Apple Netbook

Update 2009.03.11 10:41AM PDT: According to Reuters, Apple will take deliv­ery of 10″ touch LCDs from Wintek in Q3’08.

Update 2009.03.10 10:29AM PDT: The dis­play will be between 9.7″ and 10″–so squarly in net­book territory.

Original Post 2009.03.09 10:41AM PDT: Regarding the pos­si­bil­ity of a net­book from Apple: ”The mar­ket is just get­ting started… we’ll see how it goes.” – Steve Jobs, Oct. 14, 2008

According to Wintek, a Taiwan-based small/medium-sized LCD man­u­fac­turer, the com­pany will be sup­ply­ing touch pan­els with ship­ments com­menc­ing in Q3’08 for an Apple prod­uct. Wintek stated that it does not know what appli­ca­tion the new touch pan­els are geared for. Quanta Computer will be man­u­fac­tur­ing this Apple device incor­po­rat­ing Wintek’s touch panel. The Chinese-language Commercial Times is sug­gest­ing that the new Apple prod­uct will be a netbook.

What really is a net­book? “A net­book is a light-weight, low-cost, energy-efficient, highly portable lap­top suit­able for web brows­ing, email and gen­eral pur­pose applications–primarily noted for its small form fac­tor.” –Wikipedia

“A net­book is a stream­lined mobile device designed for the Internet, so you can stay con­nected on the go. Get up-to-date news, the lat­est scores and weather infor­ma­tion, access your e-mail and social net­work­ing sites, and enjoy dig­itl videos, pho­tos and music… a net­book spe­cial­izes in mobil­ity and the web, so it’s great for travel as a sup­ple­ment to your main PC.” –Best Buy

I feel like Apple already has some­thing like this in the form of the iPhone.

This new rumor from DigiTimes/Commercial Times doesn’t bode well with a rumor that came out late last year about a net­book from Apple to hit stores in the first half of 2009 as reported by PC World. “The slip­ping econ­omy will force Apple to address a glar­ing omis­sion in its line-up…” I don’t think any­thing, includ­ing the econ­omy, really forces Apple to do any­thing. The first half of 2009 has just 3 1/2 months left. I doubt Apple will come out with a net­book before the end of June. Maybe a refreshed iPhone, but not a net­book. Just my opinion.

CrunchGear (2008.10.14) gave five rea­sons why Apple should def­i­nitely get in the net­book game. Here they are:

“It gets peo­ple in the door.” Well, peo­ple have been going inside Apple’s doors. I don’t think Apple is wor­ried about retail foot traffic.

“… alter­na­tive oper­at­ing sys­tem…” I don’t quite under­stand this but if Apple were to do a net­book peo­ple will pur­chase it because it’s an Apple prod­uct not because, “Oooh, it’s a Windows alternative!”

“It’s time for Apple to put out another small-ish lap­top.” First you have to look at the cur­rent 13.3″ MacBook. It has about the same height as did the pre­vi­ous 12.1″ Powerbook and the 12.1″ iBook. So Apple already has a small-ish lap­top for sale.

“The iPhone and iPod Touch des­per­ately need to be inte­grated with some­thing sub­stan­tial.” And that some­thing sub­stan­tial is iTunes, which can be used on any­thing that runs either OS X or Windows.

“Make the deci­sion easy for every­one by giv­ing it a multi-touch screen like the one on the iPhone/iPod Touch and a good key­board like the one on the MacBooks.” If Apple came out with a net­book the deci­sion will already be easy for those that like Apple gear. Multi-touch and a good key­board won’t be the fea­tures that’ll make it easy for con­sumers to buy an Apple netbook–it’ll be Apple’s hard­ware design, soft­ware and the inte­gra­tion between the two.

Even if Apple decides not to do a net­book, you can make your own: load OS X on your MSI Wind, make use of your cut­ting skills and roll your own trans­par­ent Apple logo, like this guy did.

Source: DigiTimes, PC World, Engadget, CrunchGear, Motley Fool, Ars Technica,