The Apple thread

skweek · Post by **skweek** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 1:10 pm 0

Newton, innit.

tufty · Post by **tufty** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 1:12 pm 0

With my music removed, I only use half of the 80GB on my mac mini...

xav · Post by **xav** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 1:17 pm 0

I can see Apple potentially handling the reduced storage space of a flash laptop in a few different ways:

1) Launch a home NAS - an Airport Extreme with a hard drive. The bulk of your data lives on there so that when you're in the house you have access to all your data, with reduced access when you're out and about.

2) Increased storage and functionality in .Mac so that you can access your files from anywhere that you've got an internet connection.

3) A bit of both of the above: a NAS that synchronises with your .Mac account automatically; the NAS acts as a local cache for faster access, but you can still get to everything when you're out and about. They could get really fancy and let you buy multiple NASen which would synchronise via .Mac, so that you can have a cache at home and a cache at work.

4) A bit of both, but rather than synchronising with .Mac, the .Mac servers just act as a gateway to negotiate a connection between your Mac and your NAS. Thereafter the actual data transfer is directly between your Mac and the NAS.

skweek · Post by **skweek** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 1:18 pm 0

xav wrote:I can see Apple potentially handling the reduced storage space of a flash laptop in a few different ways:

1) Launch a home NAS - an Airport Extreme with a hard drive. The bulk of your data lives on there so that when you're in the house you have access to all your data, with reduced access when you're out and about.

2) Increased storage and functionality in .Mac so that you can access your files from anywhere that you've got an internet connection.

3) A bit of both of the above: a NAS that synchronises with your .Mac account automatically; the NAS acts as a local cache for faster access, but you can still get to everything when you're out and about. They could get really fancy and let you buy multiple NASen which would synchronise via .Mac, so that you can have a cache at home and a cache at work.

4) A bit of both, but rather than synchronising with .Mac, the .Mac servers just act as a gateway to negotiate a connection between your Mac and your NAS. Thereafter the actual data transfer is directly between your Mac and the NAS.

I like your thinking but only have one thing to say...

.Mac

xav · Post by **xav** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 1:22 pm 0

I know what you mean, which is why I tried to imply that .Mac needed a serious upgrade as well:

xav wrote:2) Increased storage and functionality in .Mac

matt · Post by **matt** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 1:34 pm 0

Roll on 6pm!

skweek · Post by **skweek** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 1:35 pm 0

xav wrote:I know what you mean, which is why I tried to imply that .Mac needed a serious upgrade as well:

xav wrote:2) Increased storage and functionality in .Mac

I know, I know.

The .Mac overhaul has been rumoured for ages though and has never turned up.

Kemper_Boyd · Post by **Kemper_Boyd** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 2:18 pm 0

skweek wrote:The .Mac overhaul has been rumoured for ages though and has never turned up.

A .mac overhaul? That's right up there with the xMac. Face it Steve doesn't
give a fuck about what we want.

*secretly crosses fingers to be proved wrong*

sarabob · Post by **sarabob** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 3:03 pm 0

xav wrote:I can see Apple potentially handling the reduced storage space of a flash laptop in a few different ways:

1) Launch a home NAS - an Airport Extreme with a hard drive. The bulk of your data lives on there so that when you're in the house you have access to all your data, with reduced access when you're out and about.

Thinking about this: it should be possible to make a nice NAS with *better* disk speeds than internal drives - I get pings of 0.8ms to the router, disk latency is typically ~10ms. Can nfs/cifs/whatever be faster than an internal disk? (assuming big cache on the nas, natch). At what point does throughput start to hurt for 'normal' disk usage? Hmmm.

Bubba · Post by **Bubba** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 3:58 pm 0

Kemper_Boyd wrote:Face it Steve doesn't give a fuck about what we want.

I think sadly looking at the decreasing build quality of macs that this has been true for some time.

Just as Epic is now known as "The studio that bought you Gears of War", Apple now sell iPods / iPhones. And occasionally macs. Witness the Genius Bar being full of people who know how to sync music to your iTunes rather than anything about macs.

I still love them though, just look back at my powermac G3 and G4 and wish they still made them like they used to

Cheers

Bubba

matt · Post by **matt** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 4:16 pm 0

Asus make the current Macs, read into that what you will.

Also, they are trying to bring their product ranges closer together by introducing the "palmtop computer" iPhone/iTouch?

WiteWulf · Post by **WiteWulf** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 4:20 pm 0

Store's down

(Excited now)

teamonkey · Post by **teamonkey** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 4:24 pm 0

matt wrote:Also, they are trying to bring their product ranges closer together by introducing the "palmtop computer" iPhone/iTouch?

Fingers crossed for a 7" iTouch...

HGFB · Post by **HGFB** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 4:28 pm 0

If it's a flash based laptop then I expect that like the iPods it won't be a total sudden replacement. Mainly because of the lower disk capacities. It'll be a gradual phasein with the spinny HDDs being replaced totally over time with larger and larger flash storage.

matt · Post by **matt** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 4:57 pm 0

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/15/live ... s-keynote/

The show kicks off at:
07:00AM - Hawaii
09:00AM - Pacific
10:00AM - Mountain
11:00AM - Central
12:00PM - Eastern
05:00PM - GMT / London
06:00PM - Paris
08:00PM - Moscow
02:00AM - Tokyo (January 16th)