New, Larger iPad

Rumor is that Apple will release a new larger iPad meant to compete with laptops.

No confirmation that it'll be called the MaxiPad.

Over Steve Jobs' dead body.

Apple went through this kind of loss of vision during the years when Jobs was out of the company. It took his return to restore the company to profitability.

You'd think SOMEBODY at Apple would have a little corporate memory.

It's not a rumor. It's for sale on their web site.

I don't know why they did that. They have the iPad Air and several laptops.

It's kind of funny: the industry spent meagbucks making everything smaller, now they are making things bigger again.

_Howard wrote:

I don't know why they did that.

Because the suits running the company now have no vision.

Not only is the larger iPad probably unnecessary, but Apple has introduced a stylus -- something Jobs said would only happen over his dead body (hence my link).

He's dead now, so it's happened. HUGE step in the wrong direction IMO.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Because the suits running the company now have no vision.

God, I get tired of hearing that word. Vision. Marketing bullshit is all that is.

They have introduce a product to compete with their other products. And have done away with a very popular product.

The stylus is meaningless. It's old technology and no one in the world givers a damn whether Apple has one or not. Just because Jobs didn't like them is of no importance.

I think you're wrong and here's why.

Apple is not just another computer company; there's a design philosophy and an interoperability (where everything works together seamlessly) and a singular vision of clarity, simplicity, of intuitiveness (to where an owner's manual isn't necessary) that cannot be said of Microsoft or any other competitor. Apple, for all its faults, is at its heart very zen, very minimal, very forward-thinking (the first to do away with floppy drives, the first to do away with hard drives, the first to offer wireless keyboards and mice).  There's a guiding philosophy there -- something no other competitor can claim.

And they've lost it.  Again.

Wow. You drank a lot of the Kool-Aid.

It's not just "marketing." I've been an Apple user off-and-on since 1983 and there really is a difference.

NoCoPilot wrote:

There's a guiding philosophy there --

Apple has, and has always had, one guiding philosophy: keep the profit margin as high as possible.

For the past few decades, Apple has not invented a damn thing. They take other companies' inventions and make them cute. Then they charge twice as much as anyone else. There's a guiding philosophy for you.

Consider their so-called "Fusion Drive." It is not unique - other computers have it. Apple charges $200 for sticking an off-the-shelf $80 chip in the computer. But they have them built with a non-standard connector, so you can't go down and buy a standard chip and plug it in. That's the kind of thing that really pissed me off about Apple.

Maybe they were the first to market a computer without a floppy drive. The iMac, I believe. But who is to say that was a good thing? At the time the iMac came out, a lot of people had massive archives of data and source code on floppies. A computer which could not read them was not a good thing for those people.

I doubt that they were the first computer without a spinning hard drive.  SDDs have been on the market for quite a while, and can be retrofitted to many computers, and purchased as standard equipment in a great many non-Apples. By the way - doesn't your new computer come standard with a hard drive?

A computer is a tool. Nothing more. Apple does not sell computers - they sell gadgets.

There was a time when I thought "Apples are computers for people who don't like computers." I cherished my ability to get under the hood of my PC and hotrod it to my specifications.

Until I started spending a lot of time chasing down viruses, malware, bloatware, and unneeded TSRs. Until I started having compatibility problems with every new device I bought. Until I inherited my sister's and my dad's computers and had literally no way to read the hard drives.

Now, I think "Apples are computers for users who want to do stuff -- instead of spending all day maintaining their computers."

_Howard wrote:

Consider their so-called "Fusion Drive." It is not unique - other computers have it.

Correction: other computers have hybrid drives. The Fusion Drive is unique:

Wikipedia wrote:

Apple's Fusion Drive design incorporates proprietary features with limited documentation. It has been reported that the design of Fusion Drive has been influenced by a research project called Hystor.[3] According to the paper,[4] this hybrid storage system unifies a high-speed SSD and a large-capacity hard drive with several design considerations of which one has been used in The Fusion Drive.

* The SSD and the hard drive are logically merged into a single block device managed by the operating system, which is independent of file systems and requires no changes to applications.
* A portion of SSD space is used as a write-back buffer to absorb incoming write traffic, which hides perceivable latencies and boosts write performance.
* More frequently accessed data is stored on the SSD and the larger, less frequently accessed data stored on the HDD. Fixed
* Data movement is based on access patterns, if data had been on the HDD and suddenly became frequently accessed, it would usually get moved to the SSD by the program controlling the Fusion Drive. During idle periods, data is adaptively migrated to the most suitable device to provide sustained data processing performance for users.

Several experimental studies[2][5][6][7][8][9] have been conducted to speculate the internal mechanism of Fusion Drive. A number of speculations are available but not completely confirmed.

* Fusion Drive is a block-level solution based on Apple's Core Storage, a logical volume manager managing multiple physical devices.[5][6] The capacity of a Fusion Drive is confirmed to be the sum of two devices.[5][6] Fusion Drive is file system agnostic and effective for both HFS Plus and ZFS.[7]
* Part of the SSD space is used as a write buffer for incoming writes.[5][6] In the stable state, a minimum 4GB space is reserved for buffering writes.[2][5][6] A small spare area is set aside on the SSD for performance consistency.[6]
* Data is promoted to the SSD based on its access frequency.[5][6] The frequency is detected at the block level [8] and below file system memory cache.[9] Data migration happens in 128KB chunks during idle or light I/O periods.[5][6]
* Operating system and other critical documents are always cached on the SSD.[5] Applications are likely to be handled similarly.[6] A regular file can reside on both devices.[8]

PC World wrote:

Hybrid storage products monitor the data being read from the hard drive, and cache the most frequently accessed bits to the high-speed NAND flash memory.

Additionally, the new Intel chips support this technology, allowing the use of an SSD and HDD as a single volume.

Well the technical details are over my head, but from this it appears that Intel's Smart Response Technology uses an SSD to cache a HDD but doesn't combine them into one logical drive as the Fusion Drive does. But I could be wrong.

Oops I'm wrong. Mark the calendar.

I've notified CNN and MSNBC.
Fox wouldn't take my call.

When I first read about the Fusion Drive on the new Apples, it seemed like a good idea (escept for being over-priced of course). Fast memory for the operating system and a huge cache. But after reading several articles about it, I'm not sure it's a very good idea the way they have implemented it.

To start with, it's not a cache. Often-used files are moved to the SSD. And the operator apparently has no control over which files get moved.

The only cache usage implemented is for a write-back buffer. That's a bad idea, IMO. Only the fastest memory in the system (RAM) should be used for write buffers; anything else presents a bottleneck in the system. Consider this entry from Apple's FAQ:

Quote :

I'm using video capture software and it reports frame drops during sustained captures. What could be wrong?
Your project's capture requirements may exceed the sustained capture rate available to your Fusion Drive. Try capturing a smaller segment of the source or reduce its resolution.

Here's an article which presents some concerns about the drive.

I think I would be happier with HDDs for most files and a separate, operator controlled, SDD for the OS and frequently-used programs. Apple is on the right track with the Fusion drive, but I think they are trying to do too much automagically, and diminishing the device's usefulness.

Way over my head, chief.

_Howard wrote:

Maybe they were the first to market a computer without a floppy drive. The iMac, I believe. But who is to say that was a good thing? At the time the iMac came out, a lot of people had massive archives of data and source code on floppies. A computer which could not read them was not a good thing for those people.

Hold up a sec.

I thought you said Apple's philosophy was to maximize profits. Making a computer that "a lot of people" can't use doesn't sound like maximizing profits.

It almost sounds like, hmmm. What's the word?

Oh yeah: vision.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I thought you said Apple's philosophy was to maximize profits.

Well, you thought wrong. What I said was "keep the profit margin as high as possible." And it wasn't in reference to their decision to drop the floppy disk.

NoCoPilot wrote:

It almost sounds like, hmmm.  What's the word?

Oh yeah: vision.

No, the word is Kool-Aid.

I went to the Apple site and tried to configure an iMac. With the 21.5" display, you can only get a single 5400 rpm drive unless you want the fusion drive (which I have decided I don't). 5400 rpm? Hello 1985!

With the 27" display, you have a couple of hard drive options, but you cannot get the i7 processor. Oddly, you can get it with the 21.5" display.
Explain that one.

I also realize that there are no expansion slots or free drive bays on the iMac. Sucks. Big time. I have two optical drives and three internal HDDs in my current box (and a floppy disc drive that hasn't worked in many years). Also have external drives that are incompatible with Apple products.

A couple of articles I read indicate that even adding RAM to the iMac is a  nightmarish task.

I really would like to have an iMac, just for grins, but it seems like I'm too limited in what I can buy, and there is no way to upgrade the damn things. That is my problem, however. I have become used to adding, changing, swapping, and generally fucking around with my computers to get them the way I want. A really "personal" computer. Even before there was an IBM PC, my  CP/M computer had a custom I/O card  built by a friend and me to connect the computer to a typesetting machine. I guess the bottom line is, if I can't mess with the computer then it's not for me.

Rats!

_Howard wrote:

I also realize that there are no expansion slots or free drive bays on the iMac. Sucks. Big time. I have two optical drives and three internal HDDs in my current box (and a floppy disc drive that hasn't worked in many years). Also have external drives that are incompatible with Apple products.

Yep.  My three external HDD and one external SuperDrive -- all USB -- are pretty worthless. I also own a USB floppy drive but I haven't tried it yet. Think I should?

Why do you need three internal HDDs? Just get one 3TB Fusion Drive and be done with it.

_Howard wrote:

A couple of articles I read indicate that even adding RAM to the iMac is a  nightmarish task.

Took me less than a minute.  Pop the door, slide in the SIMMs, close the door.  But I didn't read the article first so what do I know?

_Howard wrote:

I really would like to have an iMac, just for grins, but it seems like I'm too limited in what I can buy, and there is no way to upgrade the damn things. That is my problem, however. I have become used to adding, changing, swapping, and generally fucking around with my computers to get them the way I want. A really "personal" computer. Even before there was an IBM PC, my  CP/M computer had a custom I/O card  built by a friend and me to connect the computer to a typesetting machine. I guess the bottom line is, if I can't mess with the computer then it's not for me.

Yup.  Sounds like messing with the computer is pretty important to you.  Instead of a means to an end it is the end in itself.  Stay away from Apple.

"Messing with" the computer is not important. Having the ability to modify it as needed is important.

Does the iMac have an optical drive? I don't see it mentioned.

The newest iMacs take an external optical drive. It was the weak point in the old iMacs so I can sorta see why they did that. The drive was I think $169 or $179, and plays CDs, DVDs and CDRs that no other drive will boot.

Not Blurays though.