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from the have-you-tried-programming-on-a-tablet? dept.
Christopher Mims writes at the WSJ that Apple like all ambitious companies occasionally strays from its focus. According to Mims the iPhone is just coming into its prime, the iPad is an immature platform and the iWatch is in its infancy, yet Apple continues to invest in one-of-a-kind feats of engineering like the Mac Pro, which ships in volumes that are a rounding error on pretty much everything else Apple makes. "Something's got to give," writes Mims. "Showpieces like iMacs with screens that have more pixels than any PC ever (and four times the average selling price of a PC) are impressive, but what is Apple trying to prove? Is it really a good idea for Apple to continue to put resources against being king of a last-century technology?"
According to Mims the world's best tech companies can be the best at two things at once, maybe three and even a company as mighty as Apple gets to be the best at only a handful of things. "In a world in which the cloud is increasingly the hub of everything individuals and businesses do, and our mobile devices its primary avatar, what on Earth is Apple doing running victory laps around a dying PC industry? Personally, I'd rather see Apple push the envelope on what's next."
takyon: Paywall buster.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:19PM
They didn't invent the ultrabook format. They may have a great entry in the area, but they were far from the first to try.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by theluggage on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:31AM
They didn't invent the ultrabook format.
Well, the term "ultrabook" wasn't coined by intel until after the success of the Air... and read any review of a PC ultrabook and see what they compare it to.
The Air was, pretty much, a new format: there had been ultra-portables (like the Vaio 505) and netbooks (like the eeePCs) but they tended to have tiny displays, miniature keyboards and pretty feeble processors. The Air had an almost full-pitch keyboard, a reasonable sized display, was comparatively powerful, but really went for thin-ness and dependence on wireless connectivity.
Anyway, the whole concept of the modern laptop - with the set-back keyboard and the pointing device in the middle of a wrist-rest - dates back to the Apple/Sony collaboration on the original PowerBook.