Apple to re-enter teh sub-notebook market

Bluehair

I'm not normally too bothered with rumours but am intrigued by this.

If it turns out to be true i reckon there'll be a huge market for it. There seems to be a trend the last few years with laptops to try and load them with features but naturally that doesn't sit well with portability (though huge strides have been made no doubt).

Personally i'd really like something a little smaller than the current ibook, drop the optical drive and load up the battery life (i'd kill for 8-10 hours with normal usage, typing, surfing etc).

A decent amount of ram, a reasonable cpu (but i'd take battery performance over speed any day), wireless and i'm good to go. For everything else i've a perfectly good imac that fulfills my needs. With nothing exotic under the bonnet they should be able to pull this in at a decent price point too.

Fingers crossed

Cabaal

can't see them dropping a optical drive, other features year but not the optical drive...

Bluehair

Cabaal wrote:

can't see them dropping a optical drive, other features year but not the optical drive...

Makes sense to me to drop it. I never use it on our ibook while traveling and it's just space and weight that could be used better for something else. Seems likely that they would provide a small external optical drive for those that might use it but dropping the internal optical drive is a good direction for this.

Do you really need one? Then move up the line to the Macbook. This is about portability and extreme battery life not features that few will use. In my honest opinion this market is about providing a compliment to your desktop and not a replacement for it, looking for that? again move up the product line to Macbook.

BostonB

Bluehair wrote:

...(i'd kill for 8-10 hours with normal usage, typing, surfing etc). A decent amount of ram, a reasonable cpu (but i'd take battery performance over speed any day), wireless and i'm good to go. ...

I already get 6-7hrs easily with my PC laptop more if I'm careful. Never understood why recent apple laptops don't have better battery life. I think some of the older Apple models were much better for battery life. Personally I also rarely use the optical drive for most of my IT work. Then again I'd generally use a desktop for anything that does need a optical drive.

K.O.Kiki

After the noisy SOB that is the iBook's optical drive, I say: drop it!
Just pass the savings on to me, so I can buy an external drive if needs be.
And give me more USB ports; 2 is annoying!

Creamy Goodness

i doubt they'll drop it to be honest.

one of the mac's selling points is that you can now load windows with ease having to do all these boot with usb keys malarky would put people off no doubt.

K.O.Kiki

Cremo wrote:

...having to do all these boot with usb keys malarky...

...what?

Creamy Goodness

sorry what i meant was it would be hassle for most users to install operating systems like any *nix based OS if there wasn't a optical drive.

Cabaal

Cremo wrote:

sorry what i meant was it would be hassle for most users to install operating systems like any *nix based OS if there wasn't a optical drive.

exactly and I can't see apple supplying a backup of the OS on USB drives (putting it on a partition of the harddrive would be just thick and would be liked what compaq used to do years ago...very bads idea)

heggie

they could sell it with the option of an external drive, like sony's used to be - still provide os disks

440Hz

Twill be a business hit I reckon what with all these airline travel restrictions and all, handy to have something small yet powerful to throw in with other stuff as hand lugguage.

Dont see it replacing/influencing the existing products, there is just a specific market for sub-notebooks which Apple are smart enough to re-enter.

Bluehair

440Hz wrote:

there is just a specific market for sub-notebooks which Apple are smart enough to re-enter.

Exactly. And it's exactly why it should be feature-poor (in terms of internal optical drives, fast cpu, large display) but ultra-portable with a long battery life.

Anyone who needs an internal optical drive can simply move up the product line and find what they need. An external option with this unit would happily fulfill anything that would be needed for irregular use.

I can see exactly the market Apple is aiming for with something like this and like i said earlier it's about providing an ultra portable compliment to your desktop or other system not about replacing it. I've zero need to optical drives of any nature when traveling, don't need a large display, don't need a powerful system to run demanding software. What i do need is OSX reliability , wireless, an office suite and the ability to stay away from a power supply as long as possible