“There’s an interesting chart in a report to clients issued early Thursday morning by Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“What caught my eye, however, was what her proprietary research shows about the impact of the iPad and other tablets on the broader gadget market, starting with netbooks. As her chart shows, sales growth of these low-cost, low-powered computing devices peaked last summer at an astonishing 641% year-over-year growth rate,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “It fell off a cliff in January and shrank again in April — collateral damage, according to Huberty, from the January introduction and April launch of the iPad.”
“Her timing seems a little off,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “Steve Jobs didn’t unveil the iPad until Jan. 27, yet the NPD data she cites is dated Jan. 10.”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple “tablet” rumors were off the charts well before Jan. 27.
Elmer-DeWitt continues, “But in support of her theory, she offers a Morgan Stanley/Alphawise survey conducted in March that found that 44% of U.S. consumers who were planning to buy an iPad said that they were buying it instead of a netbook or notebook computer.”
Full article, which also shows that iPod touch might be next in line to be cannibalized, here.
MacDailyNews Take: Nearly every netbook that’s replaced means one less Windows sale for Microsoft and one more OS X sale for Apple. Watch out for flying chairs!
• The tablet market has only succeeded as a niche market over the years and it was hoped Apple would dream up some new paradigm to change all that. From what I’ve seen and heard, this won’t be it. – John “Bloated Gasbag” Dvorak’s iPad assessment, MarketWatch, January 29, 2010
• You know, I’m a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard – in other words a netbook – will be the mainstream on that… It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.’ – Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman, February 10, 2010
Bill Gates. Ever the visionary.
• The Apple iPad is not going to be the company’s next runaway best seller. – John “B. G.” Dvorak, MarketWatch, February 12, 2010
• The iPad has fewer capabilities than a netbook, in a similar size. Not a good start. – Lee Gomes, Forbes, March 05, 2010
• iPads will top the publicity charts this week when they launch, but netbooks will still top the sales charts, and far outsell iPads into the foreseeable future. The iPad will remain an expensive, niche device compared to all-purpose netbooks. – Preston Gralla, PCWorld, March 30, 2010
Gralla’s may be a record incubation time for a foolish quote. Congrats, Preston! Our Take in response to Gralla was: “Ford’s Model T will top the publicity charts this week when they roll off something Ford calls an ‘assembly line,’ but horse-drawn carriages will still top the sales charts, and far outsell automobiles into the foreseeable future. The Model T will remain an expensive, niche device compared to all-purpose horse-powered vehicles. – HorsecartWorld, September 23, 1908.”
• Anyone who believes this thing is a game changer is a tool. – Paul Thurrott, SuperSite for Windows, April 05, 2010
Leave it to Paulie to immediately break the record for ineptitude.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “JES42” for the heads up.]
Even though I do not have an iPad, I cannot see why I would want to pay similar money for an ordinary netbook when the iPad is available. For the price, and in oh so many ways, it is a superior product. So, this is not surprising, but it is validation that outside MS entrenched Windows desktop world, Apple is a dominant force.
Welcome to the future. Apple added sugar and sex to the cloud and we’re happily falling in line.
“…and that, my liege, is how we know the earth to be banana shaped”
That graph shows year over year growth in sales.
Thinking it shows virtually no sales since the iPad started selling would be a mistake.
@Contrarian
I don’t know…I went to the Apple store last night to get first-hand, touchie-feelie with the iPad……eh….it found it heavy, but like everyone has said–very very responsive.
I tried typing–my arms don’t yet have the muscle memory for the keyboard that my thumbs do on the iPhone keyboard–I can hold the iPhone and type at the same time.
Then I see my daughter on her netbook–which she loves(she likes Apple products as well) and I think–that just looks right somehow!?
THE iPAD IS TOO BIG!! I should be kindle sized and similarly weighted–that’s what I’d buy!
When Apple finaly makes a netbook–nevermind what Steve the Jobs says–I’m buyin’ it!
Apple got everything right but the size.
MacDailyNews Take: Most every netbook that’s replaced means one less Windows sale for Microsoft and one more OS X sale for Apple. Watch out for flying chairs!
—————————————–
If the netbook is being replaced by an iPad, then technically it’s not an OSX sale, it’s one more iPhone OS sale for Apple… Partly the same, but definitely very different.
The few netbooks I have seen in the wild were not that impressive. People who have looked at my iPad are amazed and most say they want one. Netbooks did show that people want small very portable devices. iPad blows netbooks away in size, usability, and cool apps. Star Walk blows peoples minds. Netbooks are last years toys.
@btaylor,
there will without a doubt be an iPad mini. Probably 6 inches or so, much like the Kindle and Kindles DX.
@ btaylor,
The iPad is too heavy? What kind of girly boy are you?
There seems to be a little confusion in the Dewitt comment and Mac Daily News response about the numbers after the names of months in the chart. These numbers usually indicate the year, not the day. This would seem to be substantiated by the YOY (Year on Year) label for the vertical blue bars.
“HorsecartWorld”…
MDN, you guys are funny!
@Al
TY
@btaylor,
I can understand your point of view. But, I remember when the iPhone came out. I thought, who needs it? I have a cell phone, and an iPod, eh, I’m fine. Then I actually spent time playing around with a couple that friends had. It took a bit of time (until the 3G came out), but then I understood. The iPhone has changed my life, particularly the way I can do business and untether myself from the office.
So here’s the iPad. It is different. I may resist and say I don’t like…or I don’t want…based on small bits of time. However, once you get used to something, it may truly be wonderful. So, the question is…do I not like something new because it is new, and my genetic desire for consistency and keeping the “known” prevents me from embracing it? Or, are my initial instincts and feelings correct? Only time will tell. So, keep trusting your initial feelings, but keep open to the idea that you just haven’t “clicked” over to something new yet.
Heck, I never IM’d until last year. So I am not fast adopter of technology. I do like quality products and have been using Apple products since ’92 (when I could finally afford my own and through off the shackles of DOS and early Windows). I still remember programming in BASIC and Fortran and…Pascal? Sheesh, I feel old. Maybe an iPad will make me feel young (at heart)?
@Big Als MBP
Quoting “@btaylor
The iPad is too heavy? What kind of girly boy are you?”
*Giggling like a little school girl* . . . but when talking about the iPad, it’s like the 11 year old girl in that new movie: a stone cold assassin that kicks ass and even if it’s just slowing the YOY growth, that’s taking the leg off of Microsoft’s netbooks from the kneecap down.
Good times!
It won’t take long for the socialist liberals to try and destroy Apple’s initiative! People aren’t allowed to keep their wealth or have success anymore don’t ya know!!! Apple’s success is in consistent, visionary excellence! That should be encouraged and rewarded! Liberals see it as an anti-trust violation!!
If we can keep the horses from farting, Obama and the Dems are looking to bring back those “all-purpose horse-powered vehicles.” This time with glow stick lights! (No open flames boys and girls).
I think this is the equation:
(people start to realize netbooks suck) + (the iPad is really great) = lower netbook sales
Staring at that Excel chart reminds me why I went into graphic design and not accounting.
Where is Google Chrome netbook? The reason why Google built the Chrome browser was its anticipation of rolling out the Chrome netbook that will use the browser as its platform for surfing the net with blindingly fast speed and to kill the laptops from the Window and Mac platforms. But the present Chrome browser is slower than Safari and is still at beta stage. With the advent of the iPad, Apple has practically rendered the Chrome netbook obsolete. The iPad can do far more things than the vaporous Chrome netbook which is only suitable for surfing the net. Apple’s iPad startup time is instantaneous and its battery life is a long 12 hours with 30% to spare even with a heavy-duty workload of videos and games.
Google’s launch of the Android OS is the antithesis of its total dependence of the web. By copying Apple’s approach of using apps instead of the browser for everything, Google is silently admitting its strategic flaws. Google is clueless and out of focus. It appetite to gobble up everything out of its core competencies will lead to its downfall.
@btaylor,
iPad heavy? Surely, you’re joking. To me, iPad feels solid, robust, sturdy, and the battery life is fantastic. Apple could have made it significantly lighter by putting smaller batteries in it. I’ve now had my iPad for over a month, and not once have I thought of it being “too heavy.” Enjoy your netbook and Windohs.
@iMaki
I don’t share your pessimistic view of liberals. It appears to me that competitors and bureaucrats are the ones you should blame. Adobe allegedly complained. Now the government through bureaucrats do their job. Their job is not to be efficient, but to carry out their mission. The mission of the DOJ and FTC are to determine if a complaint is valid and worthy of deeper investigation.
I remember when European bureaucrats were complaining about iTunes, Apple, and DRM. They eventually realized that (1) Apple did not care about DRM and would (and did) drop when record labels did, and (2) Apple had a built in way to avoid DRM (and that music ripped from CDs was DRM free).
So, although I am happy to blame liberals for bad policy (cons too, but never libertarians), I think your claim here is false. But perhaps it was just a bit of rhetoric.
They have to act like they’re considering Adobe’s anti-competitive claim against Apple. On the surface it can sound like Apple’s stifling innovation. In the end, they’ll see the light though. Even if they do a dog and pony show, don’t think they’d be so stupid to try and intervene. Even I’d give them hell for that.
Ha, the kapcha down below is “left”! Very funny!
@btaylor,
“Then I see my daughter on her netbook–which she loves(she likes Apple products as well) and I think–that just looks right somehow!?”
—– Then buy a netbook. PS, if your daughter is 1/2 your size, then her netbook seems twice as big to her.
“THE iPAD IS TOO BIG!! I should be kindle sized and similarly weighted–that’s what I’d buy!”
———- Then buy an iPod touch. Just a thought here,
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
“Apple got everything right but the size.”
——–
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> Actually if you gain 600 lbs, the iPad will seem just the right size. Er maybe a kindle is in the books for you. I hear they are really light and last 10 days not 10 hours.
Then again there is always the PADD used by Starfleet. Of course those are harder to buy on e-bay.
Just a thought,
en
@Macromancer, actually it’s:
((people start to realize netbooks suck) + (the iPad is really great)) * (desktop OS is on its way out for the mass market) = lower netbook sales
Could we not have a yearly world wide TV show whereby each of these fools is lead on stage by a monkey (though to the audience no doubt it may look the other way around) and forced to spout their offending nonsense before an appropriate laughing audience armed with all manner of decaying fruit and veg.
The inventories and orders on the net books were reported as being pulling down prior to the release of the iPad. They all knew what was about to hit and no one wanted to be holding old technology inventory.
Note: Net books were the growth segment of the PC Box makers. NOT ANY MORE!!!
I’m sick and tired of people moaning about how useful net books are. I bought one while my mbp was in the shop and it was the most miserable computing experience I’ve ever had!!!
Tablets sucked in the past because of windows slow and not tablet friendly ways. The ipad instant on ability and ease of use is what the every day person has been looking for, for a long time.
PC World is so desperate.
@vsp
Google dropped Chrome because Apple showed them the way, just like HP, Microsoft and RIM.
Prepare for the parade of slates with hardly anything substantially different from Apple’s iPad, except of course Microsoft’s with the stylus.
Stylin’!
I can definitely see the iPad cannibalizing the iPod touch. Though, I could see it causing a little resurgence of the iPod shuffle and iPod nano because people may still want a small device to take jogging or whatever and the iPad might be too big for that. Though, if I had all my druthers, I’d have an iPad and an iPhone and a 27″ iMac.
“flying chairs” – Bobby Knight reference??
I found myself reading this article on my iPad while sitting on the toilet. When I got to Bill Gates’ quote I thought: The last thing I need right now is a pen and a keyboard. Some visionary, eh? I love my iPad.
@ MichaelD
“I found myself reading this article on my iPad while sitting on the toilet.”
Ugh. Too much information friend.
@ btaylor
You should have taken your daughter to the Apple store.
iMaki: go kaki and disappear up your own hole.
Steve Jobs is a liberal . Now make like Flash and disappear.
Most columnists in the PC world are blinded by the light of Microsoft funding and feeding of they & their readers to the point that they can’t recognize when their oligarch is being blindsided by a tactic/technique that the oligarch itself even espoused years ago.
It is NOT about Apple, whiners!
It is about SATISFYING CUSTOMERS.
When any company truly satisfies customers very well in a new way, the result is really due to CUSTOMER CHOICE.
Instead, the whining PC writers choose to ignore customer choice and start talking about things other than what is OBVIOUS.
I have not been surprised at what the plebes write anymore, because, truth known, they have no vision and no creativity and no ability to connect with typical consumers. They have only a script and marching orders they give themselves (or occassionally $s from a large corporation).
Sickening.
I don’t think this chart shows anything that impressive. NO product, even the esteemed iPad, iPhone, or iWhatever could continue that type of “year-over-year” growth.
The chart shows highest growth over the months of July, August, and September. Anyone with retail experience would recognize this as “back-to-school.” The netbook presented itself as the perfect low cost alternative to full sized laptops. I would assume based on the chart, that last summer was when the netbook really became accepted by college students who did not purchase them as much in the previous year.
Following “back-to-school” we have a little thing called the holiday shopping season. In some aspects and some industries “back-to-school” can be a bigger portion of their sales year. Couple this with the assumption that there were probably higher netbook sales for the same period the previous year and you start to see a decline in the graph. November’s spike could probably be attributed to that most favorite of days for retailers; Black Friday, where I personally saw QUALITY netbooks in the sub $200 range.
After that, let’s face it January and February are dead months. Who wouldn’t expect further drop off of year-over-year growth.
The iPad furor really wasn’t as big as you would think outside of the Apple and techno geek crowd. However the annonoucement probably did have some impact on netbook sales initially both negative and positive as the keynote also showed what the device wasn’t going to be capable of. I know for myself I wanted the ipad as soon as it was announced, yet could not personally see the need for a netbook. It really stopped me from buying a Kindle and not a netbook, and my daughter will still be getting a netbook as mostly everything she uses it for requires (faux shock and horror) flash.
I really believe that the chart more accurately reflects the maturation and saturation of the netbook market and less of the iPad slaughtering the netbook. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Love me, Love me, I’m a Liberal…
Well there is still one thing that a netbook has that the ‘ipad’ doesn’t and that is a built in webcam. They are not very good, admittedly, but good enough to video skype. So here is hoping that the 2nd generation will have that very important (to me) feature.
“”flying chairs” – Bobby Knight reference??”
Eh, that would be King Ballmer of Chubby Funsterland
He regularly breaks chairs whenever a competitor frustrates the old creaky Microcomputer Software Mothership.
Not by sitting on them (i know, i couldn’t believe it either) but by throwing them across the room.
Ha! Apple fundamentalists are easy to enflame.
You’d have thought I said something like: “THERE IS NO GOD!
@Big Als MBP:
The iPad is too heavy? What kind of girly boy are you?”
Actually it’s….girly-MAN, to you.
@MDmac: “You should have taken your daughter to the Apple store”
She’s been there and loves it! My wife bought her the notebook because that’s what was affordable and adequate.
I have four kids–I can’t only afford the iPhone/AT&T;Thanks to:
MDmac , MikeK, WetFX, Arnold Ziffel
for honest, kool-Aid free responses to my comment.
“Anyone who believes this thing is a game changer is a tool. – Paul Thurrott, SuperSite for Windows, April 05, 2010”
That was a stupid thing to say, however you look at it.
Someone who believed it was “a game changer” would, if it weren’t one, merely be mistaken.
It would be someone who said it was “a game changer”, while believing it wasn’t who would be “a tool”. That’s Paul’s usual role for Microsoft, of course.
@ob 1 spyker
I’m no statistician, but I would have to say the graph portrays data and we are left to divine some meaning or causation on our own. Your conclusion may well be correct. I believe 30 milion netbooks were sold in 2009, and they were probably expecting 45 million this year. If the trend depicted in this data continues, they’ll be lucky to sell 30 million. Ouch! They’ll be losing money on each sale.
@ onionhead
and who are you that is so wise in the ways of science?
Imaki: Don’t forget to flush
To be successful we need to stop with the either or viewpoint. Desktop OS work with certain devices and the iPhone OS works with others. Both will be OK.
@ btaylor again,
Nothing fundamental about 1.5 pounds being heavy. I doubt you’ve ever held an iPad let alone typed on one while standing up.
No one who has used a Mac would settle for a Netbook. Adequate? You mean her netbook surfs the net and runs MS Word very slowly. She can send e-mails and IM her friends. The A-V software hogs the CPU cycles and drives her nuts.
She must hate you and the wife.
@Indy Mac, here’s a little more background for you… From Monkey-Boy Ballmer’s Wiki entry:
In 2005, Mark Lucovsky alleged in a sworn statement to a Washington state court that Ballmer became highly enraged upon hearing that Lucovsky was about to leave Microsoft for Google, picked up his chair, and threw it across his office. Referring to Google CEO Eric Schmidt (who previously worked for competitors Sun and Novell), Ballmer allegedly said, “I’m going to fucking kill Google,” then resumed trying to persuade Lucovsky to stay at Microsoft. Ballmer has described characterizations of the incident as a “gross exaggeration of what actually took place.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer#Lucovsky.2FGoogle
back to the first line in the article…
“There’s an interesting chart in a report to clients issued early Thursday morning by <b>Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty.<b>”
HUBERTY!!! the analyst who has repeatedly been WAY off in her estimations of all things Apple for many many quarters.
The article pretty much has to be disregarded from the start.
@Big Als MBP’s-re: my daughter’s netbook. “She must hate you and the wife”.
OK. You’re right. I’m wrong.
@Contrarian:
I’m not saying I won’t ever buy an iPad at some point. Just saying I can’t justify it right now. The iPhone is beginning to feel a bit small for a lot of the stuff I use it for daily.
Besides “Big Als MBP’s” gonna kick my a$$ if I say I don’t quite like something he loves.
Whatever adult deems the iPad as being “too heavy” had better stop using their computer right now and start going to the gym or at least buy some resistive hand grips to increase their wrists and grip strength. That is so pathetic for a healthy adult to say something like that.
On another note, I want all those iHating pundits that said the iPad would be a failure to bend over and let Steve Jobs give ten whacks with a paddle to their buttocks for being so stupid and narrow-minded.
These are the same pundits that are always calling Apple product users sheep. They should realize that there are so many Apple product loyalists that would buy anything Steve Jobs says is magical and amazing. Just that fact alone would make the iPad successful even if just for a short while. Now, practically anyone that lays their eyes or hands on the iPad start to salivate and start saying they definitely want one of them. Kiss Steve Jobs’ bony buttocks, you narrow-minded, iHating MFs.
Guaranteed seven million iPads will be sold before the end of 2010. Hopefully Apple will be able to keep up with iPad demand.
Go, Apple, go! I’m almost certain Apple’s market value will pass Microsoft’s before the end of this year as Windows 7 licenses start to lose momentum.
Sigh. btaylor was not saying the iPad is heavy. He said he found it heavy. Is it too much to expect people to read in context? Clearly, he was referring to his preference, as in what he likes and expects.
Please. Let the testosterone go.
Oh. And for those people who hate netbooks. I see plenty of people with netbook hackintoshes. I considered getting one a year or so back. The iPhone has filled much of that need, an iPad, i expect, would do so and more.
Like btaylor, I remain hesitant. And skeptical (by nature) of all conclusory claims that the iPad is triumphant and all who do not see it are Luddites. That is intellectual bullying, and all too common these days in all facets of life. Tolerance and understanding are all too rare.
It looks to me like a steady decline that started last August.
Mark and others,
Making a distinction between desktop and portable OS versions is necessary for Windows. We should not, however, carry that assumption over to Mac OS X. Unix based systems are scaleable. It is simply a matter of which parts you include in the kernel, and which you leave out. Unix can be made to run a wrist watch with very little memory, a mainframe that manages an assembly line, or a research interconnected server bank. It’s all a matter of what options you choose when you install the OS. Nothing has to be re-written. It’s like adding options to a car. This makes OS X the key to all of Apple’s strategies. They can build a new device and decide what parts of the OS it needs. This cuts development time and encourages innovation. This is the reason I bought all the Apple stock I could afford back when they announced that they would have a new OS based on Unix, back when it was $7.50 per share.
“”Her timing seems a little off,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “Steve Jobs didn’t unveil the iPad until Jan. 27, yet the NPD data she cites is dated Jan. 10”
Um, no, it’s dated January 2010. Apparently Philip Elmer-DeWitt doesn’t know how to read charts.
Okay, not that I’ve spent almost a week with my 64GB 3G iPad, I can honestly say that if you can’t see how its better in every conceivable way than a netbook, you might be a complete raging fool.
The iPad might be too heavy for you (I find if perfectly acceptable) but it’s lighter than a netbook, at least any netbook I’ve used. If you don’t like the soft keyboard, then you can use a BlueTooth keyboard like the one I am now typing on. It’s sleek and light and even carrying both units around is still lighter than a netbook. Plus, when watching TV shows or listening to music, your BT keyboard becomes your remote for play/pause, skip, volume and brightness. Don’t want to carry both to the coffee shop? Then the soft keyboard will do for entering URLs or the odd email. You do not need a mouse, a power supply, or a big bag to carry it all in.
Now let’s get to functionality. Netbook screens are useless. Once you have a browser taking up 1/3rd of the narrow screen you don’t have much space left to enjoy web pages, and you can’t change orientation. You can suffer with a tiny track pad, or carry around a mounse and have to have a surface to mouse on, which means sitting in a chair with no table is out.
I’m a photographer (http://www.chrissyone.com) and there is no sexier way, on earth, ever, to store, transport, and show off your photos than an iPad. It can be used standing and walking around with ease, unlike putting a netbook or laptop over your forearm and gimping the trackpad with one hand. It can be easily viewed by you and flipped to show others. There are no navigation controls when showing photos. Just swipe, and rotate to show verticals off the way they were meant to be seen. Redraw? Uh… no. They’re all right there. Thousands and thousands of images scroll by with ease, and zoom and swipe beautifully. If the iPad was ONLY my photo portfolio, I’d be happy. But it’s more.
Netbooks run desktop apps. And SO WHAT? There are iPad alternatives to most applications that work better, look better, and do things that desktop apps can’t, like use the accelerometer, GPS, and multitouch. And most of these apps are far less expensive than their desktop counterparts. I can get a productivity suite from Apple for 30 bucks. Now of course, I can’t run Excel macros in Numbers, but I use Excel about 1% of the time and it’s only for work stuff. If I need to make a spreadsheet for my personal business use, Numbers would work just fine. It’s certainly not worth sacrificing all the other advantages just to use Excel for an hour a week.
I will probably never play games on my Mac again, and my toughts of buying a console have now vanished. I don’t know why I need one. Games are absolutely gorgeous on the iPad, and give you a true analog control experience for things like car-racing games (my personal favorite). The iPad offers a unique interaction paradigm that no typewriter-based computer can match. Your mileage may vary… but really, I’ve never seen anyone playing a game on a netbook. Well, aside from Farmville.
Netbooks are officially history. And mark my words – laptops are next. I will certainly never buy one again. I don’t know why I need one. I’ve never liked working in Lightroom on photos on a laptop screen, preferring my large iMac with a second 23″ monitor. I’ll work this way on the desktop for the forseeable future. But the iPad does almost everything else I need to do, and then some. It’s a fantastic ebook reader, it’s quickly replacing my television with great apps like ABC and Netflix, and for a news and photo junkie its a dream sent from heaven with apps like Reuters, BBC, and Guardian Eyewitness.
So let’s review… netbooks are stupid and useless. Laptops are looking like relics from the prop room of a steam punk movie (but way less cool). The iPad beats all of this, if, that is, you’re willing to give up some of your notions of what you think a computer is.
I dare you to try.
-c
@Contrarian
Ah yes, thx.
A voice of reason amidst the Fanboy congregation.
“The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found”
-Miguel de Unamuno
I think we’re finding out who the reasonable adults are here.
@C1
Well, that was a rather aggressive review. And you daring me to try, well, that is just plain…..er….okay, that might work
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
But I think I have the power to resist. It certainly wasn’t a triple dog dare.
Hello… is everyone forgetting the dead horse on the dining room table, and the 600 LB. gorilla that put him there?
Netbooks soared last year because you could buy Linux based 9″ netbooks for $179. However Uncle faster (the aforementioned 600lb gorilla) was unhappy, because 1; the small trim netbooks were not capable of running the heavily bloated vista (or win7) OS AND they were selling too cheap to cover the “microsoft tax”
He vowed then to push the price of netbooks up to nearly what laptops cost, AND reverse the then wide availability of linux netbooks.
Well… he succeeded in both, there are almost no pre-configured Linux netbooks available and cost double. Guess what is it any surprise that not only has the growth dropped?
Think netbook sales are down now? Wait till iPad manufacturing ramps and they are available world wide, there won’t just be a decrease in the rate of growth, but a flatline (or even decrease) in units sold.
(PS why is MS allowed to continue to strong arm manufacturers away from linux while the EFF, FSF, FTC, and DOJ stand by mute, while screaming about Apple’s “monopoly on apple products”???)
If there are any reasonable adults here I want them caught and shot right now.
“I triple-dog dare you”
;P
@Contrarian
There are a lot of us older/young at heart people around. I programmed in BASIC on a TRS-80 (as well as an Interact and an Apple II) and the last version of FORTRAN that I used was FORTRAN 77.
Anyone old enough to have used an Apple II or even one of the early Macs is around four decades old (plus or minus). But that makes us a bit more discerning in some respects (or so I like to think). Having used up roughly 50% of our anticipated life span, we are less tolerant of wasting our time and increasing our blood pressure with inferior technical implementations (Windows and Windows-based PCs).
Being older (and still alive) is better than the alternative.
What shot would you give me? Tequila? Gin? Bourbon? Vodka? Sounds like my everyday cocktail hour.
Oh wait, you meant….Exit stage right.
@ KingMel. I remember playing Colossal Cave on a TRS-80. Still fun to think about it.
Otherwise, fair enough. I only use Windows (via VM Fusion) to connect to certain government websites.
“we are less tolerant…”
You don’t say…
It’s not less tolerant–it must be judgment.
“At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.”
Partially agree. But wit is ageless.
Franklin’s quote was about what reigns at a particular age, not what you gain and/or lose each decade. I shudder at the thought that my wit (of whatever amount) will wane very soon.
In Franklin’s case, at any age, he tended to keep the reins in his trousers.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
I bow down to your superior wit.
To those who might like the iPad but want more of a netbook feel (don’t tell ChrissyOne though), perhaps the ClamCase might be an option?
Oh come on, I’m not THAT touchy. ;P
But let me say this – the BlueTooth keyboard is *excellent* and removes one more barred that folks might have. Personally I like to keep them separate so I have the option of using or not using the keyboard.
errrr yawn……zzzzzzzzzzzzz
!!!!say what?
I like chips with OK Sauce.
…….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Oh, sure, of course not ChrissyOne (backs away smoothly, no sudden movements, we’re all friends here…).
Just kiddin’ ya anyway.
Lol ;P
Is the new ipad just like a laptop or no?
because i dont know if i want to buy a laptop or an ipad. if the ipads just like a computer or laptop then i would want the ipad
.