6 ms·

Imagine the Apple Thunderbolt Display… without the display

39 points by ukdm 15y ago

allenp 15y ago
"You see, we are almost certainly moving towards a world where the only computer we own will be wearable, or simply a smartphone." I just don't think that's true any time soon. Anyone that needs to type out a paper for school, for example, might need something more than a smartphone. Or someone that likes to read on screens larger than 4". Maybe the author is counting on holographic projection or the like?
- mrsebastian 15y ago
  Read the next few sentences! The whole point is that Thunderbolt will let you plug your smartphone into a keyboard (to write that paper), or a projector, video camera (FireWire), or an external RAID array (eSATA/PCIe) for that matter. As soon as the Thunderbolt/Light Peak socket gets a little thinner, anyway :)
  - glhaynes 15y ago
    But is that really what people want? I don't want my phone being tied up being a CPU. I want to be able to pick it up (without unhooking any wires) at any time and make a phone call, walk around, etc. Or check Twitter on it while I'm working on my big screen. Just because it'll have enough processing power/storage capacity to be my "computer" doesn't mean I'd want it to - I still want both form factors.
    - mrsebastian 15y ago
      Yes, multiple form factors will exist. As you say in your other comment, there are different use cases -- you don't want to read a book on a display the size of a wristwatch, for example :) I mean, it's impossible to say what we'll be doing in a few years, let alone 10 or 20, but if we still spend a lot of time moving around and interacting with the physical universe then I think smartphones will beat out tablets. You might have a tablet at home or at the office, but I suspect it will just be a dumb display. Admittedly you wouldn't want to use a Thunderbolt cable in that case -- you'd want a wireless solution of some kind. There are wireless solutions that support extension of the PCIe bus, though, like the upcoming WiGig thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Gigabit_Alliance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Gigabit_Alliance
      - glhaynes 15y ago
        Definitely agree it's impossible to say. :) Why do you think the tablet would become a dumb display? It's hard for me to imagine there being much cost savings there - you could remove some smarts but you'd have to replace them with almost-equivalent-costing smarts because you still have to handle networking, presentation of remotely-generated video and audio, receiving and transmitting user inputs, etc. Guess you could save a bit on flash storage, too. But compared to the extra latency, added dependence, etc, it doesn't seem a win to me at all.
        mrsebastian 15y ago
        Hrm, good question. I guess I just don't see us using 10 discrete computers to interact with the cloud. I don't see us having a TV computer, a tablet computer, a smartphone, a desktop, an office machine -- I see us having one computer (with a secure link to the cloud) that then interfaces with our surroundings. I agree, the cost difference wouldn't be that significant between a normal tablet and a dumb tablet, but I don't think it will come down to costs. It will come down to security, flexibility, customizability...
        glhaynes 15y ago
        I expect there'll be options for this, but I also expect they won't become very popular for a number of reasons. The biggest that springs to mind is that this puts a lot more strain on the battery of the phone, the device that you most want to stay charged. No doubt this will be mitigated by lower-power electronics and better battery technology, but I think we're still many years from people having tons of battery capacity to spare on their phones. Anyway, I hope systems like this will be built, in part because I like to see all the evolutionary options explored! But I don't see anything functionality-wise that appeals to me personally from systems like the Atrix, while the disadvantages seems pretty clear. EDIT: I should say that there is one clear benefit of an "all-in-one" system: having all your data with you all the time. But cloud-storage with automatic push of documents and media allows a similar benefit.
  - jokermatt999 15y ago
    So basically the Motorola Atrix? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G
    - wmf 15y ago
      Except the "webtop" mode is garbage.
      - sukuriant 15y ago
        Could you expound upon that? Except for my understanding that it uses tethering bytes instead of phone bytes, I thought that they webtop mode would be sufficiently cool to be useful for emailing, more verbose texting, some web-browsing and ssh sessions. Is it really that bad?
  - jarek 15y ago
    Back in my days, the future involved wireless keyboard and file access... But why do it with Bluetooth when you can do it shinier with Thunderbolt?
- glhaynes 15y ago
  I agree that we're not moving to a world with only wearable/smartphone computers — why would we? Why would we not want tablets or laptops any more? And why would we want our devices to depend on each other (like a tablet or laptop that draws its processing power from one's wearable computer)? We'll continue to have devices in a variety of form factors (meeting a variety of human interface needs), but our data will be synced up via the cloud.
  - ianterrell 15y ago
    The author, however clumsily, is noting that computing and interface are separate concerns. We don't want "laptops," we want a clamshell keyboard and display for ergonomic reasons. Similarly, we don't want desktops, we want a keyboard and a large monitor. We don't want tablets, we want a medium sized interactive touch screen. But I'd be no less happy if the actual computing was done in my pocket by my smartphone while I sat the dumb keyboard/display clamshell on my lap (it'd be lighter and cooler, too, I expect), or held the interactive screen in my hand, or typed on the keyboard resting on my desk. In fact, I'd be much happier, because all the data would stay with my physically 24/7, like my phone already does. All of my separate form-factor input/output peripherals would be working with the same versions of apps and code. On the other hand, if I lost it, I'd cry myself to sleep, so cloud backed up everything would be required. This makes it a not-ok choice for many people for many reasons (privacy, etc), but it's great for the average user doing average things. I see it as a very real possibility that the smartphone will be the CPU, and all the other devices we have will get dumber and dumber.
    - mrsebastian 15y ago
      I'm the author -- and yes, you got it in one :)
    - Hyena 15y ago
      I'd think that world would be a long ways off for a lot of people. I can't play large games from my phone. There's not even a port of Dwarf Fortress. Sad times.
- riobard 15y ago
  “Anyone that needs to type out a paper for school, for example, might need something more than a smartphone.” This might sound awkward, but it's actually doable on an iPad with the bluetooth keyboard connected for typing. Maybe not for complex math papers, but for English essays the setup is definitely very usable. I've tried.
haberman 15y ago
Wouldn't it be nice if the Thunderbolt Display had an optical drive? Lack of an optical drive is one of the few things that makes me nervous about going the MacBook air route anytime soon.
- chetan51 15y ago
  Would you use it regularly, and if so, for what? For the offhand driver installs, you can always use Mac disk sharing.
  - haberman 15y ago
    Not regularly, no, just something I want to have available. Here are some things I still use an optical drive for: - ripping CDs of rare or out-of-print music. - burning CDs/DVDs of photos for friends who don't have a USB drive. - reading old CDs I have, like a CD of BeOS. But I use it infrequently enough that maybe a peripheral is the way to go.
    - petsos 15y ago
      1) A valid reason. 2) Come on, just buy them a usb stick, it will be much cheaper in the long run and way more convenient. 3) Storage is so cheap and CDs so unreliabe that you are better off just ripping them once and never use them again.
- mrsebastian 15y ago
  That would basically make it an iMac... :D
- chromium 15y ago
  But consider, would you really need one? I thought the same thing when I explored purchasing the new 13" Air, until I realized that the last time I needed to put a DVD in my computer was 2008 and it adds way more everyday weight than it gives everyday use.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
sudont 15y ago
I expect Matrox would be up for building it since they already have an established base for video switching. However, I've always suspected that the iMac is the real successor to the Cinema Display line: Thunderbolt pass-through, internal video card. It'd take some engineering, but if anyone could do it, Apple could. Plus, Apple's always interested in consolidating product lines with value-adds.
- sandipc 15y ago
  As far as I know, the 27" iMac already does video pass-through over mini-displayport/thunderbolt. I think it has to be turned on, though.
  - sudont 15y ago
    It does DisplayPort, which is a terminal connection. I'm thinking the new ones could use the thunderbolt bus to both initialize the internal video card, as well as pass through DisplayPort to another monitor.
kemiller 15y ago
I love that mini display port is now considered "chubby".
- glhaynes 15y ago
  It wasn't too many years ago that I heard that they were working on standards for flash storage cards that were smaller than CompactFlash and I thought to myself: "What in the world is the point? CF is really small already!"
Unregistered 15y ago
Why thunderbolt interconnect, and not wireless thunderbolt interconnect? We already have Wireless HDMI.
- masklinn 15y ago
  > Why thunderbolt interconnect, and not wireless thunderbolt interconnect? 20Gb each way over the air? Good luck with that one. And the latencies are going to be ignominious. > We already have Wireless HDMI. WHDMI is not a 2-way data communication, latency matters far less when you're just streaming A/V to your television.
  - Unregistered 15y ago
    The article was meant to be forward looking - "You see, we are almost certainly moving towards" I don't think the vision is practical if you have to continuously plug/unplug your devices. The wirelessHD spec has theoretical data rates up to 25Gb. Latency matters for user input ( keyboard/mouse) which is already accommodated at much lower bitrates, so I wouldn't expect it to be much of an issue.
    - masklinn 15y ago
      > Latency matters for user input ( keyboard/mouse) Not really, as long as those latencies stay significantly sub-second they're invisible to users. These latencies matter for everything but user input.
      - Unregistered 15y ago
        " as long as those latencies stay significantly sub-second" exactly. You can't really state that something doesn't matter, and then give criteria under which it doesn't matter. That implies that it does matter, and the solution needs to be engineered within spec. I'd also be interested in some examples of the "everything else" cases in which latency is a big deal ( within the given context).
napierzaza 15y ago
So... a laptop docking station. I know those haven't existed for Macs... but they do exist, right now.
- rauljara 15y ago
  Not sure exactly how long these have been around, but my boss has had one for four years, at least. http://www.bookendzdocks.com/ http://www.bookendzdocks.com/
- thought_alarm 15y ago
  No, a laptop docking standard, among other things.
dkarl 15y ago
For your next trick, Steve, please invent a tablet that is a docking station for an iPhone. One device, multiple form factors. I'd love to snap my iPhone into the back of a 10" screen so I can watch a move or read the paper. When I didn't feel like carrying the 10" screen around, I'd just take the phone out and leave the screen behind. When I felt like doing some work on the road, I could carry the 10" screen _and_ a bluetooth keyboard. At home, I'd connect my phone to a big beautiful monitor and a full-size keyboard. Concrete steps toward that vision is your best bet for keeping me buying Apple hardware now that there are good Android phones available and good Android tablets, too (if not now then soon). One device, multiple form factors. One device to manage content and applications on, one device to sync, one device to always have with me. Any form factor I want. Sounds like a perfect way to spend the dividends of Moore's Law.
- avdempsey 15y ago
  That's actually the whole point of iCloud. You'll have separate devices--screens with an SOC--but they'll all behave just as you describe. Each device pushes your data up to the cloud where it bounces back to the rest. Three reasons why Apple will go this way rather than your transformer approach: -The utility is exactly the same -Each device's hardware will be designed to be itself, rather than a compromisotron -Apple gets to sell more devices
  - jjtheblunt 15y ago
    "compromisotron" :) well said.
  - dkarl 15y ago
    Apple gets to sell more devices This is Apple's top priority, so you're probably right. It assumes way too much about having a working internet connection, though[+]. When I'm reading a book or a movie and decide to switch to a different form factor, I don't want it to take a bunch of fiddling just to get back to where I was. Nor do I want to be stuck without a wireless connection and be stuck unable to download the app or data from one device to another. Without guaranteed communication between devices, they really will be different devices, with all the inconvenience and mental overhead that entails. Apple will have to implement peer-to-peer syncing over bluetooth or over a cable instead of depending on iCloud. [+] I took a trip to Chicago over the weekend, and my 3G connection only worked a handful of times over four days. Coming from a city where AT&T provides excellent 3G service, it was a real shock to be reminded that you can't take connectivity for granted.
georgieporgie 15y ago
where is our Thunderbolt-enabled $500 Windows laptop or netbook? Uh... The reason you get the Windows laptop for half the price is precisely because it doesn't have nifty hardware like Thunderbolt.

39 points by ukdm 15y ago

"You see, we are almost certainly moving towards a world where the only computer we own will be wearable, or simply a smartphone." I just don't think that's true any time soon. Anyone that needs to type out a paper for school, for example, might need something more than a smartphone. Or someone that likes to read on screens larger than 4". Maybe the author is counting on holographic projection or the like?

mrsebastian 15y ago
Read the next few sentences! The whole point is that Thunderbolt will let you plug your smartphone into a keyboard (to write that paper), or a projector, video camera (FireWire), or an external RAID array (eSATA/PCIe) for that matter. As soon as the Thunderbolt/Light Peak socket gets a little thinner, anyway :)
- glhaynes 15y ago
  But is that really what people want? I don't want my phone being tied up being a CPU. I want to be able to pick it up (without unhooking any wires) at any time and make a phone call, walk around, etc. Or check Twitter on it while I'm working on my big screen. Just because it'll have enough processing power/storage capacity to be my "computer" doesn't mean I'd want it to - I still want both form factors.
  - mrsebastian 15y ago
    Yes, multiple form factors will exist. As you say in your other comment, there are different use cases -- you don't want to read a book on a display the size of a wristwatch, for example :) I mean, it's impossible to say what we'll be doing in a few years, let alone 10 or 20, but if we still spend a lot of time moving around and interacting with the physical universe then I think smartphones will beat out tablets. You might have a tablet at home or at the office, but I suspect it will just be a dumb display. Admittedly you wouldn't want to use a Thunderbolt cable in that case -- you'd want a wireless solution of some kind. There are wireless solutions that support extension of the PCIe bus, though, like the upcoming WiGig thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Gigabit_Alliance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Gigabit_Alliance
    - glhaynes 15y ago
      Definitely agree it's impossible to say. :) Why do you think the tablet would become a dumb display? It's hard for me to imagine there being much cost savings there - you could remove some smarts but you'd have to replace them with almost-equivalent-costing smarts because you still have to handle networking, presentation of remotely-generated video and audio, receiving and transmitting user inputs, etc. Guess you could save a bit on flash storage, too. But compared to the extra latency, added dependence, etc, it doesn't seem a win to me at all.
      - mrsebastian 15y ago
        Hrm, good question. I guess I just don't see us using 10 discrete computers to interact with the cloud. I don't see us having a TV computer, a tablet computer, a smartphone, a desktop, an office machine -- I see us having one computer (with a secure link to the cloud) that then interfaces with our surroundings. I agree, the cost difference wouldn't be that significant between a normal tablet and a dumb tablet, but I don't think it will come down to costs. It will come down to security, flexibility, customizability...
        glhaynes 15y ago
        I expect there'll be options for this, but I also expect they won't become very popular for a number of reasons. The biggest that springs to mind is that this puts a lot more strain on the battery of the phone, the device that you most want to stay charged. No doubt this will be mitigated by lower-power electronics and better battery technology, but I think we're still many years from people having tons of battery capacity to spare on their phones. Anyway, I hope systems like this will be built, in part because I like to see all the evolutionary options explored! But I don't see anything functionality-wise that appeals to me personally from systems like the Atrix, while the disadvantages seems pretty clear. EDIT: I should say that there is one clear benefit of an "all-in-one" system: having all your data with you all the time. But cloud-storage with automatic push of documents and media allows a similar benefit.
- jokermatt999 15y ago
  So basically the Motorola Atrix? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G
  - wmf 15y ago
    Except the "webtop" mode is garbage.
    - sukuriant 15y ago
      Could you expound upon that? Except for my understanding that it uses tethering bytes instead of phone bytes, I thought that they webtop mode would be sufficiently cool to be useful for emailing, more verbose texting, some web-browsing and ssh sessions. Is it really that bad?
- jarek 15y ago
  Back in my days, the future involved wireless keyboard and file access... But why do it with Bluetooth when you can do it shinier with Thunderbolt?
glhaynes 15y ago
I agree that we're not moving to a world with only wearable/smartphone computers — why would we? Why would we not want tablets or laptops any more? And why would we want our devices to depend on each other (like a tablet or laptop that draws its processing power from one's wearable computer)? We'll continue to have devices in a variety of form factors (meeting a variety of human interface needs), but our data will be synced up via the cloud.
- ianterrell 15y ago
  The author, however clumsily, is noting that computing and interface are separate concerns. We don't want "laptops," we want a clamshell keyboard and display for ergonomic reasons. Similarly, we don't want desktops, we want a keyboard and a large monitor. We don't want tablets, we want a medium sized interactive touch screen. But I'd be no less happy if the actual computing was done in my pocket by my smartphone while I sat the dumb keyboard/display clamshell on my lap (it'd be lighter and cooler, too, I expect), or held the interactive screen in my hand, or typed on the keyboard resting on my desk. In fact, I'd be much happier, because all the data would stay with my physically 24/7, like my phone already does. All of my separate form-factor input/output peripherals would be working with the same versions of apps and code. On the other hand, if I lost it, I'd cry myself to sleep, so cloud backed up everything would be required. This makes it a not-ok choice for many people for many reasons (privacy, etc), but it's great for the average user doing average things. I see it as a very real possibility that the smartphone will be the CPU, and all the other devices we have will get dumber and dumber.
  - mrsebastian 15y ago
    I'm the author -- and yes, you got it in one :)
  - Hyena 15y ago
    I'd think that world would be a long ways off for a lot of people. I can't play large games from my phone. There's not even a port of Dwarf Fortress. Sad times.
riobard 15y ago
“Anyone that needs to type out a paper for school, for example, might need something more than a smartphone.” This might sound awkward, but it's actually doable on an iPad with the bluetooth keyboard connected for typing. Maybe not for complex math papers, but for English essays the setup is definitely very usable. I've tried.

haberman 15y ago

Wouldn't it be nice if the Thunderbolt Display had an optical drive? Lack of an optical drive is one of the few things that makes me nervous about going the MacBook air route anytime soon.

chetan51 15y ago
Would you use it regularly, and if so, for what? For the offhand driver installs, you can always use Mac disk sharing.
- haberman 15y ago
  Not regularly, no, just something I want to have available. Here are some things I still use an optical drive for: - ripping CDs of rare or out-of-print music. - burning CDs/DVDs of photos for friends who don't have a USB drive. - reading old CDs I have, like a CD of BeOS. But I use it infrequently enough that maybe a peripheral is the way to go.
  - petsos 15y ago
    1) A valid reason. 2) Come on, just buy them a usb stick, it will be much cheaper in the long run and way more convenient. 3) Storage is so cheap and CDs so unreliabe that you are better off just ripping them once and never use them again.
mrsebastian 15y ago
That would basically make it an iMac... :D
chromium 15y ago
But consider, would you really need one? I thought the same thing when I explored purchasing the new 13" Air, until I realized that the last time I needed to put a DVD in my computer was 2008 and it adds way more everyday weight than it gives everyday use.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

sudont 15y ago

I expect Matrox would be up for building it since they already have an established base for video switching. However, I've always suspected that the iMac is the real successor to the Cinema Display line: Thunderbolt pass-through, internal video card. It'd take some engineering, but if anyone could do it, Apple could. Plus, Apple's always interested in consolidating product lines with value-adds.

sandipc 15y ago
As far as I know, the 27" iMac already does video pass-through over mini-displayport/thunderbolt. I think it has to be turned on, though.
- sudont 15y ago
  It does DisplayPort, which is a terminal connection. I'm thinking the new ones could use the thunderbolt bus to both initialize the internal video card, as well as pass through DisplayPort to another monitor.

kemiller 15y ago

I love that mini display port is now considered "chubby".

glhaynes 15y ago
It wasn't too many years ago that I heard that they were working on standards for flash storage cards that were smaller than CompactFlash and I thought to myself: "What in the world is the point? CF is really small already!"

Unregistered 15y ago

Why thunderbolt interconnect, and not wireless thunderbolt interconnect? We already have Wireless HDMI.

masklinn 15y ago
> Why thunderbolt interconnect, and not wireless thunderbolt interconnect? 20Gb each way over the air? Good luck with that one. And the latencies are going to be ignominious. > We already have Wireless HDMI. WHDMI is not a 2-way data communication, latency matters far less when you're just streaming A/V to your television.
- Unregistered 15y ago
  The article was meant to be forward looking - "You see, we are almost certainly moving towards" I don't think the vision is practical if you have to continuously plug/unplug your devices. The wirelessHD spec has theoretical data rates up to 25Gb. Latency matters for user input ( keyboard/mouse) which is already accommodated at much lower bitrates, so I wouldn't expect it to be much of an issue.
  - masklinn 15y ago
    > Latency matters for user input ( keyboard/mouse) Not really, as long as those latencies stay significantly sub-second they're invisible to users. These latencies matter for everything but user input.
    - Unregistered 15y ago
      " as long as those latencies stay significantly sub-second" exactly. You can't really state that something doesn't matter, and then give criteria under which it doesn't matter. That implies that it does matter, and the solution needs to be engineered within spec. I'd also be interested in some examples of the "everything else" cases in which latency is a big deal ( within the given context).

napierzaza 15y ago

So... a laptop docking station. I know those haven't existed for Macs... but they do exist, right now.

rauljara 15y ago
Not sure exactly how long these have been around, but my boss has had one for four years, at least. http://www.bookendzdocks.com/ http://www.bookendzdocks.com/
thought_alarm 15y ago
No, a laptop docking standard, among other things.

dkarl 15y ago

For your next trick, Steve, please invent a tablet that is a docking station for an iPhone. One device, multiple form factors. I'd love to snap my iPhone into the back of a 10" screen so I can watch a move or read the paper. When I didn't feel like carrying the 10" screen around, I'd just take the phone out and leave the screen behind. When I felt like doing some work on the road, I could carry the 10" screen _and_ a bluetooth keyboard. At home, I'd connect my phone to a big beautiful monitor and a full-size keyboard. Concrete steps toward that vision is your best bet for keeping me buying Apple hardware now that there are good Android phones available and good Android tablets, too (if not now then soon). One device, multiple form factors. One device to manage content and applications on, one device to sync, one device to always have with me. Any form factor I want. Sounds like a perfect way to spend the dividends of Moore's Law.

avdempsey 15y ago
That's actually the whole point of iCloud. You'll have separate devices--screens with an SOC--but they'll all behave just as you describe. Each device pushes your data up to the cloud where it bounces back to the rest. Three reasons why Apple will go this way rather than your transformer approach: -The utility is exactly the same -Each device's hardware will be designed to be itself, rather than a compromisotron -Apple gets to sell more devices
- jjtheblunt 15y ago
  "compromisotron" :) well said.
- dkarl 15y ago
  Apple gets to sell more devices This is Apple's top priority, so you're probably right. It assumes way too much about having a working internet connection, though[+]. When I'm reading a book or a movie and decide to switch to a different form factor, I don't want it to take a bunch of fiddling just to get back to where I was. Nor do I want to be stuck without a wireless connection and be stuck unable to download the app or data from one device to another. Without guaranteed communication between devices, they really will be different devices, with all the inconvenience and mental overhead that entails. Apple will have to implement peer-to-peer syncing over bluetooth or over a cable instead of depending on iCloud. [+] I took a trip to Chicago over the weekend, and my 3G connection only worked a handful of times over four days. Coming from a city where AT&T provides excellent 3G service, it was a real shock to be reminded that you can't take connectivity for granted.

georgieporgie 15y ago

where is our Thunderbolt-enabled $500 Windows laptop or netbook? Uh... The reason you get the Windows laptop for half the price is precisely because it doesn't have nifty hardware like Thunderbolt.