

Apple Killed the Netbook - joxie
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/01/what_happened_to_netbooks_apple_s_ipad_and_macbook_air_killed_the_400_former.html

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dizzystar
People were snapping up $200 to $300 netbooks because they were broke, thus it
stands to reason that these people were holding out to pay north of $700 for a
touch tablet with an incomplete OS you couldn't run two programs on
simultaneously?

What killed the netbook is simply that the price of a genuine laptop went down
in price. Picking up a brand new 15" laptop for $400 was unheard of 2 years
ago. Hell, I bought my i5 w/ 6 gig Ram for $550 brand new. That would have
been the price of a mid-line netbook two years ago.

~~~
timerickson
I think the point you raise is valid, but the way you arrive to it is
disingenuous.

North of $700? The iPad starts at $500, and recently, the iPad Mini at $330.
Granted the Mini is late in this timeline, but it stands to reason the price
point is closer than you're making it out to be.

Secondly, an "incomplete OS" is a fallacy. It's complete to the spec it was
designed for. Yes, that means its not intended to be a fully-fledged desktop
OS, but its not inherently incomplete, just focused.

Thirdly, "running two programs simultaneously" – I'd wager that many netbook
users (myself included) found the netbook so limiting and simple that it was
only ever used for doing one thing at a time, such as reading email, browsing
the web, listening to music or reading a book; all of which now accomplished
by the iPad.

~~~
dizzystar
Fair points. I'm sort of going by the price points from when the iPad first
came out and I really don't recall the real price, but the baseline was
definitely higher than today's baseline models. Quick search suggest $500 for
the baseline, which isn't competitive to $300.

Yes, I agree that the "incomplete" OS is sort of a fallacy, but not in all
cases. Even if the iPad started up at $300, I'm pretty sure most people,
especially those who had no computer at all, would dive toward a netbook,
since yes, you could run Word + Browse the Web + listen to music (no flash! no
youtube!), plus, you know, type on it. The big fallacy with the article is
that the author is suggesting that an iPad could have replaced a netbook, and
this, I hope you agree, simply was not, and is not, the case, and I really
don't believe that many people would have bought an iPad if they didn't
already have a computer of some sort, though I could be wrong here.

In regards to how much you can push an Intel Atom. Well, let's see here. I
watched youtube lecture videos, ran Python IDLE, and even had other programs
open while doing all of this. I also had successfully installed and ran MySQL,
Xampp, Drupal, Gimp, and Emacs simultaneously. Not saying this is optimal, but
just saying that you could do it. I ran Eclipse and Java for a week to test
those waters too. It was fine for my first forays into development, so I think
it would have been okay for the Average User. I still have the thing sitting
on my shelf.

~~~
fpgeek
> I really don't believe that many people would have bought an iPad if they
> didn't already have a computer of some sort, though I could be wrong here.

When the iPad came out didn't you need a computer (with iTunes) to activate
it? I vaguely recall Apple offering to activate iPads at Apple Stores at some
point, but I'd presume the vast majority of iPad users didn't need that.

------
fpgeek
One issue the article doesn't touch on is the various restrictions Microsoft
and Intel put on netbooks (to protect their margins related to other PCs, I
believe). I'd say those were at least a contributing factor (if not the
underlying killer) because those restrictions made it much harder for netbooks
to change as the competitive landscape did.

~~~
crdoconnor
I'd say that was the killer full stop. I would dearly have loved to have kept
on buying netbooks, but they're still at 2GB RAM, (mostly) one core and
1024x768 even 3-4 years on.

Microsoft put that ceiling there, not Apple.

~~~
hollerith
That's a little misleading: the ceiling applied only to the discounted version
of Windows. Any manufacturer who wanted to sell netbooks with better specs
could have sprung for the full-price Windows license.

~~~
Shorel
What you suggest is not financially possible given the tight margins for
netbooks, and MS knows this.

They would essentially be paying their customers for each device and then
losing money with each machine.

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reidrac
I'm honestly surprised that Charles Arthur's article is being referenced in so
many places without taking into account that Arthur is well known for being an
Apple fan (there are several examples in the tech section of the Guardian; ie.
the Windows PC are dead because Apple is growing faster, but don't look at the
market share!).

I'm not saying the iPad didn't have a role in the netbook decline, but "Apple
killed the netbook" sounds to me like it's a little bit excessive. May be it
was the raise of smartphones and tablets, but not just from Apple.

Signed: an habitual reader of the Guardian's tech section :)

~~~
neya
Agreed. Just flagged the article. These people with unethical journalistic
bias are only causing more confusion amongst the readers usually leading to an
unwanted debate so they can benefit (=pageviews) out of it.

~~~
weiran
You flagged an article because you didn't agree with the author's opinion? I
guess I should go flag half of the the Hacker News top posts.

~~~
neya
I said I flagged it because of the unethical nature of the article. Don't
manipulate things as you see fit, please.

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wink
What I find most confusing about this article that the author finds that
netbooks went away for good.

Since when choice is that bad? No one's forced to buy a netbook if he doesn't
want to, right?

I bought an eeePC 900A in late 2008 and it's travelled all over the world with
me now, gone to several conferences and troubleshooting gigs at friends and
relatives, and basically everywhere I didn't want to carry a 15" notebook
(don't have anything between)

Yes, it was a bit slow, but it's running a default debian install on a LUKS-
encrypted 8GB SSD - what's not to love about it?

I indeed mourn the downfall of the netbook, and if mine ever dies I'd be very
much tempted to get a new one for ~250 EUR just before a larger trip.

Edit: I have HTC Desire Z and a 7" ainol tablet, I like both - but for nearly
everything I've ever used my netbook, I can't use them really. Only exception
is writing blog posts on the road...

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asveikau
In some circles this isn't a popular sentiment, but rest in peace, netbook.
Put a minimal Linux distro and a light X setup on it and you've got a very
usable machine for ~$300 or less. I guess when my current one breaks I'll have
to resort to Debian arm on an android tablet, or similar.

~~~
hollerith
Or a Chromebook.

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marmaduke
I was pretty darn happy with my eee pc: lightweight, good battery life,
durable, and replaceably cheap (for a student).

Somehow the x220 I bought afterward, for speed and one more inch of screen,
compromised all those qualities.

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lifeguard
MS killed the netbook not Apple. They did this by inducing OEMs to make more
powerful (expensive) machines that would run XP. XP didn't work on the first
eeepc, for example.

~~~
hollerith
>XP didn't work on the first eeepc, for example.

I always thought that XP would have run fine on the first eeepc and that Linux
was chosen to keep the retail price down.

XP became the most common OS on netbooks after Microsoft introduced a special
netbook-only lower price for XP.

~~~
lifeguard
From wikipedia:

"Newer models added the options of Microsoft Windows operating system,
rotating media hard disk drives (HDD) and initially retailed for up to 500
euros."

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jpxxx
The PC industry's shitty netbook lines killed the netbook. Apple was just
standing there.

~~~
wtallis
Intel in particular had a lot to do with it. For all their talk, they really
haven't accomplished much with their Atom line: it's got less than half the
IPC of their mainstream architecture and has pretty low clock speeds, and it's
been embarrassingly slow about moving to new lithography nodes. (The 22nm Atom
has reportedly been delayed to 2014, when Intel's mainstream 22nm chips
shipped spring 2012.) On the other hand, Intel refuses to make a sufficiently
cheap version of their Core lineup, which is why ultrabooks are so much more
expensive and yet most components are still pretty low-quality.

~~~
baq
intel likes money. if atoms have lower margins than bigger cpus, then intel
will try to make people buy bigger cpus. simple.

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Shank
I wouldn't say it's "just Apple" or just a product by them. In every case of
someone owning a netbook I've seen, it's just too difficult to use. Typing on
a tiny keyboard is a nightmare, and running a fully fledged OS just makes the
problem worse.

Apple might have accelerated it, but the form factor was terrible, while the
price exceeded that of a mid range laptop in several cases.

~~~
wtallis
The keyboards weren't small enough to be completely unusable, but 1024x600 was
obviously never going to be good enough. If we'd had today's LCD market back
when the netbook fad started, they would have been much more usable machines.

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jinushaun
Having owned a netbook, Apple didn't do anything. Netbooks killed themselves.
They were really bad products and a worthless compromise anyway you measure
it: cramped keyboards, unreliable track pads, processors too slow to watch
YouTube videos, poor viewing angles and a screen so small that many websites
don't display properly.

Netbooks were a nice thought experiment, but the market was never there. $400
for a tiny poorly-made laptop just to check Facebook, or $600 for a decently-
made full-size laptop?

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gte910h
To be fair, netbooks are pretty rough to use, especially for men (finger size
on 80% keyboards). They always seemed transitional to me.

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bunderbunder
What killed the netbook is that nobody ever wanted to buy a second netbook.

