Apple Touch-Screen Netbook?

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Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 11, 2009 @04:23AM from the heard-this-before dept.

je ne sais quoi writes "The Apple rumor mill is churning today. Reuters and the DOW Jones news wire are reporting that an anonymous source in Taiwan has leaked that Apple has ordered some 10-inch touch-screens from WinTek, the maker of the touch-screen for the iPhone. It looks like an Apple netbook could possibly be in the works for a delivery date in Q3 of this year, in time for back-to-school sales. CNET and Engadget have completely unsubstantiated mock-ups."

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Who wants this? by cayenne8 · 2009-03-11 04:28 · Score: 3, Insightful

Obviously I am not in the market for one of these netbooks, but, I'm just wondering, WHO is the large target audience for these small screened, underpowered computers?
Is it for people that ONLY do a little websurfing and email? Even with that...why not pony up just a few more $$ and get a real laptop?
This is a question in general about the netbooks, not just the Apple one.

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1. Re:Who wants this? by nicolas.kassis · 2009-03-11 04:30 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Cause they already have a laptop but it's a pain to carry the thing around for your average meeting or what not. Plus, tons of people get them for college since they are cheap. The couple hundred bucks does make a difference. And they aren't really that underpowered. 2 years ago a mini9 would have been a perfectly good laptop.
2. Re:Who wants this? by Spazztastic · 2009-03-11 04:31 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  WHO is the large target audience for these small screened, underpowered computers?
  *cough*porn*cough*
  
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  Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
3. Re:Who wants this? by prefec2 · 2009-03-11 04:42 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The good things about netbooks are:
  - They are cheap
  - They normally run hours without a recharge
  - They are small and lightweight so it's easy to carry them around
  - For most day by day tasks they are good enough
  - They boot fast, so it's more or less like using a real notebook (I mean these paper pencil things)
  The bad things are:
  - The screen is too small to do big tasks
  - They cannot be used for complex calculation problems
  - They have not enough storage for your torrented movie collection
  But the important thing is, netbooks are gadgets. They are cheap and they are good at the tasks they are designed to do. They are not fully fledged work machines. But hey, a fun car is not a truck either.
4. Re:Who wants this? by onefriedrice · 2009-03-11 05:09 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  This may not apply to you, but most of us don't use our mobile computing devices to simulate weather patterns or crack encryption algorithms. We have beefy desktop or server machines for that, and if we need that power while out and about, we can always just ssh or remote to the powerful machine. Otherwise, a netbook is perfectly capable of everyday tasks with the added benefits of increased mobility and better battery life (i.e. the new eeepc 1000he can get 7-8 hours realistically). As a developer, a netbook isn't my primary machine, but it's perfect for my mobility needs. I'd expect it would be an equally good mobile device for a network admin or student.
  
  You may not be in that target market, but at least now you know who they are. For many (most?) of us, the extra computing power of traditional laptops goes grossly underutilized, so why buy more than you need and get a less mobile computer in return?
  
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5. Re:Who wants this? by quickOnTheUptake · 2009-03-11 05:12 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  . . . pull it out of my pocket . . .
  
  You must have exeptionally large pockets. ; )
  
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6. Re:Who wants this? by quickOnTheUptake · 2009-03-11 05:23 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Marsupial?
  
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7. Re:Who wants this? by chunk08 · 2009-03-11 05:25 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I'm currently looking at getting a netbookas a college student. Not because of cost concerns, but simply because I want something to type notes on with a battery life that will work for my 7 consecutive hours of lecture. There are uses for these things, not every computer has to be able to run folding@home, Crysis, and my web server at the same time.
  
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8. Re:Who wants this? by XxtraLarGe · 2009-03-11 05:41 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I'd have to agree partially, but the iPhone/iPod touch does have some serious limitations. I was using my iPod Touch this past weekend to update Twitter from a high school championship sporting event--yeah, I finally found a way to make Twitter useful--and the keyboard is not very good at all when you're trying to type quickly & accurately. None of the Twitter clients on the iPhone support landscape orientation, making typing a real pain in the neck. Also, how long is Apple going to be stubborn on the whole copy/paste issue? There were some LONG URL's I wanted to link to but couldn't. Both of these issues really slowed me down quite a bit. Don't get me wrong, I love my iPod Touch, but I don't think it would give a small netbook a run for it's money as far as being able to quickly enter data is concerned. Even an OLPC would have done a better job in this particular instance.
  
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9. Re:Who wants this? by truthsearch · 2009-03-11 05:44 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Their lowest-end laptop currently costs $999. So a tablet or netbook would almost definitely cost less.
  
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10. Re:Who wants this? by lostfayth · 2009-03-11 05:50 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Is that really so terrible?
  I guess it's a matter of taste.
11. Re:Who wants this? by ColdWetDog · 2009-03-11 06:02 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Hospital use -- how do you disinfect it? Will it survive being wiped down with astringent cleaning solutions several times a day?
  
  We use the general purpose disinfectant wipes on laptops, cell phones, pages, stethoscopes, etc. all the time. A consumer quality computer product would do fine. You don't need to sterilize them. And you try to hire people that don't "drop" things all of the time. Seriously, the world isn't entirely made up of two year olds. I'd love one of these things if it ran OS X. If it were powerful enough to run Parallels or Crossover Office I'd buy a half dozen.
  
  You listening out there Apple? There is a giant world out there that doesn't watch videos or listen to music. They do useful things. With computers.
  
  We've got the money, honey, if you've got the time.
  
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12. Re:Who wants this? by Corporate+Troll · 2009-03-11 06:09 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  An iPhone is cheap? Since when?!?
13. Re:Who wants this? by Paracelcus · 2009-03-11 07:10 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  "They cannot be used for complex calculation problems", Huh? are you calculating an interstellar jump? They are plenty powerful enough for any normal (non gaming) activity.
  
  --
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Dirty Screens by Spazztastic · 2009-03-11 04:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

Now you can have a netbook with smudgy fingerprints all over the screen to match your iPhone.

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1. Re:Dirty Screens by Sponge+Bath · 2009-03-11 04:42 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Heh, from the subject line I might guess those smudgy bits aren't fingerprints.
  -1 Ewww, gross.
2. Re:Dirty Screens by TeknoHog · 2009-03-11 07:16 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  And that's why they call it "GUI".
  
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hold the keyboard please, need replacement Newton by WillAdams · 2009-03-11 04:31 · Score: 3, Interesting

Or at least do something interesting like having a second display function as a keyboard.
Above all, update InkWell and provide good support for use as an ebook reader which could do .pdf annotations (adding a .pdf preview of all documents to file bundles would be ideal if such annotations could then be synched back into the document when it was opened in the originating app).
William

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And so the cycle begins anew... by aftk2 · 2009-03-11 04:37 · Score: 5, Funny

The Apple Product Cycle:

"An obscure component manufacturer somewhere in the Pacific Rim announces a major order for some bleeding-edge piece of technology that could conceivably become part of an expensive, digital-lifestyle-enhancing nerd toy."

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The Apple Product Life Cycle by pauljlucas · 2009-03-11 04:37 · Score: 3, Funny

... an anonymous source in Taiwan has leaked that Apple has ordered some 10 inch touch-screens from WinTek, the maker of the touch-screen for the iPhone. It looks like an Apple netbook could possibly be in the works for a delivery date in Q3 of this year, in time for back-to-school sales.

Yet another example of how this is so true.

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The real question: Little laptop or big iPhone? by wisebabo · 2009-03-11 04:41 · Score: 4, Interesting

So will it be a computer running a "traditional" OS with the whole Windows, Icons, Mouse Pointer interface or will Apple make it a big iPhone like device that hides a lot of that stuff under a (relatively) minimalist user interface?
Part of me wants the WIMP paradigm because of the additional control I have over files and folders but part of me wants to see how far you can take an interface based from the ground up on a purely touch interface (like the iPhone). [I think the advantage of a iPhone interface is that it is even simpler than a WIMP interface, no need to explain about files or directories etc. Great for the rest of... err.. them, like my mom!]
Speaking of user interfaces, did anyone catch the new "Voice over" feature in the new iPod Shuffle? It seems this might be another (relatively) unexplored user interface design where a visual user interface is not available. Will this be incorporated into other Apple products (like multi-touch was transported from the iPhone to the MacBook touchpads?).
I say "relatively" because obviously voice/audio cue interfaces are not new (every voice mail system uses them) but this is the first time I've seen it in a portable device.
Re:Touchbook by Zerth · 2009-03-11 04:47 · Score: 3, Funny

So like an Ipod Mega or Kilo?
Re:Touchbook by Onaga · 2009-03-11 04:50 · Score: 3, Funny

No keyboard... maybe it's a touchscreen version of this.
Already THAT far? by denzacar · 2009-03-11 04:57 · Score: 5, Funny

I would not bet the "Netbook" has a keyboard. More like small 10" tablet what has virtual keyboard.
But actually I am not believing this "inside news" at all.
We are at step 4 already?

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Re:I'd Buy One by Anonymous Coward · 2009-03-11 05:01 · Score: 3, Funny

I wish people like you would stop existing so Apple would finally go out of business.
Re:Touchbook by Anonymous Coward · 2009-03-11 05:03 · Score: 5, Funny

Do you really want to hold a 10" monster in one arm and try to navigate with the other?
Your mom can do it quite well...
Please mash the screen with your palm. by CompMD · 2009-03-11 05:24 · Score: 3, Funny

Its an ipod touch for fat people! Multitouch on a small screen must suck for them.
NETBOOK CONFIRMED by Deanalator · 2009-03-11 06:10 · Score: 4, Funny

I checked on the Internet, and can confirm that this is true.
On a side note, can slashdot have a special place for articles with titles that end in a question mark?