Netbook at MacWorld? No Chance!

Apple Matters readers leave some of the best comments around. This is usually great but when one of the comments mirrors an article you've been working on it can make it look as though you're a plagiarist. Starting an article over is an unlikely remedy, which leaves one option: sourcing the comment and adding to it. In this case, the comment was a response to Hadley's suggestion that MacWorld would see a netbook Mac. Hadley is a smart guy but he's horribly misguided this time. 

James Katt's comment started out thusly

"Apple already has a netbook. It is called MacBook AIR."

James makes a bold statement, a statement that a lot of people are going to disagree with. How strongly will people disagree with this statement? The same thing was said at our sister site iPhone Matters and resulted in someone dropping profanity more commonly found in Kevin Smith movies in a comment section devoted to all things iPhone.

For an assertion to elicit such impassioned reaction indicates vehement disagreement. Why someone would disagree that strongly with a matter of semantics is a question best left to psychologists. The fact remains that there are those who look at the MacBook AIR as just another Mac notebook instead of a netbook. Let's break out the definition of a netbook from Wikipedia

The form factor of a netbook is smaller than that of a notebook and they are very light in weight. A typical model weighs 2 to 3 lb (about 1 kg). Common features include a small screen (usually around 7-inches to 10-inches diagonal), wireless connectivity, but no optical disc drive, and a smaller sized keyboard (usually 80 percent to 95 percent of normal size). There is also a trend of using solid-state drives instead of traditional hard disk drives.[10]. Most of the CPUs in current[when?] netbooks clock at a speed of 1.6 GHz

Does that description sound anything like a MacBook AIR? Sure, it has the Hz correct, the solid-state drive part is spot on, and the AIR doesn't have a disc drive. On the other side of the equation, the AIR has a big screen and a full sized keyboard. The AIR can't be Apple's netbook can it?

Let's go to the man himself, Steve Jobs, and see if he thinks it is a netbook or not.

From the  '08 Keynote:

"Well, we went out and looked at all the thin notebooks -- most people think of the Sony TZ. They're thin. We looked at ALL of them, tried to distill the best of breed. They generally weigh 3 pounds, about 0.8-1.2-inchs thin, wedge shaped, they compromise to get the weight down. Things like the display."

Okay, Steve didn't say netbook but since the AIR was thinner than anything else he emphasized the thinness. And there you have it, Steve clearly thinks of the AIR as a netbook competitor. You can already hear the howls about the price point, the people screaming that it can't be a netbook if it isn't cheap. As Steve has noted before, Apple doesn't do cheap, it isn't in the company's DNA

There is only one reasonable conclusion: There won't be an Apple netbook at MacWorld this year because Apple's netbook was introduced at last year's MacWorld

In his comment James Katt continues

"A better product would be a Tablet Version of the iPhone, the size of a Paperback Book or larger... 

New applications could be sold through the iTunes iBook App Store."

James thinks the tablet will be called an iBook (hence the reference to the iBook App Store) but that seems doubtful. Still, any product that capitalizes on the success of the red-hot App Store has to appeal to Apple. Not only does each app sold generate a little cash for Apple it also generates a little down the road lock in. If you have hundreds of App Store only apps on your machine (iPhone, iPod, mysterious tablet) it makes it that much more harrowing to jump to a competitor. How many people still use Windows because they have a decent sized investment in applications for Windows.

James further argues:

"It would be an entirely new platform.  It would still be based on OS X.  But it would be a lot simpler than a desktop.  And it would have fewer headaches on a smaller screen than a desktop."

Anyone who has used an iPhone realizes that the difference between the iPhone and a full-blown Mac is still substantial. They also realize that you can get an incredible amount of stuff done on an iPhone. It isn't stretch to imagine a slightly larger iPhone type device with a beefed up processor being perfectly adept at doing 90% of what the MacBook AIR does

James has more:

"The iBook would have cell phone capabilities via a PC Card.  This would allow the cell phone capabilities to change as technology changes.

It would have a larger speaker than the iPhone, and can thus be a good speaker phone."

This is actually a nifty idea. You can already get VoIP on the iPhone so VoIP on this (so far imaginary) tablet shouldn't be much of a trick. With the right slot you could use it with the carrier of your choice. Verizon, Sprint, Cellular one... whatever company you wanted to go with. Apple's dependence on AT&T is gone! 

Clever idea or not, the concept is a bit of a stretch. You're asking a lot of the average user to hunt up a VoIP app for the device and even more of them to set it up and be comfortable with it. Vonage, even for all the savings it offers, didn't go over huge because they were trying to appeal to people with landlines when the kind of folks willing to chase new tech were already completely cell based.

There are, as expected, ways Apple could easily get around thing. Install an Apple created VoIP app on the device. Apple could even manage the service. It would undoubtedly make the process simple for users (and profitable for Apple) but one suspects that AT&T has competent lawyers and Apple would be contractually prevented from trying something like this.

When has Apple cared about contracts? Apple's general take on something like this would be "screw AT&T by the time it's litigated everyone will have one." A tablet, or even an iPhone that accepts cards, would seem to be Apple's super killer product. Think of it as the original iMac. You pay once and then choose your service (AOL, earthlink, etc.).  Apple is back in the business of selling hardware and software without meddlesome partners. Most of us would say the risk was worth the reward

But it isn't going to happen. As much as Apple fans want it to happen, as much sense as the arrangement makes on the computer screen it ignores the success of the iPhone. The iPhone has been Apple's biggest hit ever, anything that would jeopardize that success will be viewed with suspicion.

Remember that the iPhone has weirdish accounting and that Apple makes revenue throughout the life of the contract of the iPhone. To make a tablet, that if it went over, would kill that revenue stream and trade it for a buy it once, Apple is paid once deal is too much to ask from Apple. Apple would either have to price the device high enough to cover all the revenue from an iPhone sale (which is more than you'd be willing to pay), risk massive cannibalization or hobble the device to make sure it didn't truly compete the iPhone

Though all hope is not lost. It should be noted that Apple does occasionally make a completely unintuitive move. Moves like replacing the most popular iPod with a new model. This happened when the nano was introduced. Until the nano showed up the most popular iPod (by a long shot) was the mini. So it isn't impossible that something like the tablet would show up. That noted it seems that the rumor mill is strongly tilting to a nano redux. With a smaller, less capable phone being the centerpiece of this years MacWorld