Supposing the iTablet is an upscaled iPhone with a bigger screen and hardware keyboard, the economics should be the same.
You'll never know the true cost if you buy it on a 24-month plan, locked to a particular carrier. Apple can afford to subsidise the initial purchase cost if it makes its money through apps, music and videos you download from their online services. (cf. Console makers lose money on their hardware but make it up on each game)
Agreed, calling this a rumour is even stretching it a bit. Paraphrasing the article:
Apple bought a chip manufacturer. The iPhone is too small to surf the web and needs a real keyboard. All the cool kids have portables with 10" screens. Wouldn't it be cool if my Macbook had the iPhone's multi-touch input? My Apple shares are idling due to the global financial crisis; I better start some badass rumour to spur on the fanboys. It's Apple, they haven't introduced some magical product for a while now.
Arnie was the terminator and his presence made the films what they were. Take him out of the show and it's just another doomsday time travel story, for which we know the plot but the central character is missing.
LAMP and the internet changed the goalposts and Sun failed to adapt. Sun has open sourced everything in sight, so this seems like a last ditch attempt to save themselves. Apple turn profits from iTunes and App Store. Sun wanted to capture the non-iPhone market.
As proof Sun developed a new device-independent abstracted Java platform called JavaFX, taking swathes of Java people off the core libraries to focus on the new platform, that as you say no one has yet adopted.
Unfortunately the financial crisis hit, Oracle swooped and it's all too late.
I'm not doubting Apple should apply the upstream security patches. But look at the comments for the article yesterday, most would advocate turning Java off anyway. Now that may be only a cross section of Slashdot nerds but if they each tell their non-techie friends and relatives...
Maybe I did, though the only mention of non-Java apps was a google toolbar mechanism.
If this were the case for Windows users, shareware authors might flock to repackage their stuff for the Java-Store instead of download.com
I'll stick with apt-get.
Anyway, as far as the JRE goes, these days most linux distros bundle their own openjdk. So it's only Windows users that have to put up with all the extra nagware and registration screens that Sun may bundle in the installer.
Schwartz kept mentioning JavaFX, so this in theory does mean phones too.
While Swing is a desktop platform requiring a full Java SE, JavaFX is supposed to target different devices. Now it so happens that the desktop implementation of JavaFX runs as an abstraction over Java2D and the AWT but this needn't be the case. Today's OMAP3 smart phone is plenty powerful enough for many small screen desktop Java SE apps, RAM excepted. (you wouldn't run eclipse on it!)
So while Swing and SWT may have too much 'bloat', the idea is to create a movement around JavaFX that has a smaller footprint so that they'll try to sell JavaFX applications that run identically on a desktop and a phone.
Still-born hype for JavaFX, Sun's shiny new device agnostic platform.
As we've seen with the recent article about JRE security on OS X, users are generally reluctant to run client-side Java. Swing hasn't managed much traction, with desktop consumers overwhelmingly preferring native apps. Somehow a new JavaFX facade over JNLP/Applets and an App Store will change this?
Phones may be a different story but I suspect any JavaFX adoption would be significantly trail iPhone and Android in terms of relevance. Perhaps 3 years too late.
Gary Benson from Red Hat has been targetting non-x86 architectures via Zero/Shark implementations of the Hotspot virtual machine (and since Red Hat is a Linux company, his brief has been to get it running on Linux first).
On Mac OS X, I don't think it has been integrated into the BSD port quite yet.:(
Historically every 'official' Java implementation has licensed the class libraries from Sun. I'm not sure why GIJ is mentioned in the same breath, since it's code base is based on GNU Classpath, a clean-room implementation of the Sun class libraries. Though, it could have been implemented in a similar manner for binary compatibility across VMs.
So if the flaw is in the class libraries rather than the virtual machine, it's common code... Yes, from the 'reference implementation', now present in OpenJDK - which has now been patched as the article suggests.
Probably nothing, if you don't go with the 'Home' version. The catch? you have to run a copy of Windows 7 'outside' XP, i.e. Microsoft's compatibility mode.
Instead of virtualizing an XP guest inside a Windows 7 host, how about XP on bare metal, running 7 inside a VM for forward compatibility? MS could sell it as an option pack for XP - continue using XP now, clean install 7 on your PC when you want to fully migrate.
Definitely YES, if it's an article worth viewing. I mightn't think I'm interested in a topic, only to find I am.:) Clicking a link after a screen only disrupts one's concentration, while the next page loads, when most of us just use a scroll wheel. And as far as revenue goes, you can fill an entire sidebar with ads, if lost advertising is a concern...
And to whoever moderated his post a troll, get a life. He's trying to improve the experience for us readers and we should encourage dialog...
C'mon, 15 pages? You wonder why few of us ever RTFA...
Make Slashdot linked articles direct to a single page version, with maybe a handful of ads, and we may stick around and look at the rest of your site. Otherwise, it's potentially 1 million readers who may not bother clicking the URL, or just skip to the conclusion and miss the point of the article - perhaps hurting sales of advertised nvidia cards, the crux of the article's technology.
Perhaps no match for Nehalem based desktops but a challenger for the Netbook market. A platform that runs Windows applications via seamless x86-->MIPS translation. Intel and MS may struggle to match the price point, which is good for consumers because Intel with be forced to considerably beef up the performance of Atom, to compete on value. (Not to mention multi-core ARM Cortex chips.)
Agreed, I'll never buy another monitor that doesn't rotate to, say, 1080x1920.
Though personally, I'm waiting for Asus, Acer etc to smash the tablet PC market by releasing netbook tablets. (yeah I know about the iPhone and Nokia devices based on the Maemo platform but, from experience, the screens are too small.) For those who use public transport, the ability to curl up on a 30+ minute journey with a PDF in hand (replacing books!) or 3G web is a calmer image than crouching over a conventional laptop to the annoyance of lateral passengers who dislike being elbowed.
Perhaps this is the next step in the evolution of integrated 'nettop' devices. By day, a 11.6" 1366×768 tablet. By night, it attaches to a USB-hub equipped stand. By plugging in a USB keyboard and mouse we instantly gain a small desktop with the convenience of being folding everything in a briefcase or daypack. Motion Computing, amongst other vendors, may market similar devices based on the Core 2 but the price tag of $US2K discourages widespread adoption.
Trudgill's Sociolingustics. I'm not sure whether it's an authoritative work on the discipline but it was at the local library.:-) It's a fairly broad book covering a number of topics. The chapter I was referring to details the differences in pronunciation, vocabulary and historical evolution of languages based on male/female biases etc.
(I've been wondering about studying applied lingustics by distance education.)
I generally agree about Joe Consumer preferring an x86 solution to run Windows.
At some point, our new Chinese FOSS overlords will fix that. Forget ARM; MIPS will be the driving force of x86 emulation...
An offshoot of the Chinese government has created a MIPS-compatible CPU known as Loongson (my point about FOSS - RMS uses one). The latest planned revision has specific instructions to execute x86 codes with only a 30% performance hit. The idea being that the operating system will eventually transparently execute x86 code via qemu.
This x86 translation will target the hybrid Linux Unified Kernel but may eventually make it into standalone Windows clone ReactOS.
While the above is initially only a Loongson/MIPS solution, the seamless qemu emulation may find its way into ARM solutions too (without the specific hardware support).
Your point about the performance hit of x86 binary emulation is valid but they're working on it. The Chinese gov't will pour heaps money into weaning their IT sector off US companies such as Intel and Microsoft.
Now church is embracing twitter, this acquisition can only lead to the sale of more iPhones along the lines of 'little Johnny needs an iPhone because all the cool kids in Sunday school have one'.
Ok, so this is only one church but if such an article was reported in a nationwide church newsletter mass adoption could result.
Twitter is only the beginning to get them to buy the device. Then there are all the faith-oriented downloads from the App Store...
Assuming MS Office is written in C/C++, producing a version for ARM would be little more than a 'simple' recompile. (Yeah I'm being flippant but the abominable MS Word 6 for Mac shared much of the codebase from Windows; different CPUs.)
Oh wait, there's no Windows XP for ARM Cortex...
Still, it will be interesting to see what impact, if much, ARM-based netbooks have on MS.
Several possibilities:
WinCE/Office Mobile work on ARM, beef it up for netbooks?
They have been working on Windows 7 for ARM?
They do release an Office 2007 for ARM, pending a Windows 7 port.
Point 1. Is a likely outcome, the product already ships on smartphones...
Point 2. MS may have discontinued Windows for other architectures after NT 4 but there may be a secret code branch for ARM just to ensure that Windows doesn't accumulate too much x86-specific nastiness. e.g. Apple were rumoured to have kept x86 secret builds of OS X long before Steve made the switch.
Point 3. Assuming the ARM Linux phenomenon catches MS by complete surprise, they could do my original suggestion and release an ARM version supporting Linux via wine (win32 ARM binary running on wine within ARM linux). Unthinkable? Perhaps but it's still a sale of MS Office, in a market they may deem too small to justify a full Windows port. ReactOS for ARM is another competitor in the medium/long term!
Failing any of these, Oracle will dominate the ARMbook market with OO.o. Unless, again via wine, Corel decide to re-resurrect WordPerfect X4 for Linux. I saw WordPerfect for the first time in ages on my German friend's Medion Akoya (Aldi sold MSI wind clone). Perhaps sales of WordPerfect are stronger on Netbooks where the footprint is lower for Atom devices...
Apple have publicly denigrated the netbook market in the past. i.e. the iPhone is an internet appliance and for everything else there's the 13" MacBook Air.
The conspiracy theory would suggest that Apple is clearly worried about netbooks cannibalising their student notebook market. [A white Macbook at $US1K is their cheapest offering.] That they will only divide and conquer the 10" netbook market when they have developed a killer solution.
Specs on the CPU for the netbook market are fairly low. Single core in the low end, 32 bit only, performance rivalling a 4 year old PowerbookG4.
Now, see, Apple owns a line of CPUs ideal for this market. multi-core, 64 bit (in line with snow leopard), energy efficient - PWRficient. The best bit is they own the CPU; with no one else using their chips they don't have to worry about 'unofficial' clones on that architecture. Battery life mightn't be the same as the new ARM devices but should be better than a Core 2 while spanking an Atom in performance.
Slashdot Mirror
Supposing the iTablet is an upscaled iPhone with a bigger screen and hardware keyboard, the economics should be the same.
You'll never know the true cost if you buy it on a 24-month plan, locked to a particular carrier. Apple can afford to subsidise the initial purchase cost if it makes its money through apps, music and videos you download from their online services. (cf. Console makers lose money on their hardware but make it up on each game)
Agreed, calling this a rumour is even stretching it a bit. Paraphrasing the article:
Apple bought a chip manufacturer. The iPhone is too small to surf the web and needs a real keyboard. All the cool kids have portables with 10" screens. Wouldn't it be cool if my Macbook had the iPhone's multi-touch input? My Apple shares are idling due to the global financial crisis; I better start some badass rumour to spur on the fanboys. It's Apple, they haven't introduced some magical product for a while now.
Arnie was the terminator and his presence made the films what they were. Take him out of the show and it's just another doomsday time travel story, for which we know the plot but the central character is missing.
Surprised it made it to 31 episodes...
LAMP and the internet changed the goalposts and Sun failed to adapt. Sun has open sourced everything in sight, so this seems like a last ditch attempt to save themselves. Apple turn profits from iTunes and App Store. Sun wanted to capture the non-iPhone market.
As proof Sun developed a new device-independent abstracted Java platform called JavaFX, taking swathes of Java people off the core libraries to focus on the new platform, that as you say no one has yet adopted.
Unfortunately the financial crisis hit, Oracle swooped and it's all too late.
I'm not doubting Apple should apply the upstream security patches. But look at the comments for the article yesterday, most would advocate turning Java off anyway. Now that may be only a cross section of Slashdot nerds but if they each tell their non-techie friends and relatives...
Maybe I did, though the only mention of non-Java apps was a google toolbar mechanism.
If this were the case for Windows users, shareware authors might flock to repackage their stuff for the Java-Store instead of download.com
I'll stick with apt-get.
Anyway, as far as the JRE goes, these days most linux distros bundle their own openjdk. So it's only Windows users that have to put up with all the extra nagware and registration screens that Sun may bundle in the installer.
Schwartz kept mentioning JavaFX, so this in theory does mean phones too.
While Swing is a desktop platform requiring a full Java SE, JavaFX is supposed to target different devices. Now it so happens that the desktop implementation of JavaFX runs as an abstraction over Java2D and the AWT but this needn't be the case. Today's OMAP3 smart phone is plenty powerful enough for many small screen desktop Java SE apps, RAM excepted. (you wouldn't run eclipse on it!)
So while Swing and SWT may have too much 'bloat', the idea is to create a movement around JavaFX that has a smaller footprint so that they'll try to sell JavaFX applications that run identically on a desktop and a phone.
Still-born hype for JavaFX, Sun's shiny new device agnostic platform.
As we've seen with the recent article about JRE security on OS X, users are generally reluctant to run client-side Java. Swing hasn't managed much traction, with desktop consumers overwhelmingly preferring native apps. Somehow a new JavaFX facade over JNLP/Applets and an App Store will change this?
Phones may be a different story but I suspect any JavaFX adoption would be significantly trail iPhone and Android in terms of relevance. Perhaps 3 years too late.
What would Larry do if he were running Sun? :-)
On Linux, yes.
Gary Benson from Red Hat has been targetting non-x86 architectures via Zero/Shark implementations of the Hotspot virtual machine (and since Red Hat is a Linux company, his brief has been to get it running on Linux first).
On Mac OS X, I don't think it has been integrated into the BSD port quite yet. :(
Historically every 'official' Java implementation has licensed the class libraries from Sun. I'm not sure why GIJ is mentioned in the same breath, since it's code base is based on GNU Classpath, a clean-room implementation of the Sun class libraries. Though, it could have been implemented in a similar manner for binary compatibility across VMs.
So if the flaw is in the class libraries rather than the virtual machine, it's common code... Yes, from the 'reference implementation', now present in OpenJDK - which has now been patched as the article suggests.
Both, I'd guess. If someone releases some killer software for OpenCL they'd be made not to - Apple are pushing it for OS X.
On the other hand, if they do a deal with someone to write CUDA stuff, it's lock-in that you must buy an nvidia card.
Either way they win...
Probably nothing, if you don't go with the 'Home' version. The catch? you have to run a copy of Windows 7 'outside' XP, i.e. Microsoft's compatibility mode.
Instead of virtualizing an XP guest inside a Windows 7 host, how about XP on bare metal, running 7 inside a VM for forward compatibility? MS could sell it as an option pack for XP - continue using XP now, clean install 7 on your PC when you want to fully migrate.
Yeah, try turning your ad-blocker off once in a while, for the full internet experience! :)
Definitely YES, if it's an article worth viewing. I mightn't think I'm interested in a topic, only to find I am. :) Clicking a link after a screen only disrupts one's concentration, while the next page loads, when most of us just use a scroll wheel. And as far as revenue goes, you can fill an entire sidebar with ads, if lost advertising is a concern...
And to whoever moderated his post a troll, get a life. He's trying to improve the experience for us readers and we should encourage dialog...
To be honest, it's all about advertising.
C'mon, 15 pages? You wonder why few of us ever RTFA...
Make Slashdot linked articles direct to a single page version, with maybe a handful of ads, and we may stick around and look at the rest of your site. Otherwise, it's potentially 1 million readers who may not bother clicking the URL, or just skip to the conclusion and miss the point of the article - perhaps hurting sales of advertised nvidia cards, the crux of the article's technology.
on MIPS, beware China!
Combining Linux with Wine, ReactOS and qemu is the basis of a Wintel killer.
The platform? LUK on Loongson.
Perhaps no match for Nehalem based desktops but a challenger for the Netbook market. A platform that runs Windows applications via seamless x86-->MIPS translation. Intel and MS may struggle to match the price point, which is good for consumers because Intel with be forced to considerably beef up the performance of Atom, to compete on value. (Not to mention multi-core ARM Cortex chips.)
Agreed, I'll never buy another monitor that doesn't rotate to, say, 1080x1920.
Though personally, I'm waiting for Asus, Acer etc to smash the tablet PC market by releasing netbook tablets. (yeah I know about the iPhone and Nokia devices based on the Maemo platform but, from experience, the screens are too small.) For those who use public transport, the ability to curl up on a 30+ minute journey with a PDF in hand (replacing books!) or 3G web is a calmer image than crouching over a conventional laptop to the annoyance of lateral passengers who dislike being elbowed.
Perhaps this is the next step in the evolution of integrated 'nettop' devices. By day, a 11.6" 1366×768 tablet. By night, it attaches to a USB-hub equipped stand. By plugging in a USB keyboard and mouse we instantly gain a small desktop with the convenience of being folding everything in a briefcase or daypack. Motion Computing, amongst other vendors, may market similar devices based on the Core 2 but the price tag of $US2K discourages widespread adoption.
Trudgill's Sociolingustics. I'm not sure whether it's an authoritative work on the discipline but it was at the local library. :-) It's a fairly broad book covering a number of topics. The chapter I was referring to details the differences in pronunciation, vocabulary and historical evolution of languages based on male/female biases etc.
(I've been wondering about studying applied lingustics by distance education.)
Well, sorry. I've been reading a book on sociolinguistics which discusses gender specific pronouns...
Perhaps, like me, (s)he's from the southern hemisphere.
Yes, it's multi-monitor aware. It outputs a different shade of blue for each screen.
I generally agree about Joe Consumer preferring an x86 solution to run Windows.
At some point, our new Chinese FOSS overlords will fix that. Forget ARM; MIPS will be the driving force of x86 emulation...
An offshoot of the Chinese government has created a MIPS-compatible CPU known as Loongson (my point about FOSS - RMS uses one). The latest planned revision has specific instructions to execute x86 codes with only a 30% performance hit. The idea being that the operating system will eventually transparently execute x86 code via qemu.
This x86 translation will target the hybrid Linux Unified Kernel but may eventually make it into standalone Windows clone ReactOS.
While the above is initially only a Loongson/MIPS solution, the seamless qemu emulation may find its way into ARM solutions too (without the specific hardware support).
Your point about the performance hit of x86 binary emulation is valid but they're working on it. The Chinese gov't will pour heaps money into weaning their IT sector off US companies such as Intel and Microsoft.
Now church is embracing twitter, this acquisition can only lead to the sale of more iPhones along the lines of 'little Johnny needs an iPhone because all the cool kids in Sunday school have one'.
Ok, so this is only one church but if such an article was reported in a nationwide church newsletter mass adoption could result.
Twitter is only the beginning to get them to buy the device. Then there are all the faith-oriented downloads from the App Store...
Oh wait, there's no Windows XP for ARM Cortex...
Still, it will be interesting to see what impact, if much, ARM-based netbooks have on MS. Several possibilities:
Point 1. Is a likely outcome, the product already ships on smartphones...
Point 2. MS may have discontinued Windows for other architectures after NT 4 but there may be a secret code branch for ARM just to ensure that Windows doesn't accumulate too much x86-specific nastiness. e.g. Apple were rumoured to have kept x86 secret builds of OS X long before Steve made the switch.
Point 3. Assuming the ARM Linux phenomenon catches MS by complete surprise, they could do my original suggestion and release an ARM version supporting Linux via wine (win32 ARM binary running on wine within ARM linux). Unthinkable? Perhaps but it's still a sale of MS Office, in a market they may deem too small to justify a full Windows port. ReactOS for ARM is another competitor in the medium/long term!
Failing any of these, Oracle will dominate the ARMbook market with OO.o. Unless, again via wine, Corel decide to re-resurrect WordPerfect X4 for Linux. I saw WordPerfect for the first time in ages on my German friend's Medion Akoya (Aldi sold MSI wind clone). Perhaps sales of WordPerfect are stronger on Netbooks where the footprint is lower for Atom devices...
Apple have publicly denigrated the netbook market in the past. i.e. the iPhone is an internet appliance and for everything else there's the 13" MacBook Air.
The conspiracy theory would suggest that Apple is clearly worried about netbooks cannibalising their student notebook market. [A white Macbook at $US1K is their cheapest offering.] That they will only divide and conquer the 10" netbook market when they have developed a killer solution.
Specs on the CPU for the netbook market are fairly low. Single core in the low end, 32 bit only, performance rivalling a 4 year old PowerbookG4.
Now, see, Apple owns a line of CPUs ideal for this market. multi-core, 64 bit (in line with snow leopard), energy efficient - PWRficient. The best bit is they own the CPU; with no one else using their chips they don't have to worry about 'unofficial' clones on that architecture. Battery life mightn't be the same as the new ARM devices but should be better than a Core 2 while spanking an Atom in performance.