Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple Planning Entirely New Mac Product Line?

macintologist said:
Headless iMac
Click to expand...

Exactly, some sort of tower type computer with a 3.1GHz i5 or 3.4GHz i7 with the ATI Radeon 6970 or 6950. Maybe we'll see something like the old low-end PowerMacs.

Definitely no touch screen computers, Steve Jobs said it himself when he announced the new MacBook Airs in 2010, they tried making touch screen MacBooks and iMacs. He said it dosen't work, after 15 minutes your arm would fall off, and that's why they're pushing trackpads for all their computers.
 
Bluenose17 said:
Could this be the start of the quote in last months conference call:

Q: 12% downtick in revenue guidance is more than usual. Why?
A: Let me start with the units. For education buying season, September is weighted toward higher education, and we expect increases there. We also expect increases in iPhone, etc. There is also a future product transition that we are not going to talk about today. Those factors are already in our guidance. Confident in our pipeline. Tim Cook talking about some cannibalization of Mac by iPad. But also cannibalizing Windows. Very happy with 14% growth in Mac. :cool:
Click to expand...

That was the first thing that came to mind when I read the article title.
 
Somebody may have mentioned this already - don't have time to read all the comments - but it seems to me that there is room in Apple's product line for an iOS device that is friendlier to a physical keyboard and (oh, gasp) a mouse/touchpad-type interface. Yes, you can currently use a bluetooth keyboard with the iPad. And yes, you can use your finger as a mouse. But there is a gap in there that makes a laptop/desktop still necessary, and prevents the iPad from being your "only device." I picture a laptop docking station of sorts. Picture the bottom half of a MacBook Air - keyboard and touchpad and same form factor and such - but without a screen. The iPad becomes the screen when you attach/dock it to keyboard. In other words, the iPad is an appliance when you want it to be, and becomes a "laptop computer" dock it.

Yes, I know there are plenty of cases out there that sort of turn your iPad into a computer, but you still have to use the touch interface, and that makes a lot of work awkward. I believe - or at least want to believe (perhaps naively) - that they will build a mouse/touchpad-type code into iOS, and that the iPad will become all you need, at least on the most basic level.
 
faroZ06 said:
The Mac systems' structures are way better than MS stuff. I'd pay extra for an OS that actually makes sense and doesn't have so many security breaches.
Click to expand...

To over a billion people, Microsoft has an OS that "makes sense". There is a reason Microsoft is king in the enterprise market, and it isnt solely because of the cheaper prices. It is also because of the quality and choice of software, the Microsoft Ecosystem is great, especially in the enterprise market, where everything needs to be compatible with each other. Windows today is very secure, most of the big virus swarms are caused and spread by the kind of people who will click accept to any dialogue box, open any attachment they receive.

Imagine if a business was run entirely on Leopard, how screwed are they now? Apple seems to have left Leopard in the dust, or what if they'd just upgraded to Snow Leopard because they could afford it, and most of their business was dependent on software that required Rosetta, what will they do when Apple inevitably stops supporting Snow Leopard soon. Custom designed Computer Software for Enterprise is incredibly expensive to have coded, and many businesses can ill afford to have it upgraded and remade.

At least with Microsoft you can have the support you need, Microsoft are still supporting XP, and companies can still make an agreement with Microsoft to continue receiving support till beyond XP's shelf life.
 
faroZ06 said:
No, the rainbow Apple logo can be perceived as the gay symbol today. :(
Why couldn't they choose something less commonly used than a rainbow?!
Click to expand...
Use of the rainbow Apple logo has been deprecated by Apple corporate for many years, well over a decade.

When they started, the rainbow was not commonly recognized as a LGBT symbol.
 
Benjy91 said:
To over a billion people, Microsoft has an OS that "makes sense". There is a reason Microsoft is king in the enterprise market, and it isnt solely because of the cheaper prices. It is also because of the quality and choice of software, the Microsoft Ecosystem is great, especially in the enterprise market, where everything needs to be compatible with each other. Windows today is very secure, most of the big virus swarms are caused and spread by the kind of people who will click accept to any dialogue box, open any attachment they receive.

Imagine if a business was run entirely on Leopard, how screwed are they now? Apple seems to have left Leopard in the dust, or what if they'd just upgraded to Snow Leopard because they could afford it, and most of their business was dependent on software that required Rosetta, what will they do when Apple inevitably stops supporting Snow Leopard soon. Custom designed Computer Software for Enterprise is incredibly expensive to have coded, and many businesses can ill afford to have it upgraded and remade.

At least with Microsoft you can have the support you need, Microsoft are still supporting XP, and companies can still make an agreement with Microsoft to continue receiving support till beyond XP's shelf life.
Click to expand...

Microsoft is not the company that makes sense. Every single MS product I have ever owned has broken or had a million bugs.

The only reason people use it is because others use it, and they want to have the common "standard".

And the Microsoft system is not well structured or fit for business. You need a @#$%ing driver for everything, it wastes RAM, it's low security, it doesn't use the newest standards for networking (seriously, FTP & MS CHAP?), and the OS files are scattered so they are near impossible to find.
 
NewGenAdam said:
Yeah but the ape didn't use a rock to hold the other rock - he used his hands to hold the rock directly...

You seem so boxed into the old standards of having a mouse that you've forgotten what a mouse is for: using something.

A mouse is not an end in itself; it is a means. It's a tool which lets us use another tool, through an interface.

Don't forget that a computer is a tool. If we can use our hands directly rather than indirectly, this is an improvement to the simplicity and usability of the technology.

The only costs are to precision and obscuring the display - I'd say that's worth it, particularly for a portable...
Click to expand...

There is no way to do many of the things that you would do on a computer without a pointing approach that is more precise than my fat fingers... at least not in the current UI paradigm. Things won't change dramatically until we shift away from this.
 
I think we're gonna see something like iPad Pro, iPad with bigger screen, higher resolution and Lion.
 
Crzyrio said:
This Story seems irrelevant without a time frame.
Click to expand...

Other reports say by the end of 2011.

Also, they say the report is that it is a new product or a revamped current one that is so different they might perhaps use a new name.

My guess is that Apple is redesigning the form of the Mac Pro and it is very different from the current so someone is assuming it is a new product when in fact it isn't
 
theSeb said:
Our fingers are not always the best tool for the job. What may be "natural" is not always the best. As far as I know the Mona Lisa wasn't painted with fingers.
Click to expand...

At least parts of it were… ;)

What's the secret behind the smile?
Though Da Vinci is known as a master of sfumato — a Renaissance technique that layers light and dark translucent paint to create an illusion of smoke — the particularly subtle method he applied to Mona's mouth has evaded scholars. As the Sunday Telegraph reports, Walter and his team have concluded that Da Vinci painstakingly used his finger to apply 40 or so super-thin layers of glaze — each up to 50 times thinner than a human hair — to create "the slight blurring and shadows around the mouth that give the Mona Lisa her barely noticeable smile that seems to disappear when looked at directly."
Click to expand...
Link
 
cvaldes said:
Use of the rainbow Apple logo has been deprecated by Apple corporate for many years, well over a decade.

When they started, the rainbow was not commonly recognized as a LGBT symbol.
Click to expand...

In the late 90's? The rainbow was definitely an LGBT symbol in the late 90's. At least where I lived anyway. Not that it matters. No one associated the multi-colored apple symbol that way anyway. It isn't like everything that's multi-colored must be a rainbow, or that rainbows can only have one meaning, anyway.
 
theSeb said:
Hmmm... fair point. My second guess is a Mac not-so-pro.
Click to expand...

With desktop sales declining vs laptop/tablets/smartphones ? Forget it, there is no 1000$ tower coming. Ever.

dernhelm said:
In the 90's? The rainbow was definitely an LGBT symbol in the 90's. Not that it matters. No one associated the multi-colored apple symbol that way anyway. It isn't like everything that's multi-colored must be a rainbow, or that rainbows can only have one meaning, anyway.
Click to expand...

Doesn't that symbol hail from the 80s ?
 
Benjy91 said:
To over a billion people, Microsoft has an OS that "makes sense". There is a reason Microsoft is king in the enterprise market, and it isnt solely because of the cheaper prices. .
Click to expand...

its because they made deals with virtually every hardware vendor decades ago and eventually had every enterprise sale locked to their OS and office suite . It was better business negotiations, not better products
 
If I were Apple I would offer a...

new Mac form factor based on the iPad but running Mac OS X (not iOS). It would not have a physical keyboard, would be touchscreen, and would run all existing Mac apps.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-gb) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

trims said:
Why not just a 'Mac'?

Budget version of the Mac Pro Desktop, with easily upgradeable internals, to be hooked up to any external screen

Would make a huge difference to market share.
Click to expand...

+1
 
aeaglex07 said:
its because they made deals with virtually every hardware vendor decades ago and eventually had every enterprise sale locked to their OS and office suite . It was better business negotiations, not better products
Click to expand...

I have 3 broken XBOX 360s given to me by friends :confused:
I managed to get one to work by turning it on and off about 30 times, then I had to use a paperclip to open the DVD drive.
 
As computers continue to shrink, future full fledged computers will be ultra portable. A transitional touchscreen product running ARM and a full blown OSX type software is only a matter of time.
MS has already previewed Windows 8 running on ARM, and as we have seen, the first to market with a products that catches on will have an advantage with consumers and developers alike.

I see a portable iPad on steroids that can be docked to a keyboard and monitor if you so choose that can handle the most demanding software.
 
theSeb said:
There is no way to do many of the things that you would do on a computer without a pointing approach that is more precise than my fat fingers... at least not in the current UI paradigm. Things won't change dramatically until we shift away from this.
Click to expand...

I recognise that there are many things which are marginally easier with a mouse, but I genuinely can't think of any things which absolutely demand a mouse.

If you'd argue that a mouse is precise, remember it is limited by the user's dexterity and the onscreen resolution - whilst it may be more usable it's by no means perfect!

And your thinking is still boxed: the primary reason that "many of the things that you would do on a computer" can't be done with "my fat fingers" is because software has been developed to suit the needs of a mouse.

I have enough faith in human ingenuity to trust that touch interfaces needn't be a boundary to technology. Quite the opposite. They're an elegant simplification which allow the removal of a superfluous tool, the mouse.
 
NewGenAdam said:
A mouse is not an end in itself; it is a means. It's a tool which lets us use another tool, through an interface.
Click to expand...

I agree in part but I think our brains are doing more than you might realise.
As Ludvig Wittgenstein pointed out in 1953
“When I touch this object with a stick I have the sensation of touching in the tip of the stick, not in the hand that holds it. .... What goes with this is that when I touch the object I look not at my hand but at the tip of the stick; that I describe what I feel by saying “I feel something hard and round there”—not “I feel a pressure against the tips of my thumb, middle finger, and index finger”

Our ability to project ourselves into the tool we are using appears to be innate as we don't have to teach young children how to do this, so whilst you are right in identifying the mouse is an interface to something else, it may not really matter because the 'interface-conversion' is taking place before we are even aware of it.

It is odd tho that the mouse is both immensely popular and yet still such basic technology.
 
I'll vote 3 times.

1. a TV.

2. an Air/iPad convertible. When in laptop mode it will run Lion OS and when you flip the screen around and close the lid leaving the screen face up, iOS automatically comes on.

3. an affordable user configurable DESKTOP computer. Not the mini and not the gold plated mac pro.

PS.....number 3, not a chance. It's what I would want though. Heck, that is what has kept me away from apple all of these years.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back