Top Apple Rumors, Bricks, Low Price, NVIDIA

Vigile writes "With the news that Apple will be releasing new MacBook products on October 14th, speculation has begun on what exactly those new products will be. Tips of a manufacturing process involving lasers and a single 'brick' of aluminum are catching on, as is the idea of a sub-$1000 netbook-type device. More interesting might be the persistent rumors of an NVIDIA chipset adoption that would drastically increase gaming ability, allow MacBooks to improve their support for OpenCL and take advantage of the new Adobe CS4 software with GPU acceleration. Will NVIDIA's ailing chipset business get a shot in the arm next week?"

Comments

Mac vs. PC vs. Xbox 360 vs. PS3

[tepples]

God knows that gaming graphics is the only reason left why I'm still hanging on to the PC platform...

Are first-person shooters and indie games the only reason left why you haven't already moved to the Xbox 360 or PS3 platform?

Re:Mac vs. PC vs. Xbox 360 vs. PS3

[Synn]

I own a PS3 and I still prefer PCs for shooters and gaming. I just like the interface better.

Though maybe that would change if I just forced myself to play them on consoles more.

Re:Mac vs. PC vs. Xbox 360 vs. PS3

[FrozenFOXX]

Since you mentioned you have a PS3, why not just use a mouse and keyboard with it, the interface you prefer? Several games already support this such as UT3.

As a side note on the topic of control interfaces (though not to the parent specifically), I personally "prefer" the gamepad. It's comfy and in some titles like RTSes (!) I actually do VERY well with it (shockingly, I might add). However, both the 360 AND the PS3 support keyboards and mice, it's the games that don't. The onus is on a game company to support keyboards and mice in their games. It's not really very fair to a console these days to complain that a console doesn't give you an interface when in all reality yes, it does, it's just your favorite game studio decided to gimp the product for the platform. Bitch at the dev house.

Re:Mac vs. PC vs. Xbox 360 vs. PS3

[timbck2]

You don't have to worry about the trigger pull, the weight of the
gun, the length of the gun or keeping the gun steady during recoil.

Not to mention the danger of injury or loss of life...

Re:If they sell a laptop for $800...

[pete-classic]

All I want for Christmas is a Mini with a Blu-ray drive. An integrated screen is a detriment to an HTPC.

-Peter

Re:FYI

[ArhcAngel]

Thank you. I did a double take myself until I goggled it. It's frustrating when posters assume new technology is automatically known by everyone. Don't they know the tinfoil impedes our clairvoyance abilities?

Shot in the arm?

[ArhcAngel]

" Will NVIDIA's ailing chipset business get a shot in the arm next week?"

They'll need it since they just got a swift kick in the a@@

Plausibility?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While they do make for fun fanboy wank material, does anybody actually take the OMG PWERBOOKS WILL be carved by LASER ROBOTS!!! thing seriously? Material fabrication and shaping is an area that is steadily improving; but nothing points to Apple as having made any revolutionary advances in the area recently. And, barring such revolutionary advances, machining big chunks of material isn't exactly cheap. Cheaper than it used to be, sure, and definitely cheap enough to be cost effective for some applications; but hardly cost competitive with present techniques.

The other rumors seem markedly more plausible. 800 would be about the expected pricepoint for Apple's answer to the netbook(whether it will actually use atom and SSD or just be a low end macbook, I have no idea).

Re:If they sell a laptop for $800...

[Shivetya]

Makes more sense to expand the iTV to support a Blu-Ray drive and offer it in black.

Sorry, but the mini just doesn't fit for me. It looks out of place unless I hide it behind the TV

Re:Hooray for NVIDIA

[spazdor]

For the love of God, man, use a comma!

Re:If they sell a laptop for $800...

[TheRaven64]

Apple's laptop sales passed their desktop sales over two years ago. They cater for the 'you can't squeeze as much power as I need into a laptop' market with the Mac Pro. The Mac Mini is for the 'I can't afford a laptop' market, and this is growing steadily smaller. I wouldn't be surprised to see the AppleTV and Mac Mini product lines converge - a small box running OS X under the hood, but only exposing Safari, iPhoto and iTunes at the UI, with the ability to rip CDs, and maybe DVDs too. The only question is whether it would run x86 or ARM. The newer OMAP chips can decode H.264 in realtime, and are a lot cheaper than anything Intel has on offer.

Re:If they sell a laptop for $800...

[pete-classic]

I really like having a general purpose computer hooked up to my TV.

You know you can't add codecs to an AppleTV without voiding the warranty, right? And it doesn't have the horsepower to decode anything good in software anyway. Blech.

Seems way more important than the color to me. But if you're really hung up on it, buy a skin: http://www.skinit.com/devices/miscellaneous/apple_miscellaneous (You can do "custom" and select all black.)

-Peter

Stamping, drawing, etc.

[Animats]

Right. Nobody makes mass-produced items by machining them out of solid metal. It's too slow, and you waste too much metal. That's what die-casting, drawing, and stamping are for. Laptop cases are thin enough that die-casting is probably overkill. Drawing or stamping is more likely, followed by a punching step. There might be a role for a laser if very small holes have to be made or some surface engraving is desired.

The NextCube case was a magnesium casting, which was sort of silly for a desktop device.

A cute idea for the case modding crowd would be industrial origami. This little-known technology works much better than you'd expect. It's a fun experience to take a flat, prepunched plate and hand-fold it into an electrical outlet box.

Re:Ick... BLOB

[not already in use]

Yeah, it will totally suck to have your graphics hardware properly supported under Linux. Considering you're dual booting Linux along side one of the most locked-down proprietary consumer platforms available while at the same time complaining about a binary driver on the Linux side is.... Ironic.

Re:LEAK! This year's "ONE MORE THING"

[moosesocks]

Don't forget Sigur Ros! I swear those guys are elves or something....

Re:HP Pavilion Slimline and Mac mini

[danaris]

So if I develop and sell copies of a party game for Windows and Mac OS X, will I find a large market of HTPC (home theater personal computing) enthusiasts and few competitors?

Few competitors? Probably. Large market? Not from what I've seen.

So far as I can tell, HTPCs are largely of interest to us geeks—and only accessible to geeks of greater-than-average income (or debt, depending on the level of financial good sense). I think they're gaining some traction, but by and large, if your average person is going to have something connected to their television besides a DVD/VCR, cable/satellite box, or Big 3 game console, it's going to be a cable/satellite-company provided DVR (which may simply double as the cable box), or a TiVo.

So why don't more HDTVs have a Windows PC or a Mac mini by them?

From where I sit, I see 3 main reasons:

1. Price. Most people have one computer, and it's a desktop, and they want to sit at it and use it like a computer. If they have a second computer, it's probably a laptop (or just their older desktop).
2. Ignorance. Most people don't even know that you can do something like that.
3. Lack of a compelling reason. Most people, even if they knew that you could do something like that, wouldn't care. As I said, they've got their desktop, and maybe their laptop; even if they have the cash to burn on another computer for the living room, what does it really get them? They can already play DVDs; they're not torrenting tons of shows; anything they do download, they're OK with watching on their computer screens.

Essentially, it just isn't worth it to most people to have a computer whose sole purpose is to be hooked up to their television. I'm sure that as convergence proceeds and prices drop (assuming this financial meltdown doesn't destroy civilization as we know it first), there will come a point at which the features are good enough, the price is low enough, and there's some killer app that finally drives sales of computers intended to be combination DVR/game machine/general-purpose living room computers. However, that time is still a ways away.

Now, going back to the original point, that's not to say that we won't start to see more casual/party games intended for HTPCs before they really take off among non-geeks. For independent developers, even though the geek market isn't large, it could still be large enough to support moderate-to-low-budget development. But it's still quite a gamble at this point, and I don't think that even many geeks are thinking of HTPCs as party gaming machines...which makes it a chicken-and-egg problem, like so many out there.

Dan Aris

Re:Still won't save nVidia

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow, I can't see how moving from a huge amount of the computer market to most of a 4% share of it will help. Sure, it might keep them afloat, but it's a huge step down.

Nothing is stopping Nvidia from making PC chipsets. The Apple deal would be on top of what they're doing now.

IMO, AMD was stupid for purchasing ATI... they should have purchased nVidia. Trying to improve ATI is like polishing a turd.

Maybe buying ATI was a mistake but it seems like its paying off. ATI currently leads on performance and performance per watt at all levels of the GPU market.
On top of that, Nvidiia seems to be having serious problems with their notebook & desktop GPUs, much more than just the few HP model that they're claiming.

Re:Ick... BLOB

[GaryPatterson]

... one of the most locked-down proprietary consumer platforms available ...

I love how people throw this sort of thing out when they must know it's just not true.

http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html
http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/
http://developer.apple.com/opensource/internet/webkit.html

Apple use and contribute to open source, and OS X is largely an open source OS with a proprietary front-end.

Criticise Apple for real stuff, you've got plenty of choice. Don't make stuff up and pretend it's true though.

Re:Ick... BLOB

[Anonymous Coward]

The "most locked-down proprietary consumer platform" would be Windows right? I know I've browsed the kernel source for my Mac online at least once or twice...

Re:Nvidia & Apple aren't really know for relia

[falconwolf]

Nvidia? That'd be just awesome. I can't think of any other way to make Apple hardware (already more prone to need warranty service than any other manufacturer's product that I can name) any less reliable.

Apple consistently has high high customer satisfaction year after year. I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro I've had for almost 14 months and the only tyme I've taken it down to an Apple store, there are 4 within half hour's drive, was when I got it. Some software I ordered with it was old. I have not had a single hardware problem whereas with 3 new PCs, a Gateway and an HP with Windows and a no name brand PC with Linux preinstalled, the hdd and mobos failed within the first year.

Falcon