Stan Beer
Monday, 15 December 2008 17:33
Opinion and Analysis
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A couple of months ago Steve Jobs described netbooks as $500 pieces of junk, presumably not worthy of Apple. However, Jobs also kept his options open and promised some interesting ideas if the netbook market ever did take-off - and take-off it has. Will we see those interesting ideas come to fruition in the form of a netMac at Macworld 2009?
If there's one thing you can say about Apple these
days, it's that the company doesn't take unnecessary risks. Apple
chooses markets very carefully and makes sure they're already well
established before it enters them. Then Apple proceeds to blow the
incumbent opposition away with a superior product.
The market was looking for Apple to release a Mac netbook - a netMac -
at Macworld 2008. However, Apple wasn't interested. The market was too
new and unproven.
So instead, Macworld 2008 saw Jobs strutting his stuff while stuffing
an envelope with a MacBook Air. It was a beautiful product to be sure
but with appeal limited to the premium end of the market.
One year on and things have changed dramatically. The US and, as a
consequence, the rest of the world has been hit by a mother of an
economic crisis and the netbook market has exploded.
The time seems ripe for Jobs to lob a few grenades of his own into the
netbook market with an explosively good and affordable touch screen
netbook that could be part iPhone, part MacBook, all cool and set to
blow away the PC competition - yet again.
We know that Intel has already released a "nettop" Atom 330 dual-core
processor, and we know that Apple gets special treatment from Intel and
new processors early.
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