Quad-core iPhones with GPGPU acceleration and firmware 3.0?

[Athernar]

Physical buttons won't be replaced until we have a technology to simulate the tactile response on a touch surface. Period.

[duritz]

Not according to the last six months. Outmoded, dinosaur thinking.

Check out what's hot in the App Store.

The iPhone gaming paradigm, even at this early stage, is huge.

Like I've been saying for a while now - moving parts, buttons, dials, knobs, levers, LOL, you name it, are gradually being phased out. And the funny thing is, this push not necessarily coming from the big consoles, but from smaller handhelds. Everyone wants in on an App Store-like feature, and developers are flocking to it.

i highly disagree with u. most of the iphone games, besides simple ones like tetris and card games, are not at all revolutionizing mobile games. I never intended to use my iphone for heavy gaming use, but the "action" games I have played are very cumbersome and lacking the proper controls to really have fun with them. Besides that, my fingers take up 1/3 of the screen because I have to be touching the screen with them to move the character, etc. around..

It will be a sad day for mobile gaming if buttons are EVER phased out completely. Now what would be cool is if apple was open to the idea of adding sleek buttons for games or other tasks. it wouldn't tarnish the iphone for me at all...

Now on the REAL topic, quad core phone would be a great advancement , but really how many people will be needing to use pc applications ona 3.5" screen? And plus, I just bought my 3G! :(

[NienorGT]

QC for a phone , OverKill :ermm: :blink:

Why?

The old Creative Zen Vision:M that I still have do have a Dual Core CPU inside...

It's not a QuadCore like you see in PCs...

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

Quad-core iPhone 3G?

I am SO there!

[Ayepecks]

So the iPhone is going to have roughly the same graphics power as the current MacBook?

Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. :rolleyes:

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

Sounds interesting. Multiple cores would work well if Apple decides to allow multiprocessing.

[Quillz]

So the iPhone is the new Pippin.

[qdave]

defintely an overkill :)

iphone needs a bit better cpu/gpu and definately more memory (both space and os memory), and it will do fine.

its phone after all not gaming console.

unless they are making something else.

[I am Reid]

Keep talking, before you know it the physical keyboard and mouse will be gone too. Microsoft Surface, the iPhone, all the other companies scrambling to come up with touch control devices. LTD might be looking a bit far into the future but he's right. Physical buttons as we know it are a dying breed.

lol, the keyboard has been around for probably 100 years, and you seem to think a few new products are going to all of the sudden replace it.

[NienorGT]

Sounds interesting. Multiple cores would work well if Apple decides to allow multiprocessing.

I bet it's the goal of going multicore, because let face it, one of the biggest default of the iphone right now is being unable to do 2 things except for the music. And this sucks.

Safari at least need it, loading pages in background should be a requirement...

its phone after all not gaming console.

The iTouch is now targeted as a mobile gaming device as well. Apple really pushed it.

And I use more my iTouch to play games than doing music :rofl:

http://www.apple.com/ca/ipodtouch/

Look how mush games are presented on the page.

[qdave]

The iTouch is now targeted as a mobile gaming device as well. Apple really pushed it.

And I use more my iTouch to play games than doing music :rofl:

http://www.apple.com/ca/ipodtouch/

Look how mush games are presented on the page.

I completely forgot about ipod touch :p in any case i dont see many games which could utilise such power. even f you have breathtaking 3d graphics you still dont have proper controls :p

[ToneKnee]

What iPhone needs is a better CPU (I find it sluggish at times) and BETTER BATTERY LIFE!!!!

[.Kompressor]

What iPhone needs is a better CPU (I find it sluggish at times) and BETTER BATTERY LIFE!!!!

agreed

[StandingInAlley]

Maybe with this they will finally add copy and paste :p

On a more serious note, i was thinking of picking an iPhone 3G tomorrow. Now i m in a soup. :/

[PyX]

What iPhone needs is a better CPU (I find it sluggish at times) and BETTER BATTERY LIFE!!!!

One would think that by innovating in the battery of the 17-inch MacBook Pro, maybe they could include some kind of similar technology in the iPhone?

[MrA]

QC for a phone , OverKill :ermm: :blink:

No it's not. My 4+ year old iPod is a dual-core system. And the fact is, you get much better performance/power and performance/silicon when you use many simple cores as opposed to fewer complex ones. The cost of this however, is increased software complexity which isn't as big of a problem as it was 10+ years ago now that we have tools like OpenCL, Open MP, and better compilers, and even just better education into parallel computing.

[DanManIt]

Interesting article, although I don't really see why they would be doing all of that just to play games......sounds like it would be rather expensive

[fix-this!]

Pure rubbish, the battery would drain almost instantly !

[Smigit]

Touchscreens have been around longer than Apple they were just the first company to do it right, its just like anything gadgety there will always be a "thing" or new fad of the moment, first it was laptops, then the 'origami' UMPCs, now netbooks, then it will be the MIDs(mobile internet devices).

Unless someone comes up with a radical new UI/Input Format tactile buttons will never go away and no amount of gushing over how great Apple is and how far they can see into the future wont change that fact.

To jump in on this debate IMHO the death of the keyboard won't come with the rise of touch screens but rather the day voice recognition if good enough to work first time every time with basically any person and accent out there without the user needing to train the system beforehand. That and the technology has to be able to work around things like speech impediments, stuttering and the like that many users may have as a condition or may just do occasionally even.

Really touch screens are nice but things like surface are really technologies that are replacing the mouse, not the keyboard. They aren't and likely never will be a device that you can use without line of sight so to that extent they are best suited to drag and drop actions and the like as opposed to typing where users expect to be able to achieve a high thoroughput with minimal effort.

So yeah, I personally do see touch screens becomming the norm but keyboards will still remain for typing until such a time as voice recognition is able to take over. Even then there are issues like how do you manage 50 people in an office apartment all talking to their pc's at once? Obviously it can be done since many places are like that only with phones but it would be a concern that may hamper uptake.

I guess the alternative is stylus taking over but I'd argue a stylus isn't necessarily making a typist job any easier. I do think the keyboard will remain until voice communication is common. I doubt we are THAT far away either.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Voice recognition won't kill off keyboards either.

Try dictating "( tar -c /dir/to/copy ) | ssh -C user@remote 'cd /where/to/ && tar -x -p'" (for example), we'll always have a use for keyboards and mice.

[Smigit]

Well I didn't say it above but the extension from that is it should be natural language. So it should be taken to a level where you can say "untar file XYZ to my images directory" or whatever. Obviously we are a bit further away to that that just voice recognition, but once the computer can understand natural language the keyboard will become alot less necessary.

It'll have a place mind still for a long time.

[DDStriker]

Not according to the last six months. Outmoded, dinosaur thinking.

Check out what's hot in the App Store.

The iPhone gaming paradigm, even at this early stage, is huge.

these products didn't exist when dinosaur's were around...so how could they be thinking about it :p

the iphone is a horrible at playing games the controls are just weak no feedback (hell even a little vibration would do for positive feedback) if people are gonna sit around all day playing games on their iphone they should just jump on a computer were atleast the controls are decent and worth the time

gaming on the iphone is just a nice thing to look at..for a few seconds

Like I've been saying for a while now - moving parts, buttons, dials, knobs, levers, LOL, you name it, are gradually being phased out. And the funny thing is, this push not necessarily coming from the big consoles, but from smaller handhelds. Everyone wants in on an App Store-like feature, and developers are flocking to it.

that while is going to last throughout your entire life :p

for low priority stuff yeah touch screen is great but for everyday use buttons/knobs/dials(arn't they the same thing? :p)/levers will all remain in use

like a studio would want to swap out all their mixer boards for a digital display analogue input ftw

Well I didn't say it above but the extension from that is it should be natural language. So it should be taken to a level where you can say "untar file XYZ to my images directory" or whatever. Obviously we are a bit further away to that that just voice recognition, but once the computer can understand natural language the keyboard will become alot less necessary.

It'll have a place mind still for a long time.

programmers will not want to sit there talking to their computer all day...not ever....in a block of code you'll see the words "****ing piece of ****" and other profanities mostly directed to the clients which wouldn't be good for the client to see :p

[Luis Mazza]

Not according to the last six months. Outmoded, dinosaur thinking.

Check out what's hot in the App Store.

The iPhone gaming paradigm, even at this early stage, is huge.

Like I've been saying for a while now - moving parts, buttons, dials, knobs, levers, LOL, you name it, are gradually being phased out. And the funny thing is, this push not necessarily coming from the big consoles, but from smaller handhelds. Everyone wants in on an App Store-like feature, and developers are flocking to it.

It?s not dinosaur thinking... it?s simply terrible to use a hard glass screen to press buttons as fast and accurately as many games need to be controled. Touching is not always good... thats why theres also the *pressing* action.

Some people want to look soooo modern themselves that they start to look ridiculous.

[ichi]

To jump in on this debate IMHO the death of the keyboard won't come with the rise of touch screens but rather the day voice recognition if good enough to work first time every time with basically any person and accent out there without the user needing to train the system beforehand. That and the technology has to be able to work around things like speech impediments, stuttering and the like that many users may have as a condition or may just do occasionally even.

I don't think voice recognition will ever be mainstream enough to kill keyboards, for two reasons:

1. Privacy. People wouldn't feel comfortable with everyone knowing what they are doing at every moment. A bit like why almost no one uses video calls over regular phone calls.

2. It just wouldn't work if there's more people around. Just imagine a crowded office, it would be utterly annoying.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Well I didn't say it above but the extension from that is it should be natural language. So it should be taken to a level where you can say "untar file XYZ to my images directory" or whatever. Obviously we are a bit further away to that that just voice recognition, but once the computer can understand natural language the keyboard will become alot less necessary.

It'll have a place mind still for a long time.

That's more AI than voice recognition. Voice recognition turns the sounds into words, it doesn't assign them meaning.

And even then, what about games, "Go forward 20 meters, turn to 45 degrees right, go forward 20 meters" would be different depending on every game, they might share the same units if they're the same engine, but going from HL2 to Bioshock won't work.