Does Apple Netbook repudiation signal a shift?
Apple COO Tim Cook's recent comments about Netbooks may reflect an incipient movement to look beyond this category of laptops--now more than a year old. The comments also echo lingering disaffection with the Netbook business model. Sentiment that may not be that far removed from Intel's internal thinking.
Toshiba's first crack at a Netbook was hardly an endorsement of the category--the lackluster design was officially only available in Latin America
(Credit: Brooke Crothers)This New York Times blog does a good job of dispelling any ambiguity about Cook's comments when it says that "contempt may be too kindly a term" to describe his attitude toward Netbooks.
Cook joins a small chorus of less blunt but equally disdainful companies. Toshiba initially resisted Netbooks and in conversations I had with Toshiba at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January (where its Netbook offering had been relegated, quite intentionally, to an easy-to-miss corner of its sprawling booth) they clearly were not enthusiastic about (if not disdainful of) the category.
Toshiba, caving to pressure in its home market (Japan) from Acer and Asus, has since come out with a redesigned Netbook but has yet to offer anything officially in the U.S. market--more than a year after the Atom processor was launched.
And in case anyone misses the irony. Toshiba practically invented the laptop category and, to state the obvious, is one of the largest laptop vendors in the world.
And Sony has gone out of its way to say that its Netbook-like notebook is not a Netbook--and priced it accordingly.
Advanced Micro Devices has been more outspoken than most. Their contempt, to a large extent, is a given since they are Intel's chief rival. And, unlike Toshiba and Sony, they're not a customer of Intel's and don't have to couch their disdain in diplomatic language. (Skeptics will cite a host of other reasons too: AMD's lack of R&D funds to develop an Atom equivalent, for one.).
That said, in conversations I have had with AMD (including CEO Dirk Meyer), they seem to genuinely believe that Netbooks--as defined by Atom--are not going to be around for the long haul. In short, like Apple's Cook, they think they're too dinky. (See Cook's comments linked above for a variation on this theme, including the words "junky," "terrible," and "cramped.")
There is also some anecdotal evidence that demand for Intel's Atom Netbook processors is slowing a bit. (It should be noted that the source for this information is Digitimes, which is not always the most reliable font of information.)
Now, my final statement is strictly opinion. I would submit that Intel--the very company that manufactures the electronics core of virtually all Netbooks--in its more candid moments harbors thoughts not that far removed from Cook's thinking. Intel executives have said in the past that a Netbook is not really practical for more than an hour and "it's not something you're going to use day in and day out."
So, the staying power of Netbooks will be tested over the next 12 months. The forces potentially arrayed against the Netbook--that is, the Netbook as defined by Intel and the Atom processor are:
- An aggressive ramp by Intel of its Consumer Ultra-Low-Voltage class of chips
- A successful execution by AMD of its low-power Athlon (aka dual-core "Congo") strategy
- An enthusiastic reception by tier-one PC makers of Intel's CULV and AMD's Congo
- A consequent shift in consumer preference for slightly larger, slightly more pricey thin notebooks
- The popularity of a smartphone-style Netbook, as defined by Qualcomm and its Snapdragon silicon
Time to alert the Netbook grave diggers? Absolutely, categorically not. Atom-based Netbooks are still very popular and their popularity may become entrenched as consumers acclimate themselves to this mode of computing, as Atom gets updated, and as 3G becomes a part of the feature set. But "exciting" new PC categories like the UMPC (ultra-mobile PC) have a way fizzling out when there isn't broad, sustained, enthusiastic industry support.
Brooke Crothers has served as an editor at large at CNET News, an editor at Dow Jones' Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, and a senior editor at InfoWorld. His CNET blog covers chip technology and computer systems, and how they define the computing experience. He also contributes to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. Follow Brooke on Twitter @mbrookec. 
Apple's no stranger to cut price ultraportables--They've already sold several:
The Powerbook 100, cut-price ultraportable sibling to the 140 and 170
The Powerbook Duos, cut-price aternatives to mainline Powerbooks.
The Powerbook 2400, a full featured ultraportable (but not cut-price. The cut price model of that generation was the 1400)
The chiclet iBooks, cut-price "more portables" than the 15" Powerbooks.
The 12" Powerbook (full price) and iBooks (cut price), ultraportables compared iwth the 15" and 17"
I don't see Apple releasing a "netbook" either. However, how about a "full-powered" computer in a similar form? It wouldn't BE a netbook... It would mean Jobs isn't going to sell an "underpowered" computer (not as if the iPhone always keeps up with scrolling web pages, etc...), and they could distinguish the "netbook" market from their device quite easily. The problem with this scenario is that I don't think there is a large market for this type of device (at this time).
Jut my 2 cents...
A GRAPHICS PROCESSOR / "card" with its own dedicated VRAM
I still have a 12" iBook that gets regular use for college work (it's the same size as a textbook) and it benefits greatly from having an ancient Radeon 7500 GPU with 32MB of actual separate VRAM.
Now, find me a netbook with something like the Nvidia GeForce 9400 or better, and I'll consider it.
You just don't get it do you.
Netbooks are netbooks because of the size not the price.
If hypothetically a company offered a 17in laptop for $300 the low price would not constitute it as a netbook.
Devices like this are the =ent of what you get in a box of cracker jacks. Its a supplement pure and simple. I mean heck. I have a Precision M6400 for hardcore work. I have a Gateway tablet for on the go work that does pen input, and my little Aspire one. I take what I need with me. Sometimes its the luggable. Sometimes its the Aspire.
for the price of these things I can afford a throw-away computer...ok so its not a throw away. But I wouldn't cry if it went away like my workstation.
And I'm not sure what "temper tantrum" you're referring to Apple throwing about netbooks. I guess it's all about perception.
My sister has the acer netbook... for portability i would love one of those...
when i need power for gaming i go to my quad core...
it apple makes a netbook people will see how over priced the touches are
After taking a beating from those low cost and light weight netbook and 13" laptop, more people are heading for the 15" and bigger laptop.
The human ergonomics is not going to evolve anytime soon. Don't hold your breath.
And to all you griping about the "limited" power of netbooks, mine runs Adobe Photoshop CS4 just fine. I can plug in my 22 inch external monitor, a usb keyboard and mouse, and edit graphics all day long.
My laptop has become in essence my desktop, never leaving my room, and my netbook has come to replace my laptop in the portability sense.
My laptop meanwhile can run PS/CS4, render a 30 fps animation with ambient occlusion turned on, and have enough change left over to surf the web and listen to music.
It also helps to do graphics on a screen that's big enough and at a high enough resolution so that you can actually, you know, see what you're doing :)
Don't get me wrong, there are legitimate uses for a netbook, but for folks who really want to do things that tend to be a bit resource intensive, there's only one way to go... bigger.
Let's get this straight: "exciting" new PC categories have a way of fizzling out when there isn't broad, sustained, enthusiastic *customer* interest.
Funny thing is, some companies that used to make the unsaleable UMPCs have now repackaged them into "Premium Netbooks" at the same inflated UMPC prices.
Buy a netbooks for looking at lectures and taking notes in class, then buys a PC desktop to do everything else (including gaming) = about the same $ you pay to buy a laptop!
iPhone==smartphone
iPhone is tied to at&t and that makes it automatically junk
I love my iTouch though
Its a phone there are cell phones that have more features then a iPhone with touchscreens does this make them netbooks too?
I mean, my msi wind plays Spore at a higher graphics quality than my desktop -- home-built on the cheap two years ago -- and streams hulu SD movies, etc, with no problem. The atom is not the weak, crippled processor that people seem to want it to be. Add the fact that the wind weighs a mere 2.5 pounds, and I'll never buy another kind of laptop if I can help it. I'd much rather buy a powerful desktop at a savings, and use a netbook for portable computing.
It's true that the 7'' models were crippled by their size, but the 10'' models, which have now reached a very comfortable price point, are easy to get used to, and are much more pleasant for literal "lap-top" computing than most laptops. If you have a 8lb behemoth because you need power, why not just buy a desktop? So you need to do processor-intensive imagine processing. Do you need to do it in a coffee shop??? Maybe one person in ten -- at most -- has that problem. For the rest of us, nebooks supply more than enough power, at a great price point, and in an incredibly light, compact form factor.
iPhone/iPod Touch are not netbooks its not capable of full web browsing wait till I need to use Java or Flash has no real Office apps. And even lacks copy and paste.
Ignorance is what makes people buy 8lb 'gas-guzzlers' when all they really need is a little bit of power. If all you need to do is type and read email, why not have those capabilities in a small, inexpensive, exquisitely cheap package?
- by megustansalchichas April 30, 2009 2:25 PM PDT
- i don't see why the netbook/notebook distinction. the netbook i just bought is the essentially the same computer i had 3+ years ago only cheaper and smaller. for the same reason people don't want to upgrade to vista, they don't need fancy new notebooks -i.e., they are just using their personal computers to email and surf the web, and leave their professional computing to their professional computers at work. it's computer 'enthusiasts' that want the blue ray, dvd burning, orbcasting experience, and those people know how to handle technology better and probably have a home server and a netbook combination where most just have a netbook. the intels and amds are whiners because they can't keep convincing people to spend $400 bucks on a processor upgrade every 16 months like they did a decade ago.
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