7 ms·

Apple to expand CPU design group beyond iPad A4

56 points by Bud 16y ago

Bud 16y ago
Note that the Newton's soul really does live on in the iPad, according to this article. Long live the Newton!
- mmphosis 16y ago
  But does the iPad recognize handwriting as part of the operating system like the Newton did?
  - pclark 16y ago
    Not yet, but Mac OS X does.
  - ugh 16y ago
    Why would you want that? Handwriting is slow, certainly slower than the keyboard iOS provides. I’m honestly puzzled why handwriting was ever a favored input method.
    - slantyyz 16y ago
      Maybe because just about everyone knows how to do it, and because it's quieter than tapping on a screen or keyboard? That's not to say it's the optimal method of input, but either is voice. There are use cases where writing or voice may be better than typing.
      - ugh 16y ago
        While writing might be a nice additional feature, I can certainly understand why Apple didn’t build iOS around it. (In the current climate this probably also means that handwriting won’t come to iOS anytime soon.)
        slantyyz 16y ago
        I think we can thank RIM for that. While they were not the first, they arguably made the QWERTY keyboard ubiquitous and (for the first time) more than tolerable on a phone sized device.
    - bosie 16y ago
      You are right about speed. However, I would like to have handwriting simply for symbols and drawing (i.e. mindmapping). How are you going to enter math formulas faster with a keyboard than a pen? Same goes for marking and annotating things. IMO, precision and speed for marking/annotating is pretty bad with iOS. But I don't see how apps like Omnifocus can make use of it.
      - masklinn 16y ago
        You'd need a thin stylus for that, and Apple doesn't ship one which means they're not going to built it into the OS. But surely it wouldn't be too hard (where too hard means technically infeasible) to create an application based on hand-written input (Graffiti or Rosetta/Inkwell-type technologies).
        glhaynes 16y ago
        And there are indeed apps that do that. (I don't know the name(s), but I've seen at least one running on a friend's iPad.)
  - xal 16y ago
    Did the Newton? :-)
    - kabdib 16y ago
      Not part of the OS per se. Part of the platform, yes, but there were plenty of apps that never used handwriting recognition. [Near as I can tell, the only association with Newton is the use of an ARM. I sure wouldn't use NewtOS on anything modern, even as cool as NewtOS was in its day.]
  - masklinn 16y ago
    iOS has had a handwriting-based keyboard for Chinese since iPhoneOS 2.0. But I'm guessing drawing letterforms with your finger isn't a very enjoyable input method, and most of the iPad styluses available aim at replicating a finger (since that's what most applications expect).
    - riobard 16y ago
      Actually for drawing Chinese characters it's not that bad. I plan to get an iPad for my parents so they can draw Chinese characters instead of learning how to type (there are many older generations in China who cannot type Chinese on a computer because they don't know how to do that). I just wish the character recognition could be better.
      - masklinn 16y ago
        Oh yes, sorry for the lack of precision, I meant "for western-european languages" (or more precisely for languages with a fairly low number of graphemes), for Chinese or for Japanese Kanji it makes a lot of sense to ask for tracing as providing keyboard systems with good/easy access to thousands of graphemes is not easy. Though I believe Japanese have a system for such a thing, which they use on regular QWERTY keyboard, my sister demonstrated it to me (you basically type phonetics and it builds graphemes/characters on the fly, something like that). For that reason (and because japanese people are used to that kind of input) iOS has a qwerty (romaji) and a 10key japanese keyboards but I don't think it has a handwritten one (it has 8 different Chinese keyboards, 3 simplified [with "handwriting" and "stroke" versions] and 3 Traditional [Handwriting, pinyin, zhuyin, cangjie and stroke]).
- rbanffy 16y ago
  I always called the iPhone the Newton ][ The iPad is the Newton ///, something interesting because, unlike the original Apple ///, this one is a huge success.
ams6110 16y ago
The acquisition of NeXT really gave Apple a lot of flexibility. Even in the 1990s, the NEXTSTEP OS ran on M68K, Sparc, and x86. Apps could be compiled to "tri-fat" binaries so one binary distribution worked on all platforms. I have no doubt that Apple had Mac OS X running on Intel from day 1, as well as PowerPC. That legacy gives them a lot of flexibility in processor choices.
- SamReidHughes 16y ago
  They did. This was revealed when they did the Intel switch-over. Or at least they claimed so.
  - wriq 16y ago
    Rhapsody's (OSX's codename) first two developer releases were available for X86. It wasn't until OSX Server 1.0 that Apple only publicly released PowerPC versions of OSX.
- spitfire 16y ago
  Quad fat, NeXTstep also ran on HP-PARISC. In fact an HP 712/100 was the nicest NeXT system I have ever used. Blazingly fast (even in 2010!) easy to use and dead silent.
- malkia 16y ago
  I miss YellowBox (OpenSTEP, NeXTStep, Cocoa whatever you call it for Windows). I still have installed on my Windows XP from the last Objective-C based WebObjects - 4.5.2, but can't redistribute apps with it. It came with built in Sampler, one was able to debug with Visual Studio the compiled executables (there was a converter that took the dwarf debug info and converted it CV (CodeView) compatible one for Visual Studio). The apps looked natively on Windows (unlike GNUStep), much like Cocotron, but you were able to develop them on the system. That to be said, Apple's OS and the underlying Foundation/AppKit/UIKit are truly hameleonic - I'm sure they can migrate easily to new platforms.
hackermom 16y ago
It won't stop here. Apple will put ARM in their laptops, and they will help usher in a new era of more power efficient computing in a way that x86 simply cannot, in whatever shape. Just wait and see.
- chrisaycock 16y ago
  ARM claims their new Cortex-A15 will provide five times the performance of existing smart phones. So the resources and interest are definitely out there. http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a15.php http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a15.p...
  - pohl 16y ago
    A factor of 5 then. How close would that put such a CPU to the slowest MacBook? (how many times faster than an iPad is a MacBook Air?)
    - sp332 16y ago
      It seems to be 5-7x faster, according to http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/2010/10/macbookair_benchmarks-late-2010/ http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/2010/10/macbookair_benchmarks...
  - protomyth 16y ago
    Probably just as important for a MacBook replacement: "The introduction of Large Physical Address Extensions (LPAE) enables the processor to access up to 1TB of memory."
    - spicyj 16y ago
      I think that refers to RAM, not disk space.
      - protomyth 16y ago
        uhm, yeah, and that's why it is so important as it breaks the 4gb ram barrier on ARMs.
grantheaslip 16y ago
Quick rule of thumb: if it's on AppleInsider, it's probably speculative bullshit. Doubly so if it's written by Daniel Eran Dilger, whose articles usually are in the following form: Recent news item + A bunch of tangentially related, usually revisionist details about Apple's history + Some tangentially related, laughably biased, usually revisionist shots at Microsoft/Google + (Sometimes) An insane, impossible-to-read graph/chart = Unsubstantiated conclusion that reads like a wish list for what Daniel wants Apple to do, not what the evidence shows. He recently wrote an article explaining that he thinks Apple is going to port Cocoa to Windows and release a Windows app store: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/11/12/when-will-apple-release-an-app-store-for-windows/ http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/11/12/when-will-apple-rel...
- cubicle67 16y ago
  and yet... I see you can't help but read them
  - grantheaslip 16y ago
    Total red herring. Sure, I've read some of his articles in the past, and I even skimmed this one to make sure I wasn't wrong, but that doesn't change a thing about the substance of them.
  - masklinn 16y ago
    Oh yes you can. Check author, if it's Dilger just close the tab.

56 points by Bud 16y ago

Bud 16y ago

Note that the Newton's soul really does live on in the iPad, according to this article. Long live the Newton!

mmphosis 16y ago
But does the iPad recognize handwriting as part of the operating system like the Newton did?
- pclark 16y ago
  Not yet, but Mac OS X does.
- ugh 16y ago
  Why would you want that? Handwriting is slow, certainly slower than the keyboard iOS provides. I’m honestly puzzled why handwriting was ever a favored input method.
  - slantyyz 16y ago
    Maybe because just about everyone knows how to do it, and because it's quieter than tapping on a screen or keyboard? That's not to say it's the optimal method of input, but either is voice. There are use cases where writing or voice may be better than typing.
    - ugh 16y ago
      While writing might be a nice additional feature, I can certainly understand why Apple didn’t build iOS around it. (In the current climate this probably also means that handwriting won’t come to iOS anytime soon.)
      - slantyyz 16y ago
        I think we can thank RIM for that. While they were not the first, they arguably made the QWERTY keyboard ubiquitous and (for the first time) more than tolerable on a phone sized device.
  - bosie 16y ago
    You are right about speed. However, I would like to have handwriting simply for symbols and drawing (i.e. mindmapping). How are you going to enter math formulas faster with a keyboard than a pen? Same goes for marking and annotating things. IMO, precision and speed for marking/annotating is pretty bad with iOS. But I don't see how apps like Omnifocus can make use of it.
    - masklinn 16y ago
      You'd need a thin stylus for that, and Apple doesn't ship one which means they're not going to built it into the OS. But surely it wouldn't be too hard (where too hard means technically infeasible) to create an application based on hand-written input (Graffiti or Rosetta/Inkwell-type technologies).
      - glhaynes 16y ago
        And there are indeed apps that do that. (I don't know the name(s), but I've seen at least one running on a friend's iPad.)
- xal 16y ago
  Did the Newton? :-)
  - kabdib 16y ago
    Not part of the OS per se. Part of the platform, yes, but there were plenty of apps that never used handwriting recognition. [Near as I can tell, the only association with Newton is the use of an ARM. I sure wouldn't use NewtOS on anything modern, even as cool as NewtOS was in its day.]
- masklinn 16y ago
  iOS has had a handwriting-based keyboard for Chinese since iPhoneOS 2.0. But I'm guessing drawing letterforms with your finger isn't a very enjoyable input method, and most of the iPad styluses available aim at replicating a finger (since that's what most applications expect).
  - riobard 16y ago
    Actually for drawing Chinese characters it's not that bad. I plan to get an iPad for my parents so they can draw Chinese characters instead of learning how to type (there are many older generations in China who cannot type Chinese on a computer because they don't know how to do that). I just wish the character recognition could be better.
    - masklinn 16y ago
      Oh yes, sorry for the lack of precision, I meant "for western-european languages" (or more precisely for languages with a fairly low number of graphemes), for Chinese or for Japanese Kanji it makes a lot of sense to ask for tracing as providing keyboard systems with good/easy access to thousands of graphemes is not easy. Though I believe Japanese have a system for such a thing, which they use on regular QWERTY keyboard, my sister demonstrated it to me (you basically type phonetics and it builds graphemes/characters on the fly, something like that). For that reason (and because japanese people are used to that kind of input) iOS has a qwerty (romaji) and a 10key japanese keyboards but I don't think it has a handwritten one (it has 8 different Chinese keyboards, 3 simplified [with "handwriting" and "stroke" versions] and 3 Traditional [Handwriting, pinyin, zhuyin, cangjie and stroke]).
rbanffy 16y ago
I always called the iPhone the Newton ][ The iPad is the Newton ///, something interesting because, unlike the original Apple ///, this one is a huge success.

ams6110 16y ago

The acquisition of NeXT really gave Apple a lot of flexibility. Even in the 1990s, the NEXTSTEP OS ran on M68K, Sparc, and x86. Apps could be compiled to "tri-fat" binaries so one binary distribution worked on all platforms. I have no doubt that Apple had Mac OS X running on Intel from day 1, as well as PowerPC. That legacy gives them a lot of flexibility in processor choices.

SamReidHughes 16y ago
They did. This was revealed when they did the Intel switch-over. Or at least they claimed so.
- wriq 16y ago
  Rhapsody's (OSX's codename) first two developer releases were available for X86. It wasn't until OSX Server 1.0 that Apple only publicly released PowerPC versions of OSX.
spitfire 16y ago
Quad fat, NeXTstep also ran on HP-PARISC. In fact an HP 712/100 was the nicest NeXT system I have ever used. Blazingly fast (even in 2010!) easy to use and dead silent.
malkia 16y ago
I miss YellowBox (OpenSTEP, NeXTStep, Cocoa whatever you call it for Windows). I still have installed on my Windows XP from the last Objective-C based WebObjects - 4.5.2, but can't redistribute apps with it. It came with built in Sampler, one was able to debug with Visual Studio the compiled executables (there was a converter that took the dwarf debug info and converted it CV (CodeView) compatible one for Visual Studio). The apps looked natively on Windows (unlike GNUStep), much like Cocotron, but you were able to develop them on the system. That to be said, Apple's OS and the underlying Foundation/AppKit/UIKit are truly hameleonic - I'm sure they can migrate easily to new platforms.

hackermom 16y ago

It won't stop here. Apple will put ARM in their laptops, and they will help usher in a new era of more power efficient computing in a way that x86 simply cannot, in whatever shape. Just wait and see.

chrisaycock 16y ago
ARM claims their new Cortex-A15 will provide five times the performance of existing smart phones. So the resources and interest are definitely out there. http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a15.php http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a15.p...
- pohl 16y ago
  A factor of 5 then. How close would that put such a CPU to the slowest MacBook? (how many times faster than an iPad is a MacBook Air?)
  - sp332 16y ago
    It seems to be 5-7x faster, according to http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/2010/10/macbookair_benchmarks-late-2010/ http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/2010/10/macbookair_benchmarks...
- protomyth 16y ago
  Probably just as important for a MacBook replacement: "The introduction of Large Physical Address Extensions (LPAE) enables the processor to access up to 1TB of memory."
  - spicyj 16y ago
    I think that refers to RAM, not disk space.
    - protomyth 16y ago
      uhm, yeah, and that's why it is so important as it breaks the 4gb ram barrier on ARMs.

grantheaslip 16y ago

Quick rule of thumb: if it's on AppleInsider, it's probably speculative bullshit. Doubly so if it's written by Daniel Eran Dilger, whose articles usually are in the following form: Recent news item + A bunch of tangentially related, usually revisionist details about Apple's history + Some tangentially related, laughably biased, usually revisionist shots at Microsoft/Google + (Sometimes) An insane, impossible-to-read graph/chart = Unsubstantiated conclusion that reads like a wish list for what Daniel wants Apple to do, not what the evidence shows. He recently wrote an article explaining that he thinks Apple is going to port Cocoa to Windows and release a Windows app store: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/11/12/when-will-apple-release-an-app-store-for-windows/ http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/11/12/when-will-apple-rel...

cubicle67 16y ago
and yet... I see you can't help but read them
- grantheaslip 16y ago
  Total red herring. Sure, I've read some of his articles in the past, and I even skimmed this one to make sure I wasn't wrong, but that doesn't change a thing about the substance of them.
- masklinn 16y ago
  Oh yes you can. Check author, if it's Dilger just close the tab.