Robomac's Profile

Big cats are much less tacky than "Mac OS X version 10.blah.di.blah. I never did hear about Shaye and its purported product code-names. Apple stealing them? How rude! Shame on Stevie... ;)

The enterprise is not about having the nicest most elegant GUI. The enterprise's needs are different from a consumer's point-of-view. Samplings: 1. Enterprise use of PC OS are utilitarian in nature - if one works well enough (a.k.a. Windows) then so be it keep using Windows, period. No more debate. - The enterprise did not upgrade to Vista for XP was still very useful and more importantly, stable enough for the common daily tasks such as word processing and number crunching. Never mind that XP is over 8 years old. - Win7 is a reworked Vista (I am working on RTM release right now) that offers that XP reliability that the enterprise is looking for. Win7 looks great but shouldn't a new OS have to be beautiful anyway? 2. The enterprise have legacy apps and internal codes that must work. Some of these are critical to the enterprise's viability and survival, period. - That means going forward the next upgrage cycle is Win7 with the XP Mode as a security blanket for the older apps. - The only way the Mac can squeeze in to this next upgrade cycle is to offer Win7 bundled in a dual-boot configuration (as default) or a type 1 hypervisor (bare metal kind) not OS hosted like Parallels. 3. This one is debatable but true. IT shops prefer a platform where there are more than one vendor or supplier for many reasons. - HP, Dell, Acer all offer Windows machines and are available directly from the vendors' web stores or from retailers like CDW or even NewEgg. - Apple's Macs are only available from Apple, period. (OK so they can be bought from CDW or Best Buy, but you know they are still from Apple). There are other reasons the Mac and Snow Leopard will have an uphill battle in the enterprise but those are the killer reasons. I own several Macs over the years and I loved them all. But I am also practical and knows full well what the enterprise needs (I own a small business too). Yeah, it would be great if all the PC machines disappear overnight replaced by shiny new Mac Pros and MacBooks and Minis. But that ain't gonna happen unless Apple does the unthinkable and resolves all of those points above. Chris H: The dude's got talent in design, indeed! Jon Ive must hire this guy. IMHO he isn't mechanically inclined engineer tho. The weakest point in his unified OLED display is the hinge. There has not been enough data to really know how OLED screens take the daily bendings and stretchings that a normal hinge takes each and every day.

Likewise, there is a need for a portable smartpads. Can you just imagine UPS or FedEx drivers lugging a full-size notebook around the block? Those Symbol smartpads are actually mini PC terminals with a barcode reader. Symbol even made the original Apple Store POS mobile terminals. So, to answer your question Chris, yes there is a place for a "netbook" in Apple's lineup. It will not be a netbook like what Asus, Acer, or Dell is currently peddling - microbooks. Those are not much better than the failed Samsung or OQO Origami-based mini-notebooks. Yes, they are selling like hotcakes at the moment but to whom? Those same people are expecting an XP-like experience but only to find out that they are best for web browsing - and that is what they are designed for. That is the reason Apple rudely ridiculed this exact form-factor for a mobile microbook. The iPod touch is fine as a pocket Mac but you can only do so much with it - as EdiEdi confesses above. So, the expected 8-10" screen form-factor tablet is a perfect fit between the iPhone/Touch and the MacBook. As I have inferred in the past the $699 price point is a nice middle ground to prevent cannibalisation. I expect such tablet Mac to offer the full OSX Snow Leopard when it comes out for the Holidays this year. Just to be fun of course, Apple will include the same accelerometer chip to make it compatible with iTunes games & applications. GPS and magnetometer may not make it initially. This iMate Touch will make a perfect college backpack doohicky to show off to those lonesome tumbleweeds.

Google is wishful thinking... Do you really think a search company (however big) can really be focused on supporting a browser and an OS to compete with OSX or even Windows 7? Granted, G took the easy route by sugarcoating a Linux kernel with a homebrew GUI and a patch of open-source frameworks like WebKit to reach time-to-market faster than, say, a ground-up design like OSX. How is this different from Ubuntu or Fedora? Those OSes has been claiming big ever since. Nice to experiment with but you always end up asking yourself, "Now what...?" Do you really think this Chrome OS even has slim chance of defeating the Big 2 in desktop/mobile OS? OSX is lightyears more advanced than anything out there and even more so with the next release - Snow Leopard. Even Windows 7 has so far surpassed everyone's expectation of a Vista SP. We know that OSX/Unix was designed to be "modular" from the bottom-up and the frameworks in Snow Leopard such as Grand Central will enable seamless 32/64-bit transitions. It will be totally transparent to the top layers - meaning apps and you. Quicktime X will take advantage of latent GPU power and in-built H.264 decoding hardware (CUDA?). So, my question to you is, do you really think Google Chrome OS will be the OSX and Windows 7 killer? I am very doubful, Chris.

Like I mentioned in my last post, if Apple went with a re-engineered ARM multicore + PowerVR core capable of HD & H.264 then I'm all for it. TV is a "closed" or embedded box unlike the Mac desktops. The CPU/GPU/OS/firmware are not relevant to the consumer in an embedded device. Like do we really care what OS/CPU on those nice Samsung refrigerators? Microwave ovens? What matters is the final output and how solid an HD experience will be and can an ARM-based platform support HD games, apps, and media? If ARM satisfies this question then I say go for it. If not, you have to look back to a low-power multicore PPC or a multicore Intel. Which would it be? As to the Mac desktops, although the UB framework can support any CPU architecture in theory (it does it well actually). It made business sense for Apple to switch to Intel completely. Why not AMD? VIA? Sure, they can be supported as proved by the Hackintosh people. But simplicity strikes those out. Intel's CPU roadmap is paved like a sweet Alpine highway - and the Intel discount is perhaps too delicious to look elsewhere. Another powerful motive for the desktop Intel switch was the urge to run x86 code natively (hypervisor or what not) on the Mac hardware. People were sick of slow, bloated, and unreliable VPC x86 emulators at the time. Now all you hear are praises. PPC or Power for the Mac Pro desktop today is doable but unlikely. There is no benefit for Apple and end users alike. Mobiles are now locked to ARM architectue and deserving. Will embedded devices go ARM? If ARM can support the rigorous specs for HD games and content then it just makes sense. Simplify. If not, embedded devices have a choice of PPC or Intel. Greg, as for the GPU is all you need for a good TV, I agree and disagree all the same. Although GPU's can now access main memory directly via DMA (or some exotic local bus tech) they still are restricted to rendering frames and pushing pixels. GPU's are not computing engine nor calculating physics of the game. GPU's are still tied to the CPU logic and memory controller. Yes, the road to a more "logical" GPU is slowly taking hold as in NVidia CUDA tech that will be in Snow Leopard. Leave that for another chat session shall we? So, if Apple integrates the PowerVR with H.264 codec into a multicore ARM or PPC, that may be a one strong combination of an elegant SoC chip. Again, it doesn't matter what CPU core Apple chooses. It just have to satisfy the specs and needs to make business sense.

"The possibilities I mentioned were a wishlist, definitely not a prediction." Kash, I suppose we are all making wish lists until the actual TV 3.0 comes out. Then we start making new wish lists for next year. Isn't it FUN to be following  tech? Robo

I have been to Australia and Germany for a good vacation and I saw FTA television broadcasts quite compelling and the selection can be quite good. I can see what Greg is talking about an TV with FTA DVR capability. But, let's be honest, Cupertino is in California and as long as the domestic US is Apple's bread 'n butter market, we won't see this FTA board integrated. Fact, although FTA still breathing in the American landscape, the selection is not quite that great - public broadcasts (PBS), local biggies (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX) are all you've got. Yes, you can probably time-shift their primetime programming and a small slice of cheapos will be happy but that would miss the point and would not justify this one feature. The majority of US households are grudgingly-happy paying customers to cablecos, satcos, and telcos. If Apple offers this DVR, it will have to start there and somehow also offer FTA for those customers in the Eurozone and Australasia. How must the TV support thee? A expansion slot is what I have in mind as a solution. This slot can be served by the third party market like the iPod accessory companies. This would not add much to the cost of the hardware. The only real question is how will Apple open the hw for others to tinker? They might proprietize this expansion port (a la dock connector) and make some $$ from licensed parties. I think that is doable. The expansion slot should be designed to support the latest US CableCard specs, ClearQAM for the satcos, Free To Air broadcasts, and who knows what else will come out for an Apple-authorized expansion port. The HDD must also be easy to upgrade. An access slot should be implemented there. Then let the customer upgrade his own HDD at his own behest and expense. Last, I still expect the low-end Mac mini and the AppleTV to eventually merge. There will be too much overlap if the AppleTV expands upwards in features. There will be pressure for Apple to just combine the effort and you'll just have a mini box that can be both a desktop computer (if you want) or a nice entertainment center media processor - much like the TV now but much, much better.

I mentioned this DVR option on the next TV will be an interim solution. For one thing, local time-shifting capability is a technical solution to a present-day problem of limited bandwidth. A few years from now, this technical problem won't be there. So, the DVR's days are surely numbered, like DVD and, I can't help it fellas, BluRays. With the advent of FiOS and U-Verse, the "end game" of excess bandwidth is coming. If cable will not adhere, its future is also numbered. Fiber optic distribution will surely reach your neighborhood. It's just a matter of time. When they do you will be assimilated - like me - and you will never regret it. So, why would DVR's become extinct? Simple. When this fiber distribution reaches critical mass in a few years, all the TV shows, movies, video rentals, new or back catalog, will all be available at the press of a button. No more local time-shifting. All the time-shifting will be done by your generous fiber optic service provider. This is both a plus-plus to you and the provider. First, you won't have to mentally set the DVR again to record SNL (ooops, damn. I fgot) you'll just know its there after the "live" broadcast. Another, the provider can always insert "fresh" ads not stale Bud Light commercials. Both sides win. Not a bad thing since there is really no "free lunch" guys. Beer, maybe. Remember, the IP network is fully managed unlike the unmanaged, woeful public internet where Hulu, YouTube, Netflix must traverse before reaching your Roku STB or PC. In a fully managed IP network, TV+phone+Movies -on-Demand works like a charm. Internet traffic are given the lowest priority through the IP switches and routers (like it is now on the public internet) so it is not the ideal vehicle for media distribution. Too much latency and jitter to be reliable. So, the AppleTV may in some future revision work with these managed IP networks (whether FiOS, U-Verse, and such) since the public internet is not a good way to stream anything without hiccups, missing frames, blocks, whatever it is called. Remember, even if you are rated 50Mbps down does not mean you will get a guarantee of troublefree streams from Hulu or Netflix. That is the reason the AppleTV is best when it is set to a buffered streaming or a download before playing. I hope to see FiOS and/or U-Verse on the next TV!