Apple, Intel’s IDF and getting personal

Posted by Dennis Sellers Mar 15, 2006 at 6:25am

If you happen to be one of those Macites that are following every scrap of news coming out of Intel’s Developer Forum’s (IDF) in the hope of gathering an insight or two concerning Apple’s roadmap, then you’ve probably read the bulk of last week’s press releases. However, not all information concerning Apple can be found in press releases alone.

In this report, you’ll find a few new insights along with various photos and presentation slides that you just may find interesting.

Intel’s 2006 Spring IDF could really be summed by just one slide presented in Justin Rattner’s keynote that simply states “The Dawn of Energy-Efficient Performance.” Most of the IDF keynotes revolved around this theme – in one way or another.

Intel’s Maloney & Apple hardware

In and around the 7 minute mark of the IDF video presentation by Maloney, he stated that “you’re now looking at a live map of flights across the United States.

I’m looking at it here on this beautifully smooth Apple iMac with a core duo at 2 Gigahertz.” That got the audience both applauding and laughing. Maloney’s presentation also used a new Intel MacBook to look up the site called “Hot or Not” for a little humor. You’ll find that segment in and around the 9 minute mark of Webcast.

It’s about passion and “the personal”

Another reference to Apple came by way of Maloney’s presentation point concerning the historic passion found in the PC industry. Beginning around the 9:36 minute mark of Maloney’s presentation he stated “That passionate of the personal … that passion of pioneering has always come around in our industry to a large extent by the desire for things to be personal. Forty years ago, the passion at Stanford University … to get away from the horrible mainframe interface led to the creation of the GUI and obviously then through Xerox PARC—the mouse. The passion that lead to the Palto Alto Home Brew computer club—that ultimately ended with … or … gave birth to – the Apple computer—and the PC.” Maloney concluded that segment of his presentation with TCIP that lead to the beginning of the Internet.

Intel’s belief, according to Maloney, is that the next phase of the Internet is about the personal. Steve Jobs’ Macworld keynote this past January also drove home the personal by introducing their Share theme—that also touched on AJAX as did Maloney’s introduction segment.

This is also the keynote where Intel talks about some of the advantages of performance per watt for mobile computing. Do you remember that specific point? Steve Jobs made his initial argument for switching to Intel by stating that, “As we look ahead, we can envision some amazing products that we want to build for you. And we don’t know how to build them with the future PowerPC roadmap. And that’s why we’re going to do this” – (@ QT 24:15). His main focal point was the mid-2006 and beyond outlook at performance per watt. Steve Jobs stated that the PowerPC would hit a wall at 15 units of performance per watt while Intel’s roadmap was targeting up to 70 units per watt.

Home entertainment keynote highlights

The following keynote highlights were derived from Don MacDonald’s webcast. MacDonald is Intel’s VP and General Manager Digital Home Entertainment.

Defining Viiv

Beginning at the 2:45 mark of MacDonald’s keynote video, MacDonald defines the Viiv platform as follows:

“Viiv was designed from the ground up as a user consumer entertainment platform. At its core we have silicon dual core CPU’s, we have the Intel Chipsets and we have Intel networking silicon. The hardware alone doesn’t make a platform. It also has about million lines of Intel software code. And together that combination delivers a consumer experience that’s better than the sum of each individual component. And those things do the high definition audio, video, the quick-resume technology – and they shape a whole bunch of innovations that run on top of the platform. And so we’re really striving to deliver this new compelling entertainment experience. But the golden rule as I said last time and I’d like to demonstrate on stage today is that they really, really, have to be incredibly simple to set up. They have to be exquisitely easy to add new devices. And above all – it has to be incredibly simple to use.”

Various notes

One of things that were impressive to a certain degree, was the fact that Intel estimates that by year’s end there’ll be more than 250 designs of Viiv based units to choose from on the market from both PC and consumer electronics manufactures.

At the 4:47 mark of MacDonald’s keynote, he added that ”…The high performance coupled with the low power has enabled a new breed of industrial design. And together, they deliver this new class of experience driven of course, in no small part by the dual core performance. But it delivers a lot more than that. Breakthroughs in the low power consumption allow Viiv platforms to basically hold there their head up high in the living room, in near silence.”

MacDonald’s presentation on the topic of Viiv’s heat and noise begins around the 5:35 mark of Intel’s video. As one example of the great strides made in the area of heat and noise reduction, MacDonald pointed to their concept PC dubbed the Golden Gate unit (Mac mini copy cat) which is claimed to run cooler than a child’s night light.

Adding web services to Viiv

A little interesting fact was found when MacDonald went on to explain that if the consumer wants to add a web service to their Viiv entertainment PC, such as Cinequest he added, they only need to download it from the web to Viiv which would then automatically promulgate that content and directory to every DMA throughout the home.

That’s interesting in a way because that would suggest that a consumer using a Viiv based system would have no problem downloading content from Apple’s iTunes Music Store. It’s just another web service like Cinequest right? Yes of course.

According to one of MacDonald’s slides, it stated that Viiv’s Transcoding Technology supports 20 formats. So for Apple’s TV programming I don’t think why there’d be a problem. Whether Apple and Intel have worked something out for iTunes is another matter, but in theory a consumer could download iTunes to a Windows based Viiv system just as they could do on a Windows PC running XP today. If this could materialize, then Apple could have their cake and eat it too. With 250 units coming to market for Christmas, Apple could easily chalk up some healthy sales via web services on Viiv Systems. Time will tell.

Who’s got the best remote?

The following could be found at the 21:54 mark of MacDonald’s keynote video:

“In the industry there’s been a little bit of tension to say who’s got the easiest product and device and who has the fewest buttons on the remote. And so we saw that some of the devices [remotes] have 60 buttons and 40 buttons etc. And we actually saw Steve and Apple stand up and have their six button remote control. And one of the members of the audience, Charlie last year said to me – Okay, if you’re so good Intel then why can’t you do something with no buttons … can you beat six buttons. So we decided to do just that.”

From there, MacDonald went on to describe another concept PC called Salt Creek that provides a remote control. He went on to state that a consumer could use Salt Creek’s touch screen pad or use its physical remote control to control menus on a display. He then picks up this remote, which by the way had a great number of buttons to begin with, and began using Salt Creek’s voice activation feature on this massive remote control.

Ouch! The demo went poorly. The first two attempts at using voice commands failed miserably with MacDonald pleading – “Please work.” Attempt number three, was still a flop. Yes, finally on the fourth try it finally kicked in – but with a hitch! MacDonald had to physically stand in line with the display for it to work! Ya right, like that’s convenient for consumers. Who’s going to want to be forced to align themselves perfectly with their television in order to use voice commands? Get real. And yes, you’ll see that on the video.

Then the joke of the keynote came into play with MacDonald stating that “We’ve set the bar for zero buttons on a remote control, so we’d like to see that being bettered.” Wait a minute MacDonald. In the first place, the Salt Creek remote had a million buttons to begin with, and so who’s kidding who here? The buttons are obviously a back up in case the voice command system fails like the demo did. So there’s not much here to consider one feature a breakthrough. The real challenge Mr. MacDonald is could Intel make a sleek remote control like Apple’s. By the way, I won’t hold my breath waiting for an answer to that one.

On the other hand, it was nice to see that MacDonald and his Viiv team were admittedly under pressure to better Apple’s cool and truly simple remote. But at the end of the day, I think Intel has to go back to the drawing board on that feature – don’t you? And just in case some of you are unaware, Apple has their own voice activated system on the way. So I’d hold my victory speech for a little later Mr. MacDonald – until we see both systems in the real world.

Is it time for Apple to reinvent the Duo Dock?

In and around the 30 minute mark of Maloney’s presentation he introduced a concept PC that brought me back years ago to Apple’s one-time Duo Dock (as illustrated). It’s worth checking out Intel’s concept PC on the video, because it looks like a real winner.

I think there could be a real market for a cool new Apple Duo Dock with a 17-inch display. A desktop/mobile unit combination with WiMax, which is rolling out this fall, would make a rather compelling case for itself. Hmm, having a cool new MacBook with Merom as the heart of my desktop wouldn’t be that bad an idea.

For now I’ll leave it at that. But if you have a moment to check it out, do so. Once you see that dual function concept PC, you’ll see that it could be just right for a new Mac hardware option for Christmas 2006/2007. If you think I’m right on this one, then email me at my address below.

Conroe is Impressive!

Now, what was truly amazing was MacDonald’s demo of gaming using Conroe that reached 111 frames per second (fps). The demo was insanely wicked. Then again, if you actually played a game that fast, then you’d be insanely off your rocker. But it made for a fun presentation point for speed, that’s for sure.

The better news, according to MacDonald, is that you could expect another 20 to 40 percent enhancement in speed once all the tweaks are done. Yowza! You’ll find that demo begin around the 25:40 mark of the video presentation. A little later in the presentation there’s a discussion about Intel’s secrete source code being released for gamers (whatever that means).

RDFI Technology

In July 2005 I wrote a report about Motorola’s upcoming RFI inks for smart posters along with examples. At the 31: 15 mark of Intel’s video, MacDonald demonstrates this very feature with an Intel device scanning a corner of a poster to bring up a movie trailer. This was presented as a great Viiv networking example, but I’m sure that Apple will be introducing RDFI technology built into future iterations of their iPod. Count on it.

Neo’s Notes

To verify any of the information found in this report, you could always review Intel’s various Keynote Webcasts for yourself—if you happen to use Internet Explorer that is. Let’s hope that Intel will provide Apple’s base with QuickTime formats by their Fall IDF.

Should you decide to view any of these webcasts, then I’d suggest viewing both keynotes by Sean Maloney and Don MacDonald first, as they’re the most applicable concerning Apple in my opinion. On the other hand, you may appreciate the Keynotes by Pat Gelsinger and Justin Rattner for their basic overview of the future of Intel based technologies.

If you like humor, then check out the first two minutes of the Justin Rattner keynote that has a hilarious skit with kids and technology worth checking out. Additionally, towards the end of Gelsinger’s keynote, he slightly touches on the fact that Intel is on target for 45 nm for the second half of 2007. Intel is certainly preparing for a huge leap ahead! A leap that will certainly be harnessed by Apple’s next generation OS dubbed Leopard.

If you have an opinion on an aspect of this report, write to me at neo@macsimumnews.com

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