i wish apple would buy my arm . . . oh wait, i just bought a new macbook. they got it and my leg. at least it was worth it . . .
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Apple's ARM Plans in 2009? NetBooks, Tablets, Other?
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Hi
Ever since I got my AlumiBook MacBook I have been staring at the mini-displayport on it and then keep thinking about the iMac-ish patent app that came out a while back. (small box that slides into the side of an iMac screen)
Your post is one of the first I have seen that also thinks about minidisplayport in other ways. 99.99% of the others are how minidisplayport stole their girlfriend or kicked their dog and that it's just plain evil
Now given that iphone game apps are being outputted (unsupported) to larger displays, I have to think now more than ever that their will be an iphone to miniDisplayPort cable in the future.
The idea of hooking up my iPhone to my 24" LED ACD and then just using my Apple BT keyboard with it just feels 'too cool' & 'so right'.
...and maybe 'too real' in the near future.
Is it MW yet?
Cheers
-wsn
I assuming everybody on here is also stuck in this Holiday/Christmas game. I only want Mac stuff, and it has to be a gift card as 'my' Christmas is not till Jan
I entirely agree with this, but I don't think that its going to happen soon. As Steve Jobs said, "We've Got Some Interesting Ideas", but I think that there not quite ready to throw anything out there that might not be very good. Apple has always tried to sell the best, but most expensive computers. I think that they are going to keep it that way for just a little longer. In the near future, they will have to make some cheaper products because of the economic slow down that could continue for another year or so. I sure do hope that Apple will do this soon, so maybe one day, they can put Microsoft out of business.
I hope Apple bring out a netbook next year (however unlikely that is).
If they could scale the iPhone user-experience up, that would do.
I find sometimes browsing on an iPod touch is less of a pain than on some netbooks with their awkward trackpads so I'd love to see Apple's take on them.
If they could scale the iPhone user-experience up, that would do.
I find sometimes browsing on an iPod touch is less of a pain than on some netbooks with their awkward trackpads so I'd love to see Apple's take on them.
Went into an Apple store with my netbook this weekend to see if I could rationalize buying a MB or MBA for a cleaner solution than my AA1. I really wanted to make it work. My wife wanted it to work. It doesn't, and the footprint is the real issue. The MBA is close on weight... but it can't take the place of the netbook!
Juggle a netbook on an airplane once and you will be sold for life. I could fit my dinner and my netbook on the tray at the same time! I could effortlessly get out of my seat without having my neighbor hold something. It makes the decision of bring or not go away altogether.
The problem with Apple focusing on its current lineup is that the full-size notebook market is being subjugated by netbooks and cell phones. Devices with higher pixel densities that are perfect for 75% of the tasks people do, and adequate for at least 15-20% of what is left. I have a fairly complicated Sketchup model I work with, no problems. Financial spreadsheets, no problems. Powerpoint... no problem. Everything I use my 17" MBP for (aside from AutoCAD) works just fine.
There is also significant room for improvement... the keyboards and touchpads are awful, and the over all workmanship could be better.
I have a new design for Apple to consider. Use an iPhone or an iPod touch as the trackpad for a MacBook or MacBook Pro. They will come with a depression where the trackpad would otherwise be, with padding to cradle the phone or touch. You just drop it in and use the touchscreen. You'd tap once for a "click" and the phone/touch would support single or multi-touch gestures just as the trackpads do now, but in addition it could display menus or other information to help you use the active application. When the phone gets thin enough, it could be used in the MacBook Air too.
You could even talk on the iPhone while it's cradled, using either the iPhone's or the Mac's microphone and speaker.
You're welcome, Steve.
You could even talk on the iPhone while it's cradled, using either the iPhone's or the Mac's microphone and speaker.
You're welcome, Steve.
Anything is possible but it is not like Cortex has a surplus of instruction codes. What wouldn't surprise me is a co processor that works within the current ARM hardware architecture. It would be nice if they could accelerate the heavy parts of Objective C but it would also be nice to see Apple introduce a decimal math co processor.
The question is how do you accelerate that? One thing that comes to mind is the incredible amount of string processing that goes on in a modern iPhone type app. So much is done by string look up and comparison that instructions to accelerate that might have a significant impact on performance.
I'm not so certain that the big hold up is message passing, might be I just don't know. What I do know is that Apple wouldn't do anything hardware wise without profiling a lot of code. So they likely have an eye already on what ever the big hold ups are. It is very possible that they could do for embedded devices what they did for vector processing with Alt-Vec.
Like wise I'm not sure if Apple is up to anything here but I do know that ARM has the provisions for co processors. What they implement is likely to be via that mechanism.
As for the next gen iPhone a 1.5 to 2x speed up would be very welcomed. For most apps it is not needed but Safari can always use more horsepower. Even then next gen iPhone will need significantly more RAM. I'd like to see Apple jump to 512meg of RAM, especially if they go the route of a larger tablet.
Dave
That's Apple taking care of your life style choices. 4 hours of games is plenty, go outside and play in the sun after!
days instead of hours, that would be nice. I never take my laptop anywhere without its Ac adapter.
Well no it doesn't but that doesn't mean nothing is there.
No it doesn't make sense but you have to take into account that the source might be a liberal arts major. He may have info we don't but simply can't connect the dots. Frankly I do believe it would be possible to extend ARM to enhance it's ability to run iPhone apps. A co processor for string handling might help for example.
It is interesting that Apple is rolling it's own ARM processor wise. The question is what special sauce are they going to put into their SoC to justify it?
Certainly high integration of support logic is part of the goal but what about special logic such as a co processor for string handling. Just a thought.
Dave
No it doesn't make sense but you have to take into account that the source might be a liberal arts major. He may have info we don't but simply can't connect the dots. Frankly I do believe it would be possible to extend ARM to enhance it's ability to run iPhone apps. A co processor for string handling might help for example.
It is interesting that Apple is rolling it's own ARM processor wise. The question is what special sauce are they going to put into their SoC to justify it?
Certainly high integration of support logic is part of the goal but what about special logic such as a co processor for string handling. Just a thought.
Dave
I am really looking forward to Macworld. I have a good feeling that we're getting something exciting. This ARM tablet idea would be amazing. I reckon they can revolutionise the Netbook market on a similar scale to what the iPhone did for phones.
(ARM Ltd) -> ARM -> *custom implementation by PA Semi/Samsung/etc name here*
ARM is an architecture like x86, and whatever implementation of it by licensee is counterpart of atom/coreduo
Apple has not used this idea, but there is an application in the App Store that let's you do the same thing, Touchpad Elite.
Apple of all places knows the use of lesser/older technology to make new devices. Heck they were built on that premise. I just can't see them taking a decisive step to netbooks next year because they could have taken such steps already and haven't.
He's got 4 years. No hurry.
I see your point, but.... I live in North Carolina where we have a lot of lower-incomed families (as compared to other areas in the country [or even parts of NC for that matter]). During black Friday, Target started stocking netbooks (linux Asus EE PC - Black and White), 4gb hard drive for $399. You should have seen them flying out of there. People were buying them to introduce their kids to their first computer. Adults were buying them for themselves, so that they could finally have a computer, get on the internet, etc.
I think the price point is what is sriving the netbook rage. For me, I would just want one for when I travel on vacation (internet, email, download pictures/video from my camera to free up the SD card, and maybe MS-Office).
Like Apple, netbooks are a niche market that seems to be filling nicely.
Shoot the author of this article or teach them to have their work checked by someone in the field their writing on.
Certainly is!
Now that Intel has recaptured the desktop (for the moment) and has a clear strategy on that front for the next 8 years, your definitely going to see a big push into the low power CPU market.
I think a hint of that was shown by the frustration vented by an Intel engineer in the press a few months back over the decision of Apple to use ARM instead of the Atom. It was quickly dismissed by everyone, but the mini success of the Atom really got Intel's attention. Based on that alone, I would think Intel has something in the works.
Hi
Ever since I got my AlumiBook MacBook I have been staring at the mini-displayport on it and then keep thinking about the iMac-ish patent app that came out a while back. (small box that slides into the side of an iMac screen)
Your post is one of the first I have seen that also thinks about minidisplayport in other ways. 99.99% of the others are how minidisplayport stole their girlfriend or kicked their dog and that it's just plain evil
Now given that iphone game apps are being outputted (unsupported) to larger displays, I have to think now more than ever that their will be an iphone to miniDisplayPort cable in the future.
The idea of hooking up my iPhone to my 24" LED ACD and then just using my Apple BT keyboard with it just feels 'too cool' & 'so right'.
...and maybe 'too real' in the near future.
Is it MW yet?
Cheers
-wsn
I assuming everybody on here is also stuck in this Holiday/Christmas game. I only want Mac stuff, and it has to be a gift card as 'my' Christmas is not till Jan
Since the news of the TV out libraries has been pushed around in the iPhone SDK, how different is an iPhone or iPod Touch from an Apple TV? What if the App store was suddenly available to the Apple TV and they used an iPhone or iPod Touch as the controller (like the Remote app). It would certainly give that ATV Hobby a little more legs.
The things that make you go Hmmmn...
I can understand that it's slower ( in terms of time per task ) as it's less powerful due to no conditional execute prefixes, no operand shift, etc, but is penalty for thumb really that significant in cycles per instruction?
Fits my prediction
I think this post is a validation of the prediction that I made that if Apple comes out with a netbook, they're not going to create a typical "cheap" laptop - they're going to reinvent the category.
http://devinsblog.com/2008/12/07/apples-netbook-release-strategy-redefining-netbook/
I think this post is a validation of the prediction that I made that if Apple comes out with a netbook, they're not going to create a typical "cheap" laptop - they're going to reinvent the category.
http://devinsblog.com/2008/12/07/apples-netbook-release-strategy-redefining-netbook/
Any additional decode is usually hidden in a pipeline stage, so it only appears as a missed branch prediction penalty. I have one benchmark where the Thumb code was faster... because it was small enough to fit in icache, whereas the ARM version wasn't. YMMV.
.
They'll make the same thing as everyone else, but instead of "cheap", it'll be "expensive"!
I hope Apple can make it thin without sacrificing too much performance. Absolute performance at least would be quite good.
I've always thought of the iPhone and iPod touch as the first foray into the mobile arena for Apple.
What I've been saying for a long time now. I don't see Mac OS X working out for mobile devices. Not only are the specs are too high (note that minimum specs are exactly that: MINIMUM specs), but the user experience won't be as good. Mac OS X (and apps) work well with a certain resolution (display size) or higher. The smaller the device gets, the worse the user experience is, and I don't see either specs or Snow Leopard changing that. A user interface designed for a small device would work well on a bigger one, with small tweaks. I see things being much snappier with iPhone OS than Mac OS X.
Plus, apparently small devices are used for tasks like general web browsing and document editing. Well, if iPhone OS included iLife and iWork (as well as more editing capabilities in general), wouldn't it do most if not all of what the device would be used for even if it had Mac OS X?