Anyone want an Apple Ultraportable?
Apple isn't ignoring ultraportable PCs. It's just thinking different. Very different, in fact. Alex Kidman thinks something special is in store from Apple on Monday.
The computer world seems to be re-inventing itself recently. We've seen a huge take-up in ultra-cheap ultra-portables (AKA "Netbooks", AKA "Eee PC clones" AKA "Why is this bloody space bar so small? Oh, that's right, it's because the whole unit is tiny").
There's something of a race to the bottom in pricing terms -- Pioneer's recently announced Dreambook Light IL2 will sell for a ludicrously cheap $349, albeit with very, very poor processor, possibly overinflated battery claims and flippin' Windows CE -- who wants Windows CE? Hands up, both of you, and get up against that wall.
Anyway, the re-invention is happening right now, as Asus releases a slightly better Eee PC -- for more money, bucking the trend of PCs getting cheaper over time, or at least retaining price parity while features improve. If your high-end ultraportable notebooks sit at the top of the mountain, Eees and all their clones are rapidly plummeting to the bottom of the mountain, and seemingly gathering speed.
Meanwhile, Apple (you knew I had to mention Apple somewhere in this blog, right?) seems to be sitting in a cave somewhere in the middle of the mountain, hatching its own plans for the portable computing space. It's a gamble that could pay off in spades, or come crashing down around Apple's ears while Asus and the rest play in big piles of money.
I was curious earlier in the year about Apple's ultraportable plans, enough to hold off buying an Eee until after the Macworld Expo announcement, whatever that would be. Sure, Apple did bring out a very nice portable machine there -- the Air's a lovely bit of kit -- but they seemed to miss the whole "inexpensive" tag by a rather wide margin, especially for the SSD-equipped Air. So I picked up an Eee, and have been happy with it for what it does -- it's still my appliance PC that I lug around places to jot quick notes.
The truth of the matter, though, is that unlike the budget PC space , Apple isn't ignoring the portable computing space at all. It's just attacking the problem from a completely different vector than the rest of the market. While the rest of the market's busy re-inventing the laptop as a cheap ultraportable, Apple's reinventing the laptop -- as a cheap phone. The long rumoured 3G iPhone, to be precise.
No, I don't know when or where they'll release it, although I will be willing to take the bet that if they don't say something fairly solid at the WWDC conference next week, Apple's share price will take something of a bump downwards. But Apple's race to sign up new providers all around the world, including at least Optus and Vodafone in Australia in an unseemly haste for the world's most secretive and concurrently popular PC maker, does point to the 3G iPhone being a matter of sooner rather than later.
A 3G iPhone, is, in essence, a very classy Eee, with a few added benefits, the key one being 3G connectivity, and not just for that whole telephony thing. It's perfectly possible to add mobile wireless to a cheap ultraportable -- for the record, I got a 3 USB modem working more quickly on my Eee than on my Macbook -- but it's not exactly elegant, and neither does it have that "always on" aspect of a 3G phone.
The iPhone's browser is excellent for a mobile, and if Apple can get around the pesky "No Flash" problem -- also possibly a WWDC announcement -- it's good enough for most users.
Storage is inbuilt, and while it's not extensive, rather like the netbooks, if you're just using it for music and a few jotted notes, it doesn't need to be.
My one big personal catch would be the keyboard; I can use my iPod Touch's keyboard for very quick notes, but couldn't thump out an article on it comfortably, something I can do with the Eee. I'm probably odd in that though -- I suspect a huge proportion of users would be happy with URLs and the odd SMS.
Then there's the price. Sure, the Dreambook might cost nearly half that of the Eee 900, and it probably won't even be the cheapest in a couple of months time when the 3G iPhone arrives. That $349 price point, however, might find itself rather outclassed by a rather more attractive price point -- free. How many people do you know who actually paid outright for their mobile phone?
I'm willing to bet the answer is "not many", and while rumours persist that Apple will sell an unlocked iPhone at a premium to those that want one, the locking of mobiles hasn't stopped Australians from picking them up at a rapid rate -- there's now more of the little things than there are of us. You do pay for a "free" mobile over time, but people never look at the fine print -- they just look at the big red "$0" sign outside the front of Crazy John's.
It is still a somewhat risky gambit for Apple -- the mobile phone market is particularly vicious, and there's always the possibility that punters will vote Nokia (or Sony Ericsson, or whatever) and continue to pick up Eees by the millions. If it pays off, though, Apple won't so much emerge from their mountain side cave as be forced out by all the money that's suddenly filling the place up.
Other Blog Entries written by Alex Kidman:
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