I never said they should. As I pointed out in this reply, not competing in the low end market is part of a sound business strategy.
As for whether a used Mac would be better than a new Windows system at the same price, that depends on the needs of the individual. I'll take the Windows system and install Linux on it every time. My mother would just take the Windows system. She has absolutely no interest in learning a brand new interface and likely wouldn't gain much from doing so.
A $600 desktop hasn't been budget for many many years. Especially when the keyboard and mouse will set you back another hundred. Even the original G4 model (at $499) was only budget compared to other Apple machines.
And the last generation iBooks had an MSRP of $999 for the 12" models, not $800. Not particularly expensive, but still priced well above the entry level models in the PC market.
Just because someone doesn't want the kind of laptop you prefer doesn't mean they don't want a laptop. People have different priorities and use patterns. There are plenty of reasons to want a large screen. Consider:
1) Desktop replacement - no wiring, tucks away when not in use, can be packed for occasional travel.
2) Gaming rig - nice big screen, can be taken to LAN parties easily.
3) Work machine - usually used at a fixed location, but can be taken to conference rooms and customer sites if needed.
Just a few off the top of my head. Preferences are just that - preferences. I plan on getting a UMPC (likely an 8.9" Eee when they're available) but that would be mostly for when I go cycling or personal travel. No way in hell would I want that for extended use though, like when I go to customer sites, conferences or one of the data centers.
He never said all Apple laptops started at that price. I personally would have been more specific, though.
It still stands that if you want anything but a tiny screen (comparatively, x86 laptops are typically 14.1" or 15.4" with 17" being more common) you have to shell out for the "pro" line. You get a good machine for the price, but you don't get much choice.
As a strategy, it's not bad. They get to upsell people into a higher cost, higher margin unit than they might have otherwise purchase. It also helps to foster a strong aftermarket for older generation hardware, which encourages the more affluent among their users to sell and upgrade every generation.
They do the same thing with the desktop segment - no low end (a $600 machine doesn't qualify), no proper middle ground between their entry level and premium.
My favorite analogy is car brands. Dell would be like GM - a few different brands serving different market segments. You have your volume brands (e.g. Chevy, Dimension/Inspiron), performance (Pontiac, XPS), upscale performance (Cadillac, Alienware), commercial (GMC, OptiPlex/Latitude), et cetera. Apple is one of the luxury manufacturers. For Apple, pick one of the luxury brands. Say Lexus. You can get an IS for $30k, but if you prefer a more roomy sport sedan you have to move up to the GS models which start at $44k.
Because it hasn't. PowerDVD had a broken implementation of BD+ such that you could copy a BD+ encrypted disc to a hard drive and play it back with AnyDVD. No one has come up with a way to strip protection yet, or burn a disc that will play in a compliant player.
Part of the problem with BD+ is that it isn't a single scheme. It's a whole virtual machine that content providers can build their own protection on top of. No idea if the spec allows for it, but I would guess that when BD Live becomes the norm a publisher could build discs that require remote authentication for playback even.
Yep. I'm really hoping they pursue that strategy with the studios. Even though I own an HD DVD player I still only buy the combo discs because I want compatability with all my players, including two more standalone DVD players I won't replace until they break, four computers with DVD drives and the car mount one I'll be picking up so the kids have something to watch when we go on road trips (even if there were HD players in that market I wouldn't buy them... who the hell needs more than 480 on a 7" screen?)
Since when is Bluetooth UWB and multi-hundred Mbps?
Erm, the UWB specification (the radio platform underpinning both W-USB and Bluetooth 3.0) goes up to 480mbit/sec. Taking a look at the Wimedia Alliance website it looks like the standard was ratified by ECMA on 2005-12-09. So I guess the answer to your question is "a little over two years ago". No shipping products but that can be said of TransferJet as well.
Unfortunate but true. Even Breyer's, one of the last bastions of all natural ice cream with national distribution, has started adulterating their product with emulsifiers and substituting fats (and even claim that "chocolate flavored" chips have "more chocolatey flavor" than real chocolate).
Aside from homemade and some locally produced products the only brand of ice cream I buy regularly these days is Turkey Hill's All Natural line. Vanilla ice cream made with cream, milk, sugar, vanilla and vanilla beans. How novel!
They've always got the option of shipping it in their own notebooks, of course.:) If consumers start buying them selling the tech to third parties becomes a lot easier.
The embedded sector may be a more fertile market than general purpose computers though. Designing a set top box, video recorder or HD media player? Use a low cost, low power system on a chip for basic functionality and offload all the video processing onto this bugger.
And of course Toshiba is already talking about putting a Cell into HDTVs for high quality upscaling and picture-in-picture.
This isn't the Cell that ships in a PS3. It's a derived design with four SPEs and hardware MPEG encode/decode. The prototype draws 10-20W @ 1.5GHz and production versions would doubtless be more efficient than that.
The PWRficient isn't comparible. That's a general purpose processor. This is a co-processor that doesn't even implement a PPC instruction set.
Being able to run an OS is hardly a feat. Processors have been doing that for decades.:)
There's numerous documents detailing the design behind the Cell, though. As IBM puts it "the key design goals of the PPE are to maximize the performance/power ratio as well as the performance/area ratio." In other words the PPE wasn't optimized for raw performance, which is pretty obvious from the specs - only two execution units, no branch prediction, small caches.
The article also seems to ignore that the SpursEngine includes decidated MPEG-2/4 decoding and encoding, which the PS3 lacks. I'm not sure but I think that could make a wee bit of difference for video stream processing.:)
Rather than speculating, you could read the press release. This isn't "The Cell"; it's the SpursEngine. Completely different design. Sits on a standard PCI-E bus. Draws 10-20W in prototype.
Actually Sony sold all their fabs to Toshiba back in October. They've retained a minority capital stake, but are no longer involved in operation. It's not just the Cell either; they're handling production of the RSX and some of the parts for the PS2 line as well.
Not producing even a draft spec over the course of twenty months doesn't reek of inevitability to me. It says "we'll keep it on the back burner so we have something to point to if a studio presses the issue and in the meantime we'll merrily ship hundreds of thousands of region free players and millions of region free discs".
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The MBA is a computer for people with smooth hands. If you need a tricked out notebook meant as desktop replacement, try the MacBook Pro.
How about a subnote that actually has enough features to be useful to me? Guess I'll be sticking with IBM or Dell.
I never said they should. As I pointed out in this reply, not competing in the low end market is part of a sound business strategy.
As for whether a used Mac would be better than a new Windows system at the same price, that depends on the needs of the individual. I'll take the Windows system and install Linux on it every time. My mother would just take the Windows system. She has absolutely no interest in learning a brand new interface and likely wouldn't gain much from doing so.
A $600 desktop hasn't been budget for many many years. Especially when the keyboard and mouse will set you back another hundred. Even the original G4 model (at $499) was only budget compared to other Apple machines.
And the last generation iBooks had an MSRP of $999 for the 12" models, not $800. Not particularly expensive, but still priced well above the entry level models in the PC market.
Just because someone doesn't want the kind of laptop you prefer doesn't mean they don't want a laptop. People have different priorities and use patterns. There are plenty of reasons to want a large screen. Consider:
1) Desktop replacement - no wiring, tucks away when not in use, can be packed for occasional travel.
2) Gaming rig - nice big screen, can be taken to LAN parties easily.
3) Work machine - usually used at a fixed location, but can be taken to conference rooms and customer sites if needed.
Just a few off the top of my head. Preferences are just that - preferences. I plan on getting a UMPC (likely an 8.9" Eee when they're available) but that would be mostly for when I go cycling or personal travel. No way in hell would I want that for extended use though, like when I go to customer sites, conferences or one of the data centers.
He never said all Apple laptops started at that price. I personally would have been more specific, though.
It still stands that if you want anything but a tiny screen (comparatively, x86 laptops are typically 14.1" or 15.4" with 17" being more common) you have to shell out for the "pro" line. You get a good machine for the price, but you don't get much choice.
As a strategy, it's not bad. They get to upsell people into a higher cost, higher margin unit than they might have otherwise purchase. It also helps to foster a strong aftermarket for older generation hardware, which encourages the more affluent among their users to sell and upgrade every generation.
They do the same thing with the desktop segment - no low end (a $600 machine doesn't qualify), no proper middle ground between their entry level and premium.
My favorite analogy is car brands. Dell would be like GM - a few different brands serving different market segments. You have your volume brands (e.g. Chevy, Dimension/Inspiron), performance (Pontiac, XPS), upscale performance (Cadillac, Alienware), commercial (GMC, OptiPlex/Latitude), et cetera. Apple is one of the luxury manufacturers. For Apple, pick one of the luxury brands. Say Lexus. You can get an IS for $30k, but if you prefer a more roomy sport sedan you have to move up to the GS models which start at $44k.
One would presume he's talking about the one that starts at $2000 (the Macbook Pro) rather than the one that starts at $1100. :)
(There are an awful lot of people who prefer screens bigger than 13")
Yeah, no optical on a subnote is pretty much standard. Now the choice of only one USB and no cardbus/expresscard slot? That's pretty asinine. :)
Vast majority? As of 1Q07 83.43% of active internet users (52.72% of all households) had a broadband internet connection.
As opposed to the Blu-ray vendors who are all being upfront about how their current players aren't based on a final spec and can't be upgraded?
Because it hasn't. PowerDVD had a broken implementation of BD+ such that you could copy a BD+ encrypted disc to a hard drive and play it back with AnyDVD. No one has come up with a way to strip protection yet, or burn a disc that will play in a compliant player.
Part of the problem with BD+ is that it isn't a single scheme. It's a whole virtual machine that content providers can build their own protection on top of. No idea if the spec allows for it, but I would guess that when BD Live becomes the norm a publisher could build discs that require remote authentication for playback even.
Yep. I'm really hoping they pursue that strategy with the studios. Even though I own an HD DVD player I still only buy the combo discs because I want compatability with all my players, including two more standalone DVD players I won't replace until they break, four computers with DVD drives and the car mount one I'll be picking up so the kids have something to watch when we go on road trips (even if there were HD players in that market I wouldn't buy them... who the hell needs more than 480 on a 7" screen?)
Never underestimate parents buying Ratatouille on regular DVD so they can actually play the damn thing in their minivan. :)
Since when is Bluetooth UWB and multi-hundred Mbps?
Erm, the UWB specification (the radio platform underpinning both W-USB and Bluetooth 3.0) goes up to 480mbit/sec. Taking a look at the Wimedia Alliance website it looks like the standard was ratified by ECMA on 2005-12-09. So I guess the answer to your question is "a little over two years ago". No shipping products but that can be said of TransferJet as well.
Unfortunate but true. Even Breyer's, one of the last bastions of all natural ice cream with national distribution, has started adulterating their product with emulsifiers and substituting fats (and even claim that "chocolate flavored" chips have "more chocolatey flavor" than real chocolate).
Aside from homemade and some locally produced products the only brand of ice cream I buy regularly these days is Turkey Hill's All Natural line. Vanilla ice cream made with cream, milk, sugar, vanilla and vanilla beans. How novel!
They've always got the option of shipping it in their own notebooks, of course. :) If consumers start buying them selling the tech to third parties becomes a lot easier.
The embedded sector may be a more fertile market than general purpose computers though. Designing a set top box, video recorder or HD media player? Use a low cost, low power system on a chip for basic functionality and offload all the video processing onto this bugger.
And of course Toshiba is already talking about putting a Cell into HDTVs for high quality upscaling and picture-in-picture.
The Cell is a PPC chip. The SpursEngine is not.
(BTW, Toshiba co-developed it and owns the majority of the fab capacity for it.)
So far the only way to get a Cell processor is PS3.
Not true
This isn't the Cell that ships in a PS3. It's a derived design with four SPEs and hardware MPEG encode/decode. The prototype draws 10-20W @ 1.5GHz and production versions would doubtless be more efficient than that.
The PWRficient isn't comparible. That's a general purpose processor. This is a co-processor that doesn't even implement a PPC instruction set.
Being able to run an OS is hardly a feat. Processors have been doing that for decades. :)
There's numerous documents detailing the design behind the Cell, though. As IBM puts it "the key design goals of the PPE are to maximize the performance/power ratio as well as the performance/area ratio." In other words the PPE wasn't optimized for raw performance, which is pretty obvious from the specs - only two execution units, no branch prediction, small caches.
Yeah, they silently lost their kool pretty early on. :)
The article also seems to ignore that the SpursEngine includes decidated MPEG-2/4 decoding and encoding, which the PS3 lacks. I'm not sure but I think that could make a wee bit of difference for video stream processing. :)
Rather than speculating, you could read the press release. This isn't "The Cell"; it's the SpursEngine. Completely different design. Sits on a standard PCI-E bus. Draws 10-20W in prototype.
Actually Sony sold all their fabs to Toshiba back in October. They've retained a minority capital stake, but are no longer involved in operation. It's not just the Cell either; they're handling production of the RSX and some of the parts for the PS2 line as well.
Originally it was Kool Desktop Environment.
s@would/will@could@
Not producing even a draft spec over the course of twenty months doesn't reek of inevitability to me. It says "we'll keep it on the back burner so we have something to point to if a studio presses the issue and in the meantime we'll merrily ship hundreds of thousands of region free players and millions of region free discs".