Oct 2010 Apple Mac Event (Mac OS Lion)

Oh boy.

Some nice stuff - the new MacBook air machines. Not for me, but nice.

Software updates for iLife are a good thing for people who use those programs, I don't however. It's unfortunate to see a number of applications missing and it's super unfortunate not to see iTunes split into multiple applications yet.

The Mac OS App store. As a developer I feel this is horrible news. It's going to offer some additional form of promotion, however Apple is going to east 30% off the top and that's insanely higher than I'm paying right now. It's going to take away focus from developers' own sites, lower their direct sales, possibly limit or remove in-app automatic updates and compromise security on top of everything. The software protection used on iOS devices has been hacked and cracked to bits and I'm assuming the Mac OS variation Apple will use is gong to be the same or similar enough to get smashed wide open.

I currently have my own licensing system which works really well and which I'd like to use on future products. What a happens to an App if you want to sell it in the app store? Do you maintain two versions of it now? One for direct-sale and one for the App store?

With regards to the OS, I always take everything with a HUGE grain of salt. Any mention of "lots of features" or "more than 300 features" I usually translate down to "less than half a dozen new features you'll actually notice or care about."

It's been quite popular for Apple to announce features in the past and never deliver on those promises. They've done it with the past three major revisions to Mac OS. For Snow Leopard, does anyone remember OpenCL? Yeah, well it's not yet been deployed. QuickTime X? Loses most of the features of the old QuickTime. Resolution independence? Not yet being used... It goes on.

I think the news of the Mac OS app store is really bringing me down...

I think the Mac app store thing could be a good thing, as finding new apps on the Google is an exercise in slaying SEO dragons, and the various sites that try to catalog Mac apps range from worthless to disappointing.

It's not like the app store will prevent people from downloading and installing apps from other places (at least not yet -- If they ever did, or if they ever tried to do some daft "warning: this app isn't from the app store and might eat your children" thing, that's a different story.) But, assuming this is just another way to get apps, I don't have a problem with adding the app store to OS X.

I am curious -- they said they'll host free apps, too -- is there a fee for that, or do they take 30% of nothing?

I didn't even tough on the race to the bottom effect the App Store might have, like on iOS. I don't want to see Mac apps for 99 cents.

I know it's just another store front in which to sell your software and the Apple cut can be compared to selling through retail where the store (including the Apple store) will want at least a 30% markup. My biggest worries are about what I've already mentioned, the licensing and how you can have the same piece of software in and outside of the store. And wether or not Apple has any stipulations about that as well.

A consumer purchasing your app directly in the past or in the future, might later discover the App Store and wonder why they're not getting notified of updates via that interface when your app is clearly listed there. I'm also worried about the approval process of course and that it might just lead people to stop searching via other channels for apps.

I'm going to have to go pay Apple $100 to find out more information about it...

Back on to Leopard... I like the new OS-approved way to do full screen apps. Making use of that in a number of designs won't be difficult at all and can really enhance the experience.

Oh, I just keep thinking of things I don't like... Every app you buy on the App store is automatically licensed for every Mac you have. That's not how all software licenses in use today work - in fact very few. Even my current software, I have a special family bundle price for installing on up to 3 machines in your home. Even Apple has family packs for their software. This is also scary.

It's not really a lot better for other OSes.

FWIW, I tend to use IUseThis, which could really use a better tagging feature, and AlternativeTo.

VersionTracker has always been lousy, and now that it's just CNet, it's even lousier. MacUpdate is lousier than old VT, but better than new VT, which is to say, lousy.

If someone has another suggestion, I'd like to hear about it.

Also, there's already an app called Bodega that is an App Store for OSX. I imagine they're thrilled at this news.

Apple already has an apps site as well. They're super slow to make updates however which really pisses me off. They still list a version number for my app that's over a year old. I've updated the info twice, the last time last week with a new version number and details.

http://apple.com/downloads

It's now super difficult to find from the Apple web site though. I suspect they've been mostly ignoring this thing knowing that the App Store was on tap.

I like the indexing aspect and as mentioned, they already have that, but IMO, they should really level the playing field by making the re-selling optional. I suppose that taking visitors off to another site and payment gateway could be confusing for some people. Hopefully they allow prominent linking to the developer's own site and don't put any restrictions on self-sales of the same products.

30% is a good cut versus traditional brick-and-mortar distribution, but most indie devs self-sell online and let me tell you, my selling costs are no more than 5% which even includes web hosting. Plus I also sell hardware, how's the store going to deal with that? Especially if the hardware is complimentary to the software.

The other thing is that Apple's App Stores are consignment-based. Unlike a brick and mortar, they're not pre-purchasing any inventory in bulk or otherwise. Big retailers get great wholesale prices buy buying large quantities and promoting what they're selling. The manufacturer or distributor is generally already paid by the time the items sell off the shelves.

I'd be extremely surprised if Apple's credit card processing rate was even as high 2%. Where's the other 28% going? Minus hosting costs and some web development and maintenance costs, they'll be making a large chunk of cash. They claim they're not making very much on the iOS App Store, but unless they're putting the cash in a shredder and making confetti with it for office parties, they're full of shit. Oh my, how can PayPal survive on a measly 1.9-4%?

It's not really news that Apple's maximizing profits where they can, is it? Of course they'll make a lot. Probably less than 28%, though, when you factor in all those people they need to approve apps and make sure that they don't allow people to use the device in ways Apple doesn't approve of. But, I don't see this as problematic. Developers will decide whether it's worth it, some will go with the app store, others will try to get by without it.

Game companies have been doing the "make a version for Steam distribution" thing for a long time now. They bit the bullet, and they're generally glad they did...

I can see it generally killing off the ability for developers to sell anything which isn't explicitly Apple approved. This includes fast updates as they need to be vetted by Apple before being pushed to the app store. When I used to use my iPod touch more often, I saw lots of apps which had an update but the authors were waiting for Apple to approve them which sometimes took a very long time.

Considering the iOS approval guidelines are vague in places and the approval process itself is completely opaque apart from a yes/no answer at the end, I don't see it being a good thing that Apple will have this much control over computer apps.


The massive "feature" list is just the usual Apple hyperbole. There are always some decent features in there but as you stated, most of them are completely useless or so minor that you wouldn't have cared if it hadn't made the release.

The new air looks like a nice sub note it would have been nice if they put an ethernet jack on there though.

What do you mean by OpenCL isn't deployed yet? It's been in and supported since 10.6.0, and I've run the demo apps just fine on both my old NVidia 8800 GT and my newer ATI 4870. I don't know if any of my apps make much use of it yet, but like all new APIs, it's going to take time for people to figure out how to use them and best integrate them into their app. They also have to factor in backwards compatibility. With no OpenCL support in 10.5, most app makers weren't rushing to make 10.6 only apps right when Snow Leopard shipped.

QuickTime X did indeed drop a lot of features, but I've found I use it more then I did QuickTime 7 for tasks outside simple video watching. The built in upload to YouTube and quick trimming features, along with screen recording have come in very handy. I'm not going to specifically defend the dropping of other features, but it's not as bad as you make it out to sound, at least from my experience.

Resolution independence, not sure what the story is with that one on the desktop side, but it's tech that Apple has used on the iOS side with the iPhone. There would probably be a bigger push for it on the desktop side if monitors were going up in DPI drastically, but things seem to have stabilized for now.


30% of nothing is nothing (though to answer TonyC's question, you need to pay Apple $99 a year to be a registered developer, so there is a cost. That cost however is for an unlimited amount of apps on the store). But yet a free app still costs Apple money to approve, host, and otherwise support. From what I can find, about 31% of the apps in the store are free. The average selling price (factoring in $0.00 through the 7 $999 apps) is $2.61. I'd go further with the math to estimate how much Apple is pulling in with their 30% cut, but an accurate number isn't available due to not knowing how many apps are being sold/downloaded for free. Also, keep in mind the App Store revenue is lumped in with the general iTunes store and hosting costs, and that includes the much bigger file size movie rentals, podcasts, and other sources of content that all cut into any profit. For now, the iTunes store exists purely to sell hardware. With the potential for more expensive apps in the Mac App store, it is possible Apple may recognize more profit from it then their existing stores.

For me, I'm pretty excited about the store as a consumer. I know you mentioned the licensing as a concern, to me it's a huge benefit. Some developers like yourself offer "family packs" or whatever, but many don't. It will be much more tempting for me to buy an app knowing that I can use it on my home Mac Pro, my MacBook, or my Mac Mini. And the benefits of having one place to browse for a lot of apps will be nice. I do share the control concerns Trevor brought up though. Apple will really need to step up their turnaround time, and become more transparent on the whole process. If it becomes the only way to load apps, then I'll be really concerned, to the point of probably switching platforms.

Oh, as as far as the other announcements...

iLife enhancements, eh, but something I bought anyhow. I use iPhoto a lot, so it's worth staying up to date for me. I also get enough use out of iMovie to justify it.

OS X Lion, the full screen mode could be handy depending on how apps use it. Mission Control looks like a decent refinement and should clear up a bunch of my function keys if it works well. Launchpad is kinda weird to me since I use spotlight as an app launcher, but I see it being useful for others. At this point it seems like Lion may just turn out as another $29 upgrade unless they held back some other really big features from todays preview.

The new Air lineup looks really slick. Had I not gotten an iPad, I'd be really tempted by the new ones as I really liked my older Air. The resolution bump, the ability to go to 4GB of RAM, the better battery, and the extra USB port really addresses any concerns I had with the last model.

If they did, it wouldn't be so thin. Kinda weird to think that even USB may be getting too big as a port for how thin Apple really wants to make these devices. I will say the only time I used ethernet on my Air was at work when there wasn't a WiFi network for 3 months. Once they added that, I took the USB ethernet adaptor and threw it in a drawer. If I traveled to a place with only ethernet in the hotel room, the Airport Express came to solve that one.

I will say an innovative solution to the need for ethernet was done by the Voodoo PC folks. They built the equivalent of the Airport Express into the power adaptor for the computer. So if you did hit an ethernet only situation, all you had to do was use the same power adaptor that was likely to be on hand instead of needing a separate device.

At last.. an Apple netbook!
And since it doesn't include a free copy of WinXP, it is permitted to have a decent screen with decent resolution!

Now.. the only question for me, is can it boot/run Linux?
If so, I'll probably spring for one.

Cheers

Yep. Linux has run on the Mac for ages, ever since PowerPC support was added to the kernel. And if you have a really old pre PowerPC Mac, the Linux m68k project should cover your needs.

More relevant to the current situation, you can go two routes. You can boot the Mac into legacy mode (used by BootCamp to support Windows), and Linux will just use the traditional MBR boot loader and work as it does on any BIOS based machine. Or you can go the EFI boot route, and I'd recommend rEFIt as a good boot loader for letting you get into the EFI side of the machine if needed.

For specific hardware info, the Ubuntu Wiki is a good resource. The new Air is too new for their site, but hardware wise is very similar to the most recent Macbook (non pro) model. Info for it is here.

Specific to the Air for install, you will need a USB DVD drive, a properly set up USB thumb drive, or an SD card with the proper boot files for Linux.

And thankfully, since it's a real notebook, you get a proper Core 2 Duo CPU instead of an Atom netbook processor. Should keep those compile times down when doing heavy coding on the machine.

Umm, I've known the primary developer working on this at AMD since high school. It's not shipping yet. And NVIDIA's support isn't shipping yet either. I'm not sure what your demo apps do, but they're not using the vendor-developed OpenCL stuff. Probably just the CPU. Can't really get into any more detail in a public forum.

Here's something Apple might consider... Being able to adjust FONT SIZE system-wide. With higher resolution panels like that of the 17" MBP (1920 wide) a lot of text is just too small. Thankfully for my file manager I use Path Finder which is a lot more configurable than Finder (where you can only adjust filename font size).

Fixing some of the memory leaks and memory corruption in Safari would be nice too. Not to mention the bucket-load of bugs and poorly implemented features (address recognition) in Mail.

The quality of 10.6 in terms of stability has been much better on my Intel MBP than 10.5 ever was on my PowerBook, but generally speaking, I'm a little dismayed at the lack of attention to detail in many areas. I know, attention to detail is what Apple is known for. When compared with most any other company, they're head-and-shoulders above, but that's besides the point.

There are some bullet points about the Mac App Store approval process on TUAW.com right now. You're definitely not allowed to implement your own protection into your software. They do allow background tasks so long as you get the user's permission (this would have excluded a ton of software I've had in the planning stages otherwise).

Here are some points for rejection (from TUAW):



Here's good article from TUAW about two points, one expressly from the list and the other from the way the iOS store works. Demos/trials and upgrade pricing:
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/10/20/app-store-for-mac-highlights-two-major-app-store-flaws/

Yes, the numbers aren't available and I don't think that's simply because Apple forgot to share them. There have been 7 billion download though, that number they shared widely.

It may not even be very much money to them. A hundred million here and there tends to just slip under the rug sometimes. But it's profitable nonetheless and certainly not a loss-leader as they've implied numerous times.

I'd rather see them charge $200 or $300 a year to developers and only take a max of 10% revenue. They could easily make that work and it would be of huge benefit to the developers they're supposedly trying to help. While I like many Apple products, I've never been one to mix words about their goals. They're out to make products people like, but in doing so, making themselves as much money as possible.

Made me think of the slogan at the end of an old SNL skit. "Macintosh Jr., the power to crush the other kids."

http://videosift.com/video/MacIntosh-Jr-The-power-to-CRUSH-the-other-kids-SNL-skit

There was a "workaround" for those restrictions -- get one that came with a free copy of Win7 Pro, which came with a free WinXP boot disk and, ack-ptth, "downgrade rights". In that case the restrictions don't apply. But I think that getout clause itself had a time restriction which may have just expired. (I nipped in at the end and got a Toshiba Satellite Pro T110, 1366x768 screen, "Core 2 Solo" (Celeron) 1.3GHz.)


Apple hardware is better than Apple software. In fact, I'd go so far as to say they make the best Linux workstations available. (The bootcamp pseudo-BIOS thing tends to set its SATA up as legacy not AHCI, and needs to be quirked, but I'm guessing that what took me a day of hard googling would be second nature to the IDE guy.)

Peter

Mmm.. T110 is listed as discontinued. The "replacement" T110D is all AMD/ATI based, uses slower (but more) RAM, and is heavy.

Oh well. Maybe I'll just soldier on with the Dell X1 until somebody, someday, makes something as lightweight and good as this ancient tech still is.

Or settle for an 11" MacAir/Linux book. The non-replaceable batteries are a huge turn-off, though.

-ml

When I use a non-Apple laptop, I feel like I'm using a cheap soviet-era abacus made from recycle bread crumbs and metal shavings.

I have to wonder what is going on in the backend then. With 10.6.4 on my Mac Pro, I ran strings against the OpenGL driver for the 4870. It shows:

And I did verify that framework exists. If I run some OpenCL demo apps, like the ones here, I've set the ones that allow it to run only on the GPU, and I hear the fan spin up on the video card, more then I do when running games. Running Activity Monitor and checking open files shows the process has the OpenCL frameworks loaded, and a bit of CPU time but not much. If I set one to then run against the CPUs and GPU, I see an increase in CPU time spent.

AMD was late to get the support in, as initially this did only work on NVidia GPUs (10.6.0 and 10.6.1, possibly 10.6.2 timeframe).


I don't have XCode currently installed, but next time I do, I'll try and poke deeper.

I know the friend is currently still working on it, so I'm not sure what's in there. Possibly partial support, but it's not done yet.

Apple does offer a replacement battery service to cover the concern of a dead/weakening battery later in the systems life. If you want to go further and not rely directly on Apple, there are a number of places that sell laptop parts like iFixit. The new Air battery looks a little different, but should be replaceable yourself with just a few screws off the bottom panel. iFixit should have a complete teardown guide in a few days for the new units.

If your concern is more about in the field runtime, HyperMac sells external batteries and a charger cable for the MacBooks. However, they are currently in a lawsuit over this with Apple, and will be ceasing sale of the charger cables on November 2. They are in discussions with Apple to become a properly licensed vendor, and hopefully it works out. Apple has allowed similar battery extenders to be licensed for the iPhones, and even sells them in the Apple stores, so there is some precedent for this turning out well.

I must be out of the loop on this one. Someone elucidate.

Google "XP netbook restrictions"; for instance, here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Microsoft-Netbooks-Storage,news-29101.html

Although Intel too put licensing restrictions on what laptops can be built with what processors.

Peter

Craziness.

Other developers' reactions to the Mac App Store:

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/10/21/developer-reactions-to-the-mac-app-store/#continued

Some of the same concerns I've already mentioned. There's no doubt the audience can be wider than any other single venue at the moment, but it's all the other bits that are still a huge cause for concern.

For those who are pressed for time, here's what basically every developer on that page is saying:

"This sucks and I hate it -- of course I'm going to use it!"

Microsoft should just stop selling XP if they are going to restrict what you can sell it with. If the "netbook" makers didn't have XP available they would just have to make more capable computers or sell them with a different OS. 1024 x 600 screen resolution is worthless you can't even surf the net with that. Aren't they coming with Windows 7 now anyway ?

They want to stop selling it. People don't want to run Vista or 7 on what is likely to be an underpowered computer. So they force the computers to be even more underpowered. Makes sense, right? (No.)

I certainly don't condone limiting netbook specs (I think its awful), but I disagree with some things:

1- While I wish I had a better screen resolution on my MSI Wind, I'm using it right now to browse the web and read my Google Reader items. If I ever feel like I need a little more screen, I can just hit F11 and it's perfectly fine.

2- Bitt, I think running 7 on these devices is a perception problem. Vista actually doesn't do well on netbooks, but Windows 7 is perfectly fine, and runs fantastically on my own netbook. The next round of products are a little more powerful than mine, too.

It may or may not be a perception problem. I made no claim either way.

It might be worthless to you, it isn't worthless to everyone.

My wife needed a very light laptop that she could use when away for typing up notes, email and surfing. It needed to fit in a handbag, not have a real hard disk (so she didn't kill it buy throwing it into the bag after failing to turn it off).

The Dell Mini 9 with its tiny size, light weight and SSD is perfect for her. She doesn't have a problem with the small screen and tiny keyboard. It works fine for what she uses it for. In fact she loves it.

I'm sure it wouldn't be fine if she was using the typical XP user's setup, i.e. task bar permanently visible, IE7 window not maximized, a couple of IE toolbars etc

Thankfully she is married to me so she has the task bar set to auto minimise, is running Chrome AND knows how to maximise windows

I will say however that given the choice between a Dell Mini 9 and the old Mac Book Air she would have gone for the Mac Book (even though it wasn't as small or light as the Dell). But of course the Dell cost about a quarter of what the old Air cost.

It's not just Andy's wife. My netbook also only has 1024x600 resolution and I find that it's absolutely fine for browsing the web. In a pinch, I even find it usable for programming in Visual Studio 2010 (but the CPU lets it down there -- I did say "in a pinch").

Fact is: everyone's different. You (Matt) might not want to use a netbook with a smaller screen, but please try to avoid making such blanket statements.

The number of commentators saying "Steve said netbooks are crap and Apple wouldn't do one, the Mac Book Air 11.6 is a netbook, Steve lied" is winding me up.

Firstly, Steve lies all the time when talking about upcoming or non-existent products, no big deal.

However, when Steve was talking about netbooks being crap, netbook were all 9 or 10 inch designs with tiny keyboards and barely usable track pads. Only relatively recently have companies started releasing 11 or 12 inch machines and describing them netbooks.

Calling an 11/12 inch machine a netbook is just silly, we used to have laptops that size and they were just laptops. Those machines aren't netbooks in an meaningful way, they are just smallish, cheap, slow laptops.

All companies do it. If they don't have an offering in a space, they deny the need for that space at all. If they have an upcoming offering for that space, they spread FUD about how the existing products are rubbish and you should wait for theirs (Microsoft are particularly good at this one).

People just don't use a sufficiently large pinch of salt. And note that I'm not only talking about Steve here. Microsoft fanbois are just as bad, it's just that we don't have many here (where the initial barrier to entry was buying a Linux-based car stereo).



I used to have a 10.1" laptop before the word netbook came about. That was just a laptop, too.

Though Steve did say that if they figure out a way to build a small machine to their standards and at a price they could sell them, they'd do it. Here it is. The AIR isn't exactly running a slow Atom either.

They effectively give XP away for free with netbooks, in return for the manufacturers agreeing to hobble the machines.

Clever way to hold back an entire sub-industry, that.

It keeps Linux off those machines and it keeps those machines from competing with paying Windows licenses. It's a loss-leader for them.

BTW, didn't XP's life get extended to 2020?

So what does Microsoft get out it then ?

Stops the spread of Linux?

That's the idea. They get to maintain their near monopoly. The first "netbooks" arrived with Linux preinstalled, and it didn't take long for MS to step in and starting giving away XP for free to stomp it out.

Cheers

If those Linux laptops had sold well then the manufacturers wouldn't have been quite so keen to get WinXP on to them. Great though Linux is, consumers still don't want it on their netbooks.

They would have a better chance to sell one to me if they put a usable screen on them no matter what the OS is. I wonder how many people are disappointed that they can't fit a web page on there without scrolling.

Market share and the chance to sell other MS Apps

I thought this was another interesting question about the app store. At first I didn't really agree, but then he made some good points.

Ryan makes some good points, including the worry that many apps will be rejected based on what they do. He does start off with one very incorrect and misinformed point though.

Regarding Adobe's willingness to give up a huge chunk of change to sell high-priced apps in such a store. You better believe they would, because it's the same (or less) money they give up selling the same software in a retail box at a brick and mortar store.

Whether Adobe does or doesn't participate would hinge on many other factors outside the one Block first mentions. First off their apps would be rejected for using custom installers. Then for requiring serial numbers and activation, starting up background processes (this is easy to fix), no buggy performance (many of Apple's own apps would not pass here either), etc.

Good points. Clearly we can only wait and see at this point. I think developers won't be a quiet about being rejected from this app store simply because it isn't necessary to be in it. Unlike the iOS platform, you'll still be able to "side-load" applications on it. My concern is that eventually, Apple will decide to make Mac OS an App Store-only platform.

Matt, it's my fear as well. But the bigger short-term fear is simply that a majority of people will just "expect" the app they're looking for is available from the Mac App store and they won't bother to look elsewhere. It could drop sales for traditionally web-distributed apps.

John Gruber seems to think Ryan Block is an idiot:

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/10/24/ryan-block-mac-app-store

As mentioned, he did make some idiotic comments, including this one which I must have missed when reading the article:



Ok. Whatever.

The big issue I had with the article was mostly the cloud computing part. Sure, many people read their e-mail online, or use Facebook online all the time. But thats really the only big "cloud computing" I see going on in consumer space currently. Some of the more geek inclined people are also moving word precessing, spread sheets, photo management and such to the cloud. Outside of that, there is still plenty of room for desktop apps to thrive in the OS X App Store for a number of years to come. I definitely don't see cloud computing being a reason to say the App Store will be mostly empty in a few years.

Another factor to that is the amount of people who simply don't bother, or can't obtain low latency, fast broadband connections required for decent cloud computing experiences beyond simple e-mail and status update posts. I'd find the experience on Google Docs with a spreadsheet completely unacceptable over dialup, satellite or 3G due to the latency issues. And I think many others would too, causing these people to revert to local desktop apps, with maybe a push of data to the cloud.

I'm more inclined to agree with Bruno here, in that the main impact of the App store will be less consumers looking to other sources to obtain apps. However, I really don't expect Apple to get to a point where they block non App Store apps from running anytime soon. Not under the current conditions anyhow. If they relax the conditions that an app can get into the store, then maybe I see it as a possible future. For now, I believe the pro market is still big enough to attract Apple, and closing off apps would definitely cause a majority of the pro users to abandon the platform, including myself.

But I think he does have a fairly valid point. There is little that the consumer needs to buy, because for the average person, between the OS (okay, to be pedantic, the apps bundled with the OS) and web services such as gmail, they already have everything they need. My parents, for example, both have macs (my dad a laptop, my mom an iMac). My dad bought parallels, so he could run some Windows-only software for work. Other than that, neither of them have purchased anything.

We bought a Mac last year. So far, we've purchased zero additional software. I installed macports, we use NeoOffice, and I use VirtualBox for my minimal virtualization needs.

The only purchases I want to make are Photoshop, Illustrator, and some sort of photo-management system (because I'm not fond of iPhoto, though I really need to poke at it more), but I'd consider those sort of purchases as falling under the productivity software.

So yeah... there isn't all that much that consumers need to buy.

But Block is completely misinformed because the situation is no different today than it was two years ago, or five years ago or ten years ago. Nothing Google has done has changed any of this. BEsides, Mac OS has always come with a mail client built-in. I use it, but there are still some commercial email clients making money. I'll concede it's not a market I'd get into nor that I think would do very high volumes.

If there's any argument to be made about dumbing down internet usage we need to give props to Facebook who completely own Google or any other service-based net destination. A lot of people replace free or commercial software via Facebook.

But that aside, 10 years ago there was no iPhoto, but not too many people were buying photo viewing and managing applications either - because no one was taking and accumulating digital photos. Even with free solutions today, there are a lot of folks out there making a living selling Photo management products.

Plenty of people are happy with what comes with the OS and don't need anything more. That hasn't changed in a long time. What has changed is that there are far more people using computers today and the market for plenty of software is opening up, not closing down. Take a look at Microsoft's revenues for non-Windows software. Take a look at Adobe's. Take a look at how many more indie software developers exist today and are making a decent living versus 10 years ago. Or even 5 for that matter.

My strategy going forward still revolves around niche markets and will include hardware in a big way as well. I think the Mac App Store is going to do well, I just don't know if it's going to do well for all the developers.

Supposedly good article/commentary on the new Mac App Store. http://www.marco.org/1432156914

I've only read a few bits and they were on the money. Need to get some time to read the rest, but I have to get off this infernal computer. Have spent the past few hours doing hard-core email.

Now.. the only qu
In the end, sanity prevailed. I really cannot afford $1300 for a netbook with subpar interfaces and heavy weight.

So instead I picked up a Samsung N210, a real 10" Atom 450 netbook. With the external USB DVD-RW drive, it cost $300 + tax. Plus another $45 to upgrade the RAM from 1GB to 2GB CL4.

With a bit of fuss, it now has Ubuntu 10.04 installed and all of the ports and magic Fn-keys working as Samsung intended. Hey.. the touchpad even has limited multi-touch capability, aka 2-finger scrolling.

I yanked the included 250GB Win7 hard disk without ever powering it on, and substituted a 100GB SSD from the collection here.

The screen (MS XP standard 1024x600) is small, but fine for the intended use as a travelbook. And the (real-life) 7-10 hours/charge on the battery is a big step up from the Dell X1's 2 hours max, worth the extra 0.4 pounds in weight.

I might even get used to the funky international keyboard. The USA-centric BestBuy models had a more normal layout than this unit, but those also had a lower-capacity battery, smaller HD, unsupported WiFi, and no bluetooth.. no thanks. The built-in Atheros Wifi (B/G/N) on the international version seems to work well enough out of the install.

Thus far.. recommended, if one can stand the funky keyboard!

Cheers

Heavy weight?

MacBook Air 11 inch: 2.3 pounds
MacBook Air 13 inch: 2.9 pounds
Samsung N210 with the 6 cell battery: 2.82 pounds

Other than the missing ports, the Air bests the netbook in pretty much every way. As it should, since it's a notebook with a notebook Core2Duo processor, not a netbook with an Atom processor. Base price on the 11" model is US$999 - it's $50 more in Canada. No matter how you look at it though, it's a premium product and carries a premium price.

Anything more than the 2.2lbs of my 5-year old X1 is "heavy" especially when it has poorer connectivity and a huge price tag.

The Apple hardware looks good, but in the end it's just a netbook, and one that needs external dongles to connect to everyday things like LANs and external screens. Stuff like the non-replaceable (non-existent) "hard drive", non-standard BIOS, and difficult-to-replace battery, means that it misses out on the basics while sitting there and looking extremely pretty with a very high price tag.

Great if I wanted to run OS/X or needed high performance in a netbook, since other machines don't do that part very well. And great were I wealthy enough not to care about the price tag.

But for less than a third of the landed price, I've got a machine with better connectivity, a replaceable battery, replaceable drive (with difficulty), and similar form factor and weight. No dongles, either.

I'm happy. Wealthier (real or imagined) folks will undoubtedly go for the jewel-encrusted vib^H^H^Hairbook and be even happier!

Cheers

The Air is definitely not for me. But picking one up in an Apple store and generally seeing and touching it in person, I was very impressed by it. It's an Apples and Oranges thing really. hehe.

Yep, it is truly another great art piece from Apple. Really well done. Just not as practical in many ways as a run of the mill netbook. Better in other ways.. but that's what the MacBook Pro is for.

What is your definition of a netbook out of curiosity? It does seem to be different then what most of the mainstream agrees to, and is complicating my understanding of your actual needs. Did you consider your Dell X1 a netbook? For me, (and it seems Bruno, and many others), a netbook is an Atom powered (this no out of order execution) based system with a screen limited to 1024x600, portable computer. The X1, Air, and other certain systems with more normal (for their time) processors, higher resolutions, and such are typically called ultra portable notebooks.

As for the non-standard BIOS, indeed, it does lack that 80s BIOS standard. It does however use an industry standard called EFI. EFI is the new boot firmware being widely deployed now, including every Dell workstation and server we have received at work for the past year. It's been around in some form for a bit over a decade now, and it's also been that long since I first booted Linux using EFI instead of BIOS. What is funny to me is how most vendors will make their first EFI systems act and feel just like BIOS, so it's sometimes hard to tell the difference, especially when the system includes the CSM for legacy support.

As for the basics, all depends on your definition there. I've had WiFi pretty much everywhere I go, so thats more basic for me then a LAN. For the rare times I don't have static WiFi, I have a small Clear branded device that creates WiFi and accesses the WiMax network running in Austin. A full size keyboard also fits into my basic needs for a computer, so that tends to exclude most netbooks.

Oh well, guess I'm just one of those happier jewel-encrusted kinda guys, using his Apple "netbook" to get work done on flights using VMWare and such :-) The new 11 inch really tempts me if I'm going to be doing work on the road with the new job, as the TSA indicated it doesn't even need to come out of a bag for screening. Not that I really agree with their arbitrary security theater rules, but hey, it's slightly less time wasted when boarding a flight.

I just have to make sure not to have my wife with me when I visit the Apple store. Otherwise she'll get to touch and hold the Air and I might end up leaving with a lighter wallet. It's aptly named, since it replaces cash with air. Works on wallets and bank accounts equally well.

To me "netbook" and "ultra-portable notebook" are synonyms. There's a very broad continuum of performance and component choice across the whole product area, and dividing it in two seems like pure marchitecture. Even dividing it on screen size is a bit arbitrary: there are 11.6in Atom machines, for instance, sometimes in the same case design as the same manufacturer's 10in Atom machines (but with smaller borders round the screen).

Peter

A netbook = some low-end machine typically well under $500.

An ultraportable = a high end machine of small size, usually carrying a price premium.

Yeah, sorry Peter, but I think that's the most often agreed upon definition of Netbook. I suppose that you could call netbooks a subset of ultraportables (because they are indeed very portable), but I think the industry, press, and general public consider a netbook to be both small and inexpensive.

And Tom, I don't think it's anything beyond that, even defining a specific CPU. It's just that the vast majority of netbooks happen to have an Atom in them, for good or for bad. Netbooks are simply small and cheap. Bruno, I'd even lower that price point to $400, possibly $350 (that's for the base, though, you can always get more expensive models).

I don't have a problem with the Air, and I think it's a well-built machine. I do think, though, that it's very expensive, and the use-cases for a computer like the Air sound to me like cases in which you could get by with a standard netbook. There are so many these days that make good Hackintoshes anyway.

But that's partly my own mindset. I've never been a big laptop fan, because I've always been wary of spending so much money on something that's infinitely more susceptible to damage than a desktop. That's half the reason I bought a netbook - if I'm not going to do heavy-duty work on it, I might as well get the cheapest computer I can, and when/if it breaks I won't feel like I've lost that much money

For me, a "netbook" or "airbook", or "Dell X1" (aka. Samsung Q30) is a very small, very light, notebook computer with good connectivity. Suitable for tossing into one's handbag or luggage for quick and easy travel, and for plugging into larger screens for presentations or whatever.

The Dell X1 I have was the last of the really expensive kind, when "small" meant a huge price premium. I bought it second hand for about half of retail.

The Apple Airbook (11") is a netbook just like it, except for the poor connectivity. Both have excellent metal shells, great keyboards and touchpads (the Apple being better, but lacking buttons.. call it a wash).

The new Samsung N210 here, is of lower cost construction, but superior to the Dell X1 by virtue of the much improved battery and charge duration. The Apple netbook has a much faster CPU and excellent looking construction, and way better software out of the box than either of the other two.

But I have my own software, so that last point is worthless to me, and the machine is too expensive (though possibly not overpriced), and too limited for my needs.

I have other, better connected notebooks with big/fast CPUs and more RAM.. that's not what a lightweight small travelbook needs.

Cheers

-ml

I just built a dolly that collapses into a backpack to carry my full tower case and CRT for when I make my Starbucks trips.

I suppose my ultraportable is my iPhone with a BT keyboard.

Yeah, I thought about going with a tablet or mini-tablet, possibly with a roll-up or fold-up keyboard. But I do use it for light programming (I always have the full Hijack kernel environment on hand!), and for offloading photos from the camera's flash card. Plus the evening "slide shows" after each day's tour whilst traveling.

The selection of good/light devices is definitely better now than it ever was before. Until the current crop of netbooks arrived, I was beginning to wonder what I'd ever be able to replace the Dell X1 with.

Cheers

I for one, have owned a MacBook Air and used several netbooks, and they are certainly not in the same category by any stretch of the imagination.

Don't pretend you can lump them together unless size is the ONLY criteria.

Needing more ports is a legitimate gripe, especially for someone who does a lot of development with hardware.

For me and most other Air users, it wasn't a problem. I didn't even mind the external DVD drive most of the time. The only time I did was when flying and wanting to watch a DVD. I just started ripping them before the trip.

No, they're much, much more expensive, built like fine jewelery , and include a copy of Mac OS/X.

The airbook you owned was probably the large one, not the 11" netbook version that just came on the market.

Cheers

Heh.. Okay, so this morning, after many days of playing only with the new N210 netbook, I powered on the Dell X1 for a look.

WOW! That "tiny" 12" screen is MASSIVE!!
The old yet excellent keyboard feels even better, and the X1 seems a LOT lighter than the N210, even though the difference is barely half a pound.

Maybe I'll look into new batteries and a new backlight tube for the X1 again after all.. wow!

But I also need to think hard (again) about shoehorning a real SSD into it somehow. The internal drive bay only fits 1.8" IDE drives (not even ZIF).. tricky to find space for a PATA->SATA converter board..

Cheers

Shoulda popped for the Air. You wouldn't be feeling like this today. Cheapskate

Naw, I make my living playing with drives.. the nonreplaceable airbook drive just wouldn't do!

It's replaceable. It just uses a non-standard interface.

Toshiba has just announced retail product for this interface.

It's apparently a standard interface even, "mSATA". Started showing up in some netbooks, though not in the long stick form, usually shorter (and lower capacity).

The Toshiba drives are the exact ones Apple is using in the Air systems. Another company also announced their own line that includes a USB3 case for the old one if ordered as an upgrade.

Says sata but looks like its via mini pcie.

Mmm.. turns out that is easier now than ever.

eBay is chock full of very fast CF cards with decent wear-leveling -- essentially true SSDs in CF casings.

And there are also lots of PATA ("IDE") SSDs of various interfaces showing up there -- older notebooks can finally be upgraded to the modern era!

Cheers