During the Apple financials conference call today, Tim Cook was once again asked about Apple and netbooks and once again he poo pooed the idea.
Of course there are stories showing up on the net about Apple telling netbooks to stuff it, etc.
Of course Apple is naysaying the netbook. Why would Apple want to enter that space? Netbooks are not interesting to Apple; Apple has the MacBook as a small computer, and while nowhere near as cheap as netbooks, they suffice for students and the like.
When Apple entered the cellular market, they didn’t build a phone. They built an iPod. A phone. An internet communication device. iPod. Phone. Internet.
Of course Apple is working on a small handheld computer. It just won’t be a netbook as defined by Asus, something with little power, a tiny screen and crappy keyboard.
I envision a device with the rumored 10″ screen that would serve many purposes. A nice email/surfing device with a gorgeous screen and probably a screen based keyboard. But it doesn’t stop there.
Remember Apple TV? Those of us who bought one of Steve’s hobby boxes do. The product is dead. Really. Antiquated and misplaced.
Replace it with a different box. Running the iPhone OS (known as Cocoa Touch) Maybe even give it a Wii like wand for navigation.
Then marry it to the iBook (has that name returned!??) Much like Apple has done with the remote app. Use it for navigation. Use it as a killer universal remote, to compete in the Logitech Harmony 1000 space.
Make the little box that plugs into the TV powerful enough to not only play 1080P movies (yeah thanks Apple), but also to play games. Real games, like Madden, etc.
Then marry the little iBook to the game. Choose your plays, maneuver, look around, all with the device.
Watching a youtube on your iBook? Touch a button and it is instantly on the big TV for everyone to enjoy. Work on a video on your Mac Pro in the office? Share to the iBook in large format for showing the in-laws.
Bluetooth 3 with high speed connections? You betcha. Turn your iMac, MacBook Pro, Apple TV and iBook into a personal cloud. Data flowing to and fro without any intervention. Working on a document that is stored on the computer upstairs? You’d never know it, as it flowed onto the handheld as you walked out the door.
The winds are changing at Apple. The futuristic ramblings are still aways off, but Apple is clearly dabbling in changing how we compute yet again.
Some suggestions for Apple:
- Drop that awful iDisk and buy/license dropbox
- Drop Backup from mobile me and license something that works
- Include a year of “cloud seeding” with every new mac. All of your data is not only backed up, it is available everywhere you can see a cloud.
- Ship a super sexy easel for the iBook, which acts as a sort of dock. USB 3 or dock connector, but make it work with mice and keyboards. Come home, sit on the couch, enter some stuff, go to the office, set it into the easel, and start using the keyboard on the desk.
- Make it so data just lives in the user’s cloud, without worrying where it is at any moment. Of course someone should be able to give clues, such as “I’ll be offline for 3 days and really want to work on this project and that other project” Think outside the box about how we reference data.
In conclusion. Oh yes, there is a small device coming from Apple. It just won’t be a netbook. And when we get our hands on it, we’ll ask “Why didn’t we think of this?”