thomas fitzgerald.net

Speculation as to the reason behind the lack of Apple’s Hardware announcements.

For those that have followed the comings and goings of a certain Cupertino company, this year has proved somewhat odd. Normally the Californian computer maker has released at least one revision to it’s Macintosh line by now, but so far this year, we haven’t seen a single piece of Mac related hardware news from Apple. Macworld Expo in January usually heralds an updated consumer desktop or notebook. But this year they used virtually the entire show to talk about the iPhone. This dearth of information has left even the rumour sites scrambling for scraps, and the major magazines scratching their heads as to what to report on. So what has happened? Has Apple run into trouble? Have they lost their focus on the Mac, becoming obsessed instead with the iPod and now the iPhone? Hardly. What follows maybe some wide eyed speculation as to just what Apple is up to, but if I’m any way close, it could be a very exciting year for Apple products indeed.

Disclaimer: What follows is pure speculation. It is not a rumour. I have no inside information or “sources” It is based on analysis of recent web musings. Take it or leave it, I offer it as is.

I suspect that when we do finally see mac revisions from Apple we will see some pretty major changes to the line. First of all, when Apple made the switch to Intel, they made a very wise decision to keep the same, or virtually the same enclosures across the line (with the exception of the macbook) While some people questioned their wisdom at the time, especially as all the designs are getting a little long in the tooth. From Apple’s point of view though this decision made perfect sense. People needed to feel reassured with the switch to Intel that they were still buying a mac, and by not changing the enclosure, Apple kept the perceived differences of the intel based machines as minimal as possible. When someone went to purchase a new iMac they were greeted with a computer that looked and felt just the same as the familiar iMac of old.

Now that the switch to Intel hardware is complete, and arguably very successful, the company can afford to revise the enclosures and start offering features unique to the Intel platform. Just revising the enclosures in and of itself would not have caused them to delay new products this long. They were surely working on this for some time so, it seems unlikely this is the only reason for the delay. This may sound like a long shot, but bear with me. Perhaps Apple is adding additional hardware features to the entire product line that requires software technology in Leopard to function.

Sounds far fetched? Well, maybe not. One such possibility has been making the rounds for some time now is the integration of flash ram. Intel demonstrated the technology some time ago for supplementing computers’ storage with flash ram to speed up booting. This technology could also be used to speed up page ins and outs in virtual memory. In fact, Microsoft uses something similar in Windows Vista with their ready boost technology. In a comment to Michael Tsai’s blog posting some time ago explaining how ready boost worked, someone commented that it would be great to have the flash ram built in. This idea immediately clicked with me and seemed a logical thing for a company that controls both the hardware and software to do. The recent comments by Shaw Wu on the supposed use of Flash Ram in Apple notebooks as the primary storage is ridiculous, but his supply chain checks suggest massive purchases of the chips. What if Apple is adding flash ram to their line, but for a pseudo ready boost technology that will be a feature of Leopard? This is not that far fetched. Intel’s own “Santa Rosa” technology features integrated flash ram for rapidly speeding up booting, has been announced since this time last year, for availability, strangely enough, around now.

Another interesting idea came from Robert Cringly. He surmised that Apple would be adding hardware H.264 encoding and decoding chip to their entire product line. At first I scoffed at this idea, but on hindsight it actually makes sense. If the next generation of iDVD were to feature blu-ray and hd-dvd authoring capabilities, then, for consumers at least, the current software H.264 encoding for high definition would take way to long to be practical. However, if Apple could source a chip that can dramatically cut encoding speeds, it could offer a huge advantage over its competition. It is one of those off the wall rumours that seems too strange to have simply been dreamt up.

In the end, I suspect that pole-vaulting over the competition will be the big incentive for Apple. Now that their hardware platform is pretty much the same as other PC manufacturers they are undoubtedly looking to distance themselves from the rest of the PC market and capitalise on their control of both the hardware and software. Such vertical integration between the operating system and the hardware platform can offer Apple an a competitive advantage no other company can ever match. None of this might ever happen, but if it does, The Mac, while moving to the same platform as every other computer vendor, could ironically become more unique than ever before.