Slashdot Mirror
The Genius In Apple's Vertical Platform
Precision found a nice little piece of speculation on the real reason behind Apple's recent efforts to restrict app development to XCode. While the standard given reason is to kill competition from Flash and other stacks, this story speculates that the real reason has to do with the unusually large die size of the A4 processor inside the iPads. Worth a quick read.
Noah Wyle looks funny with a beard.
Loading...
Not only does Apple restrict you to compiling your code in c, c++,objective c with the iphone sdk, they prohibit any code that was not originally written in one of those languages. The article would make sense, if the only restriction Apple had in place was that they code be compiled by the iphone sdk. That is not the case, as far as I know.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
It is a well written, well reasoned article. It even makes sense. It is also pure speculation. Basically it comes down to "die too big" == "epic win" This is tech, and we can do better than this.
I don't care if Apple has reasons for this or not. I don't like Apple, so that means they're a monopoly just like Microsoft, and should be required to do whatever any other company wants cause it's in the constitution.
Also, there's a company in Germany that's gonna make a competing product that will blow the iPad out of the water cause it'll be open and run Flash and OpenOffice and has higher ghz on the processor and more memory and it's the hardware specs that make the difference, and I know everything, and the market should decide everything and Apple doesn't have the right to do anything to try to protect their investment in the iPhone OS as a platform cause I say so.
Did I mention they're an evil monopoly? And that Steve Jobs is worse than Hitler, cause he's got a reality distortion field and makes people pay the Apple tax?
I think the article is absolute nonsense. The A4 has been "disassembled" and it is consistent with an ARM single core.
Not the vertical integration, but the simple "Ok you're Applications are compatible now"
Apple has moved from 68k to PPC to OS X to Intel to ARM to (proposed) POWER) for both 32/64 bit and all it took in those last steps was flag in the compiler.
68k emulation in PPC was decent. Classic mode worked for most applications and Rosetta was as seamless as it gets. I understand that Microsoft has a ton of backwards compatibility they need to maintain, but if a company the fraction of your size can do it, why can't you?
Yes "FAT" Binaries are larger, but given how cheap HD space is, it's not too much of a concern of mine. (I gained more space deleting other languages). But to have a single, double clickable .app that runs on 4 platforms (PPC, Intel / 32, 64bit), naively.
Side note, and legitimate question, does Linux do fat binaries? Can I compile something that runs on my AMD64 and ARM machines and put it on a thumb drive?
The article is missing a big point: it IS ARM. Just debugging the code shows it is ARM, not PPC. "No one really knows." Geez. Step into the "reverse engineering" of 1980 already.
The die size is due to putting memory chips on die for lower latency.
It doesn't contain magical other processors.
But this guy has a pet theory about Apple and damned if he's gonna let facts get in the way of his idea!
Disclosure: I'm writing this from a Mac. I like my Macs. I like Apple. I'm not delusional like this guy.
If you didn't RTFA, there's no need. It's just some Apple fanboi trying to find genius and conspiracy where there isn't any.
Are you serious? Constricting developers because you're going to change the platform? Really? I wonder if the article author even believes this crap.
Emulating a cpu you could just as easily install for real? Never mind going back to an architecture (POWER) that you've already EOL and that is wholly unsuited for the platform (high power consumption, high heat output).
He's right that Apple is a story in vertical integration. They're doing it the same way Rockefeller did. They want to control the entire platform.
Most other pads have an Atom processor and can process anything that a netbook can. Apple are really lacking when it comes to hardware and software in the Ipad. It's like they are using technology from 5 or 6 years ago and claiming it to be new. Wifi and a rubbush pda are nothing new Apple, get with the times.
Apple gets criticized for insane control freak policy, apologists rush to write poorly thought out defenses of The All-Knowing Overlord His Greatness Steve Jobs. Come on Slashdot, I'm sure you can find better things to post to meet your "at least one iPad story every damn day" quota.
Apple can essentially treat the CPU as a commodity—and this will enable them to continually adjust 'make vs buy' strategies, wield incredible power over suppliers, and build a long-term halo around their platform.
I found that to be very interesting. Instead of the old strategy of having multiple kernels for each processor out there and having the customer choose which version they want, Apple is doing the choosing; which puts them in the driver's seat.
The Micro kernel type of software design never really seemed to take off - Intel killed off or sidelined the other CPU suppliers and it made the Micro kernel a moot point and made Intel the dominant CPU maker out there. AMD still has to follow Intel's lead, btw.
What Apple is doing.....Intel should be very afraid of the future. Apple also needs to be careful because many of their innovations are going to be copied - they will have to protect that brand vehemently.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
just to say that the next apple story i want to see, read, or comment on is when jobs croaks - hopefully the restrictive products, the apple name, and the tiresome followers will fade with that gaunt little turd of a man.
The article is interesting, but incorrect.
Converting from to objective-C is fine for the purposes he's talking about (allowing the compiler to build to 'native', where 'native' can change over time.) If you have a language that is 1:1 with C/ObjC and easily translated (there are many), then this argument is entirely moot.
(Further, its not just Flash we're talkin gabout.. BASIC, assembler, python, etc, are all impacted and outlawed (again.)) Heck, numerous games use ARM asm, which is now outlawed .. the ASM is to provide superior performance, as Xcode (gcc) is decent compiler, but no match for hand tooled assembly in 'just the right places'. (Don't argue this; compiles are great, but talk to emulation authors for ARM devices about dropping in a few lines of ASM :)
So no, its not really about native compilation speed. Its about blocking non-Apple tools, with the pretend reason that Apple makes the best tools.
When you're using a platform that is closed as tightly as the iPad is, you really have no recourse but to speculate wildly like this, even when your speculation is probably based on bullshit assumptions to begin with.
It's pretty fucking astounding, actually, that developers put up with this. If you don't even have the slightest idea of what platform(s) your app is running on, then you're just looking for trouble. When you're developing for under-powered hand-held devices like the iPad, you're just looking for trouble if you aren't aware of what the platform is capable of. And this awareness only comes from knowing exactly what hardware your app will be running on.
I believe part of the reason Apple is forced to have "restrictive" development requirements and stringent rules about apps is because they NEED the user experience to be consistently top-notch. Look at all the hate directed at something like Windows by the uninformed.. if an app sucks on Windows, people tend to blame Windows. If Apple allowed for free selection of tools and languages and did not control delivery of apps then it would be much more difficult for them to provide the proper infrastructure that allows MOST apps to feel like a real Apple experience.
You can't be an end-all-be-all company and expect to be around long-term. Seems to me for a tech company to succeed in the long run, they need to focus on doing one thing *extremely* well. People expect Apple to trump their previous creations. Once the "oooo poniez!!" mentality wears off, and the kool-aid begins to taste like warm piss, people will want more-and-better. You can't keep doing that because technology does not evolve at the pace people want new gadgets. So, people get disillusioned, you push out new products in hopes of quelling the whining and your products can't live up to their reputation. Maybe jobs is just planning on being relevant for 10 years, dunno.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Its just the GUI apps that it suspends, all the backend stuff still works fine otherwise as soon as you ssh'd into a jailbroken iphone everything else would hang while ssh ran.
Sure sure the reason is to improve performance in the applications run on Windows; from now on you will ONLY develop applications with Visual Studio and any application run on Windows will need approval.
Ins't there any Antitrust law against what these Apple dudes are doing?
Dear
> Why assume the A4 is a dual-core PowerPC when it's built for an OS that restricts the use of multitasking?
"WTF" quote of the day. What does dual-core have to do with multitasking??????????????? Windows did multitasking long before dual core chips existed.
On a related note, the iPhone DOES multitasking; it just doesn't let the USER multitask. How do you suppose an incoming call gets through while you´re listening to music?
Why does everyone think this has anything to do with technical issues? This is all about lock in, 100% pure business move.
Apple doesn't want cross compilers because that makes the iPhone just another smartphone because everyone and their dogs will be writing code for smartphones, not iPhones exclusively. Apple has to maintain the image of the iPhone to be unique, not just the 'PC' of smartphones. If cross compiling is allowed, and a person is fed up with the iPhone, nothing stops him/her/it to switch to a WM7, RIM or Android phone. Why? Because the software is probably available on those systems. Now, if some developers will stay iPhone exclusive because of the hassle of maintaining two codebases (One CS5 cross compilable and one Apple approved), people will have harder time to migrate to other platforms because their precious software only runs on iPhone OS. Why don't people switch to Linux en masse? MS Office + DirectX. Apple wants the exact same platform lock in for smarphones as the one Microsoft has achieved for PCs.
Führer Jobs is shit scared of Android, that's why the new draconian developer restrictions (and HTC patent suits), not because some [insert technical excuse here]. Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your point of view) Adobe is going to be collateral damage unless Flash on Android/ChromeOS takes off heavily. Jobs wants to stop the Android momentum at all cost, because if he doesn't, iPhone will be the 'Mac' and Android will be the 'PC'.
Disclosure: I have an iPhone 3GS.
TFA just doesn't read right -- if the iPads have dual Power CPUs, why hobble the machine with emulation that is later removed to give the fantastic jump? New products don't succeed that way.
If the iPads have dual PPCs, then their OS & some key apps would be written for it. Along with an emulator for the [many] iPhone Apps which would probably run noticably slower than on iPhone/iTouch. A dual CPU is _not_ going to cover for ~10x emulation slowdown.
Adobe is seriously upset about this, while they have basically said "no big deal" to a shift to HTML5. That's because Adobe doesn't make money from Flash - they make money from the tools to develop and design for Flash. They have the hearts and minds of the developers and designers, and switching their tools to run on something other than Flash seems to be part of their plan. In fact, it would be incredibly shortsighted if it wasn't part of their plan.
But I think Apple is doing better than just "anticompetitive" behavior, which would be reason enough. Fine, the A4 is just an ARM. I seriously believe Apple that although they might not be preparing for a platform shift in the near term, that this is a completely rational step to prepare for another almost-certain platform shift in the long term. Even if they don't know what architecture that might entail.
They own that game since it's their vertical, and absolutely nothing can help Adobe or any other company keep up. Adobe has already shown enough lack of ability to keep up when they so delayed moving their Mac tools to native x86 - it took a couple of years. So Apple says - if you want on our bandwagon, you have to keep up. And to keep up, you have to do it our way.
Unless the die size is printed in a large font, I think you simply mean "unusually large die of the A4 processor". See how the word "large" already lets the reader know that it's size we're dealing with? See, I reduced the sentence size of your sentence.
1. Make a core that's too big to fuel speculation /.
2. Seed the press with rumors of this from bloggers that get on
3. ????
4. PROFIT
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Apple-A4-Teardown/2204/1
It's not a "dual core Power Architecture."
According to the teardown, the chip is "quite similar to the Samsung processor Apple uses in the iPhone."
iFixit concluded that it was a Cortex A8 in there and I've seen nothing to contradict that.
You figure if the iPad was actually a different architecture with some kind of ARM emulator as suggested, that they would have pushed this move a long ago instead of days before Adobe's CS5 release when the iPad is already in consumers' hands and also flogged this new magical OS 4.0 speed boost during the developer's talk. And ultimately Apple is still treating developers like they don't know what their doing trying to "protect" them from the evils of alternate development tools. Sure if Apple changes architecture then they would have updated tools ready on day 0 so there is no gap, but the rest would quickly follow suit unless Apple decides to make a completely closed hardware platform as well.
A4??? That IS really big for a die size. But why oh why not Legal, since Apple is American?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As far as I know, Adobe is preparing one.
How many times do we need to go through this?
Apple isn't a monopoly, in mobile products or any other market. Monopoly is not a synonym for "company that places restrictions on their products that I don't like." Microsoft is a monopoly. The status of Microsoft as a monopoly in desktop operating systems was decided as the result of a trial in US federal court. Under the laws of the US, monopolies that exploit their status to control markets and other kinds of anti-competitive behavior may be subject to strictures imposed upon them by the government.
Preventing competitors from making products that run on your platform or for making tools to write software on your platform is not illegal, per se. It may be illegal if a monopoly is doing it, but you need to be a monopoly in the specific area in which the activity is taking place. So, for example, the Visual Studio thing might not fly, but, note, that Microsoft is free to impose restrictions on developers for the XBOX or WinPhone 7 because they don't have monopolies in that market.
Hope that resolves this for you, and that we never need to have this conversation again.
"If they made a toilet, I'd buy it." -- iPad purchaser quoted in Newsweek.
Okay, the iToilet would look really slick, but
* It would have no flush handle. Apple will decide when the time is right.
* Anything put into it would have to be pre-approved by Apple.
* Apple keeps 30%.
* Using it in public to impress strangers could be awkward.
* and, of course: no Flash.
This isn't a great summary. To quote the article:
As John Gruber noted Adobe shipped Intel-native versions of Creative Suite 16 months after Apple began shipping Intel-based Macs (and about two years after Apple announced the Intel transition).
If you are going to switch architectures, the last thing you want is to be held up waiting almost a year and a half for Adobe to get around to updating their developer tools.
(Then there is a whole bit about the iPad possibly already moving away from ARM but I don't know enough about that to be able to comment)
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
they sure get a whole lot of indirect publicity, i can't seem to be able to open a paper without seeing APPLE stamped on it lately
Its the worlds first on-chip 256 core NUMA architecture. The memory interconnects in the northbridge are arranged in a hypercube using photonic crystals for data storage and retrevial vs pathetically slow slow sram. While with x-ray inspection the cores look like an ARM processor the core actually uses plasmons rather than pushing electrons. We didn't have a device capable of clocking the actual clock frequency but you can be assured the ALU and cache clocks run at least 50Thz.
There is also an embedded GPU with 4096 shader processors each operating at 88.8ghz.
If you've noticed when you've plugged in the iPad after a days use the lights in the rest of the room appear to dim slightly.. This is because the device is actually powered by a 20mw/hr Lion-Air battery and they limit charging to prevent tipping their hand.
Really. No news here. Everyone one got that one long ago.
Potential that the new Apple chip is not actually what "experts" have been pretending it is, well, sure.
i doubt apple is running an ARM emulator on iPad.
When you develop for the iPad you have to compile for ARMv7. The older devices uses armv6 while 3GS, and newer iPods can use armv7.
The effect of this is that you end up with a universal executable with both the armv6 and armv7 code. It is basically two executables in one. One half contains the armv6 and the other half the armv7.
If the A4 was a different CPU, they would have had us developers compile for that instruction set instead of forcing us to use armv7.
So enough bullshit about it being a different architecture. If that were the case they might as well have told us to begin with.
Apple isn't a monopoly
How many times do we need to go through this? A monopoly is not required for an anti-trust violation.
"His name was James Damore."
people don’t see the true genius behind Steve Job’s vision and moves.
Another day, another worship piece for Jobs. Could he be the Maitreya after all? http://www.share-international.org/maitreya/Ma_main.htm
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Apple cannot make money by first deploying the A4 processor then switching away after another chip beats it, they'd lose that massive investment in chip development.
Apple might've noticed different constraints for the iPad and iPhone, deploying their own chip for the iPad while using other ARM chips for iPhones. Yes, maybe that's true, but agility doesn't matter there, correct forecasting matters.
Apple's most likely benefits from the A4 are :
(1) processor related intellectual property gives them an advantage when buying other chips, i.e. Apple has proven themselves litigious assholes over the last few years
(2) iPads are far less constrained than iPhones, i.e. save money deploying a slightly faster but overall inferior chip, also cut out the real chip designers when you can get away with designing them yourself.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I believe this guy is onto something. However, I don't think he's gone far enough in his projections.
Here's what I think. Apple realizes that processors are commodities. They have a tool chain that makes nicely optimized compiled code from multiple processors.
Apple realizes that it cannot compete with WinTel, but even more than that, doesn't even want to. Wintel is strapped to ancient technologies and trying to break free from those techs (x86) has proven to be nearly impossible for all (Intel, Microsoft, AMD). They HAVE to keep backwards compatibility.
Apple is going further towards abstraction away from the hardware for all things that don't need to depend on hardware, which will allow them to continue to move from platform to platform as one platform stagnates (Power) to one that is improving(x86). Now that x86 is stuck in between 32 and 64bit HELL, Apple is poised to move to a new platform architecture that isn't limited by 30+ years of legacy holding it back.
In the end, Apple will be able to build or order chips from the people showing the best capabilities, no matter what they are. It is actually something that makes a lot more sense than holding onto 30 year old technology just for the sake of holding onto 30 year old technology.
This is not a bad thing. This will break the WinTel monopoly. I believe Apple knows the endgame for this is here. Wintel used to be the commodity item, now it is a single vendor solution, and Apple is providing a better product that "Just Works" (tm), one that people are willing to pay a small premium for.
This is why people like Taco make "lame" comments, because it isn't about Ghz, Giga, Tera or anything else, it is about being useful without being hassled. My wife doesn't care about specs, she cares about doing stuff, and it being easy.
Would you buy a toaster based on wattage used, types of heater elements, what kind of processor is used for the timing mechanism? Or do you buy a toaster to make toast? Apple is making toasters; sealed appliances. And abstracting the function away from the hardware makes perfect sense, then the hardware matters less than functionality.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
100% of them get Apple products. Apple just want to keep all the assholes for themselves and others companies has right to benefit from them too.
How in the hell do you get to $1,800 for a Mac? A Mac Mini is $599, and if you have a monitor, keyboard and mouse that is all you need. That you are well advised to purchase the device you're developing for so you can test your app is absolutely standard, though technically you can test just on the emulator.
Apple's lock in is bullshit, but hyperbole and straight up lies will do absolutely nothing to change people's minds about that.
First, the A4 is a multi-chip package - there are three dies in the package. You have the A4 SoC, and two RAM chips embedded in the plastic (the flash is offboard).
Second, ARM chips are usually SoCs - you have the ARM core, plus all the other goodies around it - memory controller, GPU, peripherals, etc.
Third, Apple owns the only other ARM microarchitecture license. Marvell (who got it from Intel via Compaq via DEC) owns the other. Marvell's ARM compatible core is called XScale, and who knows what Apple is calling theirs other than A4. This is unlike other ARM licensees, who license the ARM core direct from ARM and thus can only plop in the ARM core and attach peripherals to it on the silicon via the well-known interfaces. With the microarchitecture license, Apple is free to modify an existing core for its needs, and it appears the A4 is based on a modified Cortex A8 core (which Apple is allowed to do, because of the microarchitecture license). Modifying an existing core is much easier than creating it from scratch. It could very well be that the modifications made the core much bigger
Finally, ARM is one of the most efficient architectures out there - power consumption is around 1mW/MHz (ARM quotes 1mW/MIPS, but ARM tends to scale 1:1). It'll be hard to justify a move to the POWER or PowerPC architecture, especially with the popularity of the ARM processor.
An iPad doesn't require much more CPU than an iPhone. So why not deploy your own chip? You've got soo much more space and power, you'll easily out preform an iPhone's chip, even if your designers aren't nearly as clever, You avoid paying royalties. You get patents for leverage against other chip makers, well we know Apple are litigious bastards. etc. If your using multiple chips within the same architecture, there are definitely advantages to controlling the compilers.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Apple isn't a monopoly, in mobile products or any other market.
Apple currently holds a monopoly position in the mobile application market. http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/01/apple-responsible-for-994-of-mobile-app-sales-in-2009.ars
The question will be what happens this year with Android ramping up. The last thing Apple wants are development tools which allow both iPhone and Android executables to be generated from the same source code, and Apple's recent development policy changes play right into that, despite Apple's claims to the contrary.
If Apple succeeds in preventing dilution of their "monopoly" application market they are leaving themselves wide open to an antitrust action. The problem is that they may kill off any viable competition long before the DOJ does anything... we know well from Microsoft just how fast the DOJ works.
It's about blocking crappy ports.
I've never seen a ported piece of software that was as good as a natively written one. They frequently don't make any attempt to match the UI or, if they do, they do it poorly. They're also usually slower and buggier.
You're right, it is about control, but it's not about forcing everyone to use XCode because Apple thinks it's the best. It's about blocking a flood of crappy ported apps and instead making everyone code their UI specifically for the iPhone/iPad.
IBM thought they were going to recreate the whole personal computer industry "the right way."
Even has a pretty sweet new operating system called OS 2. They got control freaky.
How did work out for IBM? And they were the old Big Blue Monster when it happened to them.
Don't piss off the developers that make your software. Windows and Linux are still around while better products (OS/2, Amiga, BeOS) are gone because no barrier to developers entering the market, and developers can use the tools they want.
Technically, isn't Opera Mini an interpreter? I understand that pages are pre-rendered before they are sent to the client, but isn't the iPhone app interpreting commands from the renderer? Where is the line being drawn?
I aks this because the company I work for is building a tool that uses similar concept as Opera.
http://www.omnis.net/developer/index.html?detail=beta
The application presents a GUI but all code execution is handled by a server.
Would you buy a toaster based on wattage used, types of heater elements, what kind of processor is used for the timing mechanism? Or do you buy a toaster to make toast? Apple is making toasters; sealed appliances. And abstracting the function away from the hardware makes perfect sense, then the hardware matters less than functionality.
You seem to be suggesting that the one does not impact the other...
The number of heating elements, and their physical distribution, for instance, would affect how evenly the toast is burned. As you say, in the end, all one cares about is "did it make good toast?" - but it is the details of the machine which determine this.
Now, your utterly pragmatic wife doesn't care about these details, and that's fine. And I can agree that it's silly to argue that she should care about a bunch of details of the machine that don't affect how she uses it, because it performs in a way that she enjoys and finds satisfactory for her expectations. But wouldn't you agree it's equally silly to tell others that they shouldn't care about details that don't fit their expectations of what the machine should be and do? From my perspective, your wife's simpler set of requirements represents a lesser utilization of the machine. And if the machine's behavior doesn't fit my needs, I think I'm entirely justified in calling the machine "lame" or whatever. That's my judgment according to my standards. If my standards aren't to be imposed upon your wife, why should your wife's standards be imposed upon me?
To me, the whole article seemed like complete nonsense. I can discern no thread of logic that connects its data and suppositions to its conclusions. It's utterly pointless to talk about whether there's useful insight in there, because it's garbage.
Bow-ties are cool.
Clearly this guy has no clue. Developers have been downloading the iPad simulator for months. There's a debugger. If it were a PowerPC machine, someone would have noticed. You can build executables that run on both the iPhone and the iPad. The iPad is a big iPhone.
I've seen the Adobe demos and some of them are pretty neat, in fact some are already in the app store. I've seen some pretty crappy apps written in obj C. It's entirely possible to be a crappy developer in any language.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
How many more virtually content-free articles are we going to get about the damn iPhone and iPad?
For those of you who may be joining after an extended absence here on iSlash:
* Many /.ers hate Adobe Flash, but still think it's dumb that it does not run on iSmallThingies /.ers consdiering it to be 'overpriced' and lacking such essential features such as a webcam, USB ports, multitasking, deep Facebook integration and Flash support /.ers with low IDs instead get excited about the latest news that IBM will finally try and get back some of its investment in OS/2. No news as to whether or not it will support Flash, or run on jailbroken iNotQuiteSoSmallThingies...
* OperaMini, or Micro, or something, is finally available on iSmallThingies store, but only because it sucks. It does not enable you to run Flash on your iSmallThing
* Steve Jobs not only considers Flash totally evil, but now has also declared war on all 3rd party development tools, including those just announced by Adobe
* Android and FOSS fans instantly soil themselves, and rush to point out the inherently better and 'less evil' nature of Android, especially for Flash support.
* Windows fans chime in, claiming that Jobs is "just jealous because iTunes on Windows SUXX LOL!!!"
* In a debate about HTML5 codecs, inexplicable references appear about how this will obviate the need for Flash on iSmallThingies
* iSmallThingies fans have purchased plenty of the latest iNotQuiteSoSmallThingie, despite many
* iSmallThingies fans deride these arguments, and point to the amazing (non-replaceable) battery life and wealth of carefully-audited, 'world-class' applications
* In a surprise move, Apple announces that the 'unexpected' popularity of the iNotQuiteSoSmallThingie means that launches outside the US will be delayed. Mass suicides of iSmallThingies fans are reported throughout Asia. Or possibly it was the earthquakes...
* Unheard of companies with appealingly improbable names launch NotQuiteAniNotQuiteSoSmallThingie 'concepts'. Since some of them might possibly run some variant of Linux, and even maybe Flash, they are instantly hailed as iNotQuiteSoSmallThingie 'killers'. Frys, Amazon and NewEgg are deluged with requests for ship dates.
* Meanwhile,
Absolutely, you can write great cross-platform apps if you try, and write crappy native apps if you don't. But it's a lot easier to get your UI right if you're not targeting an app to multiple platforms. Apple wants people to develop for their platform, not to develop for "mobile phones," one of which is the iPhone.
Apple cannot make money by first deploying the A4 processor then switching away after another chip beats it, they'd lose that massive investment in chip development.
Read up on sunk costs. Once the investment is already done it is not factored into future investment decisions. Apparently the A4 currently makes sense as an investment and Apple's balance sheet indicates that it does. The fact that they have already sunk development costs will (or rather should) not be a factor in future chipset decisions. That money is already spent and gone. Only future cash flows matter, not past ones.
It's a common irrational mistake people make saying "but I've already spent so much on this technology - it would be wasteful to dump it" when in fact that is irrelevant to whether a new investment is worthwhile. Consumers don't care how much Apple has invested in a technology and won't pay for it if something better is available. If some supplier were to come out with a much better chip tomorrow, Apple would have to decide whether there is a better forward looking return on investment with their in-house tech or outsourcing it. If the outsourced tech has the better expected ROI, they should outsource it regardless of how much money they have already sunk into the A4.
As a recent mac-hater turned pragmatic Apple supporter (far from fanboi... yet) - this sounds like the mad ravings of a long-time Apple fanboi. It almost sounded like he was firmly seated on Job's cock and parroting what a mad genius Steve-O is.
But he's got a point. I think Apple has learned an important lesson from the PowerPC experiment.
Being able to pick/choose CPU is more about power management than anything else.
Need a ten hour battery life for an iPad? Choose an ARM.
Need a CPU for a desktop machine? Choose an Intel.
etc.
Making a compiler/platform that allows Apple developers to do their jobs is _necessary_, not some kind of "genius".
No sig today...
Vertical integration has been making comeback. EthnoSync has an article on it. Check it out at http://www.ethnosync.com/?p=194 Basically, it states that companies like GM, Chrysler, even IBM that got on the outsourcing bandwagon eventually ended up losing BIG! Check it out.
How many more virtually content-free articles are we going to get about the damn iPhone and iPad?
As many as it takes for people to stop reading and posting to them. They generate a lot of reading and posting on /., so they'll keep seeing them till they don't.
(1) Commodity chips are not yet optimized for the smart-phone+touch-screen platform. There is some functionallity Apple desires (e.g. 20-hour charge life) these chips are not delivering yet.
(2) Apple is not forced to use the commodity solution. The iPad is not a $5 cellphone or $99 netbook. Apple hardware commands premium prices. They can splurge $10-$20 on a superior CPU. When Intel and AMD figure this platform out, they will be able to beat Apple's costs on shear 100x scale.
(3) There is immense, unexploited engineering talent in the Valley. They have been producing clever CPUs which have been commercial failures because they dont emulate x86, a 35-year old API. One of my classmates moved from a defunct, but highly respected boutique CPU platform (DEC Alpha) to Apple. I suspect Apple decided to advance beyond the 1970s, unlike Intel. [ To be fair, Intel has developed several clever un-Intel CPUs over the decades, all which were abject commercial failures. ]
AFAIK, XCode still uses gcc. That means Apple is required to distribute their code generator. Furthermore, if Apple wanted to be able to switch architecture, ditching their obsolete Objective-C based platform for a more modern platform would be the first thing they should do. Something like the CLR would give them better performance and complete machine independence.
No, Apple has been doing what they are doing because they want to restrict competition and screw their customers, plain and simple.
If this is indeed the case, then iPhone OS 4.0 would bring incredible speed improvements to the iPad, since it would no longer run applications on an ARM processor emulator. Can you imagine if OS 4.0 improved the iPad’s speed by 50% on day 1? Apple would be heralded as a software God. But in order for these speed improvements to be realized, apps would need to be written in objective C—which is exactly what Apple is now telling developers to do.
The writer doesn't realize that Adobe/MonoTouch were making a cross compiler from ActionScript/C# to Objective-C. So any improvements made to XCode will be available to those Apps too and if regular Apps are speeded up by 50%, so would the CS5 and MonoTouch Apps.
Posters below have already explained what a bunch of crock the speculation that the processor is actually a Power CPU is. Anyway what can you expect from a blind fanboy who writes stuff like:
Apple's DNA in this area is untouchable, helping it to innovate at the confluence of software and hardware.
I find it fascinating that Apple has been so good at diverting attention to the Flash argument, that people don’t see the true genius behind Steve Job’s vision and moves. Apple is setting the stage to become one of the biggest winners in the storied history of vertically integrated companies.
Huh? Wtf?
Why is this crap posted on Slashdot anyway?
This space for rent.
1. They scaled down the process geometry. Even though your raw gate density goes up by a factor 2 your effective routed gate density does not because you spend more gates on buffering signals.
2. They run a larger display which will need a beefier GPU
3. The main CPU is faster
4. They might have been in a hurry when PGing the device and didn't achieve the best possible density.
These factors can easily explain the die size, no need to resort to secret architecture switch theories.
All right...
What anti-trust law is Apple violating, then?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Except two things, first off, you can code on a Mac in any language you want. There's nothing stopping you from releasing software in Mindfuck or whitspace. Second, Apple's also not telling every OEM on the face of the fucking planet to sell OS X ... Or Else.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Quite possibly the first one. Certainly dangerously close to violating it.
That is, specifically, section 1 of the Sherman act.
"His name was James Damore."
A Better argument would be Apple's planning to one day use the iPhone OS on non ARM devices (like Apple TV).
You mean Sherman? How in the heck can they violate Sherman?
And more to the point, when has Sherman ever been used against a non-monopoly? Granted, it was used to crush a crippling strike - but surely you aren't suggesting that Apple is restricting trade in such a blatant manner?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
ASM is valid in Obj-C, its supported through language extensions (which is really all ObjC is anyway).
I have in fact 'dropped in' several lines of ASM to a couple iPhone apps without any problems from right inside XCode.
I really don't see this being the issue you think it is.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I have no idea why the parent comment isn't modded to the stratosphere. Perhaps it is too obvious. Too much common sense. Not interesting or insightful because it's as true as the sun is present in the sky.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I wish folks would stop making false comparisons and embrace the fact that "horses for courses" is a perfectly acceptable mode of decision making when it comes to technology.
There's nothing false about that comparison. You can't remove the battery on a MacBook. If you're on the road and you don't have a power supply near by, you're stuffed. How important that is to most people is another thing. I think most people don't think that far when buying a computer.
That's actually not such a bad speculation. Apple HAS switched platforms before, and a key to that capability is having the apps written in XCode.
True. And it's worth noting that this isn't just about the compiler/toolchain, Cocoa has to be the king of cross-platform application frameworks in terms of target history. It's run on 68xxx, x86, SPARC, PPC, and ARM. Asking people to stick with the API makes sense. Asking people to stick with Apple's toolchain for building the binary even makes some sense.
But this doesn't explain the "original" language requirements. Someone using ANSCAMobile's Corona or doing what this guy did with scheme isn't going to be causing problems if/when it comes time for a processor architecture change... because though they violate the "original" language terms of 3.3.1, they build using XCode.
I really can't think of many useful things that part of 3.3.1 accomplishes, actually.
Tweet, tweet.
Führer Jobs is shit scared of Android...
No he isn't. Android is pretty much a failure, measured on the scale Apple uses.
Jobs:
1) Loves control for its own sake
2) Monetizes control (this is the big one)
If they can loosen (I'm tempted to say "losen" so the semi-literates reading this don't get confused) control and not lose revenue or potential future revenue, fine, they might do so if it gains them something (say, good will) and doesn't cost them more than they gain. But it is all about the money. Anyone claiming the number of Android platformed devices is actually pretty big when added up needs to reread that previous sentence until it sinks in.
Microsoft gets beat up for loving the same control. Apple gets beat up for not including a camera. Even though Apple is, for my money, more controlling and more evil than Microsoft (at this point).
Thanks to the forced Preview, I had time to realize an alternate explanation is that long ago Bill Gates whipped his out and proclaimed "Mine's bigger!" and Jobs is trying to get to the point where he...you realize I'm speaking metaphorically?
iPhone OS 4.0 will not be compatible with the current iPad. Even if Apple was planning to switch to a different architecture, they would never put a more powerful chip on this iPad model, they would only include it the next one.
This is a company that doesn't even include a USB port so people can't connect a regular webcam or keyboard and have to buy overpriced Apple models. You think they would pass up the opportunity of making all their fanboys ditch their $500+ toy for another $500+ toy one year from now?
i never fail to get amazed the lengths people go to justify shortcomings of apple products... GET OVER IT .... THESE ARE FLAWS ... STEVE JOBS IS NOT GOD and the iPad is not the most perfect, magical, wonderful, excellent device ever to be created.
Gee I don't know. Lets see..
They first disallow Flash.
Then they make a deal with companies that provide Flash based games, to sell non-flash apps that provide access to those very same Flash games (Zynga Poker, etc..)
This is equivilent to Ford Motors declaring that none of its suppliers can use any tools from Stanley (aka Craftsman), and then Ford setting up its own tool supplier and declaring that you can use tools from their wholly owned tool division, or from other spoecific competition to Stanley, but not at all from Stanley.
"His name was James Damore."
This is equivilent to Ford Motors declaring that none of its suppliers can use any tools from Stanley (aka Craftsman), and then Ford setting up its own tool supplier and declaring that you can use tools from their wholly owned tool division, or from other spoecific competition to Stanley, but not at all from Stanley.
Besides being really stupid business, what would be wrong with that? It would make their cars more expensive, and there's plenty of other competition out there without such silly rules.
Now, if Microsoft did that, we could talk Sherman.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
didn't they? Not many people complained about the size. Today, what makes the bulk of a software release is the media assets included, not the code itself. Since the iPad has some good GBs of space, and most people will fill these with videos and songs, I doubt some added MB from fat binaries would make a difference.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
We used each of the top 5 processor architectures over time--6502, M68xxx, ARM, x86, and Power PC! The thing we use now has 128k 6502s with quad M68767s managing them. Runs faster than a pack of lemmings.
Steve
I can agree that it's silly to argue that she should care about a bunch of details of the machine that don't affect how she uses it, because it performs in a way that she enjoys and finds satisfactory for her expectations. But wouldn't you agree it's equally silly to tell others that they shouldn't care about details that don't fit their expectations of what the machine should be and do? From my perspective, your wife's simpler set of requirements represents a lesser utilization of the machine.
This has been the thought that has been waiting in my brain for a while. I knew there was an argument against the "well it's not for you" statements
Here in my car -- I make analogies
It is handy because -- you can relate to them
In cars...
It's like having a muscle car with a very restrictive governor for a little old lady who drives to the store and church once a week. "Oh, it's a very nice car, I like it", says granny. Her grandson doesn't even want to borrow it because it can't reach highway speeds until twenty seconds have passed. Sure, it looks great in the mall parking lot, but that's all.
Ha ha ha!!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. That was so funny, I just peed myself.
Up until the "porn store" comment I would have agreed that Jobs is not that scared of Android but when he goes out of his way to bash it in an unrelated keynote in such a childish manner, that's fear talking.
But dr. Evil, that has already happened.
Apple effectively prohibits highly complex applications by limiting the types of API's that can be used. The App store is designed to be filled with simple applications with a limited (Lowest Common Denominator) feature set.
So Microsoft is at the whims of which company? or Dell? Red Hat? Novell?
I'm sorry but your logic fails here as there are already several successful hardware and software companies that can maintain their own release schedules without the input or approval of software manufacturers. If Apple cant do this their is something wrong with the Apple OS, not the software that runs on it. MS for all it's flaws has been able to maintain good backwards compatibility meaning I can upgrade my OS and have almost all my programs work (I recently upgraded from XP to Win 7 at work with no problems what so ever).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
That report is highly flawed, as they compared applications sales from everyone else to application downloads from Apple. No doubt Apple's way out front. They were the first to market PDA apps to consumers, not business, and to price them at around the price of a cup of coffee, usually. Android is growing with a similar model, though with far more free and ad-sponsored apps (in a large parts because they still haven't worked out for-pay apps in many countries).
RIM and Nokia are also working to improve their offerings, but they were caught by surprise at how well the iPhone did. Conventional wisdom held that regular consumers would have no use for smartphones. Oops.
-Dave Haynie
Go buy yourself a dictionary.
Almost as funny as yet another Astroturf Apple Article.