It may or may not be a perception problem. I made no claim either way.

It might be worthless to you, it isn't worthless to everyone.

My wife needed a very light laptop that she could use when away for typing up notes, email and surfing. It needed to fit in a handbag, not have a real hard disk (so she didn't kill it buy throwing it into the bag after failing to turn it off).

The Dell Mini 9 with its tiny size, light weight and SSD is perfect for her. She doesn't have a problem with the small screen and tiny keyboard. It works fine for what she uses it for. In fact she loves it.

I'm sure it wouldn't be fine if she was using the typical XP user's setup, i.e. task bar permanently visible, IE7 window not maximized, a couple of IE toolbars etc

Thankfully she is married to me so she has the task bar set to auto minimise, is running Chrome AND knows how to maximise windows

I will say however that given the choice between a Dell Mini 9 and the old Mac Book Air she would have gone for the Mac Book (even though it wasn't as small or light as the Dell). But of course the Dell cost about a quarter of what the old Air cost.

It's not just Andy's wife. My netbook also only has 1024x600 resolution and I find that it's absolutely fine for browsing the web. In a pinch, I even find it usable for programming in Visual Studio 2010 (but the CPU lets it down there -- I did say "in a pinch").

Fact is: everyone's different. You (Matt) might not want to use a netbook with a smaller screen, but please try to avoid making such blanket statements.

The number of commentators saying "Steve said netbooks are crap and Apple wouldn't do one, the Mac Book Air 11.6 is a netbook, Steve lied" is winding me up.

Firstly, Steve lies all the time when talking about upcoming or non-existent products, no big deal.

However, when Steve was talking about netbooks being crap, netbook were all 9 or 10 inch designs with tiny keyboards and barely usable track pads. Only relatively recently have companies started releasing 11 or 12 inch machines and describing them netbooks.

Calling an 11/12 inch machine a netbook is just silly, we used to have laptops that size and they were just laptops. Those machines aren't netbooks in an meaningful way, they are just smallish, cheap, slow laptops.

All companies do it. If they don't have an offering in a space, they deny the need for that space at all. If they have an upcoming offering for that space, they spread FUD about how the existing products are rubbish and you should wait for theirs (Microsoft are particularly good at this one).

People just don't use a sufficiently large pinch of salt. And note that I'm not only talking about Steve here. Microsoft fanbois are just as bad, it's just that we don't have many here (where the initial barrier to entry was buying a Linux-based car stereo).



I used to have a 10.1" laptop before the word netbook came about. That was just a laptop, too.

Though Steve did say that if they figure out a way to build a small machine to their standards and at a price they could sell them, they'd do it. Here it is. The AIR isn't exactly running a slow Atom either.

They effectively give XP away for free with netbooks, in return for the manufacturers agreeing to hobble the machines.

Clever way to hold back an entire sub-industry, that.

It keeps Linux off those machines and it keeps those machines from competing with paying Windows licenses. It's a loss-leader for them.

BTW, didn't XP's life get extended to 2020?

So what does Microsoft get out it then ?

Stops the spread of Linux?

That's the idea. They get to maintain their near monopoly. The first "netbooks" arrived with Linux preinstalled, and it didn't take long for MS to step in and starting giving away XP for free to stomp it out.

Cheers

If those Linux laptops had sold well then the manufacturers wouldn't have been quite so keen to get WinXP on to them. Great though Linux is, consumers still don't want it on their netbooks.

They would have a better chance to sell one to me if they put a usable screen on them no matter what the OS is. I wonder how many people are disappointed that they can't fit a web page on there without scrolling.

Market share and the chance to sell other MS Apps

I thought this was another interesting question about the app store. At first I didn't really agree, but then he made some good points.

Ryan makes some good points, including the worry that many apps will be rejected based on what they do. He does start off with one very incorrect and misinformed point though.

Regarding Adobe's willingness to give up a huge chunk of change to sell high-priced apps in such a store. You better believe they would, because it's the same (or less) money they give up selling the same software in a retail box at a brick and mortar store.

Whether Adobe does or doesn't participate would hinge on many other factors outside the one Block first mentions. First off their apps would be rejected for using custom installers. Then for requiring serial numbers and activation, starting up background processes (this is easy to fix), no buggy performance (many of Apple's own apps would not pass here either), etc.

Good points. Clearly we can only wait and see at this point. I think developers won't be a quiet about being rejected from this app store simply because it isn't necessary to be in it. Unlike the iOS platform, you'll still be able to "side-load" applications on it. My concern is that eventually, Apple will decide to make Mac OS an App Store-only platform.

Matt, it's my fear as well. But the bigger short-term fear is simply that a majority of people will just "expect" the app they're looking for is available from the Mac App store and they won't bother to look elsewhere. It could drop sales for traditionally web-distributed apps.

John Gruber seems to think Ryan Block is an idiot:

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/10/24/ryan-block-mac-app-store

As mentioned, he did make some idiotic comments, including this one which I must have missed when reading the article:



Ok. Whatever.

The big issue I had with the article was mostly the cloud computing part. Sure, many people read their e-mail online, or use Facebook online all the time. But thats really the only big "cloud computing" I see going on in consumer space currently. Some of the more geek inclined people are also moving word precessing, spread sheets, photo management and such to the cloud. Outside of that, there is still plenty of room for desktop apps to thrive in the OS X App Store for a number of years to come. I definitely don't see cloud computing being a reason to say the App Store will be mostly empty in a few years.

Another factor to that is the amount of people who simply don't bother, or can't obtain low latency, fast broadband connections required for decent cloud computing experiences beyond simple e-mail and status update posts. I'd find the experience on Google Docs with a spreadsheet completely unacceptable over dialup, satellite or 3G due to the latency issues. And I think many others would too, causing these people to revert to local desktop apps, with maybe a push of data to the cloud.

I'm more inclined to agree with Bruno here, in that the main impact of the App store will be less consumers looking to other sources to obtain apps. However, I really don't expect Apple to get to a point where they block non App Store apps from running anytime soon. Not under the current conditions anyhow. If they relax the conditions that an app can get into the store, then maybe I see it as a possible future. For now, I believe the pro market is still big enough to attract Apple, and closing off apps would definitely cause a majority of the pro users to abandon the platform, including myself.

But I think he does have a fairly valid point. There is little that the consumer needs to buy, because for the average person, between the OS (okay, to be pedantic, the apps bundled with the OS) and web services such as gmail, they already have everything they need. My parents, for example, both have macs (my dad a laptop, my mom an iMac). My dad bought parallels, so he could run some Windows-only software for work. Other than that, neither of them have purchased anything.

We bought a Mac last year. So far, we've purchased zero additional software. I installed macports, we use NeoOffice, and I use VirtualBox for my minimal virtualization needs.

The only purchases I want to make are Photoshop, Illustrator, and some sort of photo-management system (because I'm not fond of iPhoto, though I really need to poke at it more), but I'd consider those sort of purchases as falling under the productivity software.

So yeah... there isn't all that much that consumers need to buy.

But Block is completely misinformed because the situation is no different today than it was two years ago, or five years ago or ten years ago. Nothing Google has done has changed any of this. BEsides, Mac OS has always come with a mail client built-in. I use it, but there are still some commercial email clients making money. I'll concede it's not a market I'd get into nor that I think would do very high volumes.

If there's any argument to be made about dumbing down internet usage we need to give props to Facebook who completely own Google or any other service-based net destination. A lot of people replace free or commercial software via Facebook.

But that aside, 10 years ago there was no iPhoto, but not too many people were buying photo viewing and managing applications either - because no one was taking and accumulating digital photos. Even with free solutions today, there are a lot of folks out there making a living selling Photo management products.

Plenty of people are happy with what comes with the OS and don't need anything more. That hasn't changed in a long time. What has changed is that there are far more people using computers today and the market for plenty of software is opening up, not closing down. Take a look at Microsoft's revenues for non-Windows software. Take a look at Adobe's. Take a look at how many more indie software developers exist today and are making a decent living versus 10 years ago. Or even 5 for that matter.

My strategy going forward still revolves around niche markets and will include hardware in a big way as well. I think the Mac App Store is going to do well, I just don't know if it's going to do well for all the developers.

Supposedly good article/commentary on the new Mac App Store. http://www.marco.org/1432156914

I've only read a few bits and they were on the money. Need to get some time to read the rest, but I have to get off this infernal computer. Have spent the past few hours doing hard-core email.

Now.. the only qu
In the end, sanity prevailed. I really cannot afford $1300 for a netbook with subpar interfaces and heavy weight.

So instead I picked up a Samsung N210, a real 10" Atom 450 netbook. With the external USB DVD-RW drive, it cost $300 + tax. Plus another $45 to upgrade the RAM from 1GB to 2GB CL4.

With a bit of fuss, it now has Ubuntu 10.04 installed and all of the ports and magic Fn-keys working as Samsung intended. Hey.. the touchpad even has limited multi-touch capability, aka 2-finger scrolling.

I yanked the included 250GB Win7 hard disk without ever powering it on, and substituted a 100GB SSD from the collection here.

The screen (MS XP standard 1024x600) is small, but fine for the intended use as a travelbook. And the (real-life) 7-10 hours/charge on the battery is a big step up from the Dell X1's 2 hours max, worth the extra 0.4 pounds in weight.

I might even get used to the funky international keyboard. The USA-centric BestBuy models had a more normal layout than this unit, but those also had a lower-capacity battery, smaller HD, unsupported WiFi, and no bluetooth.. no thanks. The built-in Atheros Wifi (B/G/N) on the international version seems to work well enough out of the install.

Thus far.. recommended, if one can stand the funky keyboard!

Cheers

Heavy weight?

MacBook Air 11 inch: 2.3 pounds
MacBook Air 13 inch: 2.9 pounds
Samsung N210 with the 6 cell battery: 2.82 pounds

Other than the missing ports, the Air bests the netbook in pretty much every way. As it should, since it's a notebook with a notebook Core2Duo processor, not a netbook with an Atom processor. Base price on the 11" model is US$999 - it's $50 more in Canada. No matter how you look at it though, it's a premium product and carries a premium price.

Anything more than the 2.2lbs of my 5-year old X1 is "heavy" especially when it has poorer connectivity and a huge price tag.

The Apple hardware looks good, but in the end it's just a netbook, and one that needs external dongles to connect to everyday things like LANs and external screens. Stuff like the non-replaceable (non-existent) "hard drive", non-standard BIOS, and difficult-to-replace battery, means that it misses out on the basics while sitting there and looking extremely pretty with a very high price tag.

Great if I wanted to run OS/X or needed high performance in a netbook, since other machines don't do that part very well. And great were I wealthy enough not to care about the price tag.

But for less than a third of the landed price, I've got a machine with better connectivity, a replaceable battery, replaceable drive (with difficulty), and similar form factor and weight. No dongles, either.

I'm happy. Wealthier (real or imagined) folks will undoubtedly go for the jewel-encrusted vib^H^H^Hairbook and be even happier!

Cheers

The Air is definitely not for me. But picking one up in an Apple store and generally seeing and touching it in person, I was very impressed by it. It's an Apples and Oranges thing really. hehe.

Yep, it is truly another great art piece from Apple. Really well done. Just not as practical in many ways as a run of the mill netbook. Better in other ways.. but that's what the MacBook Pro is for.