wildmac
Aug 7, 04:53 PM
A lot of these will be in a work environment where wireless networking would be a hinderance more than a help. If anything, they should bundle it with the same price and subtract 49$ if you take it off of BTO.
Yep. Where I work, something where an iSight, bluetooth or Airport can't be removed doesn't come in the door.
Yep. Where I work, something where an iSight, bluetooth or Airport can't be removed doesn't come in the door.
GoodWatch
May 4, 03:11 PM
That makes sense, while not incredibly expensive, the cost of manufacturing is still overhead if they can reduce it by providing a mechanism for the consumer to d/l it why not.
Whilst I think I have a connection with enough bandwidth to cope with the size, I do want the DVD. The cost of manufacturing (50 cents per DVD?) are costs we as customers pay for, not Apple. I you buy a carton of milk you pay for the milk plus the carton.
Whilst I think I have a connection with enough bandwidth to cope with the size, I do want the DVD. The cost of manufacturing (50 cents per DVD?) are costs we as customers pay for, not Apple. I you buy a carton of milk you pay for the milk plus the carton.
digitalfx
Mar 30, 07:31 PM
I can confirm that Preview 2 works w/ the 2011 MBPs.
is TRIM working w 2011 mbp's?
is TRIM working w 2011 mbp's?
Roy Hobbs
Aug 2, 01:38 PM
If you 'can't have cameras' dont use them. It doesnt matter if they are built in. And for people with dual monitors they will have... er... oh yeh two cameras :D
It does matter if they are built in or not......many government facilities adn the like will not allow ANY cameras in the building regardless if you are using them or not. More and more companies are implementing policies like this.
It does matter if they are built in or not......many government facilities adn the like will not allow ANY cameras in the building regardless if you are using them or not. More and more companies are implementing policies like this.
ptaylor874
Nov 3, 10:10 AM
Oh - BTW - Anyone know if they are planning to stock them in Apple stores?
As for the price - everyone complains that it is too expensive for "a mount". But, it's not just a mount. A simple mount wouldn't be worth more than about $30. It's got a GPS chip in it that is similar in quality to a standalone units GPS chip, plus a speaker (the built-in speaker isn't loud or clear enough) and a mic. I understand the enhanced GPS chip is accessed via Bluetooth, so other GPS programs can use it instead of the on-board GPS chip. It can serve as a handsfree speakerphone, so no need to buy a car kit if your car doesn't support Bluetooth (mine don't).
All together, I honestly do think this price tag is a little high - it would be more reasonable at $99, but I'm still thinking seriously about getting one.
As for the price - everyone complains that it is too expensive for "a mount". But, it's not just a mount. A simple mount wouldn't be worth more than about $30. It's got a GPS chip in it that is similar in quality to a standalone units GPS chip, plus a speaker (the built-in speaker isn't loud or clear enough) and a mic. I understand the enhanced GPS chip is accessed via Bluetooth, so other GPS programs can use it instead of the on-board GPS chip. It can serve as a handsfree speakerphone, so no need to buy a car kit if your car doesn't support Bluetooth (mine don't).
All together, I honestly do think this price tag is a little high - it would be more reasonable at $99, but I'm still thinking seriously about getting one.
Stridder44
Aug 7, 05:43 PM
Basic graphics card is kinda weak.
need to have a midground option which is a bit better, but not as much as the ATI x1900
also, where is the option of getting Blu-Ray Drive?
We need high def drives. and why have to buy them elsewhere. want a full HDMI compliant system, that can interface with LCD monitors/tv's made by apple also with speakers.
cmon apple!!!
At the price, you could buy a new car.
need to have a midground option which is a bit better, but not as much as the ATI x1900
also, where is the option of getting Blu-Ray Drive?
We need high def drives. and why have to buy them elsewhere. want a full HDMI compliant system, that can interface with LCD monitors/tv's made by apple also with speakers.
cmon apple!!!
At the price, you could buy a new car.
Fast Shadow
May 6, 02:04 AM
This story reeks. I would sooner expect Apple to acquire AMD than I would for them to make yet another architecture switch.
alent1234
Mar 29, 11:56 AM
Why not just use an app that lets you stream from your computer at home? why pay for online storage when you already have it?
they expect most people to use it from an android phone with very little local storage. and they already built out AWS over the last few years and this is just monetizing some of the extra capacity they have. they are probably using single instance storage for the music so it's not like there are going to be thousands of copies of every song on their servers
they expect most people to use it from an android phone with very little local storage. and they already built out AWS over the last few years and this is just monetizing some of the extra capacity they have. they are probably using single instance storage for the music so it's not like there are going to be thousands of copies of every song on their servers
maclaptop
Apr 20, 08:00 AM
1) This model hasn't promised anything yet because no one but Apple knows what's in store. I don't see any cosmetic changes in store, and the iPhone 4 still looks better than every handset out to date.
2) Sorry but my phone has never been dropped. Speak for yourself when you say it's going to get dropped. Not all of us are as clumsy as you and your friends apparently.
1) You're right but it still reminds me of Antennagate, and Jobs wise ass comment.
So I'll have fun with a Galaxy S2 while the gullible remain in denial.
2) My aren't you perfect.
Now you've backed yourself into a corner and loaded up on bad karma.
The next time you hear glass shatter, you'll know what it is... :)
2) Sorry but my phone has never been dropped. Speak for yourself when you say it's going to get dropped. Not all of us are as clumsy as you and your friends apparently.
1) You're right but it still reminds me of Antennagate, and Jobs wise ass comment.
So I'll have fun with a Galaxy S2 while the gullible remain in denial.
2) My aren't you perfect.
Now you've backed yourself into a corner and loaded up on bad karma.
The next time you hear glass shatter, you'll know what it is... :)
njchris
Apr 18, 04:41 PM
I have an iPad2 and an Epic 4g (Galaxy S)... one does not feel like the other at all to me.
Sure, they both have icons and a dock.. so do all the android phones.
That picture of the dock with the icons on the Galaxy S is ONLY when you go to the applicaitons (hitting the applications button on the dock).. otherwise the screen would have the dock plus whatever icons and widgets the user wants. Such as I have a clock, the weather, calendar widgets on my home screens... looks nothing like the iPad/iPhone.
I don't even feel like the icons look the same. I like the apple icons better, but feel they both are distinct in their own ways.
Perhaps the swiping right and left on the applications view is what might be too similar, but I would never mistake this for an iphone.. nobody that's seen mine has.
Sure, they both have icons and a dock.. so do all the android phones.
That picture of the dock with the icons on the Galaxy S is ONLY when you go to the applicaitons (hitting the applications button on the dock).. otherwise the screen would have the dock plus whatever icons and widgets the user wants. Such as I have a clock, the weather, calendar widgets on my home screens... looks nothing like the iPad/iPhone.
I don't even feel like the icons look the same. I like the apple icons better, but feel they both are distinct in their own ways.
Perhaps the swiping right and left on the applications view is what might be too similar, but I would never mistake this for an iphone.. nobody that's seen mine has.
nuckinfutz
May 8, 04:29 PM
Mobile Me services could well be tiered.
free, slightly limited service, iAd supported
or full, paid for service, minus the iAds.
Why would I want iAds?
MobileMe sells Apple hardware. It works with PCs but only within context of synchronizing data to mobile devices from Apple.
MobileMe isn't here to sell Blackberry, Android or WinMo phones it's here to make data sharing easy between applications and Apple mobile devices.
You guys aren't thinking this through. You're assuming that Apple has the same ability to deliver advertising that Google does and that's false. iAd is a product that's for the mobile space. Apple has excellent analytics from the App Store but where is their analytical data for the web in general? Riiiiiiight it doesn't exist.
You cannot become Google just by slapping up some advertising on a page and waiting for the cash to come in. The ads we see on a web page are just the tip of the iceberg.
If MobileMe becomes free it'll likely be very very basic (maybe sync only) and Apple will entice you to get the Mobileme Pro version once you get a taste of their freemium love.
free, slightly limited service, iAd supported
or full, paid for service, minus the iAds.
Why would I want iAds?
MobileMe sells Apple hardware. It works with PCs but only within context of synchronizing data to mobile devices from Apple.
MobileMe isn't here to sell Blackberry, Android or WinMo phones it's here to make data sharing easy between applications and Apple mobile devices.
You guys aren't thinking this through. You're assuming that Apple has the same ability to deliver advertising that Google does and that's false. iAd is a product that's for the mobile space. Apple has excellent analytics from the App Store but where is their analytical data for the web in general? Riiiiiiight it doesn't exist.
You cannot become Google just by slapping up some advertising on a page and waiting for the cash to come in. The ads we see on a web page are just the tip of the iceberg.
If MobileMe becomes free it'll likely be very very basic (maybe sync only) and Apple will entice you to get the Mobileme Pro version once you get a taste of their freemium love.
Don't panic
May 5, 07:48 AM
BTW, searching a room disarms traps, so we should get to a point where our last move is search instead of move, if I understand the rules.
as long as we remember to search a room before we move in the next turn, it shouldn't make much of a difference
as long as we remember to search a room before we move in the next turn, it shouldn't make much of a difference
HypersonicXIV
Apr 25, 08:42 AM
Oh wow, I am excited just at the thought that they might hopefully be heading in this direction, regardless of when it finally happens.
I'm a programmer and spend my day looking at text in an IDE on a couple of 27" cinema displays. When I look at my iPhone 4 and see how amazingly crisp and clear text is on the retina display and then look back to my computer screen, I weep quietly inside.
The 27" screens are beautiful, but the retina display on my phone just shows how amazing they could be.
I�m interested in what Apple will do with the 15� MBP. If Apple doubled the resolution of the 1440x900 display, then going from a 1680x1050 MBP to this new 2880x1800 MBP means an increase in DPI but a decrease in viewable information.
Hopefully they will include a scaling ability as well for those who don't mind shrinking everything down to fit more on the screen as well (which would address the problem mentioned above).
There is lots of potential for screens with such a high DPI :D
I'm a programmer and spend my day looking at text in an IDE on a couple of 27" cinema displays. When I look at my iPhone 4 and see how amazingly crisp and clear text is on the retina display and then look back to my computer screen, I weep quietly inside.
The 27" screens are beautiful, but the retina display on my phone just shows how amazing they could be.
I�m interested in what Apple will do with the 15� MBP. If Apple doubled the resolution of the 1440x900 display, then going from a 1680x1050 MBP to this new 2880x1800 MBP means an increase in DPI but a decrease in viewable information.
Hopefully they will include a scaling ability as well for those who don't mind shrinking everything down to fit more on the screen as well (which would address the problem mentioned above).
There is lots of potential for screens with such a high DPI :D
McGiord
Apr 10, 12:53 PM
Oh wow, your previous arguments about how "because spotlight says 2 therefore it is true no matter what" are just so convincing!
Failing with math and now failing with reading?
Failing with math and now failing with reading?
ste1989
May 9, 09:41 AM
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this so far, but to me it is very obvious the reason why some features will be free.
The iChat and a/v integration on the next iphone.
Obviously iChat needs either a mobile me email address, or an AIM username, or some other less common ones.
Needless to say, AIM is not very popular outside of USA. Everyone uses hotmail or gmail afaik.
If they really want to plug the new iChat, they need to get as many people using it as possible, so therefore the @me email addresses will probably become free, and maybe more features with it
The iChat and a/v integration on the next iphone.
Obviously iChat needs either a mobile me email address, or an AIM username, or some other less common ones.
Needless to say, AIM is not very popular outside of USA. Everyone uses hotmail or gmail afaik.
If they really want to plug the new iChat, they need to get as many people using it as possible, so therefore the @me email addresses will probably become free, and maybe more features with it
roadbloc
Mar 28, 09:50 AM
So what are thy going to announce? Is hardware now going to the cloud like software? :rolleyes:
LagunaSol
Apr 18, 05:02 PM
WRONG.
The LG Prada was announced in September 6 months ahead of iPhone1 announcement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada_%28KE850%29).
Odd, the link you included in your argument states the Prada was "announced" on December 12, 2006.
The iPhone was announced on January 9, less than one month later.
And the Prada looks more like a BlackBerry than an iPhone to me. The Prada and iPhone are almost nothing alike, aside from the size and shape of the earhole.
The LG Prada was announced in September 6 months ahead of iPhone1 announcement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada_%28KE850%29).
Odd, the link you included in your argument states the Prada was "announced" on December 12, 2006.
The iPhone was announced on January 9, less than one month later.
And the Prada looks more like a BlackBerry than an iPhone to me. The Prada and iPhone are almost nothing alike, aside from the size and shape of the earhole.
thejakill
Mar 29, 08:55 AM
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5)
This is quite valuable, since there is currently no way to store music on your computer.
This is quite valuable, since there is currently no way to store music on your computer.
Shadow
Aug 2, 11:46 AM
Yes and Bill Gates is expected to release Vista at the same conference. Seriously, all this happening (Mac Pros, iMac Core Duo, new iPod Nanos, iPhone, new MBPs, ect) in one conference is unlikley. Mac Pros are a given, thats all I'm saying (so I dont look stupid when it doesnt happen :p).
techpr
May 4, 03:11 PM
Releasing on MAS is posible in some sort of .DMG, .IMG Image ready to burn on DVD or copy to USB Key, Look at Xcode 4 for example. Apple may put detailed instructions on how to do it on the MAS description page.
The question is: How Much?
The question is: How Much?
poppe
Aug 3, 11:02 PM
It is sad to have to wait till September... I wanted to show my family my MBP since they've never though of using a Mac until me
reachingforsky
Aug 4, 01:17 PM
I hope we're all in for surprises at WWDC. Up until then, this is all speculation. It's fun to speculate and to try to be cool by being right, but I hope they knock everyone's socks off with the unexpected.
Cavepainter
Mar 30, 02:36 PM
I hardly think $1 for 20 gigabytes of available anywhere storage is very unreasonable.
Maybe that rate wouldn't be bad, but if you read the article, that's not what they're charging. Beyond the initial free amount, its $1 per 1 gig, not $1 per 20 gigs. A terabyte per year is a thousand dollars a year. That's not too cheap. And this isn't including bandwidth usage, which is gonna cost money too, of course. Plus, what do you think, are these rates and bandwidth usage costs gonna be higher or lower in the future?
They (banks) aren't storing physical cash somewhere anymore, it's all just a line of electronic code that states what your balance is.
Well, it actually it still exists as money, but of course banks aren't storing it all in a vault- they're loaning it out to other people, at rates 10 to 100 times greater than the interest rate they are offering you for using that money- and they're using your money to make them money. I'm sure they could loan out money at much lower rates and still do fine, but that's what we're used to paying, so there you go. But anyway, back on track-
If you want premium content, you pay for it.
That premium content you're happy to be paying lots of money for is actually making the provider plenty of money on the back end too- remember cable and satellite television still has plenty of advertisements. Again, they could probably charge you a third of what you currently pay and it would still be profitable. (I'm just sayin'...)
People just think it's ridiculous to spend money on music because avenues have popped up where you can get it for free.
True, but for me, no, I actually buy my music and support the artists- I just think its ridiculous to buy my music and pay someone else over and over and over again, forever, just to be able listen to it.
I have 2 computers at home, a laptop, a phone that has storage, a DVR, even my Xbox can store music files..... How nice to be able to visit my parents, or go on vacation, or be at a friend's house, log on to their computer, and have my entire music library instantly available at my fingertips.
80 gigs of music in a computer's memory doesn't actually "weigh" all that much. You can have all those files right there on your devices right now, unless you have terabytes of things to store. As storage continues to grow on computers, I think you'll find that the prices will be more and more appealing for larger and larger amounts of storage.
Look, I understand your points, and if you have multiple platforms that need to share and sync enormous amounts of files, that can be a challenge and the cloud would be convenient. But for the amount of music and photography and other files I have and the way I would store it and access it, I personally would rather just have all the files I need right there on my computer at my fingertips without having to pay someone to access it from a remote location. You're certainly free to spend money to access things you already purchased, but its not for me. To each their own.
Maybe that rate wouldn't be bad, but if you read the article, that's not what they're charging. Beyond the initial free amount, its $1 per 1 gig, not $1 per 20 gigs. A terabyte per year is a thousand dollars a year. That's not too cheap. And this isn't including bandwidth usage, which is gonna cost money too, of course. Plus, what do you think, are these rates and bandwidth usage costs gonna be higher or lower in the future?
They (banks) aren't storing physical cash somewhere anymore, it's all just a line of electronic code that states what your balance is.
Well, it actually it still exists as money, but of course banks aren't storing it all in a vault- they're loaning it out to other people, at rates 10 to 100 times greater than the interest rate they are offering you for using that money- and they're using your money to make them money. I'm sure they could loan out money at much lower rates and still do fine, but that's what we're used to paying, so there you go. But anyway, back on track-
If you want premium content, you pay for it.
That premium content you're happy to be paying lots of money for is actually making the provider plenty of money on the back end too- remember cable and satellite television still has plenty of advertisements. Again, they could probably charge you a third of what you currently pay and it would still be profitable. (I'm just sayin'...)
People just think it's ridiculous to spend money on music because avenues have popped up where you can get it for free.
True, but for me, no, I actually buy my music and support the artists- I just think its ridiculous to buy my music and pay someone else over and over and over again, forever, just to be able listen to it.
I have 2 computers at home, a laptop, a phone that has storage, a DVR, even my Xbox can store music files..... How nice to be able to visit my parents, or go on vacation, or be at a friend's house, log on to their computer, and have my entire music library instantly available at my fingertips.
80 gigs of music in a computer's memory doesn't actually "weigh" all that much. You can have all those files right there on your devices right now, unless you have terabytes of things to store. As storage continues to grow on computers, I think you'll find that the prices will be more and more appealing for larger and larger amounts of storage.
Look, I understand your points, and if you have multiple platforms that need to share and sync enormous amounts of files, that can be a challenge and the cloud would be convenient. But for the amount of music and photography and other files I have and the way I would store it and access it, I personally would rather just have all the files I need right there on my computer at my fingertips without having to pay someone to access it from a remote location. You're certainly free to spend money to access things you already purchased, but its not for me. To each their own.
MikeTheC
Nov 25, 10:46 PM
All this talk about Palm needing to modernize their OS, or it is outdated, or needing to re-write is absolutely hilarious.
On a phone, I want to use its features quickly and easily. When I have to schedule an appointment, I want to enter that appointment as easily as possible. When I want to add something to my to-do list, I want to do it easily and quickly. And first and foremost, I want to be able to look up a contact and dial it as quickly as possible.
A phone is not a personal computer. I couldn't care less about multitasking, rewriting, "modern" OSes (whatever "modern" means). "Modern" features and look is just eye candy and/or toys. A mobile phone is a gadget of convenience, and it should be convenient to use. Even PalmOS 1.0 was convenient. It was just as easy to use its contact and calendar features as any so-called "modern" OS is today.
I would really like to know how "modernizing" the OS on my phone would help me look up contacts, dial contacts, enter to-do list entries, and entering calendar entries any better that I could today.
Again, I repeat: a phone is not a personal computer. There's no point in treating it as such.
The same point could largely be made about cars, but I don't think either of us would want to be driving a Model T or Model A Ford these days, would we?
The term "Modern" as applied to operating systems has little to do with the interface per se. It primarily concerns the underpinnings of the OS and how forward-looking and/or open-ended it is. Older operating systems, if you want to look at it in this way, were very geared to the hardware of their times, and every time you added a new hardware feature or some new kind of technology came out, you wound up making this big patchwork of an OS, in which you had either an out-dated or obsolete "core" around which was stuck, somewhat unglamorously, lots of crap to allow it to do stuff it wasn't really designed for. Then, you wound up having to write patches for the patches, etc., ad infinitum.
Apple tried to go the internal development route, but that didn't work because their departmental infrastructure was eating them from the inside out at the time and basically poisoned all of their new projects. They considered BeOS because it was an incredibly modern OS at the time that was very capable, unbelievably good at multitasking, memory protection, multimedia tasks, etc. However, that company was so shaky that when Apple decided not to go with them, they collapsed. One of the products which was introduced and sold and almost immediately recalled that used a version of BeOS was Sony's eVilla (you just have to love that name -- try pronouncing it out loud to get the full effect).
Ultimately, they went with NeXT's BSD- and Mach-Kernel-based NeXTStep (which after a bunch of time and effort and -- since lots of it is based on Open Source software, there were a healthy amount of community contributions to) and hence we now have Mac OS X.
I'll leave it to actual developers and/or coders here to better explain and refine (and/or correct) what I've said here, should you wish greater detail beyond what I am able to -- and therefore have -- provided above.
The whole point of going with a modern OS implemented for an imbedded market (i.e. "Mac OS X Mobile") is it gives you much more direct (and probably better implemented and/or better-grounded) access to modern technologies. Everything from basic I/O tasks that reside in the Kernel to audio processing to doing H.264 decoding to having access to IPv4 or IPv6, are all examples of things which a modern OS could do a better job of providing and/or backing.
From what I understand, PalmOS is something that was designed to first and foremost give you basic notepad and daily organizer functionality. When they wrote, as you say, PalmOS 1.0, they happened to implement a way for third parties to write software that could run on it. This has been both a benefit and a bane of PalmOS's existence. First off, they now have the same issues of backwards-compatibility and storage space and memory use/abuse that a regular computer OS has. I said it was both a benefit and a bane; but there's actually two parts to the "bane" side. The first I've already mentioned, but the second is the fact that since apps have been written which can do darn near any conceivable task, people keep wanting more and more and more. And this then goes back to the "patchwork" I described earlier in talking about "older" computer OSs.
Then people want multimedia, and color screens, and apps to take advantage of it, and they want Palm to incorporate DSPs so they can play music, and of course that brings along with it all of the extra patching to then allow for the existence of, and permit the use of, an on-board DSP. And now you want WiFi? Well, shoot, now we gotta have IPv4 as well, and support for TCP/IP, none of which was ever a part of the original concept of PalmOS.
And even if you don't want or need any of those features in your own PDA, I'm sorry but that's really just too bad. Go live in a cave if you like, but if you buy a new PDA, guess what: you're gonna get all that stuff.
And at some point, all of this stretches an "older" OS just a bit too far, or it becomes a bit absurd with all the hoops and turns and wiggling that PalmOne's coders have to go through, so then they say, "Aw **** it, let's just re-write the thing."
Apple comes to this without any of *that* sort of legacy. Doubtless there will be no Newton code on this thing anywhere, but what Apple's got is Mac OS X, which means they also have the power (albeit somewhat indirectly) of an Open Source OS -- Linux. And in case you weren't aware, there are already numerous "imbedded" implementations of Linux -- phones, PDAs, game systems, kiosks, etc. -- all of which are data points and collective experience opportunities which ALREADY EXIST that Apple can exploit.
So no, having a "modern" OS is not a bad thing. It's actually a supremely awesome thing. What you're concerned about is having something that is intuitive AND efficient AND appropriate to the world of telephone interfaces for the user interface on the device you'd go and buy yourself.
All I can say, based on past performance, is give Apple a chance.
Now, here's a larger picture thought to ponder...
If Apple goes to market with the iPhone, then this is going to open up (to some extent) the viability of a F/OSS community cell phone. And this is a really good thing as well because it represents a non-commercial, enthusiast entrance into what up until now has been a totally proprietary, locked-down OS-based product world. It has the potential to do to cell phones what Linux has inspired in Mac OS X.
On a phone, I want to use its features quickly and easily. When I have to schedule an appointment, I want to enter that appointment as easily as possible. When I want to add something to my to-do list, I want to do it easily and quickly. And first and foremost, I want to be able to look up a contact and dial it as quickly as possible.
A phone is not a personal computer. I couldn't care less about multitasking, rewriting, "modern" OSes (whatever "modern" means). "Modern" features and look is just eye candy and/or toys. A mobile phone is a gadget of convenience, and it should be convenient to use. Even PalmOS 1.0 was convenient. It was just as easy to use its contact and calendar features as any so-called "modern" OS is today.
I would really like to know how "modernizing" the OS on my phone would help me look up contacts, dial contacts, enter to-do list entries, and entering calendar entries any better that I could today.
Again, I repeat: a phone is not a personal computer. There's no point in treating it as such.
The same point could largely be made about cars, but I don't think either of us would want to be driving a Model T or Model A Ford these days, would we?
The term "Modern" as applied to operating systems has little to do with the interface per se. It primarily concerns the underpinnings of the OS and how forward-looking and/or open-ended it is. Older operating systems, if you want to look at it in this way, were very geared to the hardware of their times, and every time you added a new hardware feature or some new kind of technology came out, you wound up making this big patchwork of an OS, in which you had either an out-dated or obsolete "core" around which was stuck, somewhat unglamorously, lots of crap to allow it to do stuff it wasn't really designed for. Then, you wound up having to write patches for the patches, etc., ad infinitum.
Apple tried to go the internal development route, but that didn't work because their departmental infrastructure was eating them from the inside out at the time and basically poisoned all of their new projects. They considered BeOS because it was an incredibly modern OS at the time that was very capable, unbelievably good at multitasking, memory protection, multimedia tasks, etc. However, that company was so shaky that when Apple decided not to go with them, they collapsed. One of the products which was introduced and sold and almost immediately recalled that used a version of BeOS was Sony's eVilla (you just have to love that name -- try pronouncing it out loud to get the full effect).
Ultimately, they went with NeXT's BSD- and Mach-Kernel-based NeXTStep (which after a bunch of time and effort and -- since lots of it is based on Open Source software, there were a healthy amount of community contributions to) and hence we now have Mac OS X.
I'll leave it to actual developers and/or coders here to better explain and refine (and/or correct) what I've said here, should you wish greater detail beyond what I am able to -- and therefore have -- provided above.
The whole point of going with a modern OS implemented for an imbedded market (i.e. "Mac OS X Mobile") is it gives you much more direct (and probably better implemented and/or better-grounded) access to modern technologies. Everything from basic I/O tasks that reside in the Kernel to audio processing to doing H.264 decoding to having access to IPv4 or IPv6, are all examples of things which a modern OS could do a better job of providing and/or backing.
From what I understand, PalmOS is something that was designed to first and foremost give you basic notepad and daily organizer functionality. When they wrote, as you say, PalmOS 1.0, they happened to implement a way for third parties to write software that could run on it. This has been both a benefit and a bane of PalmOS's existence. First off, they now have the same issues of backwards-compatibility and storage space and memory use/abuse that a regular computer OS has. I said it was both a benefit and a bane; but there's actually two parts to the "bane" side. The first I've already mentioned, but the second is the fact that since apps have been written which can do darn near any conceivable task, people keep wanting more and more and more. And this then goes back to the "patchwork" I described earlier in talking about "older" computer OSs.
Then people want multimedia, and color screens, and apps to take advantage of it, and they want Palm to incorporate DSPs so they can play music, and of course that brings along with it all of the extra patching to then allow for the existence of, and permit the use of, an on-board DSP. And now you want WiFi? Well, shoot, now we gotta have IPv4 as well, and support for TCP/IP, none of which was ever a part of the original concept of PalmOS.
And even if you don't want or need any of those features in your own PDA, I'm sorry but that's really just too bad. Go live in a cave if you like, but if you buy a new PDA, guess what: you're gonna get all that stuff.
And at some point, all of this stretches an "older" OS just a bit too far, or it becomes a bit absurd with all the hoops and turns and wiggling that PalmOne's coders have to go through, so then they say, "Aw **** it, let's just re-write the thing."
Apple comes to this without any of *that* sort of legacy. Doubtless there will be no Newton code on this thing anywhere, but what Apple's got is Mac OS X, which means they also have the power (albeit somewhat indirectly) of an Open Source OS -- Linux. And in case you weren't aware, there are already numerous "imbedded" implementations of Linux -- phones, PDAs, game systems, kiosks, etc. -- all of which are data points and collective experience opportunities which ALREADY EXIST that Apple can exploit.
So no, having a "modern" OS is not a bad thing. It's actually a supremely awesome thing. What you're concerned about is having something that is intuitive AND efficient AND appropriate to the world of telephone interfaces for the user interface on the device you'd go and buy yourself.
All I can say, based on past performance, is give Apple a chance.
Now, here's a larger picture thought to ponder...
If Apple goes to market with the iPhone, then this is going to open up (to some extent) the viability of a F/OSS community cell phone. And this is a really good thing as well because it represents a non-commercial, enthusiast entrance into what up until now has been a totally proprietary, locked-down OS-based product world. It has the potential to do to cell phones what Linux has inspired in Mac OS X.
