Chinese Translation Request: ? Apple Tablet?

[dongmin]

OK I did some research into these 'smart displays'. It's really misleading because they're not 'displays' in the sense that they're an output device for your desktop. Rather, the smart display is a portable computer in itself, more like a PDA with a large display or a wireless internet appliance. The windows-powered smart displays run Windows CE so they're definitely not a desktop replacement.

 

[etoiles]

Re: beeeyooowwww - beeeeeyooowwww

Originally posted by ennerseed
No, no, it runs on a special macrumors reality distortion field. simular to the jobs reality distortion field but, makes readers believe they can run a quad 980 tablet mac with simply Mac OS X (tabby) and the cold sweat of thier hands.

...and crane intestines...mmmmmmmh, crane intestines

 

[Dan8302]

MS attempt to beat apple

I just read the MS discription of their wireless displays, and somthing struck me, it said that they can not support full motion video and 3-D games. Whats the point then if you can't do that? I hope that if apple does come out with a wireless display that they have the ability to work as a regualr monitor and can display more than text and simple pictures.

 

[Hattig]

Re: Re: wireless

Originally posted by dongmin
Is a wireless display even possible? Is it possible to convert VGA or DVI signals into something wireless, like bluetooth? I've yet to hear of such a technology.

The display will also incorporate a small low-power computer running its own OS.

The display from the main computer is then transferred to the tablet either at the API level, at a primitives level (like X11 incorporates) or using plain old pixels (e.g., VNC) - or an intelligent mixture. This is a lot less bandwidth intensive, and thus works fine for most applications (without too much motion, e.g., playing video).

If the tablet used a low-power 750FX processor, then it might even run MacOSX on the tablet itself...

 

[DavidCL23]

The display gets its power wirelessly!!! Trust me on this one, apple is way ahead on this technology

 

[gopher]

Originally posted by DavidCL23
The display gets its power wirelessly!!! Trust me on this one, apple is way ahead on this technology

The technology existed 80 years ago. Read about Tesla,
who invented the wireless transmitting power station.
It was extremely noisy. He had to be 25 miles away from it in order not to be bothered by the noise.

It would make the G4 tower seem quieter than a hare.

 

[jimjiminyjim]

tablet

Well, regardless of crane intestines, wireless power, a dubious software base, and strange mixtures of processors, I for one am not very interested in purchasing a traditional desktop computer. The one I've got, an iMac 233 isn't much different than the quicksilver I'm typing on right now. And my palmpilot does (or can do) everything that I use the quicksilver for (ok, ok, except for my digital camera and the little bit of editing I do).

What I'm saying: Bring a tablet - it's time for real innovation. Bring it with a touchscreen keyboard, an optional big button (at least the size of a quarter) OS, and stick a 500 - 1 Ghz processor in it.

 

[Toe]

Howzabout something new?

Imagine this: In your house instead of having one to five computers, you instead have one tower sitting in the closet, much like a water heater or furnace. That's your home computer... basically a home Xserve with Airport.

Then in your house you also have a variety of tablets sitting around. Some might be little iPod-sized things. Some might be big 15" screens you can write on, and some might be brainless notebooks (like a PowerBook, but with nothing in it but a screen, keyboard, battery, Airport, and Bluetooth). Ideally your house would have some microphones spread around it too.

Now when you want to compute, just grab a tablet and start working. Or just speak the computer's name, and start demanding things. Or just use the TV's remote. Or grab a keyboard and use it with the TV, or with a tablet.

Get creative. What's with all this Tablet-PC crap?? That's old news, and Apple's not in the habit of manufacturing old ideas.

 

[cubist]

Re: Howzabout something new?

Originally posted by Toe
... Now when you want to compute, just grab a tablet and start working. ...

I recall Xerox PARC had something like this. They called them "Pads". They also had a thing called a "Tag" that tracked people in the facility, wirelessly. And they had these things ten years ago.

 

[-hh]

Re: Howzabout something new?

Originally posted by Toe
Imagine this: In your house instead of having one to five computers, you instead have one tower sitting in the closet, much like a water heater or furnace. That's your home computer... basically a home Xserve with Airport.

Get creative...

This is along the lines of what I've been thinking...a 15" laptop is a problemmatic child stuck between the 12" and the 17", so its basic function would be better served (current term) if it did something else.

So you have a "tablet/laptop" that only needs to be as smart as a Palm for when its away from its base station, and when its within range, capable of running Apple Remote Desktop.

Apple Remote Desktop ... iSync ... Xserve ... Airport Extreme ... bluetooth ... it would appear that all of the necessary pieces are already in place.


-hh

 

[Les Kern]

Re: ???

Originally posted by Billy_ca
How can something be wireless, not have a battery, and work all at the same time?

It's the crane intestines. Ever see Star Trek Voyager? The ship was run by freezer packs full of living cells. Or maybe the energy comes from brownian motion...
Hey, makes about as much sense as the rest of the speculations.

 

[Les Kern]

Re: Howzabout something new?

Originally posted by Toe
Imagine this: In your house instead of having one to five computers, you instead have one tower sitting in the closet, much like a water heater or furnace. That's your home computer... basically a home Xserve with Airport.

Then in your house you also have a variety of tablets sitting around. Some might be little iPod-sized things. Some might be big 15" screens you can write on, and some might be brainless notebooks (like a PowerBook, but with nothing in it but a screen, keyboard, battery, Airport, and Bluetooth). Ideally your house would have some microphones spread around it too.

You should work with Apple. At last, a visionary. Well done.

 

[jettredmont]

Originally posted by dongmin
OK I did some research into these 'smart displays'. It's really misleading because they're not 'displays' in the sense that they're an output device for your desktop. Rather, the smart display is a portable computer in itself, more like a PDA with a large display or a wireless internet appliance. The windows-powered smart displays run Windows CE so they're definitely not a desktop replacement.

The OS of the "smart display" is meaningless; the only app running on a Windows "Smart Display" is Remote Desktop. Remote Desktop is essentially the same as Apple's remote software, which allows you to see the desktop of another computer on your computer.

Remote Desktop doesn't transmit raw VGA RGB signals across the wires, or even video card buffers, but instead transmits Window Manager and GDI commands to the remote client. Its "sorta almost kinda like" X-Windows in that respect (although X reverses the client/server topology and allows any number of display devices attached to applications on one computer). Anything that bypasses the Windows GDI can not work with Remote Desktop.

"Smart Displays" (aka Mira) came out of Microsoft at the same time as the Tablet reference design, caused a bit of market confusion, then were essentially dismissed as a very bad idea (primarily because of the limitations; one smart display per desktop, and you can't use the desktop at the same time as the smart display). Also, the fact that most companies wanted to sell the "Smart Display" as a replacement for the monitor (with the limitations still there when you are sitting down at you desk) made the idea pretty much stink.

And, yes, any DirectX applications (ie, most games and video players) will not work over Remote Desktop and hence will not work with a Smart Display.

Getting back on the thread: a "battery-less" (one would hope that that means just a minimal 1-2 hour battery, not a 10-12 hour variety all-day-use battery) wireless display would seem to fit in the office environment (where the "home base" is returned to often) better than the home environment (where, ideally, such a product would be left on the coffee table or on the bedside table for hours on end and only "cradled" when necessary). But then, as Arn has pointed out, DigiTimes has a low credibility record, so perhaps they're just making that up.

 

[unclepain]

Well, for $1299 you can already have this technology- as long as you are using WinXP.
http://www.viewsonic.com/products/airpanel_airpanelv150.htm

 

[johnpaul191]

no battery? Stirling Engine powered?

Originally posted by NavyIntel007
Wireless Display without a battery? What do you have to do crank it?

it must use a Stirling Engine !!!!! We know Steve Jobs and Dean Kamen are pals.

 

[old_macpro]

Ok folks, here may be a way the tablet might be wireless, without a battery...check out the article about Wireless Firewire : http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_news.cfm?NewsID=4848

It might be possible, that such a tablet could hold a small charge (small battery), and continue to draw power from a wireless link like firewire.

 

[blueBomber]

isn't everybody sick of these tablet rumors yet? I for one could care less if Apple makes one, I've used the ones running WinXP and I find them to be useless given I can get a nice laptop for less money

 

[dongmin]

Originally posted by blueBomber
isn't everybody sick of these tablet rumors yet? I for one could care less if Apple makes one, I've used the ones running WinXP and I find them to be useless given I can get a nice laptop for less money

I guess Arn has some solid reason to believe that a tablet is waiting in the wings, b/c we do get an awful lot of tablet-related rumors posted here. I think there was even a Palm rumor posted here recently. In any event, it generates discussion; a lot of people seem to have strong opinions about it, pro and con.

 

[liloconf]

hehe

I've been waiting to see this for some time, i think most of you seem to be overlooking something sun has been doing for a long time. We are running osx which aside from being based around bsd can also (now with help from apple too) run x windows which (aqua might be able to too) can use a remote display such as sun's thin clients to display a desktop. So basically incorperating isync apple wants people to buy flat screen tablets with a keyboard that has no hard drive, cdrom etc etc , which makes use of bluetooth or 802.11b/g to acces a remote xwindows/aqua session from anywhere near your computer. If made with price in mind thease things will sell like hot cakes. imagine sitting in your faimily room with one of thease things and some headphones, watching a dvd your playing from your computer upstairs....... once again i need to work for apple, i could come up with ideas like thease all day. oh yeah and for non belivers im sure im not the only one that uses that windows based remote xwindow program to work on there mac from work....right?

(excuse speeling)

 

[Winston Smith]

Re: Howzabout something new?

Originally posted by Toe
Imagine this: In your house instead of having one to five computers, you instead have one tower sitting in the closet, much like a water heater or furnace. That's your home computer... basically a home Xserve with Airport.

Then in your house you also have a variety of tablets sitting around. Some might be little iPod-sized things. Some might be big 15" screens you can write on, and some might be brainless notebooks (like a PowerBook, but with nothing in it but a screen, keyboard, battery, Airport, and Bluetooth). Ideally your house would have some microphones spread around it too.

Now when you want to compute, just grab a tablet and start working. Or just speak the computer's name, and start demanding things. Or just use the TV's remote. Or grab a keyboard and use it with the TV, or with a tablet.

Get creative. What's with all this Tablet-PC crap?? That's old news, and Apple's not in the habit of manufacturing old ideas.

This is precisely the point of this. Someone start a new thread on what you use your computer for now that you didn't 5 years ago. Now factor in wireless , music services, downloadable video, photo albums etc. how big a hard drive do you have now compared with 5 years ago?
But you still sit in front of a desktop to enjoy this stuff?!!!
With this 'tablet' you can be anywhere within your wireless network controlling the feed from your server to your video wall, speakers, fridge even!!

Apple doesn't follow they lead or have I got a Jobs reality distortion field

 

[arn]

Originally posted by dongmin
I guess Arn has some solid reason to believe that a tablet is waiting in the wings, b/c we do get an awful lot of tablet-related rumors posted here. I think there was even a Palm rumor posted here recently. In any event, it generates discussion; a lot of people seem to have strong opinions about it, pro and con.

actually... I don't know what to make of this digitimes report... as many said... it's a bit of a jumble.

The only things I know about the possibility of a Mac Tablet are listed in this article from before:

https://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/02/20030221004455.shtml

arn

 

[TMay]

Re: wireless

Originally posted by Hattig
The display will also incorporate a small low-power computer running its own OS.

The display from the main computer is then transferred to the tablet either at the API level, at a primitives level (like X11 incorporates) or using plain old pixels (e.g., VNC) - or an intelligent mixture. This is a lot less bandwidth intensive, and thus works fine for most applications (without too much motion, e.g., playing video).

If the tablet used a low-power 750FX processor, then it might even run MacOSX on the tablet itself...

If I was doing this just as a wireless display, I would put in a low cost Quartz accelerated graphics card (chip/core), and send Quartz data via the 802.11g. How much bandwidth would that take? I would use one of the IBM embedded PPC's with a minimal OSX subset to power this. (People will want all kinds of connectivity options like Firewire (direct to videocam output), Bluetooth, USB 2.0, and ethernet, but I wouldn't get into these).

If I was building a tablet, on the other hand, I would basically just repackage an iBook behind a touch screen, or for a more Newton like approach, I would use the IBM 405LP with graphics and networking cores running an OSX lite so development is consistent across platforms.

 

[requies]

Re: Re: wireless

Originally posted by dongmin
Is a wireless display even possible? Is it possible to convert VGA or DVI signals into something wireless, like bluetooth? I've yet to hear of such a technology.

OS X is display postscript, which means that the display information is much smaller than raster display information and therefore easier to send over a wireless connection.

i think the peices are really coming together here. i think a thin client for the home is a good idea. combine that with the idea from the other tablet threads that the ipod could possibly connect to it to share hard drive space and battery power.

 

[MetallicPenguin]

Re: hehe

Originally posted by liloconf
I've been waiting to see this for some time, i think most of you seem to be overlooking something sun has been doing for a long time. We are running osx which aside from being based around bsd can also (now with help from apple too) run x windows which (aqua might be able to too) can use a remote display such as sun's thin clients to display a desktop. So basically incorperating isync apple wants people to buy flat screen tablets with a keyboard that has no hard drive, cdrom etc etc , which makes use of bluetooth or 802.11b/g to acces a remote xwindows/aqua session from anywhere near your computer. If made with price in mind thease things will sell like hot cakes. imagine sitting in your faimily room with one of thease things and some headphones, watching a dvd your playing from your computer upstairs....... once again i need to work for apple, i could come up with ideas like thease all day. oh yeah and for non belivers im sure im not the only one that uses that windows based remote xwindow program to work on there mac from work....right?

(excuse speeling)

My point exactly that's what.....wait no nevermind. But this sounds very sweet.

 

[unzkie]

plz all, stop the nonsense.
I think this thing is most likely the long awaited touchscreen lcd input tablet, 15" would be just right.
Think input not output.