The Times’ John Markoff:
That would seem to confirm findings that a search engine company shared with me on condition that I not reveal its name: The company spotted Web visits from an unannounced Apple product with a display somewhere between an iPhone and a MacBook. Is it the iPhone 3.0 or the NetMac 1.0?
You can surf the web with a Newton. But still.
I love Macs. I make my living working on, around, and with them. I use a late-model iMac at home as my main machine, and even though I have a MacBook from work, my main laptop is the Asus Eee PC. It’s portable (8.9 inches across), runs Ubuntu, and is very handy to take places, especially if I ride my bike.
But I would drop it in a heartbeat if Apple released a netbook.
There are two things required of netbooks:
- Cheap. We’re talking $400-$600.
- Small. Under 10 inches across. (9 inches is about perfect… no “that’s what she said” comments, please)
Apple has yet to hit that first target. Twice has Apple offered a laptop for $999- the iBook G4, and the current white plastic MacBook.
They almost hit the first target with the PowerBook Duo, a tiny (expensive) laptop the company offered in the early 1990s. The machine, while underpowered, could be used in conjunction with the “Duo Dock,” that took the little laptop that could and morphed it into a full-blown desktop machine complete with a CRT, additional power and storage space.
Just about perfect, you say? Many thought so, but the company discontinued the line in 1997.
With the explosion of netbooks on the market now, many have asked if Apple would join Asus, HP, and others in the realm of little laptops. During a recent event where he released updated notebooks, Steve Jobs was asked “ Are we going to see a netbook?”
The answer: “In terms of netbooks, that’s a nascent market… that’s just getting started.”
That’s like your parents telling you “may” get a pony at Christmas. It ain’t happening.
But people are still asking. On today’s Q4 call (where they announced $1.14 Billion profit), the question came again.
“Can you comment about the pricing of the Mac line? And thoughts about netbooks?”
Steve Jobs replied:
“This particular downturn is not creating a market of cheaper computers. That market has existed. There are parts of that market we choose not to play in. We choose to be in certain segments of the market, and choose not to be in certain segments. Will the downturn drive customers to different cheaper products? I’d be surprised if that happened in large numbers. I think there are a tremendous number of customers that we don’t have that… can afford to buy Apple products. We’ll see what the ratio of those two are, but we’re not tremendously worried. The netbook: not a lot of them getting sold, one of our entrants into that category is the iPhone. Browsing, connectivity, etc… the iPhone is a pretty good solution to that. We’ll see how the netbook evolves, and we have some pretty interesting ideas if it does evolve.
Apple views the iPhone as an ”entrant" into the netbook realm. I can’t argue with that, as I use my Eee and my iPhone for very similar tasks.
So maybe Apple already has a netbook. It just makes calls, too. But I bet we see another little Apple laptop before the end of the decade.
**And no, the MacBook Air is not an ultra-portable. It’s really thin, but has the same footprint as the MacBook. And it is $1799.
Getting Things Done ( GTD) has always been important to me. I’m busy and I forget things, so over the years, I have tried various methods to keep up with my tasks using everything from my old Newton 2100 to a Moleskine journal. I never really found anything to meet my three and a half basic requirements:
When Leopard was announced, I was looking forward to Notes on Leopard syncing with Notes on the iPhone, but alas, Apple pulled that feature before the final release of 10.5.
Shoot.
After puttering around with Notes on the iPhone, OmniFocus, Evernote and a few more, I just gave up… until a friend showed me Remember The Milk (RTM), an on-line task management system that is easy to use, and has an iPhone-friendly web version (for a fee).
The problem was the iPhone version wasn’t so good. Clunky and slow (even on 3G) made it violate my first requirement of any GTD system.
Shoot x2.
Then, I read about a iPhone app called (simply) Todo, by a company named Appigo. (Here’s the iTunes link.) It’s a simple, powerful GTD application that syncs with RTM.
After some heavy usage today, I’m impressed with Todo. It syncs back to RTM very quickly, and lets me add things on the go, or copy and paste large chunks into my GTD world via the RTM website from any Mac or PC. I can categorize things by list and/or tags, or leave them in the “Inbox” for later.
I think I’m becoming more productive.
Something like this:
A friend sent me an email this week:
Sometimes I like to kill time by trying to find obscure, obsolete, and completely random articles in the Apple Knowledge Base that should’ve been taken out a long time ago. Here’s a good example: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=790. Now, here’s the duel I challenge you to: find a more obscure/obsolete one.
An interesting challenge, but an easy one at the end of the day. I found article 116 which explains how “to use Apple Writer with the Paymar Lower Case Adapter.” The oldest article I found was number 3, which reads:
The Apple II and IIe power supply is a switching power supply. It is designed to accept 107 to 135 volts from DC to 60 Hz.
It will also work at up to 400 Hz but this endangers a circuit which protects the supply from shorting to the point that the protecting circuit will not work.
Glad I know that. Next time I plug an Apple IIe in, I’ll keep it in mind.
This little time-waster brought something to my attention I had noticed before but never really thought about. Apple is currently naming support articles like this: http://support.apple.com /k b/HT1545, instead of the old way showed above. At the top of each of these branded articles is this section:
If you point your browser at the old URL you get redirected to the new one with “?viewlocale=en_US” added to the end.
I suppose all of this is to make it easier to recall kbase article numbers without thinking too much, but as far as I can tell, Apple hasn’t made public what the “HT” or any of the other prefixes mean. My best guess is that HT means help topic. This page, which has search tips, doesn’t address it (but I assume the “HE” in the URL stands for help). And the “HT####” format is easier than the “?artnum=####” format.
Interesting? Maybe just to those of us who use the kbase everyday.
I’m proud to say that ForkBombr now has a logo, done by a good friend at Fox Design Company. Carl is an outstanding artist, and takes his passion for life into every piece I’ve seen him do.
Don’t suck.
With that phrase, one of my mentors has repeatedly set me straight. And with that phrase, I’m launching ForkBombr.
After reading over Merlin Mann’s “What Makes for a Good Blog?” earlier this year, I knew that I wanted to write online again. I had a blog before I went to work for Apple full-time, but it was scattered and frankly, not that good. Now, I’m back, and I have a plan on how not to suck.
ForkBombr is going to focus on the things I focus on. Seems easy enough. So be prepared to see a lot on photography, internet journalism and Mac geekery.
Welcome.