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Apple Said to Be Targeting Fall 2014 Launch for 12-Inch iPad Focused on Enterprise
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You're missing the bigger picture. MS is not about selling their own tablets. They sell an OS that is bought by a multitude of hardware manufacturers. Why would Microsoft actually bite the hand that feeds them by putting full-fledged Office on the iPad so the world buys more of those and less windows-based tablets? (Which also happen to run Windows?).
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Yes. 3 days later.
I'm confused with all this, yeah it's great they will be bigger, I see Samsung has a 12" tablet in the works too, but if they just run Android or iOS still then what's the point? When you look at the full blown Windows tablets you can buy which for enterprise usage will destroy iOS and Android?
meh I guess we will have to wait and see what they actually do with them, then again maybe Apple will stick OSX on it? You never know.
meh I guess we will have to wait and see what they actually do with them, then again maybe Apple will stick OSX on it? You never know.
No worries. Like yourself, I'm hoping Apple releases something along the lines of what's in that patent.
I've been saying quad-core but it will be the A8X. iPad Air and mini will have standard, slower dual core A series, Pro will get the X in the quad core. Plus it will need a higher end graphics processor to run a 12 retina screen. I think it will also be closer to 12" than 12.9", and have a reduced bezel. 4GB ram, AC wireless, USB port with basic peripheral support, expanded iOS 8 features like a more fleshed out system of organizing and retrieving files so you can actually do work between apps. Maybe a pressure sensitive digitizer if we're lucky.
Where this report is likely wrong is a focus on enterprise. When has Apple really focused on enterprise? This will be more geared towards creative professionals. Photographers, artists, designers, muscians, and simple enthusiasts who want something really powerful and have money. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised to see one of these things running Xcode in a few years. It's the natural progression of these things. Let me explain:
Apple had this patent for an iMac looking device. You put your hands on the sides of the screen and grab it. It senses your heart beat and that you're grabbing it and slides down into a low profile mode that is at a similar angle to the iPad in a Smart Cover being used to type. As you pull it down into this low angle position, OS X transitions into a touch friendly version. This will be your main hub. The iPad Pro will use this alternate OS X interfacewhich is essentially iOS 8 but with some advanced features, and be your away from desk creative tool. This allows you to get some work done when out and about. It stays in sync with what you're doing on your desktop, so it's effortless to grab it and head out the door. I'm not sure if they can nail it out of the park as I've described in v1.0, but that's how I envision my workflow in the next 3-5 years. For now I would just be happy to have a more powerful device that lets me edit RAW photos in Lightroom Touchand hopefully ship with software that allows the display to be calibrated.
Where this report is likely wrong is a focus on enterprise. When has Apple really focused on enterprise? This will be more geared towards creative professionals. Photographers, artists, designers, muscians, and simple enthusiasts who want something really powerful and have money. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised to see one of these things running Xcode in a few years. It's the natural progression of these things. Let me explain:
Apple had this patent for an iMac looking device. You put your hands on the sides of the screen and grab it. It senses your heart beat and that you're grabbing it and slides down into a low profile mode that is at a similar angle to the iPad in a Smart Cover being used to type. As you pull it down into this low angle position, OS X transitions into a touch friendly version. This will be your main hub. The iPad Pro will use this alternate OS X interfacewhich is essentially iOS 8 but with some advanced features, and be your away from desk creative tool. This allows you to get some work done when out and about. It stays in sync with what you're doing on your desktop, so it's effortless to grab it and head out the door. I'm not sure if they can nail it out of the park as I've described in v1.0, but that's how I envision my workflow in the next 3-5 years. For now I would just be happy to have a more powerful device that lets me edit RAW photos in Lightroom Touchand hopefully ship with software that allows the display to be calibrated.
Apple may not make products that focus on the enterprise, but they do make products that can fit into the enterprise.
iOS = OS X on ARM + Cocoa Touch + some specific sensor APIs that doesn't exist in typical desktop/laptops.
It's the same kernel being used in both OSes, just compiled/optimized for the specific environment (Cocoa Touch/ARM on iOS devices and Cocoa/x86 on Intel Macs). Many of their subsystems are similar as well.
That's why iOS simulator is running pretty well and is not an emulator, those are iOS apps compiled as x86 running natively on OS X, just missing some of those hardware sensors in the iOS devices.
The question is, would Apple ever move to include touchscreen on their laptops, or in this case, offer a large enough iPad that runs OS X but includes iOS as well. Could easily replace Dashboard with an iOS home screen.
They've already done it, it's called iOS.I'm still thinking how Apple pulled that 64 bit processor out of their ass with ZERO leaks. The industry was shocked.
How much you wanna bet that there are teams working on optimizing OS X for touch and that it will be released upon a shocked industry? That would beat Microsoft and Android into submission.
That's just what I would do, and what do I know?
Windows isn't even close to touch optimized. Yes, the Metro tiles are touch friendly, but when you get into the conventional desktop UI you still need a mouse or trackpad.
Android is touch optimized, but doesn't have the same appeal as iOS or Apple products in general.
In all honesty, there isn't much about OS X that isn't touch friendly. Tap targets (like the menu bar) will likely need to be enlarged a bit, but I can't imagine that would be terribly difficult to customize for this type of device. Launchpad already exists and works, navigation has been gesture based since Lion--more intuitively than in iOS imho--The entire thing runs on a multitouch trackpad already. It would not be a stretch to move OS X to a tablet.
Targeting enterprise is the wrong way to see it. The device will target professionals and prosumers, particularly creatives and media pros.
The key for Apple finding success with a product like this isn't Microsoft Office compatibility. It's Adobe Creative Suite compatibility. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
OS X running on ARM would be a quicker transition for these kinds of applications than iOS (I would think) and if the A8 processor can handle them I can see it being a success.
Actually there are a couple things left out of this picture.
The "prevailing market wisdom" is that everybody is ditching laptops for mobile devices the same way we all ditched desktops for laptops.
So every computing company around and most of the entertainment companies are focused on how to exploit the "mobile revolution".
As far as biting the hand that feeds them, it isn't an either or situation. Microsoft can benefit from both ends, and likewise make money whether the Surface or an IOS "Pro" prevails.
And again there is the spectre of Sherman Anti Trust anytime one division of Microsoft does anything "anti-competitive".
I think they may be prohibited from doing something so blatant as developing Office clients for Android and Windows RT but not an undeniably prolific platform as IOS. Especially since they sell physical products based on a competing platform. I'm no lawyer though.
True, but I would argue that more of their products focus on consumers and fit into a more creative person's workflow and lifestyle. So primary focus consumer, secondary creatives, third we'll slowly add in enterprise support which has been happening over a long time on Macs and iOS.
In my design program I never once saw a PC being used among the students, be it their personal MacBooks they brought to class, or any of the machines in the labs (all iMacs and Mac Pros with Cinema Displays). In photography classes it was mostly macs with a few PCs mixed in. In my business classes, it was about 50/50 Macs and PCs. In the creative agencies I've worked for and visited, it's always all Mac. iOS has been changing things and getting a foothold in enterprise, and maybe Apple is finally seeing an opening against Microsoft with their floundering Surface, but I still think this iPad Pro will be squarely focused at more creative usersespecially initiallybut will naturally also support many of the great enterprise features that have been coming to iOS over the years. My main point is that you don't need a quad-core A8X to run a word processor or spreadsheet app. The A7 is plenty fast. Maybe a bump in ram is the only thing my iPad Mini Retina needs. But to do creative work with multiple layers, audio streams, 24+ megapixel RAW files you need the power. A quad core A8X would compete nicely with current MBA performance, probably with a Geekbench result very similar. The key is getting the Pro App Store off the ground. I think they might take the lead with Aperture for iPad Pro, setting the bar high out of the gate.
Optimizing OS X for touch would create a very poor user experience. Imagine typing everything on a touchscreen...heck - imagine typing with the screen facing you. With nothing for your hands to rest on, it would get very uncomfortable after awhile.
The way I see it, iOS *is* OS X optimized for touch.
The way I see it, iOS *is* OS X optimized for touch.
Why wouldn't they? I mean the Surface is selling like mad. It's going to kill the iPad. They have to release this to compete
(Excuse me my sarcasm is burning)
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He's also clueless if he thinks that 'business' is just about Office. Like Ballmer he appears to be going that way.
Many businesses need other things and can already get them from the current iPads.
The only thing that I think could be a little true is the quad core idea.i could see Apple considering moves that way, to simply make a better iPad. So what Wang is seeing is perhaps prototypes for a year or even three down the road, if the tests work out.
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Bring back implies it was once there. It wasn't. And this long with iOS and no user accessible file system seems to me a good sign they don't see a need for it, for the average consumer that is the target audience.
Now a non accessible common bucket such that I don't have five copies of the same file for different programs and each program can 'layer on' whatever bits they want to the master, okay that might be good. Less hassle to move files between say a ringtone app and ringtones in the library, sure.less hassle to save files to transfer to or from computer, all right. But we could still perhaps only be able to see them via apps.
You probably just offended about 1/5 of Chinese and Chinese-American visitors to this site because Wang is the second most popular last name in China. But then, a lot of American names sound hilarious in Chinese.
Focus on enterprise, eh? I'll make up a spontaneous rumor that Microsoft is considering selling off their Mac Business Unit (MBU) to Apple.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Business_Unit
The MBU contains the entire development team for MS Office for Mac, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Business_Unit
The MBU contains the entire development team for MS Office for Mac, etc.
"The question is, would Apple ever move to include touchscreen on their laptops, or in this case, offer a large enough iPad that runs OS X but includes iOS as well. Could easily replace Dashboard with an iOS home screen. "
Just to understand, what you're referring to, potentially, is an iPad that runs both OSX Mac Store & iPad apps?
You'd be surprised how much similar iOS and OSX are underneath. They are both unix with a different GUI. The iPad was meant to hide its file system for a reason. It was designed to be very simple to use. Get used to it or buy a notebook.
If they indeed make an iPad Pro as described, it's going to be a different product for a different public. I would personally be happy with it.
Since we're all speculating, what if this 12" iPad was running an x86 CPU and "iOS 8 Pro"?
iOS 8 Pro (tentative name) would only run on the 12" iPad and be essentially the same on the surface as iOS 8 on ARM, but would have the addition of all the frameworks from Mac OS X that are currently missing from iOS except traditional windows management and the Mac OS X UI widgets.
Essentially it would be like (Mac OS X + iOS) - Legacy Mac GUI = iOS Pro.
Very powerful existing Mac OS X applications could be converted relatively easily simply by redoing their front end UI using iOS touch controls and full screen layout APIs, and leaving the rest of the code intact.
Yes Mac OS X and iOS already share a lot of code, but key APIs and frameworks from Mac OS X are still missing from iOS.
iOS 8 would include a new set of UI widgets that can replicate what most of the Mac OS X UI widgets can do. A new powerful Finder equivalent could be part of iOS 8 Pro, as a bridge to the old file system paradigm. And why not, split-screen multi-tasking.
Compiling "classic" iOS apps for this x86 12" iPad would work just as for the ARM platform, since iOS was built to be CPU agnostic, the device itself would have the bonus of running touch versions of more powerful Mac software.
The difference with the Microsoft Surface is that iOS already has a momentum that Metro never had and I don't think porting legacy Windows app to Metro was/is easy.
Even if porting legacy Mac apps to iOS Pro was to be harder than predicted and turned out to be unpopular, the rest of the iOS dev community would still provide plenty of powerful "native" apps for this device to be a more useful than what Metro provides on the Surface.
I haven't mentioned the possibility of running older Mac apps in some kind of compatibility layer (like the Surface Pro) because I'm not entirely sure if they should do it or not. It's a double-edged sword.
**End of crazy speculation.
iOS 8 Pro (tentative name) would only run on the 12" iPad and be essentially the same on the surface as iOS 8 on ARM, but would have the addition of all the frameworks from Mac OS X that are currently missing from iOS except traditional windows management and the Mac OS X UI widgets.
Essentially it would be like (Mac OS X + iOS) - Legacy Mac GUI = iOS Pro.
Very powerful existing Mac OS X applications could be converted relatively easily simply by redoing their front end UI using iOS touch controls and full screen layout APIs, and leaving the rest of the code intact.
Yes Mac OS X and iOS already share a lot of code, but key APIs and frameworks from Mac OS X are still missing from iOS.
iOS 8 would include a new set of UI widgets that can replicate what most of the Mac OS X UI widgets can do. A new powerful Finder equivalent could be part of iOS 8 Pro, as a bridge to the old file system paradigm. And why not, split-screen multi-tasking.
Compiling "classic" iOS apps for this x86 12" iPad would work just as for the ARM platform, since iOS was built to be CPU agnostic, the device itself would have the bonus of running touch versions of more powerful Mac software.
The difference with the Microsoft Surface is that iOS already has a momentum that Metro never had and I don't think porting legacy Windows app to Metro was/is easy.
Even if porting legacy Mac apps to iOS Pro was to be harder than predicted and turned out to be unpopular, the rest of the iOS dev community would still provide plenty of powerful "native" apps for this device to be a more useful than what Metro provides on the Surface.
I haven't mentioned the possibility of running older Mac apps in some kind of compatibility layer (like the Surface Pro) because I'm not entirely sure if they should do it or not. It's a double-edged sword.
**End of crazy speculation.
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And who was the CEO when the original iPad had 256 MB?
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That would just be stupid, Apple isn't here to take losses on hardware.
Yes, both OS X and iOS apps. It probably wouldn't be restricted to Mac App Store for OS X apps.
What I'm saying is that it's the same OS in both environments, it's just iOS is optimized for the touchscreen and OS X with non-touch display/keyboard/mouse.
It would be fairly easy for Apple to provide both in the same device if there's a way to use OS X easily since it really isn't comfortable to use on a touchscreen. In this case, a thin detachable keyboard+touchpad might be enough. They certainly have some patents on such a detachable part.
An example would be Surface Pro, Metro = iOS and the "classic" desktop = OS X. Imagine on day one of this device, 1 million iOS apps already ready to go in addition to the OS X apps.
Hybrid device to replace the MBA and add a larger iPad to the lineup makes perfect sense. I was hoping we wouldn't have to wait until Oct to get hold of it. Cook said Apple would be "releasing products throughout 2014". I hope so as all the rumours seem to be pointing towards all the new/updated devices coming in Sept/Oct again.