the Mac netbook, round two: Mac tablet instead?

The day after I posted a rather lengthy examination of whether Apple will and/or should launch a Mac netbook, two things happened that were entirely coincidental to my post but both relevant and both got me thinking further:

– A member of my extended family who’s been using a Mac for years wrote to tell me she just bought a PC. When I inquired as to what would make her give up the Mac platform and downgrade to Windows, she corrected me that she didn’t get rid of her Mac, she instead simply got a PC netbook to go with it. Wow. It’s one thing to abandon the Mac platform but another entirely to think you’re going to find success by using a real platform on your main machine and a garbage one on your laptop. But while this is the first I’ve heard of such bizarreness, she can’t be the only Mac user being tempted into adding a supplemental Windows machine simply for its size and shape. That alone suggests to me that Apple should release a Mac netbook sooner rather than later: if only to save Mac users from the temptation to do something trendy but self-defeating. Buying something as useless as a netbook is punishment enough; a Mac user buying a Windows-based netbook is akin to gouging your own eyes out.

– Not more than a few hours after I made my post, the mainstream rumor mongers claimed to have proof that Apple is about to launch a Mac tablet. And so I immediately thought wow, I called that one, didn’t I? But then of course I remembered that a Mac netbook and a Mac tablet, despite being largely commingled in rumors and discussions, are actually two very separate concepts. A Mac netbook is nothing more than a really small, really thin, really light laptop computer with really weak technical specifications – literally nothing more than that, despite all the magical buzz surrounding the word “netbook” and anything associated with it. But a Mac tablet, on the other hand, now that would be a revolutionary product if it were to come to market. We’re talking about, in essence, a giant touch-screen iPod that would be large enough to vaguely resemble a small laptop but the similarities would stop there. Everything else would be just like an oversized iPhone without a phone: virtual touch-screen keyboard, and presumably full compatibility with the App Store.

I know I lose some people when I mention that last part. But there’s just no way Apple releases any touch-screen device at this point that isn’t tied into that platform-building cash cow known as the App Store. Apple knows full well that not only does every app sold put more money into its own pockets, it also helps ensure that developers continue putting most of their mobile app efforts into Apple’s touch-screen platform, and it also helps ensure that consumers stick with Apple’s touch-screen platform as well (after all, you’re unlikely to invest in a few dozen App Store apps and then switch to a Palm Pre where none of them will work). And adding another (larger) touch-screen device to the existing product line only helps enhance all of the above.

That is, of course, if anyone actually bought one. As I’ve said before, I have a blind spot toward any machine that’s too small and underpowered to be my main computer but too large to fit in my pocket. For me (or really anyone, I think) to understand such a product, Apple would have to do a bang-up job of showing us how an eight inch wide iPod touch could be used in new ways we hadn’t even imagined. Around the house maybe? Because I know I’m not going to start carrying a backpack just so I can transport a Mac tablet around with me, and even if I did, it would be my MacBook Pro that went into that backpack, not some quasi-computer tablet. And when I’m home, why would I use the thing when I’ve got my full-featured computer right here in front of me?

It’s basically the same argument that shows what a joke the iPod touch is as a mobile communications device (just try checking your email, surfing the internet, using any App Store app that requires network access, checking Facebook ,posting to Twitter, using the map, or even checking the weather on an iPod touch when you’re not either at home or at Starbucks), except the big difference is that even though the iPod touch is only usable as a communications device when located precisely at Point A or Point B, and completely useless as a communications device when traveling between the two, it’s small enough that it can easily be carried from one to the other and used as a fantastic content player and gaming device along the way. That’s a difference to the tune of thirteen million iPod touches sold, despite some of the device’s core features being completely crippled most of the time. Then again, many if not most people who buy an iPod touch are making a mistake anyway, as they’d be better off to either own up and get a real iPhone or stick with their existing iPod nano until they’re in a position to buy a real iPhone. And iPod touch purchasers often go so far out of their way to keep reality out of the equation that they actually pretend their existing cellphone doesn’t have a monthly cost, or that they can magically find wifi anywhere they go just by wishing it were so. But again, part of the temptation of buying a crippled device like the iPod touch is that it’s small enough to fit in your pocket.

But that leads to my second necessary premise for an Apple tablet: not only does it need to be App Store compatible, it also absolutely needs to have some kind of cellular data network built into it. Then and only then does it become something that a laptop isn’t, unless you stick an awkward cellular card into the side of your laptop and pay through the nose while eating through battery life. Give me a tablet that’s always on the network no matter where I go or what I’m doing, just like with the iPhone, and you’re at least piqued my interest (if certainly not sent me to the store in search of one). While I still can’t imagine that a Mac tablet would succeed in anything other than series of niches of varying sizes (education, medicine, etc), giving it an always-on network connection would at least give the device a fair fight. Otherwise it’s just another iPod touch, a laughing stock of a mobile communications device but this time too big to function well as a mobile content player and a lot more expensive to boot.