Stan Beer
Monday, 15 December 2008 17:33
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
So - if there is going to be a dual-core Atom processor
for netbooks, one with enough oomph to keep the legendarily Steven P.
Jobs happy, and to convince him the netbook market isn't as nascent or
"junky" as it once was, chances are Apple will get it first.
There's also been a lot of work done in Taiwan to
create ever more inexpensive touch screens, not only for netbooks from
companies like Asus, but cheaper touch-screens for traditional Tablet
PCs.
Given that Apple has patented its multi-touch magic, for the iPhone at
least, a netMac with a multi-touch "glide pad" and a multi-touch
screen, possibly even a rotatable "tablet PC" style screen, is not out
of the question.
This would result in a cross between an iPhone and a MacBook, one that
could easily run Mac OS X today (especially seeing as hacked copies of
Mac OS X are running on the single core Atom-based MSI Wind nicely
enough), but also an iPhone.
iTunes exists and runs on OS X, thus giving the netMac full iTunes
capabilities, but a dedicated touch interface could also be made
available at the click of a button to emulate the iPhone/iPod Touch
interface.
The larger screen makes e-books far more practical, movies more
watchable, games more playable, digital media more manipulatable and
documents easier to create - especially with these 92% sized keyboards
that finally make typing a breeze on 10-inch netbook devices.
Although you'd expect Apple's "lozenge" keys to make an appearance,
potentially forcing Apple into a slightly larger 11-inch configuration,
perhaps also "just to be different" as it so loves to be.
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