Why Apple’s iPad will kill not only the netbook, but also Google’s Chrome OS

“Apple has just fired a death shot at the netbook. The new iPad could easily displace the netbook category, and I believe it will,” Galen Gruman writes for InfoWorld. “Cheap laptops are at risk of extinction as well.”

WIth an iPad, “you get all the media goodness of an iPhone with the tools you need to do your day-to-day work in a box,” Gruman writes. “Now it makes terrific sense why Apple has avoided netbooks and cheap laptops — not only do they earn little money for manufacturers, Apple was already planning to render them obsolete.”

“By the way, I fully expect that IT will hate the iPad because it will mean pressure for allowing in a non-PC platform. (My colleague Randall C. Kennedy has already sounded that alarm on behalf of reactionary IT pros.) After all, most IT shops have resisted the Mac for decades and the iPhone for several years, so I expect iPad resistance to be their initial response as well. But individuals and small business won’t have IT groups with that power of denial, and I fully expect them to jump on the iPad,” Gruman writes. “Maybe IT should try that approach for a change. IT might give netbooks a temporary safe haven, but that haven will be a ghetto that users will struggle to escape.”

“iPad means Google’s planned Internet appliance based on the Chrome OS is already irrelevant,” Gruman writes. “The Chrome OS vision is that you need a disk-less netbook to run apps via a browser in the cloud. The iPad vision is that you run apps locally and in the cloud; in addition, you can do all sorts of other cool things.”

Gruman writes, “Google has shown little understanding of human needs outside of search algorithms, as its Nexus One debacle exemplifies. A stripped-down, Internet-required netbook is Google’s vision — that’s taking “boring” and “compromised” to another level. The first indications of the iPad point to a device that’s anything but boring.”

Full article – from someone who gets it, highly recommended – here.

Source: MacDailyNews