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-   -   Apple gives a new meaning to solid state. (http://www.photobanter.com/showthread.php?t=126547)

Eric Stevens October 26th 13 12:43 AM

Apple gives a new meaning to solid state.
 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10...013_teardowns/
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

nospam October 26th 13 01:09 AM

Apple gives a new meaning to solid state.
 
In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10...013_teardowns/


more of the usual hypocritical bull****.

how many people repair their own laptops? not very many.

their claim that soldering components makes them more likely to break
is also nonsense.

soldering makes something *more* reliable than having sockets. many
times it's the socket that fails, not the parts or board, so by
eliminating the socket, you remove a point of failure.

they bitch about the headphone jack being soldered to the logicboard,
completely neglecting to mention that just about every radio, mp3
player and many other devices have headphone jacks soldered to the main
board and they rarely break. it's a non-issue.

another issue they mention is soldered memory, but that not unique to
apple. windows ultrabooks do exactly the same thing and most people
don't upgrade their memory after the fact anyway, so this too is a
non-issue.

they complain about the pentalobe screws, yet the appropriate tool is
easily available for a few bucks. more of the same.

but the biggest problem with that article is what it *doesn't* mention,
and that is that microsoft's own surface tablets are just as difficult
to repair, if not more so. there's a *very* high likelihood that you
will break clips or ribbon cables, leaving you with a bunch of
inoperable parts.

Alan Browne October 26th 13 01:21 AM

Apple gives a new meaning to solid state.
 
On 2013.10.25, 19:43 , Eric Stevens wrote:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10...013_teardowns/


In one sense such design should improve reliability at the expense of
owner upgradabilty and repairabilty. They've reduced component counts
and simplified the design as much as possible - all point to higher
reliability.

OTOH it could all backfire on Apple - it is _very_ easy to install OS X
in a wide number of non-Apple laptops and desktops.

What's more important to me is the OS - not the hardware - if forced I
could cobble together an OS X beast from bargain parts.

OTOOH I have a strong suspicion that Apple will migrate to ARM
processors for OS X within 5 - 10 years. I have 0 doubt that they have
such beasts running in a locked up lab in Cupertino - just as they had
intel Macs running for about 5 years before they switched away from PP
processors.

It might take 32 ARM cores to match a 4 core i7. "So be it" Apple will
say. 32 ARM cores would be cheaper than a single i7.

Further to that, the new Darth Vader Mac Pro gets _most_ of its 7 TFLOPS
from the graphics processors - not the Xeon intel beast.

--
"Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another."
-Ambrose Bierce

Savageduck[_3_] October 26th 13 01:21 AM

Apple gives a new meaning to solid state.
 
On 2013-10-25 23:52:54 +0000, RichA said:

On Friday, October 25, 2013 7:43:04 PM UTC-4, Eric Stevens wrote:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10...013_teardowns/

--

Regards,

Eric Stevens


The densest electronics I've ever seen (discrete components) came from
an F16 fighter plane flight control computer from the 1970's.


The bulk of F-16s of the 1970's have been mothballed or are in the
process of conversion to F-16QF, a supersonic target drone, and
possibly a fully combat capable supersonic intruder. Which means the
"dense" electronics of which you write have probably been long replaced
in the current F-16E/F construction (it is still being built with
variants sold World wide).
The USAF plans to upgrade F-16's to an operational service life until
at least 2025, and the 1970's electronics will seem quite quaint by
then.

--
Regards,

Savageduck


Alan Browne October 26th 13 01:22 AM

Apple gives a new meaning to solid state.
 
On 2013.10.25, 19:52 , RichA wrote:
On Friday, October 25, 2013 7:43:04 PM UTC-4, Eric Stevens wrote:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10...013_teardowns/



--



Regards,



Eric Stevens


The densest electronics I've ever seen (discrete components) came
from an F16 fighter plane flight control computer from the 1970's.


snicker

--
"Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another."
-Ambrose Bierce

PeterN[_4_] October 26th 13 01:35 AM

Apple gives a new meaning to solid state.
 
On 10/25/2013 8:09 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10...013_teardowns/


more of the usual hypocritical bull****.

how many people repair their own laptops? not very many.

their claim that soldering components makes them more likely to break
is also nonsense.

soldering makes something *more* reliable than having sockets. many
times it's the socket that fails, not the parts or board, so by
eliminating the socket, you remove a point of failure.

they bitch about the headphone jack being soldered to the logicboard,
completely neglecting to mention that just about every radio, mp3
player and many other devices have headphone jacks soldered to the main
board and they rarely break. it's a non-issue.

another issue they mention is soldered memory, but that not unique to
apple. windows ultrabooks do exactly the same thing and most people
don't upgrade their memory after the fact anyway, so this too is a
non-issue.

they complain about the pentalobe screws, yet the appropriate tool is
easily available for a few bucks. more of the same.

but the biggest problem with that article is what it *doesn't* mention,
and that is that microsoft's own surface tablets are just as difficult
to repair, if not more so. there's a *very* high likelihood that you
will break clips or ribbon cables, leaving you with a bunch of
inoperable parts.


I don't know about 'most people,' but I paid Lenovo for 4 gig of memory,
and bought 16 from Crucial, for much less than half the price Lenovo
wanted to charge. The replacement took less than 15 minutes. I had the
chance to see if I really needed the memory before I bought it, and
saved money in the process.


--
PeterN

Alan Browne October 26th 13 01:36 AM

Apple gives a new meaning to solid state.
 
On 2013.10.25, 20:21 , Savageduck wrote:
On 2013-10-25 23:52:54 +0000, RichA said:

On Friday, October 25, 2013 7:43:04 PM UTC-4, Eric Stevens wrote:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10...013_teardowns/

--

Regards,

Eric Stevens


The densest electronics I've ever seen (discrete components) came from
an F16 fighter plane flight control computer from the 1970's.


The bulk of F-16s of the 1970's have been mothballed or are in the
process of conversion to F-16QF, a supersonic target drone, and possibly
a fully combat capable supersonic intruder. Which means the "dense"
electronics of which you write have probably been long replaced in the
current F-16E/F construction (it is still being built with variants sold
World wide).
The USAF plans to upgrade F-16's to an operational service life until at
least 2025, and the 1970's electronics will seem quite quaint by then.


Common denominators of military avionics:

- by the time the aircraft is squadron ready, much of the electronic
components are usually obsolete. This is lucrative for avionics
suppliers as they get huge contracts to redesign F^3 boards and boxes to
replace them. Likewise, spares orders are well beyond "practical"
necessary because nobody wants to chance that a box can't be replaced.

- software engineers are not allowed to retire. I know a few old fogies
who are very well paid to maintain s/w written 30 years ago for the US,
Canadian, Brit, Australian, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Turkish, Japanese
and other armed forces. These gents are well beyond standard retirement
age - but enjoying the fact that they can take vacation on 7 seconds
notice (that's 5 - 8 weeks per year, plus 2 weeks for Christmas - all
paid, naturally). They do not "do" overtime.

- entire boxes on F-16's from the 70's can be done on one FPGA - with
room for added functionality.


--
"Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another."
-Ambrose Bierce

Alan Browne October 26th 13 01:41 AM

Apple gives a new meaning to solid state.
 
On 2013.10.25, 20:35 , PeterN wrote:

I don't know about 'most people,' but I paid Lenovo for 4 gig of memory,
and bought 16 from Crucial, for much less than half the price Lenovo
wanted to charge. The replacement took less than 15 minutes. I had the
chance to see if I really needed the memory before I bought it, and
saved money in the process.


I recently bought a new iMac with the minimum memory (8 GB).

I bought another 16 GB from Crucial at a lower price than Apple charged
for 8 more.

Stuffing it into the iMac took about 3 minutes from shutdown to startup.

24 GB means never having to write to swap (esp. with the new OS 10.9
"Mavericks" as it appears Apple have done major improvements to memory
management).

--
"Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another."
-Ambrose Bierce

nospam October 26th 13 01:59 AM

Apple gives a new meaning to solid state.
 
In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

OTOOH I have a strong suspicion that Apple will migrate to ARM
processors for OS X within 5 - 10 years.


it definitely won't be 10 years and won't be 5 either.

1-2 years is more likely and i would not be surprised if it's sooner
than later.

I have 0 doubt that they have
such beasts running in a locked up lab in Cupertino - just as they had
intel Macs running for about 5 years before they switched away from PP
processors.


they had intel macs since before there was an os x.

nextstep/openstep ran on intel back in the early 1990s and when apple
bought next, it was ported it to powerpc while they maintained the
intel version, but in secret, because they knew one day they'd switch
processors.

everything apple did, from os x to itunes and other apps, all had to
build properly on a secret intel system and without the engineers
knowing.

It might take 32 ARM cores to match a 4 core i7. "So be it" Apple will
say. 32 ARM cores would be cheaper than a single i7.


they don't need to match it. not everyone needs the power of a 4 core
i7.

already, an ipad suffices for many ordinary tasks.

a 12" ipad with a keyboard which can run recompiled mac applications is
very possible right *now*.

some have called this the ipad pro, now that the original ipad has been
renamed to ipad air.

the only issue is getting developer support, because without apps, it's
useless.

nospam October 26th 13 01:59 AM

Apple gives a new meaning to solid state.
 
In article , PeterN
wrote:

I don't know about 'most people,' but I paid Lenovo for 4 gig of memory,
and bought 16 from Crucial, for much less than half the price Lenovo
wanted to charge. The replacement took less than 15 minutes. I had the
chance to see if I really needed the memory before I bought it, and
saved money in the process.


most people wouldn't know where to start to add their own memory. not
everyone is a geek.

now you decide at the time of purchase instead of later, and apple's
prices aren't all that outrageous, assuming you compare the same type
of memory.

for instance, apple charges $100 more for 8 gig versus 4 gig on the 13"
macbook pro retina.

newegg has the same spec memory for $77. other sellers are a little
higher.

$20 to have it preinstalled and not need to deal with figuring out
which chip to get, along with having everything warranted by one
company so there isn't any question about what caused any problem that
might occur, is well worth it.


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