Apple to uncloak new iPads, iMacs at October 15 event? If you're a follower of Apple product rumors you know that the slimmest of evidence is enough to get the grapevine a-buzzing – and Monday's report that Apple is planning to hold an event on October 15 to announce new iPads, iMacs, and maybe more is as anorexic a bit of speculation as they come. The French website MacGeneration …
I refuse to believe Apple would shoot themselves in the foot by hobbling the macbook air with ARM processors. Sure they are great for tablets + phones, but for laptops... Look how well it has gone for the windows PC market recently.
There is no way they will do it for the MBP as every musician and every graphic designer would dump them in a heartbeat, as the sheer lack of processing power would immediately rule it out as a viable option. As for the MB air. It is a dumb idea because what do they gain? costs less and brings the development in house. What do they loose? The power Intel Haswell brings, desktop power. I mean, even with Haswell they are getting 10hrs battery life. what more do you want?
I love ARM, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. ARM processors/SoCs are not even close to x86 intel/AMD in terms of sheer grunt.
Plastic ipad.... that's so exciting :-)
Seriously, when was the last time an Apple event had any element of surprise, any big announcement, or anything remotely interesting (I'm not talking worth even 1/10th of the excitement)? Probably the iPad launch (and even that was more than leaked...)
A non event that should attract no coverage... I don't see any car vendor getting 2 minutes in TV news because this year blue is a bit lighter or darker than last year blue model...
I reckon a touchscreen macbook air running OSX, but also able to run iOS apps would be a neat trick. Especially if you could run both at the same time, and have data sharing. Don't think I could see the point in an ARM-based OSX laptop otherwise as no software would run on it. An iOS based laptop might be popular - though it wouldn't be much you couldn't do with a keyboard add-on to an iPad - not very innovative.
Macs running ARM? It's a nice idea, but it's unrealistic. Too much legacy software. No decent emulator. And Apple show every sign of commitment to Intel, especially releasing those Haswell MBAs with an insane 10 hour battery life. That's not the act of a company preparing to flee to ARM. Apple haven't decided to restrain Mac graphics power and optimise for battery life, they're heading for Retina everything. The big mystery is when they have the manufacturing capacity to start releasing Retina iMacs.
As for an iPad laptop-possible. Very possible, now Apple have made iWork free on new iThings-they clearly want to keep the iPad in as a business productivity device and not just a consumption and games machine. But would it really be better than a keyboard case? Wouldn't most people want to be able to use the tablet unit without a big heavy keyboard attached all the time? Wouldn't the kind of person who wants a laptop want to have two things open a lot of the time? It sounds like a distinctly niche product.
Here's my theory/hope: Apple invading the big-screen premium business-class tablet market. It's currently only served by Windows 8 computers, many of which have very iffy build quality and a very limited number of good touchscreen apps. A 15" iPad, especially with the ability to run mini-apps like a music player or a twitter client in a column down the side, could be awesome for people like designers wanting a drawing tablet with a screen and doctors wanting to look at scans.
Other than that: this seems like a very good date to spoil Google's launch of Android 4.4. Sweet dreams, chaps...
I suppose all the discussion demonstrates that the technologies exist and are out there.
So what may or may not develop is really a matter of preferences rather than actual obstacles or barriers and overcoming the same.
Maybe the overriding factor of potential doability is nothing to do with ARM, amd, intel, ... chipzilla and assembler of choice but is more to do with enn ess ay or gee see aitch queue?
The technologies exist - all are doable - all that matters is what is deemed actionable and, by the way, this is probably the greatest influential event space that, say, China has available to itself.
We may ponder what the West or western agencies may prefer but these in the main are bankrupt - financially and morally.
Newer emerging nations have the motivation, outreach, huge markets, intelligence and insights to do what the west cannot even imagine in its present moribund state of atrocious financial, moral and social practices?
Thus spake yet another AC?
"... and should have enough oomph to power not only smartphones and tablets, but also laptops that don't demand the top processing power... "
So is this next gen platform can run on a laptop, tablet or a phone? An Apple Edge in the making...maybe those guys at Ubuntu camp had something there after all....
This post has been deleted by its author
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
