Everyone within the Apple community is asking the same two related questions these days. Should Apple release a netbook? Will Apple release a netbook? I’ll spare you any suspense: I don’t know the answer to either question. But I do suspect that the answer to both questions is the same. Apple doesn’t always get such questions correct, but their general trend over the past decade is that Apple won’t make a niche product unless it either thinks the niche has a good shot at eventually going mainstream (the iPod, AppleTV, etc), or it thinks it can use the niche product as a testing ground for features that might eventually make their way onto the company’s mainstream products (which is the best way to describe the very nichey MacBook Air’s relationship to Apple’s mainstream laptop models) – or in at least one instance, as a decoy to plug an externally perceived hole in its product line that Apple itself doesn’t believe it exists, but feels the need to silence the pundits nonetheless.
Setting aside the notion of whether Apple would want to make an even smaller version of the MacBook Air simply as a niche breeding ground, let’s focus on the larger question: is the netbook, which is currently a trendy niche, likely to become a mainstream product? And although I’ve seen plenty of them in action, and I understand why the people who use a netbook do so, my answer is I don’t think so. And my reasoning is fairly simple.
The slowly progressing but indisputable trend over the last several years is that more and more computer users are replacing their desktop with a full featured laptop as their main computer. Obviously not every computer user has done so, and not everyone will. But over the next several years the trend will only grow stronger as the price and feature differential between desktops and laptops continues to shrink and the percentage of computer users who see portability as a necessity continues to grow. The key words here being “full featured.” Only the most passive of computer users would be able to replace their desktop with a netbook, which by definition is so underpowered for the sake of portability as to be unsuitable as a primary computer. In other words, someone who replaces their desktop with a laptop isn’t doing so with a netbook. So who is buying these netbooks that we keep hearing about? Well, there are only two potential groups: those users who have decided to stick with a desktop as their main computer but want to split the difference by having a tiny underpowered laptop for travel purposes, and those users who have a full-featured laptop as their main machine but would rather not travel with it so they buy a netbook to go with it.
The problem is that neither of the above scenarios makes a ton of sense. Users who are so home-user-centric as decline to replace their desktop with a laptop are the least likely of all users to then turn around and buy a gee-whiz tiny laptop for travel purposes. And those users who have replaced their desktop with a laptop have presumably done so specifically so that they can travel with it; turning around and then buying a netbook would contradict the notion that they wanted to travel with their main machine in the first place. So the bottom line is that the netbook, at least within the context of the current desktop-laptop landscape, isn’t a machine that makes sense for most users.
I know, it’s a bit of a dangerous game to assume that a product has to make sense for people to buy it. After all, there are literally no circumstances in which buying a Zune would make more sense than buying an iPod, and yet a few people have bought a Zune anyway. But that’s the key here; most potential buyers are accurately familiar both the iPod and the Zune (in that the latter is a lame copycat of the former that falls short on all counts yet costs just as much), and so only a few have misguidedly chosen the Zune. In sharp contrast, the vast majority of computers would be much better off with a Mac than a PC, yet most choose a PC – but that’s because most people who buy a PC mistakenly believe that the Mac isn’t an option for them. That’s the result of Microsoft spending the nineties flat-out lying to the public and Apple spending that same decade with its fingers plugging its ears; Apple’s attempts the past decade to undo that damage have only recently begun to show significant results.
But the bottom line is that people generally only buy a product that makes no sense for them when they’re unaware of a more logical option or thoroughly misled about a more logical option. And since anyone considering a netbook is generally looking within the platform or brand they’re already using, there’s no real room for the customer to be actively misled, save for a rogue Best Buy salesman with his own agenda.
That having been said, I took a lot of flak four years ago when I pointed out that there was almost no one (current Mac user or PC switcher) for which the Mac mini was a logical purchase, and that it therefore wouldn’t sell well. As it turned out I’ve spent the past four years gradually being proved right by default, as predictions of through-the-roof Mac mini sales never materialized, you very rarely see one in the wild unless it’s in the hands of a geek, and Apple itself has so little interest in the product that it sometimes forgets to even incrementally update the specs until long after the Mac geeks have gone apoplectic about it. That’s of course because hindsight has made it clear that Apple released the Mac mini for two specific reasons, neither of which had anything to do with the Mac mini actually selling. The first was to release an absurdly inept low-end model that no one actually take seriously but it would take public heat off the company for not having a low-end model; the second was to silence the Mac geeks who at that point had wasted the past seven years of their lives screaming at the top of their lungs about the fact that Apple wasn’t offering a Mac mini and were causing a prolonged PR nightmare in the process. Predictably the Mac geeks are still complaining about how the Mac mini is relegated to outdated specs and about how Apple still has yet to advertise the product, but that’s to be expected, just as iPhone geeks continue to complain about how the iPhone isn’t an open enough platform even after Apple kicked it wide open with the app store. But as with the iPhone hackers, Apple was able to reduce the screams of the headless iMac worshippers to a mere collective whimper, still front page news in the Mac geek community but barely audible to mainstream Mac or PC users. For what it’s worth I’m still waiting for the hatemailers to come back and admit that their predictions of record-setting Mac mini sales turned out to be as absurd as I knew from day one that they would be. From my end, it turns out I was right all along about the fact that the Mac mini wouldn’t sell, but where I got it wrong is that I failed to realize that not only did Apple know that the product wouldn’t sell, it was the key component to the company’s plan.
But I digress. Thoroughly. As much as I’d like to delete the previous paragraph just to not have to deal with renewed hatemail from Mac geeks who have almost literally adopted the Mac mini (not the Mac overall, just the Mac mini) as their religion of choice, it’s too central to the current netbook discussion to leave it out. Much as I’d like to see Apple change its mind about not wanting anyone to buy a low-end Mac and instead replace the Mac mini with a legitimate low-end Mac that people would actually buy in large numbers, I understand why Apple has made the choice it’s made. Rather than boost marketshare in the short term by essentially bribing people to switch to the Mac based on pricing alone, Apple has instead decided to take the much more ambitious path of gradually convincing the public that a computer is in fact not a frustrating necessary evil not worth one penny more than absolutely needs to be spent on it, but rather an inspiring product whose hour or two per day spent using it can be quite enjoyable, and therefore worth viewing as a purchase worth taking seriously and not just a bargain basement afterthought. In other words, you don’t buy an $8000 car if you can afford a $12000 car that provides an experience that’s three times as good. And Apple in turn wants to convince you that you shouldn’t buy an $800 computer if you can afford a $1200 computer that provides three times the user experience. And it follows that anyone who can afford a $12000 car can afford a computer that costs a mere one tenth as much; in fact it’s almost mandatory that the user consider doing so when you consider that the average person spends about as much time per day using their computer as they do using their car.
So what does any of this have to do with whether Apple should make a netbook? It helps to understand the company’s overall philosophy when it comes to its products. They’ll release a Mac mini as a placeholder, even if they know it’s not going to sell, if it serves the purpose of satisfying the mainstream critics and/or vocal geeks that Apple has filled a perceived hole in its product line – but they’ll make it dirt cheap, if for no other reason then to make sure no one confuses it for a flagship product that Apple actually wants to be known for. And they’ll release an iPod mini or a MacBook Air, even if they likely have no idea going in whether it’ll sell well or not, if it allows them to try out some new things that, if successful, can be grafted onto the rest of the product line – but they’ll make those products quite expensive (the iPod mini, when released, cost about 85% as much as the standard iPod despite having a fourth the capacity, and the MacBook Air costs significantly more than the standard MacBook despite generally inferior specs). It’s just as important to understand that the prices of those products, once they began to take off to varying degrees, began to drop accordingly.
The fact that desktops being replaced by full-featured laptops is the long-term trend that tells me the netbook is not a trend itself but instead a mere transitional anomaly; there’s a specific niche of users for which the product is a logical choice, and anyone else who buys one does so simply because they got confused about their own needs in the midst of the greater desktop to laptop transition. But I don’t believe that’ll stop Apple from brining one to market, nor necessarily should it. If mainstream demand for a netbook fails to materialize like I think it won’t, then Apple’s netbook doesn’t flop any harder than anyone else’s, and at worst the company learns some more about miniaturization in the process; if I’m wrong and things shift such that the netbook does end up making sense for a large number of users, then Apple manages to avoid missing that boat despite waiting until now to dive in. Let’s not forget that it’s still so early in the netbook game that the average computer, while they may have heard the term, still doesn’t have any idea what a netbook is beyond the vague concept that it’s some kind of notebook computer that does something on a network or on the internet. Of course there was a time in the iPod’s history where the average consumer had no idea what an “iPod” was either, despite having heard the term repeatedly.
The real question is whether Apple itself thinks the netbook has a mainstream future. I don’t know the answer to that, nor in fact do I know who’s really running Apple right now in terms of product strategy. Don’t forget that the Mac mini was conceived during Steve Jobs’ last medical leave in late 2004, and Steve then fired the head of the Macintosh hardware division upon his return (for reasons which never were publicly made clear), before turning around launching the Mac mini in the most low-key manner possible in January 2005; it’s possible that the guy who spearheaded the Mac mini was such an insulated geek that he thought it was actually going to do well and that’s what got him canned, and Steve then decided to reposition the product as the decoy it ended up being launched as (rather than just canning it altogether). My gut tells me that despite Steve’s leave of absence being much longer this time, the people he’s left in charge have product philosophies that are much closer to his own; Steve has never struck me as the type who allows himself to make the same mistake more than once.
I’ll leave it at this: if Apple releases an uninspired but relatively inexpensive netbook then I’ll take it as a sign that the company doesn’t believe the netbook has a mainstream future and is instead simply covering its backside. But if Apple releases a high-end, decked out, whiz bang netbook with a big price tag to go along with it, I’ll interpret that as Apple making a serious commitment to the netbook platform. How’s that, you say? If Apple thinks it can be an eventual mainstream success, it’ll saddle it with a high price? Yep. It’s the way Apple has done things for the past decade. Apple knew the iPhone would be a big hit and initially launched it with a whopping $499 price tag, almost absurdly high for a cellphone. But they did so because they knew there would be plenty of early adopters and they’d be willing to pay a high price; they’ve since gradually reduced the price down to $199 now that they’re selling into the mainstream.
So if Apple thinks a Mac netbook can be a hit, expect an initial high-end model with a hair-raising price tag, followed by a gradual stepdown to mainstream specs and pricing as the netbook concept itself makes its way down to the mainstream. But if Apple releases a Mac netbook with an uninspired design, weak specs, a low-key rollout, minimal marketing, and a low price tag that ensures a few units will walk out the door even if almost no one ends up actually wanting one, then you’ll know that Apple views the netbook as yet another Mac mini – a product that no one really cares about beyond the pundits themselves.
And if I’ve learned anything over the past four years, it’s to not even try to predict which of those two paths Apple will end up taking. This time I’ll let other take the hit on that one, and the hatemail that invariably comes with it.
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