- Monday, 16 November 2009
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Vietnam was the first TV war, this could be the first Internet war - Wall St Journal
Laptop refresh could signal new direction for Apple
APPLE ANNOUNCEMENTS are as eagerly awaited by Macolytes as Christmas is by small children. Tomorrow will see Steve Jobs stride onto the stage at the Apple Campus in Cupertino and announce to the world that... well, we don't actually know.
The Cupertino Cabal is so tight lipped about its R&D and new products that you'd have more chance getting the Editor to buy a round of beers for every one of our readers (or even one of our readers for that matter) than getting any concrete pre-launch information out of Apple. [We sure about this? Ed.]
And with good reason. Apple products are great. They feature ground-breaking designs, are beautifully engineered, feature stable operating systems and interfaces and integrate with the real world seamlessly... despite what some people might say. And that's why everyone wants to copy them.
Just look at the wheelbarrow full of pale Iphone imitations currently flooding the market. I can't think of a single phone builder which hasn't either released, or announced the release, of an Iphone wannabe, complete with large touch screen, multi finger gesturing and motion / proximity sensing. [We sure about this? Ed.]
So Apple innovations are worth a great deal of money in a market where margins are getting tighter, along with the purse strings of the computer-buying public. But the world is changing. You have only to look at the shelves of your local PC megastore to realise that there has been a sea change in the way people buy computers.
Gone are the days when speed and power were the main criteria when shopping for computery goodness. It's all about size and value for money now. Shoppers who just a few short years ago were wheeling cartloads of huge boxes out of the doors of PC World can now be seen swinging a single carrier bag as they stroll to their Smart Cars.
Sales of so-called netbooks, which were once thought to be only of use to third world schoolchildren, have gone through the roof and caught more than a few major manufacturers taking a nap. Now every OEM from Acer to HP is jumping on the crappy lappy bandwagon and making teeny-weeny thightop computers... all engineered down to a price.
Most people don't want huge screens, full-sized keyboards, world beating (and energy eating) video cards or BluToof Hi def video drives. They want to check their mail, write a letter thanking Aunty Maude for the lovely socks, browse a web site or two, steal an MP3 here or there, and maybe watch a Youtube video of someone on a skateboard irreparably damaging their testicles.
And that's it. More importantly, most people (OK you can put the green crayons down... I know this is a sweeping generalisation) don't want to spend their time assembling a computer from a bunch of off-the-shelf components, let alone rewriting and configuring the BIOS, downloading hundreds of drivers, and tinkering with dozens of pages of arcane settings just to print off their holiday snaps. They want to slip it out of its beautifully-realised packaging (pausing to inhale that intoxicating new gadget smell that brings out the geek in all of us), plug it in, switch it on... and get down to doing all the suff mentioned above.
Which is why if Mr Jobs has – as the overactive rumour mill and fanboi forum chatterings seem to suggest – decided to bless the world with a (relativley) cheap Macbook tomorrow... well it could just change the world.
A recent survey of American college students suggested that something like 70 per cent would, if funds allowed, be buying an Apple laptop as their next major computing purchase. But with the current cheapest portable offering from Apple weighing in at around eleven hundred bucks, that was a hollow figure. If funds allowed, our next car would be an Aston Martin. Nuff said.
But what about an $800 Macbook? That could really set the cat among the pigeons.
The problem is that the release of an $800 Macbook would almost certainly slash Apple's profitabilty in the short term. But Jobs is nothing if not forward thinking. Every loss-leading Macbook sold today is a life-long user, if every study of user loyalty involving Apple products is to be believed.
So will it happen? Will Apple rescind on its life-long policy of not making cheap computers, because cheap computers just don't work properly? Will the dribbly dreams of a million American students come to fruition when the Thin White Duke of Cupertino steps into the spotlight tomorrow?
The simple answer is... we still don't know, but it's possible. One report has suggested that some Apple retail stores have already seen price lists which specify up to 12 different Macbooks ranging from $800 to $3,100. Chin-scratchingly intriguing, indeed.
One hack suggested that, based on a graphic sent out as part of the invite to tomorrow's shindig, and some esoteric maths jiggery-pokery based on the relative size of the featured laptop lid and its glowing Apple log, that a ten-inch screen was in the offing. Highly unlikely as any totally new size of screen being manufactured in the required numbers for a new Apple launch, anywhere in the Far East, would have been subject to leaks. Even despite Apple's cast-iron confidentiality clauses.
So what does the INQ Crystal Ball tell us will be Steve's 'Just One More Thing' announcement tomorrow.
Well if you're going to force us, and based on nothing more scientific than guesswork and wishful thinking: a 13-inch Macbook with an aluminium shell, no optical drive, no external video port, one or two USB 2.0 ports, no firewire, a 60Gb SSD, integrated graphics from Nvidia, and an Intel Dual Core 2.4Ghz processor. And all for $800?
Bring on the flames! µ
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And this is just the beginning.

If I could bet 50 bucks on a new net book from apple based on ARM and tegra from nVidia, well I would.
Charlie, do you accept the bet? :)
Ladies and gentlemen I give you steve jobs "audience is quiet there is no clapping they are just in total awe, I'm wondering what is going on here.
Everyone is speechless, he walks past a few people and shakes their hands, 1 women gets a cuddle from him, and faints, no it wasn't Steve job's awesomeness that did it. apparently billionaires dont shower much, and he just sprayed deodorant over the top, and this makes one terrible concoction that rivals serin gas. Two well tanned men in suits picks her up and takes her away, she screams whats going on where are you taking me, the rest of the crowd is oblivious they are just focused on Steve. He is now holding his hands up in a Y, The crowd starts cheering, I can see him watching in his peripheral vision to see if the lady is out, she is, the crowd is clapping wooing, whistling, they cant contain themselves.
he drops his hands and the people instantly stop and sit down, its like he is controlling them.... wait a minute...... they are robots, run by apple mac and intel processors. they are at his control, I didnt realize they were dead quiet until he did some movments, this all makes sense to me know, its all unfloding. 

All these years when someone walks down the road with a apple product they always look spaced out, in their own world if you will. its all a ploy, the robots are placed strategically into society only to fuel Steve's hunger for cash and world domination.you never see a apple user look bad, they always look as intended, you never see a homeless person with a nano, you never see a person on the dole with baggy track pants with a ipod touch, it all makes sense I'm thinking to myself. 

" I'm trying to contain it in myself remember I am here for 2 more days at this conference, If I reveal I know I may disappear like that lady" I start to freak out, sweating I want to get out of there and reveal what I have found. I started thinking how could I have not seen this earlier, All those times I saw a person using/wearing a fruit themed product I always wondered why they liked / defended to the death in situations where their beloved product was being subjected to criticism, that is because they were all robots. Of course, thats why you could never win the argument, they had interlect and AI they were programed to defend the products at all costs. 
So these keynotes are just maintenance windows, when they sit in the chair, a little plug that no one can see is inserted , and they are updated with the latest products, and also the latest "thing that PC owners attack the mac user about their products", and also uploaded is the rebuttal, the fix for that criticism, its been 3 hours and Steve finished, I applaud him as everyone else does, I am a press representitve for a IT mag, so I pretend im interested, underneath Im praying that the rexona doesnt let me down, im freaking out to the max, my heart pounding, im scared, that these bots have IR sensors, and can see my heart rate, and how hot i am. I gotta get out of here. I need some help I scan the room for people I know, wait "is that?" I ask myself, I shake my head to se if im alive still, Its Charlie Demerjan sitting with the robots, im in disbelief and then it clicks, Of course thats true its so clear to me now, he is so anti Microsoft that this is the reason, its not even his fault he hates them, hes just programmed that way. I bet if I found a way to reprogram him, or to make him receptive, I bet he could even like Microsoft, maybe even love Microsoft!




(tune in next week for part 2 of a 3 part series, and find out if Stewart saves the day,reverts Charlie to a receptive robot. and reveals Steves Ultimate plan) and if there is even a hot female character in the story. 
A $800 Macbook as described ... you're basically just asking for them slash the price of the Air in half. Good luck with that wish.
You can't yet put 60GB of flash into an $800 device without losing money on every sale. 6GB, maybe.
I think it will be a bit trickier for Apple this time. If they do a very small netbook there will be complaint about "unusable keyboard" and too high cost compared to other netbooks. If they just shrink the MacBook by cutting off the unused 10 mm around the screen and keyboard and throw out the DVD to make it thinner and lighter there will be complaints it is not even smaller and lighter. And if they go really innovative with a "tablet PC", like a three times as large screen as the iPhone there will be complaints that it has no real keyboard. And with the recent "netbook" boom, I would be a bit nervous about releasing a tabled PC.

But this is Apple, I can't even guess what they will come up with, but I'm sure it will be cool :-)
"Just look at the wheelbarrow full of pale Iphone imitations currently flooding the market. I can't think of a single phone builder which hasn't either released, or announced the release, of an Iphone wannabe, complete with large touch screen, multi finger gesturing and motion / proximity sensing."

Now I love Apple just as much as the next guy and I'm ready to snatch up one of these new MacBooks no matter the price. As far as everyone copying the iPhone, yes there are a lot of look-a-like copycats BUT the iPhone also got its looks from the LG Prada which came out months before the iPhone. Let's not forget that many of the things Apple has are just things that they've taken from someone else and just made them 100x's better...
... no USD800 MacNetBook.

Looks like the rest of the market will have to grow without Apple ...
A free round AND more likely than an $800 (£457+vat = £540)Macbook...I'll go for the beer thank you.

I'll be a piece of cake for Apple to release a netbook - all they just need to do is rebrand (and slightly rebuild) an Asus EEE (cos all Macbooks are made by Asus anyway) and bundle said netbook with OSX = profit!