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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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."
> 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...
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
> 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."
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.
> 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.
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.
So Apple's plan is to do what Ubuntu and Windows are already heading in the direction of? Except when Apple do it is new and revolutionary.
Why would any enterprise IT department choose the iOS device, which is going to be more expensive, less open, and probably play less well with all the Microsoft back end products they have?
I cant see a single advantage Apple have in this space over Google and Microsoft, other than a lot of senior management tend to like the shiny Apple product.
Ubuntu? Where's the hardware? Where's the full experience?
Regardless, innovative isn't just trying it first. It's making it work first. Microsoft has made a good try but there's something missing if it's just not seeing adoption. I don't think it's easy to say what that is or it would be fixed already. But I do think Cringely is right that someone will get there, Apple or not.
Nobody has done it fully yet, including Apple. But again, Cringely doesn't give a single reason why Apple would succeed in this space over Google or Microsoft, or something like Ubuntu. Enterprise is probably going to want to stick to mostly one OS if everything has to be ported over and all their accessories need to be compatible, and iOS is very very unlikely to be first choice of most IT departments for obvious reasons.
So the idea of convergence isn't new, and the idea that iOS would win at the convergence game in the Enterprise is implausible - I don't know what he was smoking when he wrote this article.
Enterprise is going to be a slow-adopting beast, no matter what, but that doesn't mean that iOS (or some future evolution of it) is out of the running. Come on, you're not really saying that office work can't ever fundamentally change again, now that PCs are here -- are you?
Firstly, iOS as it stands is very very poor compared with a desktop OS for office work. At an absolute minimum people need to be able to have two documents up on screen at once, maybe one spreadsheet and one PowerPoint doc.
Secondly, im willing to entertain the idea that iOS could evolve into something that could become useful as a desktop replacement, but i am yet to see a single reason why it would have an advantage over competitors, and there are many reasons, such as cost, that they are at a disadvantage.
From my experience of working in an office with admin teams, the very large majority worked with apps open on the full screen and tabbed between them. Very rarely would they have more than app visible at once, even when they knew they could they wouldn't.
That has not been my experience with office workers. They often work with one maximized app, but they often work with more than one document at a time. For admin teams in particular they often have a small chat client open either for work reasons, or more commonly to chat with coworkers.
Didn't Ubuntu do 'Ubuntu on Android', which basically meant that when you plugged your Android telephone into a computer, you had a full desktop Ubuntu on it?
I am pretty sure Ubuntu Touch would have the same functionality.
I've been waiting for Ubuntu on Android but it seems to never come. Their site still says "Get in touch" at the bottom trying to get other companies to get involved with it. I want it to say "Download" or at least "Where to get it" damn it!
I don't know how much credit the post deserves, but something to think about: A lot of very strong companies had already started capturing the smartphone market before Apple came out with the iPhone. I think it's clear that people care about marketing and branding and are obviously willing to pay for that (hint: car companies).
In the enterprise people care about price. A lot. They might be happy to buy a few iPhones for management, but a wide scale iOS deployment as a desktop replacement to everyone in the company would be crazy, in the same way that very few companies give everyone a Mac.
Huh? Tons of companies have iOS massively rolled out to their sales teams already.
You're talking about this in theoretical terms like the iPhone isn't already doing very well coupled with Exchange in the enterprise space, but it is...
The iPhone costs enterprises about the same amount as a good Android phone (e.g. Galaxy 4/Note). So it isn't uncommon for companies to offer employees a choice of either an iPhone or Android phone, since both hook into Exchange equally as well and cost the company a similar amount.
Blackberry is dying as the go-to enterprise phone. Has been for a while.
Not as desktop replacements they don't. iOS devices are fine for when the user has very simple needs like filling in a form or reading a pdf, but real office work is a completely different story.
A desktop Windows computer is faster, cheaper and more capabale than any phone out there. Dumb terminals are dramatically cheaper. That's why almost every office worker in the world uses them. iOS is doing well replacing Blackberry and Palm Pilot in the enterprise, not replacing Windows machines.
iPhones already exist in the enterprise space. They aren't going to need to buy more of them to use them as laptops, just keep buying the ones they're already buying and use them for two things instead of one.
iPhones aren't being used for anything more than trivial tasks, they are used for phone calls, reading email and light web browsing. Any smartphone can do that, and if we see convergence then probably all the new converged devices will be fine for that purpose too.
It is going to be a lot harder for iPhones to become capable of taking over the job of a Windows PC than for a small Wintel phone to fill in the job of an iPhone.
If convergence devices do appear in the enterprise I think its more likely that the popular ones will be Windows, Android or at an outside chance Ubuntu - and the devices more likely to disappear are the ones not best suited to the desktop work.
I don't think you've been following what industry has been doing with iPhones.
First of all, "light browsing, reading, and phone calls"? You clearly haven't been in sales. Entire 2000 word screens are usually banged out on one's iPhone or Blackberry. The calendar app has to manage hundreds of events, etc.
I do almost all of my browsing on an iPhone.
Airline mechanics at at lesat one major global airline have been using them to log their maintenance activities with precise detail.
More than one Class-1 railroad is prototyping iPhones and iPads for crew and yard devices to manage train manifests and marshalling orders.
Doctors are using their iPhones for looking up and editing EHRs in some hospitals.
Everywhere I look in the enterprise, they are killing the PC in favor of the smartphone -- today.
Again, that may be important work but it is all very basic work that can easily be done with any mid-range phone or tablet. Historically there may have been genuine reasons to pick the Apple product, but as time goes by there is less and less reason to choose Apple, and more and more reason to choose one of their competitors.
For "real" office work that needs a convergence device, Apple is in even less of a strong position, for the reasons outlined elsewhere.
They are likely to find some niche applications, and probably do well in the consumer side, but its hard to imagine Apple having much success as a PC replacement (and decreasing success in the long run as a BlackBerry replacement)
I think if we're painting with really broad brushes, in the end companies care about ease of use. The cost of people is far greater than equipment. Of course, they don't evaluate hardware the same way that individuals do, so it looks like the price matters the most, because most companies already have established IT conventions and those qualify the highest for "ease of use" (they already know what they are doing).
So it will certainly take time, and it will take smaller, riskier companies demonstrating that some futuristic new platform is soooo much easier, but if that really was the case, it really wouldn't be that crazy to see large enterprises starting to shift this way.
Of course this is all based on the assumption that "it's going to be so much better and easier to use that it's obvious to the market as a whole." I'm not saying Apple will achieve that goal, but I think a lot of people who wouldn't traditionally have been "Apple fanboys" are rooting for Apple, simply because we've all seen them make transformative changes with the iPod and iPhone, and we like progress.
> I think if we're painting with really broad brushes, in the end companies care about ease of use. The cost of people is far greater than equipment.
Sounds like you have never worked in an enterprise. Ease of use for the staff is definitely not at the top of the list of concerns. They care about price, will it continue to run their legacy apps for another 10 years, how easy is it to administer etc.
Regarding your second point, I have not heard anyone who is not firmly an "Apple fanboy" cheering for iOS to supplant Windows in the enterprise. Linux, yes, iOS no.
Wide scale Blackberry deployments are in progress of being re-assessed. I know at least one large logistics company that is throwing out all pre-10 Blackberries over the next 2-3 years and allowing iOS devices as the alternative.
Yes, the iPhone (and Android devices) are replacing Blackberries. Not desktop computers. If convergence devices show up then they will replace phones. The ones that get chosen will be the ones that make the best computers, not the ones that make the best phones.
More than they would save by going to one of their competitors? By the time convergence devices arrive, Google or Microsoft will almost certainly have the most cost effective solution for most businesses.
He's absolutely right, this will be the future of office type of work. He doesn't mention the Motorola Atrix (http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/05/motorola-atrix-4gs-webtop...) which tried to do precisely what he's talking about but failed due to Moto's incompetence (and lack of software like iWork). Apple's not Motorola though, they got everything aligned, including connection to the TV screens at home, something Atrix couldn't do.
I believe it supports them, just like it supports game controllers now, but apps will have to include their own implementation of support to actually make use of them. It doesn't seem that iOS 7 supports using a mouse/touchpad by default throughout the OS itself.
Looks like apps can only support arbitrary Bluetooth devices if they're the Bluetooth Low Energy type: http://stackoverflow.com/a/11892685. Conventional Bluetooth devices would have to go through the MFi program to be supported by App Store apps.
Nor can I get it to work with either an iPad or iPhone 5 running iOS 7, using a MS BT Notebook mouse or Apple's own BT trackpad. The devices don't even see the pointing devices (or more accurately, they see them but they're not telling me in the UI). I've got an Apple BT mouse lying around somewhere that I'll try, but I doubt the results will change.
Not just mice and keyboards either, Android has a surprisingly large number of devices and device types supported. Even I am left surprised at what "just works" on an Android device.
Why are the endless, tedious contribution like this not downvoted to oblivion as being offtopic? The topic is IOS 7, if you want to talk about Android start your own thread, failing that, take your witless preaching elsewhere.
BT keyboard has been supported back when original iPad was released. But BT mouse hasn't so far. If it is supported, then I think iPhone 5S could have the potential of being the first pocket size workstation.
> Go to your desk at work and, using Bluetooth and AirPlay, the iPhone 5S or 6 in your pocket will automatically link to your keyboard, mouse, and display. Processing and storage will be in your pocket and, to some extent, in the cloud. Your desktop will require only a generic display, keyboard, mouse, and some sort of AirPlay device, possibly an Apple TV that looks a lot like a Google ChromeCast.
What is the networking? iPhones don't have Ethernet ports. WiFi has limited bandwidth and much worse security (you can sit in the parking lot and listen for authentication creds). Cellular is more secure, but expensive and slow.
What is the network identity and permissions layer? There is nothing on the market that comes close to Active Directory, which is probably the #1 reason that so many businesses still run Windows on the desktop. As far as I know, there is no AD integration in iOS.
Can businesses run an iCloud sync service locally, within their corporate firewall? I'm guessing no. Corporations are rarely comfortable with sending all their proprietary data out to some 3rd party--even more so following the recent NSA revelations.
Can you run antivirus on an iPhone?
I think Cringely is not fully appreciating the corporate mindset when it comes to technology--a common failing among tech pundits.
Active Directory is basically just an implementation of an LDAP server and Kerberos. There are plenty(1) of commercial and high quality open source implementation on various forms of Unix and iOS is Unix. Wifi bandwidth is increasing all the time. Many laptops nowadays don't have ethernet ports. iPhones don't have viruses either.
Most of the problems you mention are problems for PCs, but beyond the PC world they're non-issues. Ask your Unix server support team the last time they had to deal with a virus on their machines.
I remember when the iPad came out someone I think on HN posted that he needed to be able to print to a portable bubble jet printer and iPads didn't support that, so therefore they would never catch on. Seriously, that was his contention. Everyone thinks their own little world is the entire universe. Blackberry and the tech press were adamant iPhones would never encroach on BB's corporate sales because iPhones don't play well in corporate environments. We all now know how that went down. In theory everything you mention is a problem, but in practice they can be worked around or are just non-issues.
Active Directory itself, as you identity, isn't anything remarkable. However, it is valuable because it is deeply integrated into all of Microsoft's products and a huge range of products from 3rd party vendors.
Including OSX server's Profile Manager, which through iOS Configurator can be used to manage profiles for iOS devices. Apple's enterprise grade iOS management products have come on leaps and bounds over the last few years. This really isn't going to be a problem.
Like I said above, it's a question of mindset, not engineering. No company is going to rip out AD and Cat 5 and replace them with a custom WiFi/LDAP/Kerberos integration just so that employees can use their iPhones as their desktops. Especially since desktops are already cheaper than iPhones.
They won't need to rip out anything. That's the point. The protocol AD uses to communicate to clients IS LDAP. The authentication technology it uses IS Kerberos.
* This is something like an obvious thing to do; the question is when and whether the mobile OS vendors are going to be bothered with the work to make it happen, including the internal revenue/political frictions to overcome (ChomeOS vs. Android, anyone?)
* Speaking of the work necessary, here are two technical changes I assume you'd see if Apple was actively working towards this now: one, a move towards resolution independence for iOS apps, and two, API changes to accommodate having multiple apps active at the same time. If these were happening, presumably iOS developers would be talking about them?
* iOS famously tries to abolish the file, document and filesystem (from the user's perspective). It's interesting to consider what kind of compromises Apple would or will make in making a desktop, multitasking iOS. Stick to the iOS model or try to retrofit something?
* 'Native' support for keyboard and mouse - an experience good enough that Apple wouldn't be embarrassed to be advertising it as a first-party option - would be awkward to bring in. iOS 7 may have a nice new interface for switching and managing tasks, but how much fun would it be to close an app with the throw-it-away gesture on a large-screen device using a mouse?
I suppose most people here aren't familiar with Cringely and his completely off-the-wall "revelations", using just enough facts and tossing in a few plausible (and deniable) "pseudo-facts" to spin a good yarn.
FYI, iOS7 does _not_ support a mouse. Yes, there were jailbreak hacks for it. No, Apple has no interest in making the OS navigable with a mouse (even though the changes involved are actually pretty minor). Yes, apps can try to go their own, but good luck with trying to pair any other HID device besides a keyboard (or a few custom devices such as styluses) at this point.
Also, as someone who's been successfully living off an iPad as a thin client (using SSH+RDP to a remote X11rdp server), yes, the iPad makes a kick-ass thin client, good enough for you to develop in (despite the screen size). It was even better when I could use Citrix/ICA, but perfectly usable in every respect.
But, again, Apple doesn't care about thin clients - otherwise they'd have shipped a working ARD (Apple Remote Desktop, an enhanced VNC protocol with proprietary extensions) from day one. What they believe in is a nice, smooth, local integrated experience.
1. of course phones will replace desktops, it's been coming for ages. If your phone is powerful enough, why buy a desktop too?
2. in general, phones are "overshooting" what is needed in a phone: 1080p, 469ppi, quad-core, 2GB RAM etc
3. the real next market is a smaller form-factor (which this better tech now makes possible), not larger - maybe watches, maybe glasses, maybe something else. Apple has being absolutely extraordinary in leading new markets several times - but only with Steve. Sony also did it several times - but also only with their founder.
either don’t see a competitor rising up or are too complacent to feel threatened.
Christensen says it's far worse: even when they do see it, fund it, prepare for it, take it seriously, they still can't do it. Factors: it's a different emphasis from everything else they do, so it's not only learning/adjusting, but also unlearning/unadjusting (entrants only have to learn/adjust). Specifically: the rate of releases (eg Windows vs iOS); what users value/prioritize; how they use it (tasks); how to communicate to customers (a previous positioning works against them); financial analyst expectations (new markets start small and unexciting); corporately, small and possibly-failing new markets do not always attract the best talent; and well-established corporations tend not to attract risk-takers - and why wouldn't such people strike out on their own? That's often how it goes in practice.
Basically, like animals, companies become supremely adapted to their niche. When that niche disappears, they can't adapt. Fortunately for Apple, the same people will probably buy iWatches, iGlasses, iWearableWhatevers, for the same purposes, the same priorities as they buy iPhones.
Say you live in Apple land and have all the iStuff. Would you buy a brainless iPad with storage processing on your iPhone? If the only advantage is a cost savings ($50?), I don't see the point.
Sorry, I don't understand. Cringely's idea is not a brainless iPad, more like a brainless laptop/desktop
When laptops came out, many people docked them at home/work to a full keyboard and monitor. Why have two (or three) computers to maintain and worry about? Why go to the hassle of switching between them - your files, apps and customized environment?
To be fair, today is different, the cloud (dropbox etc) helps. But avoiding the problem in the first place has an appeal too; and dropbox doesn't solve apps. Though using webapps exclusively could solve that.
You may have a point about the price difference though - is it really only $50 to buy a PC box these days? (i.e. excluding display, keyboard, mouse).
I just gave it as an example. Brain one place hardware in another. It just doesn't require imagination using iOS & iphone-esque RAM/processor on an ipad.
$50 - In the ipad example, I imagine that would be the cost difference for the brain. Maybe a little more, I don't know. But there are definitely decent android tablets in the 100-$200 range. The whole premise of the-phone-is-the brain seems to be that this is all you need on your desktop. Anyway, Apple don't do stuff like this because its cheaper.
But I don't really see a big cost savings. File sharing might be a bit of a win, but small compared to cloud based patchwork stuff (drive, dropbox emailing files). Apps are easy enough to install in iOS anyway and you could make app purchases be cross platform if you are all in the same ecosystem.
Basically, I see the advantage of iOS on the desktop. Its clean and easy and better for a lot of people. But why complicate that by outsourcing processing to a different device? If you want iOS on a laptop, just put iOS on a laptop.
But with a brainless iPad, you don't get the keyboard, mouse and upright display, which was the point...
Anyway, maybe you're right about the cost saving. A SoC is pretty cheap.
A clearer argument is that the guts of desktops/laptops will be replaced by phone guts. This is because an ARM SoC are cheaper than intel, and now good enough. We're already seeing the samsumg chromebook and asus transformer - and as ARMs increase in power, it increasingly makes sense. It's expected that Apple will do one eventually - which I guess also explains the evidence in the article (and you get iOS on the laptop/desktop with no extra work).
Note 1: intel x86 CPUs (apart from atom) are still much more powerful than ARM - even a celeron. But Christensen's idea is that this doesn't matter. He calls it "overshooting" what the market need: people want enough power to do their tasks, they might like more, but not enough to sacrifice other things, or pay more. Maybe it won't run photoshop, but most people don't.
Note 2: Apple has a focus on video and photo editing, and as these apps improve, they will meet the needs of more and more people, perhaps eventually reaching photoshop users. One thing that intrigues me about Apple's choice of pushing GPU (and not CPU) in iPhone/iPad, is that GPUs scale better, and GPGPU might well be the best multicore we're going to get. It's generally perfect for image processing (ie photoshop). So in this case, the iPhone 5S guts may turn out even more powerful than it seems.
This seems like a giant extrapolation based on only the merest hint of any actual evidence.
The big question to me, is why would Apple, the quintessential hardware company, be going out of their way to try and sell you less hardware? They don't want you to reuse your iPhone as your main computer. They want to sell you both. In general they detest the whole concept of shoehorning bits of technology into roles they are not meant for. In Apple's eyes, each device you own is exactly optimized for its unique role.
This whole thing sounds like Cringely's personal fantasy rather than anything Apple would actually do.
Yes, it can't be the next big thing for Apple's revenues if it doesn't shift lots of fairly expensive hardware. There's also Apple love of iCloud, and iCloud revenue, to push them towards cloud (or even local) sync between your iPhone and a mini-desktop rather than a dock-your-iPhone solution.
I agree with sytelus that the writer is seeing what he wants to see. I don't agree with the reasons though. They all seem like doable hurdles if Apple really wants to do this.
I think iOS could handle mult-tasking if it was a priority. The lack of RAM/Processor/storage is not a long term problem either. Specs will go up over time and apps like photoshop will be written to max out the capabilities of their average users' machine, but not more.
I just don't buy the everything-is-powered-by-your-phone future. I see difficulties, hurdles and compromises but no benefits. There is no reason not to have processing and storage capabilities where the display-keyboard-mouse is. It's cheap.The problems solved by putting the brain in your phone are small.
I especially don't see Apple doing it. It seems like an anti-Apple move. Apple like to keep their metaphors as clean as possible. That means stuff needs to be self contained. A brainless desktop powered by your phone and the cloud is the opposite of that. It's complicated.
OTOH, I do see (or maybe see what I want to see) the benefit of iOS on a keyboard & mouse device. I just think its a different iThing. An iOS desktop could be what chromebook should have been. A "computer" where everything is easier than it is on windows/mac.
The iPhone could replace desktop PCs that are only used for basic tasks like word processing and web browsing. However, advanced uses of desktops like hardcore gaming, a/v editing, software development, etc require much more advanced applications and underlying OS support that won't realistically be available on the iPhone in the near future.
That being said, I do think the idea of Apple selling MacBook Air like cases and displays with a slot for adding the iPhone has potential.
This has been done before and not taken off, but who knows with apple. The slot could be where the trackpad is with the phone functioning as the trackpad.
I've been wanting to dock my phone into a cradle hooked up to multiple monitors, speakers, USB hub, keyboard, and mouse for a very long time.
The Microsoft acquisition of Nokia for a Surface Phone that would do something like this makes a lot of sense. They certainly wouldn't want to lose the new desktop form factor race.
I don't think Apple wants to abandon their desktop market at all. However, they could be introducing a new thing - a new Apple TV style device that's designed to connect to monitors and act as a workplace bridge for iPhones and iPads.
If you could get a $100 or $150 AppleDesktop that only ran App Store apps, but hooked up to a monitor/TV and allowed BT keyboard/mouse, would you do it?
It could be the AppleTV store, or the iOS App Store, or even the Mac App Store that's backing it, but it would definitely be an interesting competitor vs. a Chromebox, as it could function without internet (which might make it a perfect "computer" for your aging parents). The fact that it couldn't run OSX or sideload apps would clearly protect Macs from some cannibalization.
I dont get his theory at all, the trend seems to be people getting more devices, not less.
Why try to unify handheld and desktop? For customers it would be a FridgeToaster(tm), with less power than a dedicated desktop (yes performance matters). It doesnt even make business sense (less devices sold).
I'd go for the pocket PC with peripherals thing for convenience but I want to go to my desk pop open my MBP and kind of BE there with my machine.
I know this sounds kind of ethereal but ffs, I don't have an office anymore. Most people I know work in coffee shops or somewhere similar.
There needs to be some signal that I am 'at work' on something.
For me, sat on a bench at the dinner table in our apartment with my laptop open is that signal. Kids don't bug me and my wife knows to approach with caution.
Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I like having a workstation that takes up a space.
I think Cringely is wrong in detail but right in overall thrust. iOS is Apple's future, but Apple's plan is for multiple comparatively inexpensive devices that share data and do their jobs well, not one thing that hooks up to accessories and works badly. The killer app for iPhone 5S is commerce and becoming your identity wallet (Google Authenticator is a similar play, but it simply becomes an app you prefer to keep on your iPhonr). I can certainly see the iphone 5S logging you into your device.
Maybe I'm missing something, but if I were Microsoft, I think (at least my first pass thinking anyway) I'd just say "Nope. No MS Word on iOS. Ever."
I can't see what's in it for them. A tiny slice of cash compared to selling it for desktop computers, and if they don't sell it for iOS-based-desktop-replacements then the iOS-based-desktop-replacements won't have the ability to write files for the rest of the business world to use.
I'd argue the opposite; Microsoft should've been offering Office from day 0. That people have started using Numbers and pages on iPads has meant that they are aware that alternatives exist and that they do open Offices document just fine. Surely making money from a competing platform as well as your own is better than making money just on your own platform.
Good read. It seems everything will be a module of a system. Users will only need to carry the necessary part with them. And since the mobile device now can have such a powerful calculation capability and wireless connectivity, users will be able to just switch the physical interface they operate on and use the small bar as the core device. This isn't the first time someone tries to do this. But it seems quite viable with what Apple currently have.
I think it's about a TV/game console/entertainment center to compete with others in the home and accomplish what today's apple TV and tablets cannot. I seriously doubt they would give up on desktop architectures given how much effort they have put into it and the plain superiority of the modern x86 PC architecture when it comes to performance. But the specs on the 64 bit chip make it perfect for a home console.
A lot of people are seeing this. Phones now have a lot of computational power, but a 4-5 inch touch-screen and a hardware button or two constitute a piss-poor interface for using it all! You have an office suite that works on your phone. Big whoop. It still doesn't make them viable devices for serious work.
So, what's next? Do phones become our personal go-everywhere pocket computers, and will displays, keyboards, "vacuum" laptops etc. just become a way to improve the interface capabilities of our personal pocket-computers? Cloud computing, if the NSA doesn't manage to kill it completely, offers a way to at least have our documents follow us around (e.g. Dropbox). There's no reason why a lot more of our computing environment couldn't follow us around via the cloud too. It's easily doable to store everything about your current session on the cloud so that, when you leave work, your computer at home has everything waiting for you just the way it was at work. Having the exact same computer following us around without transmitting everything to Big Brother would have a certain amount of appeal if not for the greater danger of losing everything with our phone! So, what's next?
MS isn't as far behind as Cringely thinks. The surface pro is basically a desktop that's meant to follow you around. It's not quite phone sized, but MS is definitely showing a strong interest in unifying the mobile and desktop user experience. They've done more so far than Apple has, since Cringely's speculations on iOS are still entirely future tense. Still, I'm not entirely convinced the one-computer following you everywhere approach is going to beat the cloud. A little back-tracking by governments on their right to invade user privacy or a credible open-source secure-cloud environment actually taking off could lift cloud computing's chances. Yes, I'm aware it will largely be chance which one wins, and user privacy will likely be compromised no matter which approach wins, either by cloud-data storage or mobile-device backups.
No matter how it happens, things are evolving towards a world where we won't have separate, discrete devices, but just multiple ways of accessing the same persistent computing space. When it comes right down to it, new ways to interface with our computing environment are probably just as important as unifying our discrete computing spaces. Google's work on Glass indicates another possible way to change the game. Free both the user's hands and you have the potential to deliver richer user-input capability. Still, it's not entirely clear to me that this is Google's intention with glass. They may be getting too hung up on the idea of augmented reality when improving user input capability would bring far greater benefits. Augmented reality is nice, but if that's all Google sees in Glass they're going to get their butts handed to them.
Microsoft is ahead actually. It is painfull and execution is far from perfect, but they are innovating in this direction fast.
1. Like Apple, they have unified large parts of Windows on PC and Mobile, most importantly the UI. Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 also share a lot of technology; much more than OSX and iOS. For instance, they can easily support multimonitor setups, which iOS and Android cannot (afaik)
2. Microsoft has also built huge datacenters, and with Windows Azure, they now have a very complete cloud offering, including the possibility to run workstation class applications like Photoshop and Visual Studio virtualized on every device, including iOS (now that it supports a mouse) and Android.
3. Microsoft is far ahead in multi-user support, which is very important. From consumer accounts (with features such as Family Safety) to enterprise directories and cloud directories, Microsoft has all the infrastructure already in place. Settings are synced between all Windows 8+ devices, and it works very well.
4. Microsoft has a much better story toward organizations. Organizations centrally control security for their employees and they can determine how they run their systems. Azure enables hybrid cloud/on-premise solutions. Microsoft even pre-integrates their competitors OSses (several flavors of Linux) and services (Google Apps, Salesforce, and many others) in Windows Azure.
5. If Microsoft finally manages to come up with a workable Metro version of Office, the Windows desktop will become unnecessary for most users, and the new UI will start to make more sense: from phone consumption to desktop productivity to server administration: it will all work the same way. Apps may run remotely or locally without the user even knowing. Like Apple and Google, Microsoft will charge for an Office 365 subscription (for storage), and allow "free" installation of Office on any device, including iPad, iPhone and Android.
I agree with this. Microsoft has a good idea in W8, but their execution stinks. iOS & Android own the consumer market. It's unrealistic for MS to overcome their enormous lead in apps. But MS can enter the market from a position of strength: enterprise integration. If more businesses move employees to tablets, they will need enterprise features to extend their existing Windows environment to tablets/phones. They already want portable desktop environments, so this will be another bonus. Apple and Google are focused on consumers. Who is MS's competition in the enterprise space? The only thing preventing MS from succeeding is MS.
Thank you for saying most of what I felt, only so much more clearly!
I don't how anyone whose work depends on creating quality content - programmers, journalists, designers - can achieve even a fraction of their PC (I use that term loosely) productivity on a 'post-PC' device like a tablet.
I see people saying they have ditched PCs and laptops altogether in favour of tablets, and I wonder how. I'm not a Luddite, and I've owned the iPad and Nexus tablets for a while, but I still prefer my laptop for my work every. single. time!
I agree. Just a couple months ago I attempted to shift a lot of my programming work towards my tablet, just to try it out.
In short; it sucks. You need constant internet connection because you're always ssh'd in. The flow of productivity is interrupted every time you have to lift your hand to physically touch the screen, and even with a high-end keyboard the technology to quickly traverse a screen just isn't there yet.
I keep waiting for a phone vendor to really look at keyboards/touchpads/whatever on their phone and come up with a solid offering that does more than just copy Blackberry's approach.
Give me a slide-out keyboard, but don't stop there. Put a laptop-style trackpad on it or a trackball next to the keyboard in a way that emphasizes two-handed operation (like a gamepad). Put shoulder-buttons for shift and ctrl and the mouse-buttons - look at PSPs and gamepads for inspiration. Stick a scroll-wheel on the right shoulder. Our phones are getting huge but hardware keyboards are still thinking like Blackberry, and thinking like Blackberry obviously didn't work for blackberry.
Then focus on productivity. Port eclipse to the damned thing. Port your full development chain to the damned thing. Port some PC games - a trackball isn't a mouse, but it beats the heck out of a touchscreen for PC gaming.
Give us a phone that feels like a hand-held computer. Sure, it's thick as a brick and weighs more than a tablet, but it's a computer you can use comfortably without a desk.
Tablets and mobile devices are primarily consumption devices, and are ill-suited for creating anything. However, going by the 90/9/1 rule, there's a much bigger potential set of consumption consumers than creators.
your computer at home has everything waiting for you just the way it was at work.
Though not your phone (if you need to work at other times/places).
Historically, we've cycled between distributed and centralized computing. I'm not convinced the cloud is the one true way (though certainly we'll keep the option of being connected). Factors include: price of computing power; how much is actually needed; network bandwidth/latency.
Personally, the latency of webapps drives me up the wall. Makes me wonder if a resurgence in apps is coming. Native apps seem more popular on phones...
IMO, the cloud only makes sense for data that you need to share with others. Your private data should be stored as close to you as possible - in your phone, or preferrably within your own body (hello Johnny Mnemonic).
> Having the exact same computer following us around without transmitting everything to Big Brother would have a certain amount of appeal if not for the greater danger of losing everything with our phone! So, what's next?
Ever heard of Citrix, VDI etc.... that is exactly the concept you are explaining and its available now. I can hook the citrix receiver on my blackberry up to my citrix desktop then plug in the microHDMI cable and attach a bluetooth mouse/kb. Sorted, full screen enterprise class desktop applications in a secure container.
> Having the exact same computer following us around without transmitting everything to Big Brother would have a certain amount of appeal if not for the greater danger of losing everything with our phone! So, what's next?
Who said you can't do both? Phones and cloud data storage aren't mutually exclusive.
Exactly. There's this lose-lose idea for Apple and customers. Apple won't please business leaders till the business employees are able to work wherever they are, which the employees aren't necessarily asking for. As it's done for the CEOs (who use secretaries) the judge and users aren't the same.
Add builtin inductive charging, with in-monitor charging stations (so you can literally keep your phone in your pocket) and the entire puzzle is complete. Although one might only want to do this after one has their personal optimum number of kids ;)
For me, I'll miss third-party non-gate-kept software. But I'm pretty sure that I'm the minority... iff Apple can get Microsoft's business apps on board.
Serious question: which business apps? From where I'm standing it looks like Office is dying. Not dead yet, but dying. So it can't just be that. Exchange?
Numbers are from 2012 b/c I didn't want to spend more time looking for more recent #s. But according the MS Q3 2012 numbers, their Business division revenue was $5.81 billion, up 9 percent from $5.33 billion a year earlier.
Those numbers say MS' business division is doing great. They don't say specific "apps" are doing great or would be a huge value add to iOS.
That said, I'm clearly not in the business world, because I haven't used a MS product outside an Xbox since school... so I probably have a skewed perspective.
Instead of hooking a keyboard to your iPhone/ipad flip it around. Apple TV can be an airplay receiver, your ios device sends it's display to the larger screen and you type, touch, or dictate on the device that's already in your hand most of the day. Some die hards won't give up their dedicated keyboards, but many people can transition over to the "mobile desktop".
Because it's not a new idea, just an idea that's time may be coming. Ubuntu is definitely out ahead on this one conceptually, but iOS devices are inching their way closer and closer to desktop-class software and performance... by the time Ubuntu ships something, Apple may already be there.
The article was more or less okay, until he blew it with this:
> More likely, since it’s an iOS device, Apple will call this gizmo an iSomething. It will be impossibly strong and light — under a pound — the battery will last for days, and it ought to cost $199 for 11-inch and $249 for 13-inch, but Apple being Apple they’ll charge $249 and $349.
Can he really be that clueless? Does he even realize that even a large iPad is heavier than 1 pound? How could an iPad-like device with keyboard and a bigger battery be even lighter?
Also the price makes no sense at all - again because of the extra keyboard and battery, and also because there's no way Apple would price such a device below an iPad Mini. That would mean using a processor, RAM and storage that are even more obsolete than the ones in the iPad Mini.
That's crazy. If anything such a machine would have all of those even better than the large new iPad 5, and my guess is it would cost $700, while still maintaining more or less the same amount of profit as a Macbook Air (since the chip and storage would be so much cheaper than on the Air).
It would also increase Apple's average ARPU, and would bring them higher total profit and revenue, since these will be cheaper than Air, and Apple will sell more of them (but fewer than iPads, still).
i had the exact same thought when talking to a friend about the last keynote. he told me the 5c was a ripoff and noone would buy it.
i told him he's missed the most important news : productivity apps for free, and the emphasis on trying to make pads and phones not only reading devices but content writing devices as well (5s as powerful as a laptop)
And since content editing requires more power and Apple is best at producing high level computing platforms, that would let them win market shares over android again (in a "if you can't win the game, change the rules" type of strategy).
i'm predicting a huge rise in medium prices and features for apps in the next year. But we'll only be sure when the new ipad is shown. because of its screen size, it's the only device really capable of providing a true content editing platform at the moment.
It's more like a fraction of a second, not anywhere near 1-2 seconds in my experience. That said, I agree, even working with iWork-style apps might not be ideal. If they're gonna run iWork on TVs, I'd expect the apps to be executing on an Apple TV.
An interesting point is Apple is more like a consumer product company. The rules of tech industry have their effects on Apple. However, while completing in the consumer market, there are other rules as well. Taking different dimensions in to account could not be a bad idea.
What if 10 years from now, you pull up your iPhone 23s and it is more powerful than the computer you are using now and you simply rest it on your desk and let your monitors/keyboards connect to it. It acts as a thin layer between you and the cloud. No PC.
So basically what the article says is that apple should make a chromebook?
It could work. A touchscreen chromebook-like could be very attractive to the end user, especially if you can remove the base somehow and turn it into a big iPad. It would be like the Surface, except with a good app store.
No, what the article says is that Apple wants to make a phone that can also double as a desktop machine by docking it with the appropriate peripherals. That's a very different approach than Chromebook takes.
Weirdly this is exactly what Microsoft is doing with their tablets.
iOS is much more hampered in terms of doing 'real PC things' at this point so Microsoft has a good head start, even though Windows 8 isn't exactly the epitome of polish yet.
They will probably also want to support things like iMovie, iPhoto, Garage Band and give us new features etc. I don't imagine those kind of apps working well on a Chromebook.
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.