The Future of Apple iPad

[LouieSamman]

There is absolutely no benefit to doing things this way. It makes sense for your content to be streamed so you can access it anywhere, but somehow "streaming the OS" and applications will always be a worse experience than running it locally. A network connection's latency is going to kill the responsiveness of the device, whether your connection is 3G, 4G, Wireless N, whatever- not to mention what happens in those moments that you lose the connection as the others mentioned.

The OS takes up a very small percentage of the flash memory anyway, and the flash memory takes up almost no space in the device itself relative to the battery, so there is no physical benefit to doing it, either.

The Benefit of this is using apples server to store our music, applications, settings.. ect. People would love this because now they don't have to worry about syncing or backing up.

Look at what Google is doing with Google Chrome OS.

This is possible and by the 5 or 10 years our internet will be powerful enough to be able to do this.

If you are worried about the connection latency, go look at what "OnLive" is doing to solve that problem with them trying to stream games to users with an internet connection. Their is no lag time. All real time. OnLive is coming out late this year.

It has something to do with compression I believe that solves this problem.

Remember, I'm talking about the near future. You are talking about how it can't work out today.

Technology gets better that soon we will be able to do this and all you guys would start thinking how it makes sense.

People at apple needs to think ahead for you guys because obviously you guys just want more ram and processing power. You guys can't think of more advancements, thats why companies have to think for you and find different ideas to make their products that we haven't thought about.

 

[admanimal]

I think you need to be more clear about what "streaming the OS" means to you exactly. There has to be some kind of OS on the device for it to do anything. What is going to be on the device vs. what is in the cloud?

For example, Chrome OS will exist on the device. The OS is not streamed. Chrome OS will only run web-based applications, in which case, yes, most of the processing will be done on servers belonging to the providers of the various web applications (basically the way it works with web sites already). Google doesn't need to run any servers for the sake of running Chrome OS or its applications.

 

[LouieSamman]

I think you need to be more clear about what "streaming the OS" means to you exactly. There has to be some kind of OS on the device for it to do anything. What is going to be on the device vs. what is in the cloud?

For example, Chrome OS will exist on the device. The OS is not streamed. Chrome OS will only run web-based applications, in which case, yes, most of the processing will be done on servers belonging to the providers of the various web applications (basically the way it works with web sites already). Google doesn't need to run any servers for the sake of running Chrome OS or its applications.

I guess I shouldn't used Google Chrome OS as an example as you are correct.

Let me us the example of the company making "Onlive"

Well yes there is going to be a small unusable OS on it to get the iPhone OS onto it.

It's like "OnLive". They use a MicroConsole (if you go to their website you can see how small it is comparing to an xbox, PS3, and Wii)

This MicroConsole is used to get the "OnLive" gaming OS and games by being streamed to this MicroConsole.

 

[admanimal]

Even if it becomes technically feasible, I'm extremely skeptical that Apple would ever attempt this or would ever really need to. By the time the technology is ready, including appropriately fast and reliable internet, hardware will have also evolved into something fast and efficient enough to eliminate any potential benefit of doing things remotely.

I'm just talking about running software remotely by the way, I'm sure they will have all sorts of content (video & music) streaming sooner or later.

 

[LouieSamman]

Even if it becomes technically feasible, I'm extremely skeptical that Apple would ever attempt this or would ever really need to. By the time the technology is ready, including appropriately fast and reliable internet, hardware will have also evolved into something fast and efficient enough to eliminate any potential benefit of doing things remotely.

The reason why they would do this is to be able to add more specs to the device than what can be fitted inside it.

Apple can add as much ram, processing power, and flash drives as they want because they have huge machines to store it in.

This leaves the iPad to be more powerful

Apple would be limited by the small size of the iPad to add high specs

They can add a Core i7 with 8 gb of ram on the iPad making it much faster than the competition who are making tablets aswell. This will have more people buy the tablet seeing how such a thin and small device to be so powerful and it can take many people away from purchasing netbooks and or laptops for that matter.

If apple wanted to add Core i7 with 8 gb of ram on the iPad Physically. It wouldn't do. Technology hasn't advance to be able to have that in a small form factor.

So Apple will do with streaming the specs to the iPad so this could be possible.

Makes sense?

 

[DKatri]

Some cool ideas, but, not all feasible. 24hr battery in a package half as thick and flexible might be a bit too far. I think that the evolution will, overall be pretty slow. Look at the iPhone. between the first and second gen there is a leap and then a small jump from 2nd gen to 3rd and now a bigger leap to the 4th gen. Real usable flexible screens are still a few years away from a price point that would make them a viable option. And IMO I think it could detract from the sleekness of the design if you could bend and deform it.

 

[jb1280]

Makes sense?

No offense, but it doesn't make sense.

Elaborating on the prior poster's comment - until we can have ubiquitous, fast, reliable, competitively priced telcom-based internet everywhere from New York to Aukland and the Peruvian Amazon to 38,000 feet above Greenland in an airplane, it makes no sense to promote the type of computing you are in a mainstream sense.

By the time we overcome the technical, political, and, economic hurdles for that to occur, the local hardware will probably make such a scenario unnecessary.

Having the ability to stream content is one thing, making the internet a prerequisite to having any access to the device makes no sense for many many years.

 

[DKatri]

The reason why they would do this is to be able to add more specs to the device than what can be fitted inside it.

Apple can add as much ram, processing power, and flash drives as they want because they have huge machines to store it in.

This leaves the iPad to be more powerful

Apple would be limited by the small size of the iPad to add high specs

They can add a Core i7 with 8 gb of ram on the iPad making it much faster than the competition who are making tablets aswell. This will have more people buy the tablet seeing how such a thin and small device to be so powerful and it can take many people away from purchasing netbooks and or laptops for that matter.

If apple wanted to add Core i7 with 8 gb of ram on the iPad Physically. It wouldn't do. Technology hasn't advance to be able to have that in a small form factor.

So Apple will do with streaming the specs to the iPad so this could be possible.

Makes sense?

The biggest problem with the streaming OS is the servers that they would have to maintain. If they expect to sell 10s of millions worldwide and they have to stream 16+ GB constantly to each device in use, it would be too much to maintain and would cost a crazy amount, and that would end up being passed on to the user as a compulsory subscription fee, not good.

 

[admanimal]

If apple wanted to add Core i7 with 8 gb of ram on the iPad Physically. It wouldn't do. Technology hasn't advance to be able to have that in a small form factor.

Technology hasn't advanced far enough to do any of the things you are suggesting it will, so why not just assume that they will be able to get an i7-class CPU with 8GB of RAM in a form factor that fits the iPad in 5-10 years rather than assume that they will come up with a far more complicated and costly solution that has huge drawbacks?

 

[DKatri]

If they switch to the streaming OS in the next 4 years i'll eat my hat

 

[Jkazmeyer]

I, for one, am more excited to see what developers will do with this device now that they all have one.... I know we are all excited for the next generation of hardware for our device... But for me the selling point is the limitless possibilities developers have... That's what truly sold me on the iPhone to begin with... This device, as it is now, can do so much and we have only scratched the surface... Just saying... I know this device is capable of amazing things, in the hands of the right developers... I just can't wait to see!!!

 

[Battlestar]

Here's how to enable voice control now

MAC

Make sure you have afc2add installed from cydia or rock. SSH into your device or use your favorite USB browser.

1. Navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app
2. Open K48AP.plist in a text editor or a plist editor
3. Under the capabilities area add the following key:

<key>voice-control</key>
<true/>

4. Reboot your iPad and enjoy Voice Control!


Windows

1. For Windows users, you’ll need a software like WINSCP and for Mac you can use Cyberduck.
2. Install OpenSSH on your iPad using Cydia. Open up Cydia and search for it. You’ll have to restart your iPad after that.
3. Now use the following settings to log into your iPad: IP address of your iPad and user name: root and password: alpine and protocol: SCP
4. Navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app
5. Open K48AP.plist in a text editor or a plist editor
6. Under the capabilities area add the following key:

<key>voice-control</key>
<true/>

7. Reboot your iPad and enjoy Voice Control!

Attempt at your own risk

 

[LouieSamman]

Technology hasn't advanced far enough to do any of the things you are suggesting it will, so why not just assume that they will be able to get an i7-class CPU with 8GB of RAM in a form factor that fits the iPad in 5-10 years rather than assume that they will come up with a far more complicated and costly solution that has huge drawbacks?

"OnLive" which is coming out late this year can do this.

They will be able to stream your games on their servers and you can never worry about if you have enough specs to play a certain game.

OnLive allow you to play your games on highest settings all you need is an internet connection.

This shows that they are using lots of processing power, Great graphical cards, and lots of ram for all of their games that way we can play the streamed game at highest settings.

They compress it and stream it to us that way we get it in real time. No lag time.

Apple can do this in 5 to 10 years.

"OnLive" is already going to be doing late this year. So it is possible.

 

[admanimal]

"OnLive" which is coming out late this year can do this.

They will be able to stream your games on their servers and you can never worry about if you have enough specs to play a certain game.

OnLive allow you to play your games on highest settings all you need is an internet connection.

This shows that they are using lots of processing power, Great graphical cards, and lots of ram for all of their games that way we can play the streamed game at highest settings.

They compress it and stream it to us that way we get it in real time. No lag time.

Apple can do this in 5 to 10 years.

"OnLive" is already going to be doing late this year. So it is possible.

Is OnLive going to have 10's of millions of subscribers like Apple would for the iPad? Does OnLive work over high-latency Cell network connections?

I'll believe that OnLive works as well as they say it will when I see it- never mind that they would be doing things at a scale far, far smaller than what Apple would have to.

Not to mention that no one is going to be relying on OnLive working 24/7. People are using their iPads in place of a laptop in many cases. It has to work all the time With no exceptions.