5 ms·

I think OP is trying to see something when there is nothing to see. This seems to be common pattern with lot of Apple fanboys. Apple might be still innovative a

by sytelus 13y ago

I think OP is trying to see something when there is nothing to see. This seems to be common pattern with lot of Apple fanboys. Apple might be still innovative as they want to believe and I wouldn't argue with that because it's waste of time. OP's core argument is flawed due to many reasons: 1. iOS is not good at multi-tasking which is bread and butter for desktop. Look what happened to Windows 8 which tried to forced full screen apps on 24" monitors all the time. 2. Phone/pads still don't have necessary RAM to run desktop class applications. Can you imagine running full strength Photoshop on iPad yet? 3. Phone/Pads are still far behind in providing large cheap storage compared to similarly priced devices. I'm not saying that convergence is not possible. It's just too early for its time still. I can imagine iPhone 7 to be able to replace today's laptops. But arguing that Apple has this genius secret idea that no one is able to see it bit too much of fanboyism.

mcphilip 13y ago
> 2. Phone/pads still don't have necessary RAM to run desktop class applications. Can you imagine running full strength Photoshop on iPad yet? Even if the hardware could handle an enterprise app like photoshop, I don't see companies wanting to spend the resources necessary to develop an iOS version in the first place.
- rallison 13y ago
  Even if we don't get Photoshop on the iPad in the near future, that doesn't mean that a simpler version of Photoshop won't appear for tablets or even phones. There are a ton of simple (for the user) operations available in Photoshop, that are memory-intensive, that could become viable on a tablet given more memory. That said, the important point isn't Photoshop specifically. Consider the Surface Pro - despite its flaws, being able to run virtually any desktop app (decently) is huge. We are nearing that convergence point where the distinction between tablet and desktop becomes fuzzy. More memory and higher power, lower wattage CPUs are getting us closer.
  - bergie 13y ago
    There is a Photoshop for Android tablets, at least https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.adobe.pstouch https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.adobe....
    - sbuk 13y ago
      Same as iOS; https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/adobe-photoshop-touch/id495716481?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/adobe-photoshop-touch/id4957...
mbenjaminsmith 13y ago
I'm not sure I agree with Cringely here either, but I think you're missing some important points: 1. iPhones do support multi-tasking, but the interface for it is poor. This could remedied, especially if iPhone would detect a larger screen and add an additional menu bar. 2. The killer app for the average desktop user isn't Photoshop, it's some manner of email/doc/spreadsheet. These do not require gobs of ram. For everyday use, they require: monitor, keyboard, mouse. 3. Which is quite possibly why Apple has built a zillion dollar data storage center (iCloud). Actually, Cringely might be right, but I don't think we're going to see it anytime soon. I think it might be Apple's longer-term plan. Put another way, it does pull together some interesting choices that Apple has made: 1. iCloud -- and more importantly the monster infrastructure developed for it. 2. The growing iOS-ification of OS X. 3. 64-bit processors (which, of course, allow for 'desktop class' amounts of ram). 4. Hardware accelerated screen sharing (AirPlay). Another thing, I don't understand why you would classify that as a "genius secret idea". I would call it a multi-billion dollar technology company looking a few years into the future.
- bmj 13y ago
  Indeed. Particularly: The killer app for the average desktop user isn't Photoshop, it's some manner of email/doc/spreadsheet. These do not require gobs of ram. For everyday use, they require: monitor, keyboard, mouse. If Apple thought they could run Photoshop off an iPad, they'd do it, but they also know their bread and butter for laptops and desktops are designers who use Photoshop and Illustrator all day, every day. I work for a tech company with a fairly large operational staff. I reckon at least half of those employees could get by with a good tablet with peripherals for almost all of their tasks.
  - mavhc 13y ago
    There must be a reason why Apple's rewritten every pro app they've acquired. My theory is it's so they will port to iOS easily. iOS is 90% of Apple's business
- mavhc 13y ago
  1. Macs do support multi-tasking, but the interface for it is poor. This could remedied, especially if OS X would detect a larger screen and add an additional menu bar.
jamesrcole 13y ago
> But arguing that Apple has this genius secret idea that no one is able to see it bit too much of fanboyism. Did you read the article? He says: "Why would Apple do this? Well for one thing if they don’t Google will. For that matter Google will, anyway, so Apple has some incentive to get this in the market pronto."
jamesrcole 13y ago
> 2. Phone/pads still don't have necessary RAM to run desktop class applications. Can you imagine running full strength Photoshop on iPad yet? The argument doesn't require it being able to run all kinds of desktop applications. He does say: "There are other reasons why Apple would do this. For one thing it is much more likely to hurt the PC market than the Mac market, since pocket desktop performance probably won’t be there for Apple’s core graphics and video markets. Mac sales might actually increase as sales are grabbed from faltering Windows vendors."
sorich87 13y ago
I don't agree with everything the OP said, but it seems like you're criticising for the sake of it. The OP is speculating about the future and the flaws you cite are valid now, but will they be valid in the future? What prevents iOS from getting improved multitasking in the future? Phone/pads don't have enough RAM or cheap storage now. What prevents them from getting that in the future? The OP wrote "Jump forward in time to a year from today.". You're trying to see fanboyism where there's none (or at least not as much as you want to believe). If Canonical could promise something similar to what the OP described with that famous Indiegogo campaign, don't you think it may be possible for Apple to do that for the next iPhone/iOS release?
leoc 13y ago
RAM isn't the only limitation: however cloudy you are, you'd probably want more than 8 GiB of persistent storage too. On the other hand it's not hard to see future iPhones ramping up RAM and flash, partly since the explosive increase in iPhone CPU speed has to be coming towards its end.
cones688 13y ago
I think what everyone is missing here is virtualization, why do you need your phone to have the power for it run them locally. Keep all the heavy lift action in the data center and with the new mobile data speeds "stream" your desktop through the phone onto a local screen/interactive devices. Phones will be like thin clients (a la citrix receiver) and so we have persistent backups and universal access along with desktop performance but still portability and battery life when not in thin client mode.
rythie 13y ago
These things are all easy to fix. > 1. iOS is not good at multi-tasking which is bread and butter for desktop. Look what happened to Windows 8 which tried to forced full screen apps on 24" monitors all the time. The base of iOS is still the OSX kernel, which is excellent at multitasking. A new UI for multitasking on bigger screens but that is fairly small addition, given that the apps and everything in the stack can already handle this. 2. Phone/pads still don't have necessary RAM to run desktop class applications. Can you imagine running full strength Photoshop on iPad yet? Disruption doesn't start with the power users, Photoshop is a power user style app, most users don't need anything like this - think more like multiple browsers windows, a chat client, office software etc. The Sasmung Galaxy Note III comes with 3GB of RAM. The base model Macbook Air comes with 4GB, as does the mini, as does the non-retina MBP. I don't see a big difference in RAM here. With a 64bit ARM chips there's no effective limit to the amount of RAM a phone could have. http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/samsung-galaxy-note-iii-and-lg-optimus-g2-to-come-with-3gb-ram-report-387948 http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/samsung-galaxy-note-iii... 3. Phone/Pads are still far behind in providing large cheap storage compared to similarly priced devices. Android and iOS phones can talk to USB storage and SD cards anyway (except Apple currently limits this to photos only though it's camera connector). Even without this 64GB is a lot more than many people need, especially if they store content in the cloud, which seems likely in this model of computing. Even within the limitations of most phone's software now, you can use WiFi harddisks which are cheap. If Apple doesn't do this, someone else will, e.g. http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge
mercer 13y ago
> 1. iOS is not good at multi-tasking which is bread and butter for desktop. Look what happened to Windows 8 which tried to forced full screen apps on 24" monitors all the time. Most non-techie people I know barely multitask. And that includes people who really would benefit from it ('high-powered executives' come to mind). 2. Phone/pads still don't have necessary RAM to run desktop class applications. Can you imagine running full strength Photoshop on iPad yet? True, but for a huge amount of people that is not such an issue. The same people that barely multitask are also the ones that mostly use Office and a browser, and they usually only use the most basic office features. 3. Phone/Pads are still far behind in providing large cheap storage compared to similarly priced devices. Same situation. A large amount of users that I know don't need massive storage. Music is probably the biggest storage need, and even for that many have stopped bothering the whole itunes-syncing thing and just use spotify similar services. Case in point: my father is pretty tech-savvy. And yet, over the past years he's started doing more and more work on his iPad, and less and less on his MacBook. Most of what he does it writing, browsing, watching videos and email. And my mother recently 'donated' her laptop to my younger sister and does almost all she needs on her phone. My brother recently started traveling and if I hadn't given him my old MacBook Air, he'd probably settle for an iPad. And this is not just my family. I keep meeting more and more people who do this. Journalists going iPad-only, for example. And it makes sense. A shocking number of fellow students, highly educated people who should benefit greatly from multitasking and whatnot, barely understood the filesystem, and often worked at the library on shitty computers where they fullscreened every app. They are not even aware of the 'power' that we power users utilize. None of this invalidates your points. There are many people who need fully-featured operating systems. I'm merely pointing out that there's a huge market that can already get by on just an iPad (plus keyboard), and Apple is already mostly targeting this market. Convergence is pretty much possible already, and it wouldn't take much to make it entirely practical and workable for a huge amount of people.
normloman 13y ago
Seeing something where there is nothing to see isn't a symptom of fanboys. It's a symptom of journalists.

by sytelus 13y ago

mcphilip 13y ago

> 2. Phone/pads still don't have necessary RAM to run desktop class applications. Can you imagine running full strength Photoshop on iPad yet? Even if the hardware could handle an enterprise app like photoshop, I don't see companies wanting to spend the resources necessary to develop an iOS version in the first place.

rallison 13y ago
Even if we don't get Photoshop on the iPad in the near future, that doesn't mean that a simpler version of Photoshop won't appear for tablets or even phones. There are a ton of simple (for the user) operations available in Photoshop, that are memory-intensive, that could become viable on a tablet given more memory. That said, the important point isn't Photoshop specifically. Consider the Surface Pro - despite its flaws, being able to run virtually any desktop app (decently) is huge. We are nearing that convergence point where the distinction between tablet and desktop becomes fuzzy. More memory and higher power, lower wattage CPUs are getting us closer.
- bergie 13y ago
  There is a Photoshop for Android tablets, at least https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.adobe.pstouch https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.adobe....
  - sbuk 13y ago
    Same as iOS; https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/adobe-photoshop-touch/id495716481?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/adobe-photoshop-touch/id4957...

mbenjaminsmith 13y ago

I'm not sure I agree with Cringely here either, but I think you're missing some important points: 1. iPhones do support multi-tasking, but the interface for it is poor. This could remedied, especially if iPhone would detect a larger screen and add an additional menu bar. 2. The killer app for the average desktop user isn't Photoshop, it's some manner of email/doc/spreadsheet. These do not require gobs of ram. For everyday use, they require: monitor, keyboard, mouse. 3. Which is quite possibly why Apple has built a zillion dollar data storage center (iCloud). Actually, Cringely might be right, but I don't think we're going to see it anytime soon. I think it might be Apple's longer-term plan. Put another way, it does pull together some interesting choices that Apple has made: 1. iCloud -- and more importantly the monster infrastructure developed for it. 2. The growing iOS-ification of OS X. 3. 64-bit processors (which, of course, allow for 'desktop class' amounts of ram). 4. Hardware accelerated screen sharing (AirPlay). Another thing, I don't understand why you would classify that as a "genius secret idea". I would call it a multi-billion dollar technology company looking a few years into the future.

bmj 13y ago
Indeed. Particularly: The killer app for the average desktop user isn't Photoshop, it's some manner of email/doc/spreadsheet. These do not require gobs of ram. For everyday use, they require: monitor, keyboard, mouse. If Apple thought they could run Photoshop off an iPad, they'd do it, but they also know their bread and butter for laptops and desktops are designers who use Photoshop and Illustrator all day, every day. I work for a tech company with a fairly large operational staff. I reckon at least half of those employees could get by with a good tablet with peripherals for almost all of their tasks.
- mavhc 13y ago
  There must be a reason why Apple's rewritten every pro app they've acquired. My theory is it's so they will port to iOS easily. iOS is 90% of Apple's business
mavhc 13y ago
1. Macs do support multi-tasking, but the interface for it is poor. This could remedied, especially if OS X would detect a larger screen and add an additional menu bar.

jamesrcole 13y ago

> But arguing that Apple has this genius secret idea that no one is able to see it bit too much of fanboyism. Did you read the article? He says: "Why would Apple do this? Well for one thing if they don’t Google will. For that matter Google will, anyway, so Apple has some incentive to get this in the market pronto."

jamesrcole 13y ago

> 2. Phone/pads still don't have necessary RAM to run desktop class applications. Can you imagine running full strength Photoshop on iPad yet? The argument doesn't require it being able to run all kinds of desktop applications. He does say: "There are other reasons why Apple would do this. For one thing it is much more likely to hurt the PC market than the Mac market, since pocket desktop performance probably won’t be there for Apple’s core graphics and video markets. Mac sales might actually increase as sales are grabbed from faltering Windows vendors."

sorich87 13y ago

I don't agree with everything the OP said, but it seems like you're criticising for the sake of it. The OP is speculating about the future and the flaws you cite are valid now, but will they be valid in the future? What prevents iOS from getting improved multitasking in the future? Phone/pads don't have enough RAM or cheap storage now. What prevents them from getting that in the future? The OP wrote "Jump forward in time to a year from today.". You're trying to see fanboyism where there's none (or at least not as much as you want to believe). If Canonical could promise something similar to what the OP described with that famous Indiegogo campaign, don't you think it may be possible for Apple to do that for the next iPhone/iOS release?

leoc 13y ago

RAM isn't the only limitation: however cloudy you are, you'd probably want more than 8 GiB of persistent storage too. On the other hand it's not hard to see future iPhones ramping up RAM and flash, partly since the explosive increase in iPhone CPU speed has to be coming towards its end.

cones688 13y ago

I think what everyone is missing here is virtualization, why do you need your phone to have the power for it run them locally. Keep all the heavy lift action in the data center and with the new mobile data speeds "stream" your desktop through the phone onto a local screen/interactive devices. Phones will be like thin clients (a la citrix receiver) and so we have persistent backups and universal access along with desktop performance but still portability and battery life when not in thin client mode.

rythie 13y ago

These things are all easy to fix. > 1. iOS is not good at multi-tasking which is bread and butter for desktop. Look what happened to Windows 8 which tried to forced full screen apps on 24" monitors all the time. The base of iOS is still the OSX kernel, which is excellent at multitasking. A new UI for multitasking on bigger screens but that is fairly small addition, given that the apps and everything in the stack can already handle this. 2. Phone/pads still don't have necessary RAM to run desktop class applications. Can you imagine running full strength Photoshop on iPad yet? Disruption doesn't start with the power users, Photoshop is a power user style app, most users don't need anything like this - think more like multiple browsers windows, a chat client, office software etc. The Sasmung Galaxy Note III comes with 3GB of RAM. The base model Macbook Air comes with 4GB, as does the mini, as does the non-retina MBP. I don't see a big difference in RAM here. With a 64bit ARM chips there's no effective limit to the amount of RAM a phone could have. http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/samsung-galaxy-note-iii-and-lg-optimus-g2-to-come-with-3gb-ram-report-387948 http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/samsung-galaxy-note-iii... 3. Phone/Pads are still far behind in providing large cheap storage compared to similarly priced devices. Android and iOS phones can talk to USB storage and SD cards anyway (except Apple currently limits this to photos only though it's camera connector). Even without this 64GB is a lot more than many people need, especially if they store content in the cloud, which seems likely in this model of computing. Even within the limitations of most phone's software now, you can use WiFi harddisks which are cheap. If Apple doesn't do this, someone else will, e.g. http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge

mercer 13y ago

> 1. iOS is not good at multi-tasking which is bread and butter for desktop. Look what happened to Windows 8 which tried to forced full screen apps on 24" monitors all the time. Most non-techie people I know barely multitask. And that includes people who really would benefit from it ('high-powered executives' come to mind). 2. Phone/pads still don't have necessary RAM to run desktop class applications. Can you imagine running full strength Photoshop on iPad yet? True, but for a huge amount of people that is not such an issue. The same people that barely multitask are also the ones that mostly use Office and a browser, and they usually only use the most basic office features. 3. Phone/Pads are still far behind in providing large cheap storage compared to similarly priced devices. Same situation. A large amount of users that I know don't need massive storage. Music is probably the biggest storage need, and even for that many have stopped bothering the whole itunes-syncing thing and just use spotify similar services. Case in point: my father is pretty tech-savvy. And yet, over the past years he's started doing more and more work on his iPad, and less and less on his MacBook. Most of what he does it writing, browsing, watching videos and email. And my mother recently 'donated' her laptop to my younger sister and does almost all she needs on her phone. My brother recently started traveling and if I hadn't given him my old MacBook Air, he'd probably settle for an iPad. And this is not just my family. I keep meeting more and more people who do this. Journalists going iPad-only, for example. And it makes sense. A shocking number of fellow students, highly educated people who should benefit greatly from multitasking and whatnot, barely understood the filesystem, and often worked at the library on shitty computers where they fullscreened every app. They are not even aware of the 'power' that we power users utilize. None of this invalidates your points. There are many people who need fully-featured operating systems. I'm merely pointing out that there's a huge market that can already get by on just an iPad (plus keyboard), and Apple is already mostly targeting this market. Convergence is pretty much possible already, and it wouldn't take much to make it entirely practical and workable for a huge amount of people.

normloman 13y ago

Seeing something where there is nothing to see isn't a symptom of fanboys. It's a symptom of journalists.