“I don’t think it will change anything, because people don’t buy computers because of the operating system. They buy them for program functionality,” said Marc Liebman, superintendent of the Berryessa Union School District in San Jose, Calif.
Testa agreed with Liebman, saying: “The improvements are not dramatic enough for enticing educators already using Windows to move to Macs, and the price is not enough for typical universities to change from one platform to the other.”
Although Apple lowered the price of many of its top-selling products on June8, one thing looming over the company is the growing popularity of cheaper, stripped-down laptops, often called “netbooks.”
Netbooks are one of the few segments of the overall PC business that has been growing in the recession, while Apple’s Mac revenues dropped 16 percent in the most recent quarter.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has said Apple doesn’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer “that’s not a piece of junk.” That doesn’t mean Apple won’t someday try to enter that market, but on June 8, Philip Schiller, Apple’s top marketing executive, sounded similar themes, saying in one interview that netbooks are merely “very underpowered, poorly designed cheap notebooks.”
“They have poor keyboards, poor screens, and none of the features and capabilities to do what a MacBook, for example, can,” said Schiller. “We think those products are below the quality standards of something Apple would like to make.”
“Netbooks are the fastest growing segment of the PC market,” said Testa. “I believe Apple will launch a netbook eventually, [owing] to market forces and the advent of cloud computing.”
However, Liebman said it’s a little more complicated than simple marketing.
“I think that it depends on what you are doing with the netbooks. There is no doubt that they are less powerful and have fewer bells and whistles than a regular laptop or desktop. I even agree with Apple’s comments about Macs, as their reputation is having computers that can do all kinds of advanced processes–including graphics, video, et cetera. A netbook, even from Apple, won’t do that, and it would be a subpar item for their product line,” Liebman explained.
But, he added, “if you are using them as thin clients or for word processing and don’t have a need for higher-level functions, [netbooks are] a great tool. In fact, we are playing with the option of using them in a virtualized environment … and making them available for kids to have at home for use with schoolwork.”
Link:
Apple Worldwide Developers Conference
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