Imagine consumers en masse dumping their old PC clunkers for a svelte MacBook Air running the sleek, new Snow Leopard operating system. An implausible Orwellian vision but probably not that far removed from Apple's marketing aspirations.
In short, walk into any Apple Store in any tony neighborhood and the message is: relieve yourself of those old bulky PCs and flip phones and we'll give you smaller, more stylish computing with the Apple cachet.
Ford Fusion: Ford is emphasizing smaller, more efficient designs, like Apple.
(Credit: Ford)The analogy may be a bit strained, but imagine trading in a 14 mpg Hummer H2 for a 45 mpg hybrid Ford Fusion. The point: smaller is better. And it's not just Apple hardware. Apple's new Snow Leopard operating system is smaller too. About 7GB smaller than the version it replaces.
As this New York Times review graphically (and some claim fawningly) shows, making software smaller violates a basic tenet of operating system upgrades: more is better. Historically, Windows has been the most egregious example of this immutable law of software marketing. This trend culminated in the fiasco that was Windows Vista--at least the dysfunctional version of Vista that appeared in early 2007.
At General Motors, this trend culminated in the H2, a car too big even by Detroit's standards. (GM subsequently struck a deal to sell Hummer to China-based Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company and is trying to make the electric Chevrolet Volt into its marquee model for the Chevrolet nameplate.)
Are those days over? No, but it's safe to say that at an even more profound level, personal computing is moving to smaller gadgets which, by necessity, use efficient operating environments running on efficient silicon. The iPhone comes to mind. Tiny Netbooks are another good example. In short, despite the obvious compromises that small size imposes, many consumers are realizing that they can do what they need to do with less.
Even Microsoft has figured this out, albeit slowly. Microsoft's Windows 7, based on preliminary reviews, is leaner and faster than Vista. (Yes, there's Windows Mobile 6.5 but I don't think I'm going out on a limb by saying that this isn't the future of smartphone operating systems.) Intel has got religion too. Its Atom and ultra- low-voltage (ULV) processors both offer significant power savings over standard Intel chip designs.
Apple wants to go a lot further than "Wintel" has gone, however, just as Ford wants to out-mpg GM in the fuel-efficiency race. The argument can be made that Cupertino is offering a sleeker operating system in preparation for devices to come. Maybe a tablet. Maybe something that has yet to be reported. What is clear is that Apple is focusing a lot of its in-house development on small, efficient technology. Both silicon and software.
The same thing can be roughly said about Ford. Its highest profile cars these days are the Fusion, Focus, and Escape--all relatively small, fuel-efficient cars (two are sold optionally as hybrids). All the polar opposite of the most popular cars in its gas-guzzler heyday: the Explorer, Expedition, and Excursion.
No Orwellian vision here, just smaller, more efficient computing devices (and cars) that make a clean break from an obsolete past.
A report claiming that Nvidia has been ousted from Apple laptop designs has gained prominence quickly because the graphics chip supplier is still dogged by past problems.
"The word is that Nvidia is out of Apple designs," according to a June 26 report from technology Web site SemiAccurate. The report has been cited widely with varying degrees of credence given to it.
"When I say out, I mean on the Nehalem-based Macs," Charlie Demerjian, the author of the report, said in a phone interview Monday, referring to future laptops from Apple that will be based on Intel's new Nehalem Core i series of chips.
Nvidia, not surprisingly, doesn't see it that way. "These rumors are baseless," an Nvidia spokesman said Monday. Apple had no comment.
Nvidia graphics processors are currently used widely in Apple MacBooks. And Apple has been touting a new technology in its upcoming Mac OS X Snow Leopard operating system called OpenCL, which takes "the power of graphics processors" and makes it available to Snow Leopard for everyday computing tasks.
However, lurking below this push to tap into the compute power of the graphics processor lie past issues with Nvidia chips. A May 29 Apple knowledge-base article (Article: TS2377) couches frustration with Nvidia in diplomatic language, according to Demerjian. The article updates a similar notice Apple published in October of last year.
"Nvidia assured Apple that Mac computers with these graphics processors were not affected," according to the Apple May 29 statement. "However, after an Apple-led investigation, Apple has determined that some MacBook Pro computers with the Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor may be affected."
"The 8600M referred to in the Apple support page...had a particular material set," Nvidia said Monday, repeating a statement it has made several times in the past. "That particular combination of material set is no longer being used by Nvidia."
In a May 20 disclosure as part of a Form 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Nvidia said that some notebooks still have problems associated with its graphics chips.
And past statements from not only Apple but the world's largest PC makers lend weight to the tenor of SemiAccurate's assertions about Nvidia's chip problems, if not necessarily to the accuracy of the report's claims about Nvidia's future at Apple. Hewlett-Packard said last year that it had been grappling with Nvidia chip issues since November 2007. And Dell made a similar statement last year.
Writing about the SemiAccurate report, Broadpoint AmTech analyst Doug Freedman said Monday: "If the reports are indeed true...Although negative at the margins, this shortfall could be offset by new product ramps." Freedman cited upcoming products--that will offset any negative impact--such as Nvidia's Tegra chip for smartphones and its Ion chipsets for laptops and Netbooks.
Nvidia is looking to its Tegra chip for growth and Windows 7 for new opportunities.
Speaking during the company's earnings conference call Thursday, Nvidia Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang said one the company's biggest opportunities is graphics-specific applications on Windows 7. (Nvidia earnings summary here.)
Huang waxed enthusiastic about a technology he called "DirectX Compute"--which taps into the hundreds of processors inside many of today's graphics processors. "Finally it's possible to do video editing...that's not excruciating," he said. "This is going to be one of the major usage models for Windows 7," he said.
Nvidia also released a statement Thursday about DirectX Compute, saying it will boost the "speed and responsiveness" of Windows 7. This is analogous to what Apple and Nvidia have been saying about graphics on Apple's upcoming Snow Leopard operating system.
Huang also made it very clear that Tegra is a big part of Nvidia's future. Tegra is a system-on-a-chip that integrates an ARM applications processor and Nvidia's GeForce graphics silicon, among other functions. The goal is to bring robust PC-like graphics to small devices.
"Of all the products in our company, Tegra long term has the largest TAM (Total Available Market)," Huang said. "We've been investing in Tegra for about four years...There's 500 people working on Tegra."
Huang said--referring to Tegra--that Nvidia has built a "computer completely from scratch that's the size of a penny" that delivers a full high-definition experience and "consumes less than one watt." He added that this is the second computing revolution and "we want to be all over it."
Huang also talked about Nvidia's Ion platform. When Ion was launched in December of last year, the emphasis was initially on boosting graphics performance on Intel Atom-based Netbooks. But Huang said Thursday that Ion applies broadly to any products that use its 9400M GeForce chipset, such as Apple's MacBooks. The bulk of Nvidia Ion chipset revenue is coming from Apple, he said.
In related news, Nvidia released Windows 7 graphics drivers on Thursday, in conjunction with the release candidate of Windows 7. The Nvidia Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL)-certified graphics driver for PC desktops and notebooks is available for its Ion, GeForce, and Quadro products. (Like a number of hardware makers, Nvidia had issues with it Vista drivers.)
Nvidia cited performance testing on Windows 7 at technology Web site Anandtech, which said that "performance was rock solid and the compatibility/stability aspects of the driver far exceeded our expectations."
Updated on April 27 at 8:20 a.m. PDT with additional information about DirectX 11 and correcting for Intel comments at bottom.
Graphics chips will be tapped to accelerate more tasks in upcoming versions of Apple's and Microsoft's operating systems, according to Nvidia.
Apple's upcoming Mac OS X Snow Leopard will tap into the compute power of graphics processors
(Credit: Apple)In an interview Friday with Sumit Gupta, product manager for Nvidia's Tesla products, Gupta described how new programming environments will tap into the latent compute horsepower of graphics processors to accelerate software in Apple's upcoming OS X Snow Leopard and Microsoft's Windows 7 operating systems.
Graphics chips aren't just for games anymore. The trend toward general-purpose graphics processing is defined by an acronym that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue: GPGPU. But the essence of General Purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units is pretty simple: use the scores--or even hundreds in higher-end chips--of processing cores inside GPUs to speed tasks that, in some cases, would be done much less efficiently by the central processing unit (CPU).
This is where OpenCL (Open Computing Language) comes in. OpenCL is a programming environment for "heterogeneous" computing. That is, computers using a mix of multicore CPUs and GPUs. Microsoft's analogous programming environment is DirectX.
Apple says this about OpenCL on its Web site. "Another powerful Snow Leopard technology, OpenCL...makes it possible for developers to efficiently tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently locked up in the graphics processing unit."
Today, on a PC or a Mac, the CPUs made by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are adept at handling general operating system tasks. For instance, handling the sequence of things that must happen after the user clicks on an icon to start an application on their desktop.
... Read moreUpdated at 10:45 p.m. PST with additional system specifications.
The aesthete buys an Apple. This dig in the latest Mac-attack Microsoft ad contains a kernel of truth.
Here's the essential choice: A Dell with a pedestrian design but all the fixin's or a gorgeous Apple MacBook that doesn't offer quite as much. (Whether the prospective buyer needs a maxed-out laptop is a pertinent question too.)
The Dell paradigm is how many people define practicality, i.e., you get more box for the money. Hewlett-Packard of course falls into this category too.
I use both a MacBook (an Air) and a Windows machine (HP): a dualism of sorts: one pleases the eye, the other is more utilitarian. Of course, this characterization of the two platforms is greatly oversimplified (dare I not mention the dueling OSes: OS X Leopard versus XP/Vista?), but this is the kind of thinking that drives many purchases.
Without further ado, let's do a side-by-side.
Aluminum 13-inch MacBook
(Credit: Apple)Aluminum 13-inch (LED) MacBook:
- OS: OS X Leopard
- Processor: 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 9400M
- Memory: 2GB DDR3
- Hard drive: 250GB 5400rpm
- Camera: built-in camera
- Connectivity:10/100/1000 Ethernet / 802.11n
- Optical drive: 8x (DVD±RW)
- Warranty: 1 year
- Price: $1,599
Dell XPS 13
(Credit: Dell)Dell XPS 13 (LED):
- OS: Windows Vista Home Premium
- Processor: 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 9500M--256MB
- Memory: 4GB DDR3
- Hard drive: 500GB 7200rpm
- Camera: built-in camera
- Connectivity: 10/100/1000 Ethernet / 802.11n
- Optical drive: 8x (DVD±RW)
- Warranty: 2 years
- Price: $1,598
A quick glance at the features shows that the Dell beats the Apple. That said, the Dell isn't an aluminum unibody design, doesn't wow like the MacBook, and doesn't carry the cachet of the Apple brand. The latter two intangibles are important for a lot of buyers.
Perceived performance is also an intangible. The question of which of two comparable systems is faster is often based on one's individual definition of performance.
So, which computer carries the day? I'll let the reader decide.
Additional notes: Some readers say the OS plays a very large role in the buying decision. Particularly the fact that the Apple OS is a Unix derivative and that Apple users can run both OS X and Windows via Boot Camp. Duly noted.
Nvidia is in at Apple. So, what's the connection between Apple's graphics-fortified lineup and Snow Leopard OS X?
First a quick canvass of the state of Apple's graphics. Low-performance Intel integrated graphics have been booted from MacBooks, replaced by Nvidia. And, earlier this week, Apple updated the iMac, Mac mini, and Mac Pro with Nvidia graphics across the board and didn't mince words on its Web site: "Ultrafast Nvidia graphics" ad copy is prominently displayed for the iMacs. ATI graphics are also promoted for the Mac Pro and offered on the iMac.
Then, there's this Snow Leopard blurb on Apple's site: "OpenCL (Open Computing Language), makes it possible for developers to efficiently tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently locked up in the graphics processing unit (GPU). With GPUs approaching processing speeds of a trillion operations per second, they're capable of considerably more than just drawing pictures. OpenCL takes that power and redirects it for general-purpose computing."
So, what does this add up to? "Apple is teeing up to accelerate graphic applications better than anyone else--a market segment they are well known in and loved, so it behooves them to nurture and protect it," said Jon Peddie, of Jon Peddie Research, which tracks the graphics market. "Nvidia has been working in the background with Apple, very closely, for about five years now. What you're seeing now is the manifestation of that investment," he said.
What this means is that Apple is doubling its efforts to unlock the parallel processing power of GPUs--which these days pack hundreds of processing units--to speed up more than just games. Apple wants to use the GPU more as a general purpose processor by expanding, via OpenCL, the range of applications that can tap into the prodigious processing power of the GPU--which can be programmed to crunch certain kinds of data much faster than a dual-core or quad-core Intel processor.
U.K.-based technology Web site The Register had this to say about Snow Leopard back in December: "There's a strong possibility (Snow Leopard) leapt well past Windows 7." And goes on to say: "The release of OpenCL 1.0 is a giant step towards the long-sought goal...in which the massively parallel capabilities of GPUs (graphics-processing units) are brought to bear on general-purpose applications."
Apple is also extolling the virtues of Intel multicore processors, saying on its Snow Leopard page that Grand Central, a new set of technologies built into Snow Leopard, "brings unrivaled support for multicore systems to Mac OS X. More cores, not faster clock speeds, drive performance increases in today's processors."
Sounds like Windows 7 is going to have some competition.
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