Mac Netbook: Maybe The Wrong Name?

The rumor mills are working overtime about the possibility of a Mac Netbook, possibly to be announced at MacWorld:

[from Apple will unveil netbooks next month, says analyst]

Apple Inc. will introduce two netbooks at the MacWorld Conference and Expo next month that will be tied to the company’s App Store, as is its iPhone, an analyst said today.

“I don’t have any inside information,” said Ezra Gottheil of Technology Business Research Inc., as he spelled out his take on Apple’s next hardware move. “This is just by triangulation.”

Citing evidence that included the gloomy economy, climbing sales of the least-expensive laptops and comments CEO Steve Jobs made in October, Gottheil said Apple would show a pair of netbooks at January’s conference, then as it did two years before with the iPhone, put it on the market midyear.

“They like to have a big surprise at MacWorld,” Gottheil said. “They don’t need to have one, but they like to.”

But Gottheil had more than just Apple’s habit of springing surprises in mind. “It looks like netbooks are real, and getting a certain amount of traction. And this recession looks serious.”

It is clear that the econolypse has started to hit Apple’s sales of Macs based on Novembers drop. So perhaps the stars are aligned to motivate Apple to move into the hot market for Netbooks. But is it a cannibalization of laptops, just at a lower margin? Tom Reestman at TheAppleBlog thinks it is, saying “I think netbooks are primarily just the new cheap laptop.”

What if Apple made a Netbook that was much more like the iPhone, but with a keyboard and no touchscreen? Larger, but much smaller than a MacBook, say an 8 inch screen. A more closed architecture, where apps would have to be downloaded from the Apple Store? And with a built-in data connection, like the Kindle, supplied by a major phone company like AT&T or Verizon? What then? A completely different sort of a beast.

It wouldn’t be a netbook, like the ones you can buy from Lenovo or Acer, it would be a handtop device used to remain connected, browse the web, watch movies, listen to music, and serve as a Voip machine. A very different thing: a brand new category.

It might change laptop-only users like to to owning two machines: a handtop or handbook for travel away from my desk, and a second machine — a larger laptop or a non-mobile Mac — for the office. Could work.