Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 25th Nov 2008 22:45 UTC
Apple isn't exactly known for catering to the lower end of the market, but so far, it doesn't really seem to have slowed them down much. They are selling more Macs than ever, and especially in the ever-growing notebook market, Apple is very successful. However, with people all worried about possible economic downturn, and with the success of cheap, small laptops (netbooks), people are starting to speculate if Apple will enter the netbook market.
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Member since:2005-07-24
Agreed - netbooks aren't anything particularly revolutionary, they're very small laptops.
Actually, they *are* revolutionary. Instead of commanding a price *premium* for being smaller, they cost *less*, bucking a long and nonsensical tradition of overpriced Vaios, etc. That, and the size means it can be taken anywhere. And if the owner accidentally drops it in the toilet... it's only $249 to replace it and not $2490. That's revolutionary because of the effect it has on usage patterns.
And as such, the expectation is that they be able to do anything the larger models can do
Not sure about that. People's expectations vary, of course. But I suspect that most really want an *appliance* in that form factor. When I bought my EEE PC, I *thought* I wanted a small laptop and put Fedora, and then Ubuntu on it. I ended up back with the default, Asus-customized Xandros in "easy" mode because I realized that I really wanted an appliance with a simple, easy, and fast interface. In fact, there was a thread on the EEE PC user board discussing whether users preferred/used "easy" or "advanced" mode. "Advanced" mode is a standard KDE desktop. "Easy" is a customized, more appliance like mode. "Easy" was the *overwhelming* winner in that very long thread with many, many participants.
they run a full desktop OS (be it XP or Linux)
True. And for Linux, the software selection is processor agnostic.
Edited 2008-11-26 20:26 UTC
Member since:2008-08-19
True. And for Linux, the software selection is processor agnostic.
Theoretically, yes - most packages can be compiled for almost any architecture that Linux itself will run, and that's fine if you don't mind compiling things yourself.
But really, pulling binaries from a repository is much more convenient most of the time, and in that context, x86 and x86-64 are much better supported than anything else.
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Member since:
2008-08-19
Agreed - netbooks aren't anything particularly revolutionary, they're very small laptops. And as such, the expectation is that they be able to do anything the larger models can do - they run a full desktop OS (be it XP or Linux), and should be able to run any application that can run on that OS. Using a chip not compatible with those apps would be a bad idea.