Now I understand that this might be over the heads of some of my readers but it's important to me that I express my thoughts on the following issue:
My friend and fellow tech geek and Apple Fan-Boy, Jason O'Grady of O'Grady's Powerpage has written some interesting articles on his other blog The Apple Core about the netbook hackintosh phenomenon that I just have to comment on...
Links:
•The $200 "Mac"
•Apple Disses Netbooks Again
1. Business: As Jason has already said, Apple isn't interested in a race to the bottom with junky PC makers. I also don't see them licensing OS X to other manufacturers for a plethora of reasons. So basically there's no way for them to address the motivations for those, who like myself, find themselves desirous of a cheap little hackintosh. Apple charges more for their machines than the competition, they are the luxury car maker of the computer world. Yes, a Ford will get you to the same locations using the same roads as a Mercedes for a whole lot less but I don't need to tell you why the Mercedes is more expensive. It's the form factor and the overall user experience and quality that you are paying for. It's the same for Apple with netbooks as it is with BMW who has no interest in producing a sub-compact economy car. In my opinion what Apple needs to do is make a sweet netbook and forget about competing in terms of price. I for one would love a 10" MacBook Air with a few extra USB ports for less than a grand, depending on the specs, which leads me to my next point...
2. Technological Limitations: The Dell Mini 9 is a niche machine. It has serious limitations that I will try my best to describe here. The processor is a single core 1.6 Ghz Intel Atom, which is seriously underpowered by my standards as a Mac user. I upgraded the RAM to 2 GBs but as far as I can tell 1 GB of RAM seems to be plenty for use in this machine. It has never used more than half of the available RAM, but the processor has bogged more times than I care to tell. It's nice to be able to upgrade the RAM so cheaply but there really isn't much of a point with the limited processing power. There is no way to upgrade the processor, not in the uprade section of the Dell store, nor through after purchase hacks. There's actually two very good reasons for this. The first reason is heat. Dual core and higher Ghz processors run hotter and with a fanless netbook that would be a bad thing. The Mini 9 already gets pretty warm with the low power single core Atom. The second reason is battery power. Dual core and higher Ghz processors use more power and require a fan and those both draw a lot more juice from your battery. That would either severely lower your battery life or add more bulk in terms of the now necessary fan and larger battery, which of course defeats the purpose of a light, quiet, ultra portable machine. So therein lies the rub. If you want it small and quiet with a decent battery life then you have to sacrifice processing power, which with the Mini 9 is the single major limitation. I can deal with the lack of storage but the underpowered processor is the Achilles heel of the platform. So how do you think Apple will approach the problem? How will they solve the intrinsic technological limitations inherent in the netbook format? I'm very interested to find out. Which brings me to my final and most controversial point...
3. Politics: If you read any of the talkbacks from the linked articles above, you will pick up on a few consistent themes. First of all let's just say it how it is...Some people love Apple no matter what, and some people hate Apple no matter what. It really reminds me of knee jerk Democrats and Republicans. Instead of recognizing the value of positions in any particular issue, these sycophants instead blindly toe the brand(party) line ad nauseum. I'm really beginning to dislike those who are firmly, and often rudely, ensconced in their respective camps. That goes for Apple AND PC folks. I find it repugnant the way that PC people rabidly defend the Apple EULA when it comes to hackintoshes, completely out of spite. They accuse my friend, and anyone with a hackintosh, of being a criminal for breaking the EULA despite the fact that in our cases each company was payed in full for their products. The same goes for the Apple Kool-Aid drinkers who can't see the rationale behind hackintoshing and stick their noses up in the air and generally confirm the stereotypes that many Mac detractors just eat up. I personally believe that uncompromising loyalty to any brand or operating system is just stupid and dated. Soon enough it will just be a quaint story that we tell to our grandkids. "Yes Billy, there used to be two kinds of computers, and Mac/PCs were the best!" I think that when Apple switched to Intel architecture the writing was on the wall for everyone to see. Now folks are running multiple operating systems on Macs and shoehorning OS X onto non-Apple hardware. In my opinion it's the beginning of the end of the Apple/PC wars. Just go out there and use what you want and get over yourselves already...
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