Apple Announces Long-Term Flash Memory Agreements

[pubwvj]

How can so many think this means we'll see hard drives replaced by flash memory? Solid state memory is still too expensive.

Ha, ha, ha, ha!!! That is such a good laugh!!!

Why, young-un, I remember way back in 1984 people saying the exact same thing as you are now - only then they were talking about bubble memories, same idea. Back then a big hard drive was 10MB. YES! 10,485,000 bytes! That is smaller than the smallest flash memory drives are now and it cost $600 in 1983 dollars! Make that $4,000 in 2005 dollars. For that $4,000 you can now buy 55GB of Flash memory. Dollar for dollar Flash memory is incredibly cheap compared to where hard drives were.

Of course, hard drives have also dropped in price and for that $4,000 you can now buy 40TB of hard drive. So yes, hard drives are cheaper, but they consume more power, are larger, noisier and are more fragile. For certain application the slightly higher cost is well worth the price and not all devices need huge amounts of storage.

A tiny iBook or pocket handheld iPal with a mere 16GB or storage space would be plenty for highly mobile work. Within a year the price of that would be under $400 at the current rate of decline in Flash memory prices. That is enough to store:

2GB - MacOS X operating system
2GB - Applications (most frequently used on an uber-book)
4GB - Home folder - generous and not including music, videos, photos
2GB - Recent photos (archive past years on external drive)
2GB - Music (most played songs and audio books)
2GB - Video or two for the road
---
2G free space remaining

You don't have to store everything on the ultra-portable, just your most used data. At home or maybe on the web you would have additional storage for archived photos, additional music, movies, backups, etc.

This means that a Flash memory based ultra-portable notebook or handheld computer could be a reality at a decent price point using today's technology. It would be fast, small, lower power, longer battery life and real world rugged. There are a lot of people who would buy a machine like that. Think of something about the size of a small paperback book that has a run time of 40 hours or longer on four high capacity AA NiMH batteries. Very portable. Your home away from Home. Auto-syncing of course.

 

[AidenShaw]

That is enough to store:

2GB - MacOS X operating system
2GB - Applications (most frequently used on an uber-book)
4GB - Home folder - generous and not including music, videos, photos
2GB - Recent photos (archive past years on external drive)
2GB - Music (most played songs and audio books)
2GB - Video or two for the road
---
2G free space remaining

You don't have to store everything on the ultra-portable, just your most used data. At home or maybe on the web you would have additional storage for archived photos, additional music, movies, backups, etc.

The flash-based Windows Mobile devices like the iPaq and SmartPhones use a rich, compatible subset of NT.

These run in 128MiB or so of flash, with much of that free for user apps and data.

They'll typically have an SD or CF card for a few GB or so of application data space (or music, movies, etc).
_________________________

A really small device doesn't need a full OS - its UI constraints and small screen make it unsuitable for many applications. A device the size of a small paperback can't replace a 20" iMac for most applications.

Your description would be fine for an 8" to 10" or so screen on an ultra-portable, but for a PDA/phone form factor it wouldn't be necessary or useful to have full OSX.

 

[EricNau]

Could a flash drive not be used as a dedicated boot disk - OSX x86 will only boot from a specific flash drive and therefore will only boot on a Mac, sort of thing?

Stu

I don't know much about this stuff, but for this idea to really work, it would need to be 'Read Only' - that way you couldn't just copy it and put it on a Windows. Now what if there was an update? Would you have to take it into the Apple store and have them swap out Flash Chips?

And if that Flash fails - goodbye OS, hello genius bar.

 

[pubwvj]

A really small device doesn't need a full OS - its UI constraints and small screen make it unsuitable for many applications. A device the size of a small paperback can't replace a 20" iMac for most applications. Your description would be fine for an 8" to 10" or so screen on an ultra-portable, but for a PDA/phone form factor it wouldn't be necessary or useful to have full OSX.

Agreed. I was simply pointing out that even a full size OS could fit on a Flash device for a reasonable price. Personally, I would love to see Apple come out with MacOSXµ for a pocket Mac - my dreamed of iPal. It doesn't need to be able to run Halo or Photoshop so I'm not expecting G5 speeds. There is a lot from the OS that could be chopped to save space. It could probably be reduced down to 1GB or at most 4GB total storage space with OS, apps, µHome, music, photos, a video, etc. The idea is to have a portable version of one's most important data, a subset of the Home folder with complete syncing capability to one's real machine (e.g., a PowerBook for me, an iMac for my son, a PowerMac for those who use them, etc). A machine you can carry in your pocket that will let you access your basic data set and do email, web, etc when WiFi is available.

For the iBook I would forsee it being a very lightweight, very rugged, very lower wattage machine that would have an increadible battery life. A lot of people would like something like that. Same form factor as the current iBook but thinner and longer lasting on battery.

 

[AidenShaw]

...The idea is to have a portable version of one's most important data, a subset of the Home folder with complete syncing capability to one's real machine.... A machine you can carry in your pocket that will let you access your basic data set and do email, web, etc when WiFi is available.

Agree - this is just what Windows Mobile is today - except that WiFi is passé.

My Windows Mobile phone with EVDO from Verizon does all this at DSL speeds whenever I'm within the range of a cell tower.... Word/Excel/Powerpoint/MediaPlayer/Streets plus hundreds of other apps are at hand, synching with my PC.

Of course, it also has WiFi for those times when I'm within the limited range of a 802.11b/g access point.

It's so nice to be able to download at 1Mbps while on Caltrain going up to the city, or to bring up IE on the phone and check prices or product specs while shopping at Fry's. It would be so primitive to imagine that I'd need to be close to a WiFi access point to use the net.

Before too long, Apple will need to put OSX Mobile on the iNewton - or they'll miss out on a fundamental sea-change in personal computing. It may already be too late, at least if they want to reach beyond the Mac fans.

 

[dernhelm]

Flash has a hard time keeping up with spinning drives in the MB/sec race.

You won't get usec wakeups just from switching to flash.

You'll get much better battery life, however!

I guess I was referring to this:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123053,00.asp

The guys at the macslash website picked up on this as well...

 

[pubwvj]

Agree - this is just what Windows Mobile is today - except that WiFi is passé. My Windows Mobile phone with EVDO from Verizon does all this at DSL speeds whenever I'm within the range of a cell tower...

The problem is cell towers are not available out in rural areas and they cost money to use. I don't have a cell phone. I don't pay a monthly cell phone subscription and don't to be doing so just to transfer data over the network. WiFi has the advantage of being accessible in my home as well as in many urban areas. Cell is actually far more passé than WiFi in a great many respects. Of course, the best thing would be to have the option of either or both depending on one's needs and available access points. We are agreed on that.