With the iPad - and presumably, the Android tablets that will mimic it - Apple has begun to encroach on the market for netbooks, with their flash memory and ultraportable design, using an A4 processor from Samsung rather than the Intel chips it uses in its laptops and desktops.
The impact of all of this on Intel has been just short of hilarious: The company continues to push the netbook in an ongoing marketing campaign as something that runs apps. The Intel AppUp Center, currently in beta and announced at CES earlier this year, encourages developers to be a part of the next big thing by developing apps that run on an iPad-style, walled garden of a software platform, which itself runs on top of a Windows or Linux netbook operating system powered by Intels Atom processor.
Meanwhile, Googles Chrome OS netbooks will dispense with the operating system completely when they become available in late fall in favor of apps from the Chrome Web App store.
Of course, Linux and Windows netbooks like the ones Intel is targeting with the AppUp Store can run whatever software you want them to run just like laptops and desktops. Their rebranding as things that run apps is, if anything, a step backwards.
Whats next: boats that float as dubiously as rafts? Cars inspired by the motorcycle, teetering down the road on two wheels?
That said, there is a key difference between apps and software, and consumers seem to prefer the former in many cases. App-based devices are designed for consumption of text, music, video, games and other forms of output. Netbooks and their laptop and desktop siblings, conversely, are designed for input. Its not just the keyboard and mouse that make them so, but faster processors and the way their operating systems run highly specialized, powerful software from anywhere rather than smaller, simpler apps from in a single store.
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