[Mike Wuerthele]

Nothing revolutionary in six years?

The iPad? I know tablets had been done before, as I have a few of them, but not like that.

[Phileas]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

That's what I was alluding to when I said they haven't introduced anything compelling in 6 years, that was back in 2008. What have they do for us lately? Not a lot.

Try running a computer from 2008 and you'll see how wrong that statement is.

[OreoCookie]

Even smartphones: if you consider where the iPhone and Android were in 2008 and compare that to what you can buy now, the difference is night-and-day.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by Mike Wuerthele 

Nothing revolutionary in six years?

The iPad? I know tablets had been done before, as I have a few of them, but not like that.

I said Notebooks.

---------

All the examples you guys have listed are either evolutionary inclusions from the desktop market (SSDs and faster I/O ports), or products that other makers were also including from tech advances (the Asus Zenbook's battery life is just as good as the Macbook Pro's). Again, no truly innovating products, at least not since the 6 y/o Air.

[Spheric Harlot]

If it were your agenda, you could easily make the argument that EVERYTHING Apple has done in the laptop space since 1991 has been merely "evolutionary".

[badidea]

Speaking of revolutionary ...where's the "Thirtieth Anniversary Mac"?
(I know that the TAM was build to celebrate 20 years of Apple - now they could celebrate 30 years of Mac)

[howieho]

Considering that half that 16GB needs to be free to install an update, 16GB isn't nearly enough.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

If it were your agenda, you could easily make the argument that EVERYTHING Apple has done in the laptop space since 1991 has been merely "evolutionary".

No, no, they did make unibody construction a standard (also in 2008), and it was a great leap forward in notebook design in terms of durability and weight savings. Also, they made the ultrabook an affordable (and very desirable) product that offered performance that wasn't too far off from full-size devices. Then before that they standardized the 16:9 display (the TiBook), while also implementing an almost all alu/magnesium construction, which despite making them a little more fragile if dropped (I broke the hinge on mine that way), did make them much thinner and lighter. The difference between the Powerbook G3 (Pismo) and the TiBook was stunning.

[Mike Wuerthele]

Originally Posted by howieho 

Considering that half that 16GB needs to be free to install an update, 16GB isn't nearly enough.

16GB is tight, yes.

OTA update = 5GB, less than half of the 12.8GB free.

iTunes update needed 2GB free, well less than 50 percent.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

All the examples you guys have listed are either evolutionary inclusions from the desktop market (SSDs and faster I/O ports), or products that other makers were also including from tech advances (the Asus Zenbook's battery life is just as good as the Macbook Pro's). Again, no truly innovating products, at least not since the 6 y/o Air.

So if tripling to more than quadrupling battery life while quadrupling the number of pixels on the screen and doubling CPU performance is just evolutionary for you, sure, then everything that has happened in the computing industry over the last 20, 30 years is evolutionary.

[Mike Wuerthele]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

I said Notebooks.

---------

All the examples you guys have listed are either evolutionary inclusions from the desktop market (SSDs and faster I/O ports), or products that other makers were also including from tech advances (the Asus Zenbook's battery life is just as good as the Macbook Pro's). Again, no truly innovating products, at least not since the 6 y/o Air.

Ah, I missed the Notebooks part.

So, if not Apple, who do you think is driving the notebook industry?

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

So if tripling to more than quadrupling battery life while quadrupling the number of pixels on the screen and doubling CPU performance is just evolutionary for you, sure, then everything that has happened in the computing industry over the last 20, 30 years is evolutionary.

You're right, I don't consider better battery life (credit the battery companies), increasing screen resolution (kudos to LCD panel makers like LG and Samsung), or faster CPUs (Moore's Law) to be revolutionary advancements, especially not for Apple. They didn't invent, nor greatly contribute to the advancement of, any of those things. I listed what I believe to be groundbreaking innovations from them, and at least in the notebook market, they haven't introduced any in quite a while.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by Mike Wuerthele 

Ah, I missed the Notebooks part.

So, if not Apple, who do you think is driving the notebook industry?

Right now? No one, except maybe some of the smaller boutique notebook companies (pushing the envelope in terms of graphics performance with their own proprietary designs). The segment has been kind of stagnant for a while.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

You're right, I don't consider better battery life (credit the battery companies), increasing screen resolution (kudos to LCD panel makers like LG and Samsung), or faster CPUs (Moore's Law) to be revolutionary advancements, especially not for Apple. They didn't invent, nor greatly contribute to the advancement of, any of those things.

You're quite wrong about that last bit.

[P]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

You're right, I don't consider better battery life (credit the battery companies),

Battery in the 13" MBA went from 50 Wh to 54 Wh between those two models, yet battery life almost doubled. Care to try again?

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

increasing screen resolution (kudos to LCD panel makers like LG and Samsung),

Right. So who put it a laptop and made it work, was that LG or Samsung?

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

or faster CPUs (Moore's Law)

Even if I'm generous and count max turbo, it went up from 2.8 to 3.3 GHz over the period. IPC improvements was maybe 7%. Speed improvements didn't particularly come from Moores law. (Now, if we back up a bit, Moores law was very important - especially leading up to the massive improvement in Sandy Bridge - but not so much since)

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

to be revolutionary advancements, especially not for Apple. They didn't invent, nor greatly contribute to the advancement of, any of those things. I listed what I believe to be groundbreaking innovations from them, and at least in the notebook market, they haven't introduced any in quite a while.

What is the thing that improved battery life, made Retina displays work and boosted performance all at the same time? Hint: it used to be named after big cats until they ran out.

Almost all of this improvement comes from the OS, which is what Apple does for a living. High res displays are pointless without the software changes, battery life would have increased maybe 10% without software improvements, and performance increases would have been modest. There is your revolution. Would it have been better if they had held back some changes to make a big splash in one version?

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by P 

Battery in the 13" MBA went from 50 Wh to 54 Wh between those two models, yet battery life almost doubled. Care to try again?

Nope. I'm sure the battery battery developer deserves a pat on the back, though.

Right. So who put it a laptop and made it work, was that LG or Samsung?

Likely both, or either. Manufacturers know Apple's specs

Even if I'm generous and count max turbo, it went up from 2.8 to 3.3 GHz over the period. IPC improvements was maybe 7%. Speed improvements didn't particularly come from Moores law. (Now, if we back up a bit, Moores law was very important - especially leading up to the massive improvement in Sandy Bridge - but not so much since)

What is the thing that improved battery life, made Retina displays work and boosted performance all at the same time? Hint: it used to be named after big cats until they ran out.

Almost all of this improvement comes from the OS, which is what Apple does for a living. High res displays are pointless without the software changes, battery life would have increased maybe 10% without software improvements, and performance increases would have been modest. There is your revolution. Would it have been better if they had held back some changes to make a big splash in one version?

Still not seeing any serious innovation there, every computer manufacturer improves virtually all aspects of their products between refreshes, otherwise people wouldn't bother buying anything new. I continue to stand by my previous statement(s).

[Mrjinglesusa]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

Still not seeing any serious innovation there, every computer manufacturer improves virtually all aspects of their products between refreshes, otherwise people wouldn't bother buying anything new. I continue to stand by my previous statement(s).

You don't "see" most of the innovation. However, the innovation is present in almost every product Apple makes, it's just under the hood so to speak.

Seriously, Apple has over 9,500 patents that cover almost every aspect of their hardware and software.

Not innovative?

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Roll your eyes all you want, I just don't see regular product improvements/upgrades as innovations. FWIW, if you want to talk about patent numbers, IBM (with >50k and 6800 granted last year) makes Apple look pitiful.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

Roll your eyes all you want, I just don't see regular product improvements/upgrades as innovations. FWIW, if you want to talk about patent numbers, IBM (with >50k and 6800 granted last year) makes Apple look pitiful.

IBM makes a much bigger range of products than Apple though.

[Spheric Harlot]

They've also been in business go more than twice as long.

It's okay: CT has a conviction at odds with what most of us see as reality, and all us can interpret the value of technological advancements to support our views.

[badidea]

Is it really that important if Apple is revolutionary innovative (still) or just evolutionary?

As long as there is this difference, I will always buy Apple Notebooks (Specs are not everything for me)!

[P]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

Still not seeing any serious innovation there, every computer manufacturer improves virtually all aspects of their products between refreshes, otherwise people wouldn't bother buying anything new. I continue to stand by my previous statement(s).

Because you're focused on hardware, and the revolution was in software.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

IBM makes a much bigger range of products than Apple though.

Not really, not anymore. Given Apple's resources, they could be doing so much more but they choose to mostly just sit on their mountain of money. It's similar to the ISPs in the USA; no innovations, few advancements, they just keep on accumulating cash without providing a proportionately-sized benefit to society. Pretty soon that inaction becomes parasitic in nature and they begin weighing down the industries surrounding them.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

They've also been in business go more than twice as long.

It's okay: CT has a conviction at odds with what most of us see as reality, and all us can interpret the value of technological advancements to support our views.

It was pointed out that Apple has nearly 9500 patents and I replied by pointing out that IBM filed 2/3rds that amount just last year. Unfortunately, I believe your reality is colored by your affection/loyalty to the company, not by the facts. I love Ferrari, they're my favorite carmaker by a good margin, but I'll be the first to acknowledge that they're manipulative dicks and won't give them a pass for it. Despite how amazing their products are, they rule their market segment, it doesn't change the reality that, as a company, they have huge issues that they need to address.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by badidea 

Is it really that important if Apple is revolutionary innovative (still) or just evolutionary?

»Innovative« is a buzzword that gets thrown around inflationarily, and means very little. What is much more indicative of Apple's success is that other computer companies following Apple, i. e. Apple is the trendsetter in the bulk of the notebook segment. Apple makes its high-volume notebook small, equip it with SSDs (and thus, making them fast enough despite the initially slow CPU), focusses on graphics performance on built-in graphics, eschews the optical drive and includes high-dpi screens -- and suddenly, all of the other notebook makers follow in line. They were the ones who forced Intel's hand at becoming better at power consumption and graphics performance.

(And it also bugs me when people shrug off a 40 % CPU and 250 % GPU performance increase within the same TDP as boring. Just imagine if Intel and AMD/nVidia managed that in one year -- we'd celebrate them.)

[ort888]

This is an unwinable debate.

It's a frequent trope of the anti-apple brigade to trot out the "apple never invented anything!" line of reasoning.

It's impossible to satisfy these people. If it's not the first computer ever or the internet or a fusion engine or something it doesn't count.

The truth is that innovation always moves fairly slowly. It builds on itself year over year in small iterative changes. That's how it always goes.

Sometimes you get something like the desktop GUI or the first iPhone and it's a larger leap, but for the most part, year-over-year, it's never that thrilling. But when you step back and look at the curve, it's pretty incredible.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

(And it also bugs me when people shrug off a 40 % CPU and 250 % GPU performance increase within the same TDP as boring. Just imagine if Intel and AMD/nVidia managed that in one year -- we'd celebrate them.)

I didn't say "boring", don't put words in my mouth, upgrades are awesome. However, again, they aren't Apple's innovations. Apple didn't invent the SSD, they didn't even invent the concept of an SSD in a notebook (Lenovo was doing it before Apple and Sager was doing it years before that), and it's almost an identical situation with GPU and CPU performance.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

I didn't say "boring", don't put words in my mouth, upgrades are awesome. However, again, they aren't Apple's innovations.

I never wrote that you have said boring, I was referring to the thread title which implied as much.

In any case Apple designs its own SoCs, so in this case they are fully responsible here. And given that they had a bunch of firsts (best-in-class performance for 3 SoC generations, first to build 64 bit ARM CPUs, etc.) and do rather well. When they started with the original iPhone, the cpu performance corresponded to a Mac laptop from ~6 years earlier. Now the gap has shrunken to less than 3 years (the SoC in the iPad Air 2 is faster than a 2011 MacBook Air with a not-too-shabby Sandybridge Core i-series CPU which was as fast as a 2010 top-of-the-line 15" MacBook Pro).

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

Apple didn't invent the SSD, they didn't even invent the concept of an SSD in a notebook (Lenovo was doing it before Apple and Sager was doing it years before that), and it's almost an identical situation with GPU and CPU performance.

That's the same old argument people use when they want to argue that the iPhone or the iPad were not game changers: all the components existed before, »all« that Apple did was have the vision to put them together and develop them along a certain direction. But here just like with smartphones and tablets, the rest of the industry is following Apple in broad strokes (which is good for the consumer, because the quality of the machines improved).

There are also other aspects, e. g. Apple being able to push Intel to improve the GPU performance of its built-in graphics and reduce system power consumption. I still remember times where netbooks were new, the chipset wasted as much power as the cpu at that time.

[subego]

Note on thread title.

Read it as "Apple Realeases New Shit", but with a family friendly substitution.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Mike Wuerthele 

The original MBA was a 1.8-inch hard drive.

Optionally, you could get a 64 GB SSD, but that one wasn't particularly fast.

[subego]

At least it didn't overheat.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

Not really, not anymore. Given Apple's resources, they could be doing so much more but they choose to mostly just sit on their mountain of money. It's similar to the ISPs in the USA; no innovations, few advancements, they just keep on accumulating cash without providing a proportionately-sized benefit to society. Pretty soon that inaction becomes parasitic in nature and they begin weighing down the industries surrounding them.

It could be argued that IBM got to their slimmed down portfolio by divesting themselves of a number or formerly core businesses that they'd been unable to keep profitable, while Apple's mountain of cash is a result of keeping a fairly slim portfolio and working hard on keeping it profitable.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by subego 

At least it didn't overheat.

The SSD? Possibly.

But the 'Book itself would throttle performance by switching off one of the cores when it got warm, i.e. when it was needed most, IIRC.

[subego]

It didn't overheat compared to the HDD model, which would need a replacement about once a year.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by subego 

It didn't overheat compared to the HDD model, which would need a replacement about once a year.

I've never heard that the main problem was overheating, I thought it was the hinge. In any case, it was a v1 product of a new idea.

[Mike Wuerthele]

We had a first gen Air until a liquid spill claimed it in 2011 or so. Got it post-hinge issues, and had no drive issues.

Got lucky, I guess.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by subego 

It didn't overheat compared to the HDD model, which would need a replacement about once a year.

Having worked at an authorised repair centre for years, this is surprising news to me.

[subego]

Well, that's what happened to mine.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

Not really, not anymore.

IBM sold off its PC division but there was even less innovation going on there than at Apple so that was never going to make a dent in their patent rate.

IBM does a lot of research still. They still have a chip foundry as far as I know and that is the sort of field that generates a lot more patents than fancy wristwatches portable computing devices. Its bleeding edge physics let alone engineering and thats just one area. I assume they still spend a lot of time with AI after their work in the past. They have always had a lot more fingers in more pies than they ever made products.

IBM is far more likely than Apple to be the ones who invent the implantable version of the iPhone, but Apple will be the ones who put decent software on it and make it work properly for the layperson.

Also don't forget Apple is far less transparent than its competitors. They are orders of magnitude more likely to keep their tech secret so Samsung doesn't clone it while its still waiting for regulatory approval.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by subego 

Well, that's what happened to mine.

One case a statistic does not make.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

They still have a chip foundry as far as I know and that is the sort of field that generates a lot more patents than fancy wristwatches portable computing devices.

As coincidence would have it, the ink just dried on an agreement between IBM and Global Foundries. IBM will in fact pay them (in return, Global Foundries has to make PowerPC chips for 10 years).

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

Also don't forget Apple is far less transparent than its competitors. They are orders of magnitude more likely to keep their tech secret so Samsung doesn't clone it while its still waiting for regulatory approval.

I think Apple is much less speculative: IBM just like Microsoft, Bell and HP have research labs where scientists do actual university-grade research. And they've managed to hire very good people. Apple, on the other hand, focusses on products and long-term vision: who would have known that they're serious about chips when they bought PA Semi in 2008.

[subego]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

One case a statistic does not make.

No, but if the same part keeps shitting the bed, it's evidence there's a design flaw.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

It could be argued that IBM got to their slimmed down portfolio by divesting themselves of a number or formerly core businesses that they'd been unable to keep profitable, while Apple's mountain of cash is a result of keeping a fairly slim portfolio and working hard on keeping it profitable.

I'm not saying IBM has done things right either, nor do I really care what they do TBH, but Apple isn't doing anyone any favors by hoarding (except perhaps their more shortsighted shareholders). I'd like to see them be more active in advancing technology, whether by expanding their own R&D or funding some of the more innovative startups. Their slim portfolio isn't helping the industry as a whole.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by subego 

No, but if the same part keeps shitting the bed, it's evidence there's a design flaw.

Don't mention design flaws... just sayin'.

[Waragainstsleep]

Apple have always said its better to be good at a couple of things than average at a whole lot. Given Apple's success seem to have come from their process though I have to wonder why they can't scale it.

[The Final Dakar]

AT&T Locking Apple Interchangeable SIMs in iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3 - Mac Rumors

[OAW]

^^^^

This is such BS! I've said it before and I'll say it again. Cell phone locking should be illegal. Period. There is absolutely no legitimate purpose for cell phone locking that can't be accomplished by an early termination fee on a subsidized cell phone contract. And if you bought your device free and clear off contract then there most definitely is no justification for this at all.

OAW

[The Final Dakar]

If Apple had nay balls they'd block AT&T for ****ing with their hardware. That'd bring them to their knees immediately.

[OAW]

I see a class action lawsuit coming behind this. Real soon.

OAW

[OreoCookie]

The AT&T spokesperson's reply is pure gold:

Originally Posted by re/code

As for why AT&T is locking the SIM card to its network while other carriers are not, Siegel said that “it’s just simply the way we’ve chosen to do it.”

I think they released no crap. Times changing. Still defending ways as they are. Who are you? Just kidding? Strange title. Hmm. Think many innovations have been on the road. What's the point? Still waiting for the retina iMac sometimes... Ha! New iPhones out, just as thought... Think agenda is good.

Huh?