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Inside View on Apple WWDC Rumors
AppleLurker writes "In a recent interview with DVD newsroom an Apple employee talks WWDC rumors including the iPhone, Blu-ray, MacPro and the Apple Tablet. More realistic about what not to expect next week when Steve Jobs hits the stage." Apple's next move is always a hotbed of debate leading up to a product release and with all the rumors flying this year all bets are off until we see the checkered flag, so take with the requisite grain of salt.
I'd love an Apple tablet with the same approximate specs as a MacBook (you could lose the optical drive, drop the camera, and use a slower processor and I wouldn't miss it). I'd happily pay the price for a base MacBook with these features, and I think even a small $50-100 price difference would be sufficient to keep sales high. Using MacBook parts (except for the touch display and enclosure) could help offset the high cost of a tablet.
Loepoard has had the longest development cycle of any Mac OS X release since 1.0. I'd guess there will be some interesting new capabilities coming, along with API so that developers can use them, too. Past examples of new API announced at WWDC and slotted into previously blank sessions include CoreData, CoreImage, CoreVideo, and WebKit. I see there are only two scheduled sessions and one Feedback Forum regarding WebObjects. Perhaps some of the unannounced sessions will bring good news for this product.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I hope so. WebObjects is a great product that I don't feel is being marketed as well as it could be. I tried to get into it earlier this summer, but the documentation is sparse and there is no gold-standard beginner's book on the market(the most highly recommended one went out of print - is that the sign of a dying technology?).
WebObjects would be very competitive placed head to head with Atlas and ASP.net, especially with a more refined Linux/BSD deployment support. Right now deploying to Linux is a bit difficult. I just wish Apple would get on that more aggressively.
About TFA (Tying into the grammar thread of the parent), is it just me or is the interviewee a robot?
Let us observe:
Q. When will a Mac ship with a Blu-ray drive installed?
A. Some are hopeful with Oct/Nov. Doubt it. 100% Blu-ray will be built-to-order in January 07.
Q. Any changes to the iMac?
A. Externally, the iMac is a homerun. No.
Q. What Apple products will ship with the Intel Core 2 Duo chips?
A. Only Intel and Steve know.
Q. Any cool features expected in Leopard?
A. General unification. Good-bye brushed metal. Mail and iCal integration. Stronger Front Row features. And as I said, more iChat.
This person sounds a bit too... canned, short. Sentences. To be. Real.
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
Well, also because Microsoft promises new products all the time and rarely ships what was announced.
Apple keeps their mouth shut until they have stuff ready to go.
"We're a silo. Apple employees find out about new products when they're being announced. Or online. Nobody knows anything."
Frankly, I'd be concerned if I had a CEO that said "we will do this and that" and only then ask the developers who in the end will end up making them, if it is possible, how much it'll cost, etc.
Also, just for a "side-comment", this is a common tactic in politics. They give a false informant to the press who leaks something out saying it's coming from a reliable source near the point of origin. Only part of it is usually true, and it's usually manipulated. I would bet that if Apple's empployees are in a silo and know nothing of what is being anounced, then how does this source know? Is she at the source? Is she making it up? Is she a plant by the marketing team to cause a stirr? I think this is the case. But that's just IMHO.
I don't think it's safe to assume Conroe in PowerMacs/Mac Pros. I think it's much more likely they will use an all-Xeon lineup, using Woodcrest (the Xeon version of Core 2). I think this because I don't think they have any interest in inexpensive towers, and using Xeon chips is one of the things they'll have to do to justify towers starting at $2000.
64-bit support on x86 is a lot harder than on PowerPC. PowerPC allows the kernel to remain 32-bit even with 64-bit applications, while x86 does not. They'll essentially be porting the kernel to another architechture, and as a result drivers will be broken etc. Also, they'll have to provide a translation layer for the kernel to continue to run 32-bit applications, which isn't trivial either. They have also yet to provide support for 64-bit GUI applications, which is necessary for things like Photoshop to get useful 64-bit support (a 64-bit worker process doesn't cut it for things like Photoshop, they stuff to run in the same address space).
Basically, it isn't possible for them to have a production-ready x86-64 OS without a significant period spent in beta to debug the new kernel and application support, and to allow hardware vendors to update their drivers. This would, by necessity, be too large to keep secret.
It is entirely possible that they will announce 64-bit support, and they might even pretend it's production ready, but there is very little chance of this being true. My guess is a 64-bit interim release some time after 10.5 has been released, like they did with 10.2 when G5s were released.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Well, thread farming isn't that big a deal. All it really means is that in a multi-threaded process, you don't create and destroy threads, you keep a few of them around and idle in case you need them in the future. If Apple adds some explicit support for this in the frameworks, that's great, but you really can already do this today.
If they go rather further and come up with some kind of auto-threading technology that spots opportunities for multithreading and spins off threads automagically, that would be very cool, but that's not what I would call thread farming. That would be more like auto-parallelization.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
No, actually the point was to save space and weight. I'd actually prefer a sliding keyboard to a clamshell notebook design, and Apple just might be the only company willing to go there.
I still see no particular reason why Apple couldn't make a tablet AND the MacBook and have both sell well. The main issue is minimizing the "unique" parts of the tablet--by using as much stock componetry as possible from the MacBook, except for the unique display and case, and possibly a very slim Motorola RAZR style low-profile keyboard (with less tactile resistance on the keys, of course, to facilitate normal typing speeds and a Mighty Mouse-style audible click for user feedback, since the keys wouldn't feel like they've moved much). By keeping the price just slightly below that of the MacBook, it wouldn't cannibalize sales--Apple would make money with either purchase.
I don't expect the $599 price that TFA seems to suggest Apple wants. I want the "typical" notebook reinvented. I'm willing to accept a 3-400MHz slower processor to help offset the higher cost of the touch interface and to lower power requirements. I'm willing to lose the integrated optical drive because it's as useless to me as a 56k modem (which has become a USB accessory itself)--an external unit for the one time a year most people use it would work fine...or even no optical drive at all in favor of remote installation software, like used with a PDA. If I can push OS updates to the tablet from my other Macs or PCs, I'm set.
Ultimately, the tablet wouldn't compete with the MacBook any more than the Mac mini does. They're for different markets all around (mini for the budget-minded person who doesn't care about road use; MacBook for the thrifty road warrior/student; tablet for the technophile/professional/multimedia junkie who wants a full-powered, big screened PDA). I'll never buy a MacBook (I already have a PowerBook), but I'd immediately hand over close to the same amount of money for a thoughtfully-designed tablet without a clamshell hinge.
As a user I wish they add more features and APIs but not breaking the older API compatability.
:)
Lets hope we won't see dedicated pages on versiontracker.com etc for "Leopard Compatibility" again.
For example, I see Realplayer 10+ renders pages in its simple browser via Webkit. They should not have to release a update/bugfix(!) for that function work in Leopard. As a "haxie" etc user, I know you shouldn't expect system hacks to work right. I am speaking about ordinary applications.
Remember dozens of developers had to give up fixing their own bugs, enhancing their application and had to work full time to ensure their application would still work? That is what I speak about
I remember reading an enterprise focused article about how that hurts Apple's enterprise potential badly on The Register but I can't find it now.
Despite the low numbers, Apple could be very interseted in who the tablets are sold to rather than the quantities. Tablets are an expensive luxury form of portable craved by doctors, lawyers, and salesmen. Anyone who likes the "walk softly and carry mean clipboard" look as a form of function or authority will want a tablet just because of the form factor.
A gynecologist friend of mine has a Windows Tablet PC and hates it because of the crashing and small resolution, but he carries it because he doesn't look like a "troll or jeweler hunched over a laptop". He'll write on paper before he'll use a conventional laptop when he's with a patient. Apple is very good at making form factors everyone drools over. Even if the Mac Tablet is only a doctor's "data entry" PC it could be quite a lucrative market that would inspire many more sales.
The development side is risky, but Apple already has much IP that a tablet could benefit from. They've been pushing alternate input for a while in Mac OS X: Inkwell hand recognition, Voice recognition, Universal Access, and other technologies are already there. Apple has patents on areas of parallax compensation, handwriting recognition, and a whole lot more left over from the Newton. The rumored "resolution independence" for Quartz could solve one of the biggest problems of other PC tablets. As far as the hardware goes, it would require a new production process but only a few parts that aren't already bought in bulk for other Apple items. Again, it all seems to come down to the form factor.
If Apple gets into this area, my bet is that they will live or die on the form factor much more than on the OS features or even price. This is a very lucrative audience and Apple has lots of experience making, pricing, and selling machines to these audiences.