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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?"
God knows that gaming graphics is the only reason left why I'm still hanging on to the PC platform...
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Apple will announce that due to the financial crisis, they've been able to purcase Iceland. However, it will be rebranded as iCeland. Steve Jobs was apparently very fond of their homogeneous population.
Apple will soon be selling pre-bricked laptops.
If they sell a laptop for $800, as rumored, then who's going to buy a Mac mini for $600+?
Of course, they could probably sell the mini for $400 and still make 40% profit. It's basically a laptop with the most expensive part of a laptop (the screen) left out.
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?
OpenCL is NOT a typo.
See HERE:
OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is a language for programming heterogeneous data and task parallel computing across GPUs and CPUs. It was created by Apple in cooperation with others, and is based on C99.
The purpose is to recall OpenGL and OpenAL, which are open industry standards for 3D graphics and computer audio respectively, to extend the power of the GPU beyond graphics (GPGPU).
Apple has proposed OpenCL for Khronos Group where on June 16th 2008 Compute Working Group was formed for the standardization work.
OpenCL is scheduled to be introduced in Mac OS 10.6 ('Snow Leopard').According to the press release:
Snow Leopard further extends support for modern hardware with Open Computing Language (OpenCL), which lets any application tap into the vast gigaflops of GPU computing power previously available only to graphics applications. OpenCL is based on the C programming language and has been proposed as an open standard.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
You can browse /., but not Wikipedia? "OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is a language for programming heterogeneous data and task parallel computing across GPUs and CPUs. It was created by Apple in cooperation with others, and is based on C99."
RW
SNOW Leopard comes out next year. Start saving your pennies. :-)
http://www.apple.com/macosx/snowleopard/
No more prone to warranty service than every Dell I've ever had the displeasure of being asked to look at.
But people like to look closely at Apple for failure so they can bash them. More so than even Microsoft it seems.
Apple will either release a cheap macbook ($799) with discrete nvidia graphics, aluminum casing made with water-jets and lasers, netbook-sized, featuring an LED backlit screen -with good panel- OR thousands of people on the internet will start writing about how disappointed they are.
" 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@@
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
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).
The best thing the computer gaming industry can do is not actually "give" people a reason to buy a console...they've already got their computer. Theres no doubt there are problems in the computer gaming world, but this move can only be a good thing for computer gamers. If PC's, laptop or desktop (and I mean "personal computers" in general) come standard with decent graphics solutions it will only increase the platforms attractiveness to average joe who cant install a graphics card himself or does not know they even exist. Many people I know were not even aware you can get control pads for computers. They like they fact that with a console you plug it in, turn it on and play. They know they will never be able to tinker around with the inside of a computer. And when I tell them about things like Spore DRM, they know they dont want to "rent" a game. IMHO, The big PC builders, Dell, HP etc..should give away a control pad with the purchase of a new PC and perhaps companies like EA could also give away some controllers with games that really need it. It doesn't have to be a fancy wifi one...just a cheap usb PS2 clone controller...if average joe knows the controllers exists, he knows he can upgrade...
If you're defending Apple's hardware reliability by comparing it to Dell's...
"We're in bad shape, fellas."
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Most people are ill equipped to fill up a 40G drive, nevermind 1TB.
Those of us that can easily fill up a 1TB drive, find ourselves
wanting a lot more. So the mini isn't as bad as one might think
at first glance. There are far better things that Apple could do
with the line besides replicate the System76 Sable.
A Quad core mini would be my personal first choice. Add a video
chipset that has onboard h264 acceleration (although with the
quad you might not need it).
An appletv that can go toe to toe with the popcorn hour when
it comes to h264 decoding would also be a good move.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
A 500 buck cheap laptop today IS a cheap "all in one" from just a couple of years ago or so, which means it is perfectly fine except for most uses except extreme high end new games (mostly). You can still run a full size monitor and keyboard and a real mouse from them. Bonus extra screen and built in UPS that lasts for hours, not minutes!
I'll buy apple... ...when leopard freezes over!
SNOW Leopard comes out next year. Start saving your pennies. :-)
http://www.apple.com/macosx/snowleopard/
Are you trying to explain the joke? Or announcing you didn't get it? ;)
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.
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.
Similes are like metaphors
Keyboard AND Mouse? Duke Nukem 3D? That's not old-school! Why you young pups, I remember when mouselook was just a crazy gleam in a programmer's eye. You think aiming sucks with an analog stick? Try using the freaking number pad.
And I remember REAL old-school first person shooters, the ones where we ran around the backyard pointing sticks at each other going "pew pew" and arguing over who got hit first.
I guess I should add "get off my lawn."
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:
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
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
... 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.
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
Should there be a Law?