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Apple planning on offering Instant-On machines?

fool.com — Motley Fool story on Apple's aggressive sourcing of flash memory and the potential for a new instant-on or near instant-on machine.

Who dugg this? Made popular Nov 22, 2005

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  • Computer_Kid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1For instant on, just load linux in the bios!
    http://www.linuxbios.org/index.php/Main_Page
  • JDOG, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I've gotta throw in the obligatory: My mac wakes up instantly from sleep now...I don't need no stinking NAND.
  • heydigital, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Microsoft is a step ahead and already working with hard drive manufactures to embed flash memory on the drives for instant on.
  • planksconstant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1it would be cool to have as computer that turns on almost immediatly, but i'm gonna go with the "using the flash memory for ipods" group.

    it makes sense, i mean now apple has two iPod models with flash drives, they're gonna need quite a bit of flash memory. lets not jump to any conclusions.
  • maudib, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1flash hard drive combo's are a really good idea, just an extension of the bios really, why not have the os on a device with no moving parts ?, i wonder why it hasn't already been done ?

    maybe people are worried about security, if a virus infects your flash OS then it could write to it constantly effectively shortening the lifespan, I guess the risk is too great to justify changing from the status quo.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1well its a good idea, but i'm not sure there's much fact to back it up
  • chevyorange, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2FTA: "It's my bet that Apple will not only move in this direction but also get there before the rest of the crowd. Motley Fool Stock Advisor pick Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), and the rest of the PC manufacturers who have aspirations on our living rooms, or just want to keep up with the tech world's hottie, had better stay on their toes."

    To the comment that MS is a step ahead I echo others.... haahahahahahaahahahahahaa
  • Gargoyle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1IMO, it's utter rubbish. My PowerBook is already instant-on. I don't turn it off - Just shut the lid - then open the lid. It's that reliable, half the time I don't bother to save what I am working on.



  • TheManiacKY, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Okay. Think Unix and Apple. Powerbook with a 80 gig hard drive and two 4 gig flash cards. One card for the actual OSX OS installation. Only Apple certified software allowed on this partition. The second flash card is just for your virtual memory/hibernation space. No real fragmentation of files for your virtual memory. And not have to waste disk space for a hibernation file!

    Grand finally. What goes on your 80 gig hard drive? Your home folders. Media. Applications. Basically if for some reason your OS does get corrupted you simply reformat the OS flash card and reinstall onto it. Everything will remain fine on your laptop hard drive.

    Now that would be awesome. And I can't think of any reason why they couldn't do it.
  • abhibeckert, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1When you put a mac to sleep it will:

    1) turn off display
    2) disconnect from network and some other clean up stuff etc (takes a split second)
    3) power down all hardware with the exception of ram

    then you wake it up it will:

    1) power up all hardware
    2) turn on screen
    3) connect to network etc (takes maybe 1 second, but you don't have to wait before using computer)

    RAM uses a teeny tiny amount of power, you can run a sleeping PowerBook or iBook off battery for a week or so before it'll go flat. Going to sleep takes about 2 seconds, waking it up takes about 1 second (yes, wake up is faster than sleep).

    So, almost all mac users hardly ever shut down their mac. There are only three reasons why you might want to shut down a mac.

    Reason one, sleep uses power, shut down doesn't use any. This is insane, the amount of power when asleep is so low we're talking about something like 5c per month on your power bill. Anyone who can't afford 5c per month to have a computer that turns on quick can't afford a computer.

    Reason two, sleep doesn't reload the OS, shut down/restart does. Instant on doesn't reload the OS either, so this isn't relevant in this discussion. I will say that under OS X, so long as you don't have exotic third party stuff installed, this is hardly ever necessary. My mother uses her computer for email, web, word processing, a few games etc, and restarts her mac every time there's a major software update. I know she doesn't shut down or restart it any other time, because when she has a problem and I ask her if she's tried a restart or shutdown, she immediately asks me how to do that. She doesn't even know how to shut down her computer, let alone do it often!!

    Reason three, if there is power loss while the computer is asleep, you're potentially going to screw stuff up, since it's almost as serious as a forced shut down while it's turned on (not quite as serious since the hard drive and stuff are turned off). The newer PowerBooks have a feature called "Safe Sleep", where it writes the contents of RAM to the hard drive when you put it to sleep. Then if power is lost, when you boot up it will load the RAM directly from the disk, and your system is up and running as if you never turned it off. Seriously, you hit the power key, a split second later you see your desktop (slightly blurred and with no color), and a progress bar. Once the progress bar is complete (10 to 40 seconds depending on how much ram) your computer is fully functional, any documents you didn't save will still be on the screen.

    The above feature in powerbooks can also be enabled on other macs too via a small firmware crack. I have it working on my G4 iBook but older macs and G5's don't appear to be capable of safe sleep. So basically that means almost all G4 macs. But so far no-one's managed to get it working on a G3 or G5 mac (but I'm sure apple could make it work with some effort).
  • Dingle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000370041283/
  • Nick_Circosta, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0pfft nothing new here, we have been discussing Imdeding Flash chips of about 1GB in apple machines for MONTHS now.. this guy hasnt started a rumour at all
    infact i'm preaty sure that there have been quite a few digg stories on it,
    I know its been in whirlpool forums for about 3 months
  • ns2103, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I haven't used an instant on machine since about '91 or '92. Its a great way of doing things, hopefully they'll bring it back.
  • TimmyK., on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is a simple, yet genius idea. I don't think we are to the point where it would be reasonable to use Flash memory instead of a hard drive, but using it just for the OS for near instant start ups is brilliant.
  • Nick_Circosta, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Also in reality... the Instant On would not really pose any good step up at this time because like has been said ... nobody shuts down there mac these days.. my last restart was for 10.4.3 and the one before that was for 10.4.2
    so in reality... why would they do this at this time in the development?
  • Matrixsjd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0linsys, that's BS, the windows OS has to basically restart. I have never seen a windows computer instantly come to the desktop the second you wake it from sleep.
  • cyberdork, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Seriously, who shuts their Mac down every day?
    Instant-on technology is the last thing on a mac users mind!

    Hmm... how about they need this huge amount of flash memory for the MILLIONS of iPods they are selling each year? But I guess that's too boring compared to a hot new rumor.
  • isny, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Apple making instant on PCs? What fantasy world do you all live in? And if they had flash memory, how much storage would that be? 1GB is nothing for storage nowadays...how many mp3s would that hold?
  • CaptSnuffy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It'll happen eventually in the powerbooks, and I bet Apple will be the first to put it out. With those new high-capacity flash chips i'd say it's coming along quickly, and soon you'll have a laptop with a fairly regular amount of storage and an insane battery life thanks to the flash memory. Factor in OLED "e-paper", better battery technology and processor enhancements, and you're looking at latops that could remain on for days.
  • Dgen_X, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0this could acually turn me to the white side, it kinda feels like a waste of electricity keeping my computer powered up so I don't have to deal with the 35 second bootup time when I need to google -insert name here-

    serously
  • okto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0You'd only need a gig or two of NAND.
    Instant-on just means the OS and apps--any executable code--are in flash. Your documents will still live on a drive of some sort because it's both insanely expensive and largely pointless to keep them in flash. You don't need your MP3s or vids to be any faster (unless you're crazy about the Chipmunks), and many other things that take time, like opening a big image or decompressing things or rendering video are mostly processor time.
  • ryan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Isn't "sleep" the same thing? I rarely shut off my iMac, just put it to sleep and when I need it, it's back on in seconds.
  • FatController, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The sleep on my Powerbook works really well, I'm not sure that I'd actually *need* it, but it would be cool to have anyway :)
  • mikeroySoft, on 10/19/2009, -1/+1maybe they just bought all the flash to put in their iPods?
    Durka durka?
  • bitweever, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is the type of innovation that I expect Apple and Intel to bring to the table. I'm expecting Apple's new Intel hardware to be so far ahead that it won't matter if OS X has been hacked to run on generic x86.
  • blueice03, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0not so sure about this one, although I wouldn't put it past Apple. I also wouldn't put it past either Apple or Intel to be secretly developing a very specific chipset for Apple as a way of really locking down the OS, but that is another discussion for another thread somewhere. Anyway, like another poster said, flash memory really isn't all that speedy. Unless they develop significant improvements in this area, I don't see flash memory replacing either the hard drive or as a separate OS partition. Nonetheless, I, like many others, am anxiously awaiting the coming year to see if Apple does anything innovative with the new mactels or if the first gens will simply be what we've got now except with intel organs instead of IBM organs.
  • garagefighter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Has no one heard of "Sleep" mode? I never turn my Powerbook off, just close the lid. Ok so maybe not never, I do have o reboot after updates.
  • krazedkaoz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I can't wait for the day when all computers have instant boot.
  • mijman2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Its about time we finally got a machine with instant on. You'd a thought with all the technology we have today that these would have been around by now. As for flash: Woohoo! But, I think that the holographic hard drives will be what leads us into the feature! 1.6 TB?!? thats unbelievable!
  • vertigoblue, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0well, I don't turn off my computer.
    unless they have a way to download stuff while your computer is turned off ill stick with my AMD power now technology, running my PC at 500 MHz whenever I'm away...
  • Brutusfly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm with Gargoyle and the others. This feature has effectively been in Apple products for many years. I use this PowerBook every day at work and home. It runs everything from business apps to multitrack audio recording. It's had uptimes of greater than 5 months. Longer if I didn't upgrade the OS. Open the lid...BAM!
    Last login: Tue Nov 15 16:44:40 on ttyp1
    Welcome to Darwin!
    upti[PowerBook1G:~] bxxxxx% uptime
    21:20 up 75 days, 7:17, 2 users, load averages: 0.33 0.13 0.04
    [PowerBook1G:~] bxxxxx%
  • fleetskeet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Someone needs to boot a Mac from a mounted 4GB Nano for proof of concept.
  • b04155, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I thought there was a flavor of linux called lightning linux (or something like that) that already did this
  • CaptSnuffy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Apple once again steals idea from MS."

    Care to explain?
  • ManiacFive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The only reason they'd put flash drives into their machines would be for SERIOUSLY thin powerbooks, picture it now a powerbook thats as thin as the top half is now, People would wet themselves to get a hold of one. The Apple PowerRAZR :-)

    BUT you're gonna need a ***** of NAND to do that. So it aint gonna happen untill we're getting 20gb NAND chips.

    At the moment, its for the iPOds. They obviously want to make as many iPOds as possible flash based. And as aleady pointed ou, who turns off their Mac these days anyway, my mac mini never gets turned off, and my ibook boots up in 35ish seconds, barely enough time for me to settle my ass into position and settle it comfortably on my lap.
  • Carbito, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Isn't Microsoft already doing this in a partnership with Samsung?!?
  • eventide, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0In Jef Raskin's "The Humane Interface", he lists 7-8 seconds as the time it takes a human to context-switch (i.e. from turning on the computer to being mentally ready to actually use it). In his Canon Cat computer, the goal was 7-8 seconds from power on to completely alive. Before it was completely ready, I believe it snuck up a bitmap of the screen grabbed from before you last turned it off and buffered any keyboard input until it was completely ready.

    I leave my Linux computer on not so much because of the long boot up time (though it is agonizingly long), but the loss of arrangement of open windows etc. Windows' hibernate and apparently Mac's sleep take care of that, and I'm somewhat jealous (I suppose I could try to get Linux hibernate working... *sigh*).
  • abhibeckert, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I was under the understanding that windows hibernate is not as fast as apple's sleep. Something to do with hibernate being software based, while sleep is hardware.
  • krahzee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I don't see apple doing this for some sort of instant on feature, I see them doing this to ultimately replace the hard drive in the powerbook all together.

    No moving parts to break when dropped, alot less noise, ect....

    As flash grows in capacity, don't be shocked to see the larger (20, 40 gig) Ipods switch to flash down the road.
  • HyperX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0what id prefer is an instant off machine I HATE WAITING FOR FREAKIN SHUTDOWN
  • neocitron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0nobody is a "step ahead" of apple because nobody knows what apple is doing right now... they never give away roadmaps for things like this
  • cockbadger, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0What a load of nonsense. Flash memory is extremely slow. The last numbers I saw were around 15MB/s for reading, and less than that when writing to the chip. Hard drives are near 50 MB/s, and have much greater capacity. RAM bandwidth is in the gigabytes per second.

    You can't use NAND flash as main memory replacement (not that you'd want to, with a limited number of write cycles). You can store data on the hdd faster and easier when you need to power down.
  • barbobot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Beos.
  • npulido, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0NAND !
  • nutjob, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0"Let's be honest, anything shorter than 20-30 seconds is going to seem like instant to most of us."
    uh, my G5 boots in around 10 seconds, and both it and my powebook wake from sleep in around 3 seconds. How much more instant do they need to get?
  • mikeroySoft, on 10/19/2009, -2/+1Jeez, you digg kids are pretty gullible,

    Apple hasn't said a thing about making instant-on machines.
    Intel's Mac's won't be anything spectacular.No revolutionary new technology. It's the same chips that are already in your computer. Of course the advantage is a super-fast OSX, but why is this new? It's called 'BUSINESS' and they're going intel because it's a) cheaper b) faster and c) more marketable to have a dual-boot mac that also runs windows.

    No instant on. None. Show me an apple announcement and i'll believe it.
    You folks jump on any mac-rumor-mill that some 12 year old kid submits.

    I remember why i still read slashdot now.
  • cyberdork, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0krazedkaoz:
    "I can't wait for the day when all computers have instant boot."

    Take a time machine back to 1984 and you have it.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1









    Apple once again steals idea from MS.






  • TheNik, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2You both are ***** stupid.

    New rule, before you diss Microsoft, you HAVE to prove you could do better.
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