and the 15" is just too large.

iMac - why the hell do they jump from 21.5" to 27"? There are tons of 24" screens out there that would be way more affordable and are a great compromise.

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Apple is not about compromise, as you state in your post, but rather, the things that are going to differentiate them the most, and even more, will allow them to build the biggest profit into each product they manufacture and sell. Those specs you list may be right for you, Goldilocks (sorry!), but the more versions of a product a company makes, the less that company will make in profit.

The mere fact that there are tons of screens out there that are 24" says something about the market (i.e. Apple can't make an adequate profit from people wanting and/or needing 24" screens, since there are so many options already available).

genovelle said:

His comment doesn't require using win8. Using any touch screen that is upright creates the gorilla arm syndrome.

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What most people who haven't used a Windows 8 touchscreen PC don't realize is that the touchscreen capabilities are a complement (not a replacement for) keyboard & mouse. Depending on what type of activity you do on your computer, there will be time when you'll almost never use the touchscreen (eg when your activity is focused on typing text) and others where you'll use it almost like a tablet (eg web browsing, AV editing, etc...).

The only real issue I have with these devices is that their screens quickly become a fingerprint ridden mess. I've come to accept this on my 3.5" screen, but on a 15" display, it's another story.

Hopefully someone will come up with a fingerprint-proof solution.

I would say the Haswell updated MacBook's will come mid year, the iMac's might follow shortly after since Apple is unlikely to change the physical design this year.

With the growing power of the Apple CPUs I do wonder if Apple will switch to them at some time in the future for MBP or MBA?