Imagine the Apple Thunderbolt Display… without the display
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
If you like watching DVDs while you are mobile I would definitely not recommend getting a PC without optical drive anytime soon – for obvious reasons. If you don’t, I really see no reason not to ditch the optical drive. All other use cases seem to be handled well enough by emergency external drives.
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† Like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-External-Optical-SE-S084D-TSBS...
With RipIt.app set to auto-rip every inserted DVD and eject it it's no hassle.
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.
"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.
Not really, as long as those latencies stay significantly sub-second they're invisible to users. These latencies matter for everything but user input.
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).
Uh... The reason you get the Windows laptop for half the price is precisely because it doesn't have nifty hardware like Thunderbolt.
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?
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 :)
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
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.
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...
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.
Is it really that bad?
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.
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.