

New Apple Laptops Due Next Week: A Rumor Recap and a Poll - technologizer
http://technologizer.com/2008/10/09/new-apple-portables-due-next-week-a-rumor-recap/

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caudicus
I remember watching a call with someone from Dell on CNBC during the last US
recession (2001 recession and "jobless recovery" the following couple of
years). He said that Dell was basically going to cut prices like crazy and
actually lose some money in order to gain market share during the down time so
they could capitalize on it when the economy swings back up again.

I wonder if Apple has something like this in store in terms of the "cheaper
laptop" rumor. We're (sort of) already seeing this with the iPhones.
("Cheaper" but higher monthly rates which nullify the savings in the long
run.)

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iigs
I too am keenly interested in seeing how Apple works the premium product angle
in response to the netbook segment. It's pretty obvious that they're going to
have to do something, but exactly what doesn't seem obvious.

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whatusername
You don't see the iphone as _almost_ a competitor in this space?

Basic typing, myspace, facebook, emails, flickr, youtube... That's retty much
what a netbook is used for isn't it?

~~~
iigs
Sort of... Honestly I don't have a particularly charitable opinion of the
iPhone: you can't touch type on it, which makes it effectively consume-only
for email, and it's also consume-only for video (and recorded audio for that
matter).

The iPhone is a shot across the bow for Blackberry and Windows Mobile, in my
opinion. Always present, capable of doing text composition in a pinch, and a
pacifier or Game Boy for (near-)adults.

I believe that the netbook segment represents the future of notebook
computing, in that they're for task oriented ("I'm sitting down to write a
chapter of a novel at the coffee shop", or "I'm checking up on my myspace and
facebook accounts"; contrast with "I'm bored and have a second and would like
to see if someone responded to me on facebook" in the mobile case) use.
They're big enough to touch type on, and they generally can accept USB
devices, so you can create content on them.

From my POV the Asus Eee PC stands for everything that the Apple notebooks do,
it's just a little smaller, as sexy, and a lot cheaper. It's obviously not as
gratuitously sexy as the MB Air, but at $2500 that's not even on the radar of
the vast majority of the computing public.

Since OS X and the Bondi Blue iMacs Apple has had a really weak foe in the
Windows hardware vendors. Sony had the engineering prowess but no cohesive
design language, IBM had the design language, but it was ugly as sin (I say
this as a ThinkPad fanboy). There was nothing that integrated well enough with
Windows to make it feel monolithic or whole.

Asus has a game changer on their hands with the Eee in that they have full
control of both the hardware and the UI, and the price point is substantially
below typical laptop prices. This, combined with downward price pressure from
conventional laptops means that a response from Apple is inevitable.

Apple could well ride it out for another two years, but like any other
business they do better when they stake their claim (integrated iPod + iTunes
+ store, best served on an iMac) as opposed to reacting to a market trend
(Newton, back in the PDA days, or the megahertz wars).

