

With the iPad Mini, Tim Cook Has Rebuilt Apple in His Image  - seanmb
http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/10/24/with-the-ipad-mini-tim-cook-has-rebuilt-apple-in-his-image

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grecy
We've heard many stories about how the iPad was in development for at least 5
years, and the iPhone around 3-4.

I think it's extremely likely any product we're seeing today was in
development before Jobs passed. Give it a few more years until we start to see
products Jobs had not yet thought of.

~~~
Retric
Apple like most large company's have a lot of R&D products that never see the
light of day. Deciding which of those to take all the way to consumers is a
huge part of what makes or breaks a tech company and I suspect we have already
seen some slight changes. Even if it's just 'new iPad' vs 'iPad 3' style
changes.

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smackfu
It's funny, Jobs had no problem going back on things he said once he changed
his mind. But now that someone else is in charge, that same thing ends up
being "rebuilding Apple."

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jonathansizz
The biggest surprise was how indifferent the Mini is.. $429 for the 32GB model
versus $249 for the soon-to-be-announced 32GB Nexus 7, and with inferior
hardware (much lower resolution screen, half the RAM, slower processor, etc).
I hope for Apple's sake that this isn't a sign of things to come now that Cook
is in charge.

I was never a fan of Jobs, but I have to hand it to him that he always upped
the ante with new product releases. With the Mini, Apple bring an inferior
product late to the party.

~~~
jiggy2011
The problem is that the Nexus 7 doesn't seem to have any "killer app" that
really show cases that extra umph in the power dept that wouldn't be possible
on an iPad.

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nicholassmith
I'd say they're probably following a product roadmap that was laid out by Jobs
and Cook prior to his death. Apple has been working to where Cook thinks it
should go for a long while now, unrelenting progress in maximising, and
increasing the efficiency of, the supply chain.

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amirmc
Seems like a lot of people are looking for stories about Apple's 'new'
management. It surprises me that these stories always use the products
themselves as evidence of new directions or decisions. It's too soon for that.

There are other things that people could point out or discuss but they're a
little more subtle. For example, I wonder about the following:

\- Are there more leaks from/about Apple now? Perhaps the new management isn't
as zealous about shutting them down? Or is this simply a result of more
scrutiny?

\- The explicit comparisons with competitors products seems out-of-whack with
keynotes of old. Almost makes them look desperate? Would this have happened
several years ago? I don't remember seeing outright comparisons with windows
machines.

\- Way too many jargon words in this keynote, which takes away from the
'magic'. Do I really care about 'plasma deposition' or 'nits' of brightness?

I feel there are difference between old-Apple and new-Apple but I don't know
if I'm imagining it. Regardless, I'm pretty confident that we're not close to
seeing any of new-Apple's products just yet.

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danilocampos
This article is moronic.

> Cook yesterday unveiled the long rumored iPad mini, a move the purist Jobs
> condemned just two years ago... Cook reacted, quickly plugging the final
> hole in Apple’s consumer electronics empire.

Steve Jobs _routinely_ panned the product configurations and strategies of
other companies, only to turn around and release something that entirely
contradicted his earlier stance. This was a guy who slammed Intel at _every
single keynote_ , showing off whatever benchmarks his team could think of to
emphasize the PPC's superiority over x86 – until he announced WWDC attendees
could order an Intel-based developer box because the times, they were
a-changin'.

So while this article would have us believe that Cook initiated a crash
program to build a 7 inch iPad immediately upon Jobs' death, what I think is
more likely is that the form factor has been in progress since it was
understood that the iPad was a hit.

~~~
mtgx
This is exactly why I think Apple will move to ARM for Macs soon, even though
most Apple users find that hard to believe.

~~~
sneak
As someone who would have liked an 11" MBAir but got the 13" because there
isn't enough space in the 11" to hold batteries to run an x86 cpu as long as
I'd like, this makes sense to me.

There's only one way to go thinner, smaller, or lighter on their laptops at
this point, outside of some huge breakthrough in battery technology.

What doesn't make sense, though, is apps (built for x86)... Though an app-
store-only model (and requiring ARM builds for inclusion in the app store) is
not entirely out of the question, iOS style. Back to the Mac, indeed.

I don't know if an x64->ARM translation layer for the transition is feasible,
performance-wise, though - perhaps someone with more knowledge of the
architecture can chime in here.

~~~
daeken
> I don't know if an x64->ARM translation layer for the transition is
> feasible, performance-wise, though - perhaps someone with more knowledge of
> the architecture can chime in here.

It's completely feasible. The problem I see is that mapping 64-bit addresses
into a 32-bit space is expensive. I can't think of anything in ARM that will
make things more performant at the moment, but I'm sure there's some sort of
way to pull it off. If OS X binaries are relocatable by default, that'd be an
easy solution.

~~~
beagle3
64-bit ARMs are around the corner; I wouldn't be surprised if Apple has a
cooperation agreement with ARM that gives them access to the not-yet-finalized
but good-enough-to-work-with 64-bit ARM architecture.

Apple has the expertise to be such a client. They're a very significant
customer of ARM, and also (unless things changed when I wasn't looking) a
major shareholder.

Emulating intel code on the ARM is feasible, though going to be 5x-10x slower
for high performance compute code. However: most apps are not high performance
compute code; and given that native ARM for most apps is not a lot more than a
recompile away, that might not be a problem.

(With notable exceptions like Adobe - I'm sure Apple can solve these
individual problems well enough to make that into a non-deal-breaker)

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daeken
> The year Apple became the biggest company in the world, successfully accused
> Samsung of plagiarism in court, and finally released the iPhone 5 — a
> beautifully fine-tuned device.

"Plagiarism"? Are you kidding me? I'm sorry, but this is horrible reporting.
They successfully accused Samsung of many things, but none of them were even
similar to plagiarism.

~~~
Semaphor
Does this article seem to you as if it's interested in something resembling
fair and balanced journalism? It seems to be linkbait for apple fanboys.

