The Computer Is FlatApple's rumored tablet PC augurs the next phase of the netbook craze.
Posted Monday, July 27, 2009, at 1:28 PM ET
Today, the Financial Times reported that Apple is planning to release a tablet computer as soon as this September. According to the report, the tablet PC will probably be a larger version of the iPod Touch—a touch-sensitive machine with a screen as big as 10 inches diagonally. Steve Jobs and co. must have been listening to Farhad Manjoo: Back in December, he urged Apple to make "a flat-panel, touch-screen tablet that can do photos, music, movies, e-mail, games, and full-function Web browsing." The original piece is reprinted below.
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StumbleUponThere isn't much mystery to why a little-marketed computer known as the Eee PC has lately seized the top spot on Amazon's laptop best-seller list. The machine, a three-pound ugly duckling made by the Taiwanese company Asus, has a 10-inch screen, a nearly full-size keyboard, and offers what almost everyone wants in a portable computer: It's tiny and, at $390, very cheap. Of course, the Eee PC is missing some other things people tend to like in laptops—an attractive design, a DVD drive, a fully full-size keyboard, and enough processing power to run multiple demanding applications at the same time. But hey, these are tough times, and did I mention you can buy this machine for less than you're planning to blow on New Year's Eve?
Minimalism pervades Amazon's laptop list; over the last few weeks, the great majority of the 25 best-seller slots have been occupied by various permutations of the Eee PC and other souped-down, sub-$500 machines. In the computer industry, these miniature computers are known as "netbooks." The term is vaguely defined, but the best way to spot a netbook is to peek at the specs: Today's bigger laptops run on Intel's speedy Core 2 Duo processor, while netbooks use a smaller, less powerful, and cheaper Intel chip, the Atom. Netbooks also run older or more lightweight operating systems—generally Windows XP or some flavor of Linux.
PC companies are looking to these machines in much the same way John McCain once looked to the governor of Alaska—as an easy way to put a fresh face on an otherwise aging product line. Asus took an early lead in the category, but in 2008 nearly every major PC maker put out a netbook or two, including Dell, HP, and Lenovo. New netbooks will dominate CES, the consumer electronics trade show in Las Vegas next week, and completely unsubstantiated rumors have it that a netbook will also debut at MacWorld, the Apple-centric confab that starts Monday in San Francisco. It's still unclear whether this season's sales represent a trend or a fad—netbooks offer a user experience that's far from perfect, and buyers may well come to regret their chintzy purchases and vow to pay full-fare next time. Netbooks' rise could also end badly for the PC industry. As a Sony exec predicted this year, cheap machines may spark a pricing "race to the bottom," further shrinking PC makers' already squeezed profit margins.
But netbook sales suggest pent-up demand for the kind of machine that no company has yet perfected—a machine that I predict could make for the next PC boom. At the moment, the laptop market is dominated by two kinds of machines: a bunch of cheap netbooks that don't do much, and a bunch of expensive Apple notebooks that do a lot and do it very well. (Seven of the top 25 best-selling laptops on Amazon are MacBooks.) Consumers are fleeing the middle range, which seems to make sense—if you want a laptop to surf the Web, why spend $800 on a machine that runs Windows Vista when you can spend $400 on a machine than runs the more highly regarded Windows XP? On the other hand, if you want a laptop to use as your main computer, why spend $800 for a machine that runs Windows Vista when you can spend $1,000 for a virus-free, hassle-free system that runs the Mac OS (and can also run Windows)?
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