Apple helped kill netbooks. Will it bring them back?
theverge.com
theverge.com
I don't see Apple moving in that direction. Especially after the lackluster sales of the iPhone mini and the iPhone Air compared to the Pro and Pro Max line.
Their core audience for the most part isn't particularly interested in getting a cheaper and/or features limited version of their baseline devices.
Maybe they could just drop the "Air" moniker from the current lineup, It's not like there's that much difference, cooling aside, from the Macbook Pro line.
Netbooks are work machines, and as usual, people don't wanna work.
It had amazing performance for its size at the time...that is, until the absolutely underpowered fan was unable to cool it down and it would inevitably shut down. Or the battery would die after just half an hour of usage.
Once it melted, I tested a few atom-based netbooks and general performance was abysmal, mostly due to the 5400rpm hard drive they almost universally sported at the time.
Moved to a polycarbonate 2010 macbook. Of course, it was four time the price of the aforementioned Acer netbook. But that thing is still trucking to this day, still retaining nearly 80% of the original battery charge.
For all the discussion, IMNSHO, the big deal is the (unknown) software.
I miss some vital things in iOS. First, I can't right/control click on an online image to get its URL. I have to hold down, "share" it to email and grab the URL there. OOPS, for focus, I disable email on the iPad. I think I tried messages and dropped that for whatever reason.
Big plus, iOS makes text selection a horror. Try dragging your finger through 20 screens. Gimme a keyboard! Command-A totally wins (or click/shift-click).
You can get command-line and unix utils only in virtual machines like a-shell.
For various reasons, I find MacOS hundreds or thousands of times more productive than iOS, and given that many iOS apps run on MacOS, that works.
Having been through chips from 6800 and 6502 to the latest, "The software is the computer" whether installed or web-based, or, if Apple trims this down to Sunray proportions, "The network is the computer."
They must choose wisely. Without Steve Jobs ...
Along those lines, I have favored a home server (a la Cobalt) to do many chores, and one could run a bunch of stuff, TBD.
Sun experience showing. Those were Sunny Days.