I'm interested by the nosedive in attention to netbooks.
Obviously the media has gotten bored and moved onto tablets, but have consumers really moved past netbooks? I thought they filled a real niche and would be significant for a lot longer
Obviously the media has gotten bored and moved onto tablets, but have consumers really moved past netbooks? I thought they filled a real niche and would be significant for a lot longer
I'm obviously not a member of the iPad's target audience -- they can have my keyboard when they can pry my cold dead fingers from it, etc. But I appreciate the appeal of computers that can be held in one hand. Over the years I've had several mini-laptops (anyone remember the Toshiba Librettos or the Sony Picturebooks?) In most respects the netbook has hit the sweet spot for me.
Budget aside, I see no advantage of a netbook over my macbook air. It's the ultimate ultra-portable machine. The comment everyone has about netbooks is that they are slow. The Macbook air zips along fine (the advantage of an SSD and a real processor...), and the high res screen makes my old 13" macbook feel cramped.
Once again, this is budget aside. But budget isn't the only reason netbooks were a hit. Their highly portable nature and great battery life were two other big selling points.
This led to the strange spectacle of Apple pundits fainting at the ability to watch Youtube in bed on their iPads, which ordinary poor folk had been doing for years with much loved netbooks.
If you notice extreme negativity to netbooks online, it's usually coming from Apple-centric folk dealing with the cognitive dissonance of Apple openly and clearly sacrificing their customer's utility for profits. People who use them seem to love them. (See also the love for the MacBook Air, summed up by this comic: http://classicfun.ws/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Bill-Gates-a...)