Just a couple of years ago Netbooks were the talk of the technological town – but their time in the spotlight was cut remarkably short with the emergence of Apple’s iPad which has sold in the millions.
Netbooks filled a niche for a portable device that worked as both a media player with screen for use on the move – but also offering a full OS (Windows or Ubuntu) where users could be almost as productive as on a laptop due to the physical keyboard. They had the appearance of miniature Samsung, ACER, and Toshiba laptops to all intents and purposes.
The downside, however, was that with their diminutive size and price comes a trade-off in under-powered CPUs and keyboards that were often cramped to use. The better netbooks made clever use of the smaller real-estate and didn’t scrimp on thespecs – but then they were more expensive to reflect that.
More recently tablets have taken over as the gadget most in the press, with Apple selling millions of iPads, and low cost tablets from Amazon and B&N soon to hit the market. By removing the keyboard, tablets can be notably slimmer than their netbook cousins, and as they are used very differently and make use of power-sipping ARM CPUs rather than Intels X86-based Atoms chips – they don’t feel so underpowered.
The Amazon Fire and B&N NOOK Tablet are clearly aimed as consumer devices rather than productivity tools – with their feature-set boasting of video streaming integration from Netflix, and ability to double up as ebook readers – and at $200 that is what people have been after ever since the birth of the iPad.
The iPad, however, has remained in a class on its own as the desirable and “high-class” tablet. There are some very good competitors from the likes of Samsung and Motorola on the shelves now – but they have barely made a dent in Apple’s market-share. This lead may not last forever, but Apple made the tablet market for consumers – by creating a product that “just worked” and gave people easy integration with iTunes and the Apple ecosystem – Apple made tablets desirable.
The question, however, is the price – is an iPad really worth more than double a Kindle Fire? If a user is just using the device to watch media, read books, check email, and browse the web – then it isn’t. The difference comes in productivity tools which Apple has been trying to promote – but I am still unsure whether tablets can ever replace a laptop for real productivity – where a user has to create information, not just consume it or remix it.