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Blah, blah. I said this two or more days ago.

instant on is more important for PC users because they have to reboot so often to clear memory, recover from crashes. Also, I notice that PC people often shut their laptop down when leaving Starbucks rather than just closing the lid.

I don't see this as any advantage. What MDN says is true that the Mac wakes up from sleep very quickly but can actually pause until the hard drives spin up, then its up and running. OS from Flash may be able to save this spin up time but I would bet there is something on the hard drive the OS will want and then it has to wait to spin up anyway. From Power up, the OS has to actually assemble itself, that is what takes so much time at power up, not the spin up or access to drives. I don't see where Flash would change this. If it could then you could store what ever you were going to store in Flash on the drive and power up into an assumed assembled OS. This could be done now and Intel is doing work in this area, but it doesn't need Flash. Even on a PC you can enable Hibernation which is the same as this would be.

This would be awesome. Not to mention all the other benefits that could come with this.... with dual core chips... have one core sift through the NAND and the other sift through the HD.... or does it not work like that?

numlock, I don't think a restart would be instant. A restart would be from scratch. If your XP box is locked up, the data in the NAND ram would be corrupted. Maybe?

I think you all (MDN included) are maybe missing it. He means instant on from a dead start - like when you turn on your computer in the morning. Not from a sleep mode.

In the PC world, it's often called "hibernation". Sleep mode requires power to be applied because the contents of RAM need to be preserved, where hibernation writes the entire RAM to disk and thus is a no-power state.

It takes a long time, though, to restart from a hibernated state, since all the data has to be reloaded into RAM from the disk, which takes a while. If the data was in flash, the startup would be very fast.

Apple would create a more sensible system than what a PC has, though. Imagine a Powerbook that sleeps as usual when you close the lid, but after an hour or so in the sleep state would silently write the RAM to flash and turn off completely. This would be completely transparent to the user.

He´s discussing instant on from a startup, not sleep mode.

Honker,

Did you miss this part of MDN's take? MDN isn't missing anything:

That said, what Jayson describes would be true "instant-on" for Macs and it would pave the way for reliable, quick-to-power-up Macs and Apple appliances. Like a stereo receiver or a kitchen appliance, your Mac or any Apple appliance or component (DVR, perhaps?) would just be "on" with a press of the power button and "off" with another press. Just think about all of the possibilities beyond the Mac that exist in the living room and elsewhere for Apple to use this technology. And it would be just like Apple to do it first.

We would anyone need instant-on when super stable MacOSX really doesnt require that you shut it off.

Mine stays on all the time. If I didnt update and install software I'd never reboot. Still not a bad technology for laptops.

Most of you guys and gals need to slow down and read MDN's take again. They are talking about Apple appliances, not just Macs, where this technology could be very useful.

Sleep mode still uses a certain amount of power. If I leave my TiBook sleeping, the battery will be flat after 5 days or so.

Instant on means that I can have it actually switched off for several days and still performing with a full charge when I start using it.

On a desktop Mac, it will mean that less power is wasted than with a sleeping Mac, but you still get to use it pretty well instantly. Some don't worry about issues of that type, but to others it's important and could be a big plus for Apple.

The flash memory would also be a way of saving power. When running from batteries, everything destined for the HD (including virtual memory) would be stored on flash until after a certain time, stuff would get saved to disk. That way the times that the HD would need to be accessed, and thus battery power would be signifcantly lowered.

Am I one of the very few who seem to be able to see this portion of the MDN Take?

Just think about all of the possibilities beyond the Mac that exist in the living room and elsewhere for Apple to use this technology. And it would be just like Apple to do it first.

Sooner than most think, hard drives will give way to flash. First in notebooks, then in desktops, I think. Imagine the power and weight savings alone. Greater flash capacity is coming more quickly than most people think - huge investments are being made. And you can thank Apple driving it, too.

And it would be just like Apple to do it first.

I think you'll find the real importance to the Intel/Micron/Apple deal here. Apple has to be the shrewedest investor in complementary technologies in the world.

Example:
iPod. Apple bought Toshiba's entire production run of the HD used in the original iPod. Competitors were unable to develop competing products because there weren't any HDs available to them.
iPod nano. Apple bought all of Samsung's remaining production capacity (40% of total) for the nano. Competitors were/are unable to develop competing products because there aren't any NAND chips available to them.
Instant on. What if the deal involving Micron, Intel and Apple is part of a grander plan to lock up the supply of Robson chips for the next two years.

Even if MSFT tweaks its OS to partially load onto Robson chips, Dell et al couldn't develop a CPU that used the technology, because Apple had cornered the supply.

Intel has been chaffing at the bit for several years, wanting to introduce the technologies it has developed. Doing so meant MSFT tweaking its OS to avail it of those technologies. MSFT has consistently refused to do it, because adoption of the new technologies meant such radical changes in Windows that legacy programs couldn't run on the new version of OS.

I don't think Intel is afraid of losing Dell and other box makers to AMD. Not in the short term anyway. Long term, I think Intel believes Apple is going to be a major force in desktop computing, and is going to do what it can to help. After all, Apple is going to become that major force using Intel technology. Dell at el, will have to come back to Intel just to keep pace with Apple.

I have one already.

I open the lid and bingo its on and ready to go !!

Jeez, most of you who say "blah blah", "big deal", etc sound like our Windows friends. Potentially doing away with the hard drive is a huge step. Hard drives are the slowest part of a computer, so besides "instant on", the overall performance of a system will be truly as fast as the CPU and buses. Not to mention that computers, as we know them, are evolving and putting your computer to sleep may be fine for how we know computers to be nowadays, but this is a mark of true progress (which is far overdue in my estimation). As I always tell my clients: "It's not a question of if your hard drive will fail, but when".

So how many flash NAND chips will it take to match the current 60,80,100gig drives? And how much will it cost?

Blah, blah. I said this two or more days ago.

It's called MacDailyNews - they don't say which Day, however. Take it in stride. Motley picked up the story and added their speculation just today.

I wouldn't be all surprised if Apple pulls out a new appliance in the near future, however...

It should be remembered that Apple need to solve the issue of slow processors in their laptops. That's why the intel deal is so important. Hopefully by January we'll be hearing an official announcement of the first retail Mac using Intel processors.

Flash and other stuff may be included or they may just want to get a basic machine out now and deal with the fancy new features later.

Big deal!

Faster safe sleep, perhaps?

Also, in some ways this reminds me of hybrid cars, with the electric motor supplementing the gas motor in situations where the gas motor lags.

Dave,

It's really not so long ago... in the grand scheme of thing things... that we were using card punch machines and core memory.... please take at this link to see an example of how far (VERY FAR) we've come in such a short period of time....


http://williambader.com/museum/vax/pdphistory.html


I promise you.. it won't be very long before you're question is answered (and you may regret you asked it) ....

i'm sorry for the spelling/grammer mistakes... too much wine.. too little sleeep...


If I could make one investment advice.... believe in what you invest in... only invest in what you purchase at home or at work... only invest in what you are comfortable with.... keep the faith. Always remember....don't drink ANY cool-aid. the returns are.... ummm... well. ....ummm ... too great to ignore.

WATCH FOR THE SIGNS....

If the flash memory were large enough (several GB's or more) it would be possible to have all (most) of the recent OS files and data cached there so the hard disk would not be accessed as much ... would be a cool way to have "almost instant on" (just like my Palm, lowly but handy, Zire 31) and would be energy saving as well ... possibly saving to hard disk could be done in some buffered way every so often.

Sounds cool ... MW is various as I like "various" kinds of memory (especially since my long term and short term memory is failing ... We'll hello ... just call me Dory!) ...

It sounds like the right technology to use for a Front Row set-top box.

Well, the nano's 4 gigs and look how tiny it is, I bet I could fit a nano in my little 12 inch powerbook SOMEwhere......

I think MDN and Sol is right. This NAND agreement is to supply the iPod, Mac, and most importantly, additional consumer electronics products.

I think Apple is working on a video variation of the Airport Express/set-top box that will use 4 to 8GB of NAND memory, in the near term, to provide instant-on access to Front Row on the TV display and local content storage. A smart system could actually cache the first 2 to 3 minutes of all your locally networked audio/video content in this box so that it can start to play immediately upon user selection. While it starts to play, the rest of the media file begins to stream from your main storage location.

I'm a little late to the party but any implications for instant-on if your computer is capable of running more than one operating system?

Big deal. Hasn't my PDA been able to this for about the past 10 years? Come to think about, I never had to wait for my Sinclair ZX81 to boot up either. The move from 1980's ROM to 1990's EEPROM to today's NAND Flash just seems evolutionary rather than revolutionary to me.

I think flash memory usage will result particularly interesting for improving responsiveness and reduce power consuming in two specific processes (expecially important for laptops):
hybernation and memory swap area

If Apple put 4gb of NAND flash into the new Intel Macs, then the whole os could fit on the flash. This would have two benefits for Apple; OSX running and booting faster and if done properly make it even harder to install on generic p.c. hardware.

Note: I didn't say impossible just harder.

Thol

p.s. Just switched to a 20" iMac and loving it

i knew it.. i knew it...
i've telling this for months.. if apple could do something like that they're in a real nice spotlight again, which makes all those "apple is expensive"-wankers say "hmmm, apple has some pretty good ideas.. why doesn't this ugly dell have that??"

right on! now make leopard top notch! on the contrary of what i thought, recent switchers i know are already selling their new mac's... they don't like it.... :(

Good show! I was wondering about if such a thing were possible about a year and a half ago. I am very happy to see that such an advancement for Apple hardware and thus the customers may be in the cards.
Of course it won't be worth two hoots in hell if Apple doesn't advertise it…if such a thing occurs.

I would hate this on my Windows box. I can see it now. The OS (loaded in Flash) gets corrupted and I'm stuck in a continuous loop of restarting my crapped up system. I have to restart so many times now that this would really be a bummer.

"Hard drives are the slowest part of a computer, so besides "instant on", the overall performance of a system will be truly as fast as the CPU and buses."

I don't think so because in my experience writing to a Flash drive via usb is much slower than writing to my harddrive. Maybe that is because of the usb not the flash tech, but in my experience you're statement doesn't make any sense.

"It should be remembered that Apple need to solve the issue of slow processors in their laptops."

Yes, Apple wants us to remember this but we should remember that this isn't true. Just after the switch announcement IBM revealed their low power G5 chips that are perfectly suitable for notebook use. The powerbook is no longer stuck with G4 meaning it can compete just fine while staying PPC. Apple is switching to Intel for tech like this, tech that they have developed and constantly have to forget about because MS doesn't want to make the changes necesarry to use it. Other benefits include intel's deal with morgan freeman for a movie store, which apple may merge into or may use the same intel DRM tech that I assume the other store will use.

The comment of implication for multiple OS's is really interesting. Maybe for a dual OS machine you strap a 4 gig NAND chip on that can receive the RAM of the one OS while you're working in the other. For a triple OS machine you get two 4 gig chips? If this wouldn't work for technical reasons that I haven't taken into account let me know, but it seems doable to me.

I'm a Wintel user (!) and I've got to tell you, that I have never been very clear on the difference between "sleep" and "hibernate" in Windows...it's unnecessarily confusing.

Also, I have disabled "hibernate" b/c it actually takes longer for my WinXP machine to "wake-up" from hibernation than it does to do a cold start-up.

thelt,

In sleep mode the memory content is mainteined and just the power to processor activity is cut off, some power consumption is thus present; in hybernate mode the machine is completely poweroff and the current memory content is saved on disk, thus a slow wakeup but no power consumption. By using flash memory in hybernate mode would make it no slower from sleep with the great advantage of no power consumption.
Additionally if the same flash memory during normal activity would be used also for memory paging, this would give a real bump in performance and again a much much lower overall power consumption.

Well, its not instant on. Instant on employs flash technology not just waking from sleep. Look, I love Macs as much as you guys but they are a) infallible and b) do not employ the technology of the future now. Come on MDN, stop the bullshit.