WOW! According to Smarthouse.com it's TRUE! - Apple has been confirmed, by electronic giant LG, that Apple will be coming out with an OLED based netbook and new OLED iPhones!
LG should know, because they and Apple have already signed a multibillion dollar contract, and one that saw Apple pay LG a cool half-billion dollars upfront to cement! LG would be supplying all of the OLED screens, so if anyone was in the position to know, other than Apple, it would be them.
One source has even told Smarthouse that Apple already has a working prototype, with an OLED screen that that had the ability to eliminate the greasy finger streaks that are normally associated with other OLED screens! In addition, Smarthouse even claimed that Apple is even looking at using wafer thin OLEDs that would be used to link to a wireless Apple TV like box, though no other information was forthcoming on exactly what that might be.
If true, this is exciting news that should have all of the other netbook manufacturers trembling in their shoes! Apple may not always necessarily be the first in the technological ring, but once they do enter, they usually end up delivering a knock-out blow to their adversaries. They did it with the iPod, and now they have done it with the iPhone and the AppStore, so could it be possible that they will do it again with the netbook?
Apple has repetitively said that they weren't interested in the nascent netbook market, but they did have some interesting ideas for one, but for the most part they were only watching and studying it. Of course, that''s what they said about using Intel processors, or adding video to the iPod and we all know how those two turned out. Generally speaking, I have learned that if Apples says that they are not interested in something, then mostly assuredly they really are. Yes, Steve Jobs may have stated that Apple doesn't know how to make anything for $500 that wasn't a piece of junk, but then again, what about the higher end netbooks? They can easily fetch prices of up to $800 or more and that, frankly, isn't that far off from the price of the entry MacBook!
Considering that Apple's desktop and laptop sales have been recently off by some 16%, while PC sales have been up (thanks mostly to those cheap netbooks), Apple may feel that they have no real choice, in this recession, but to enter the netbook market. The question is: just what can we expect to see from an Apple designed netbook?
First off, Apple being the fashion consensus entity that it is, we can probably expect a looker - a machine that is beautiful to look at - a virtual piece of "unibody" sculptured art! It will be equally simple to use and, again, Apple being Apple, it will cost an arm and a leg! But it will be worth it, in the end, I believe, because it should offer far more than what we now presently see in the PC netbook space. Certainly, in some ways, it will depart from the traditional concepts we now see with all of the netbooks that have come thus far. Apple believes in thinking differently and that is why it's products, in various ways, are different and unique from anything else in their class. Expect the same for any Apple netbook.
Secondarily, it's obvious , that any such netbook will be running OS X. Currently, OS X runs light, it runs fast and it runs very efficiently on both the iPhone and iPod Touch and I expect to see as much on the netbook side. Like both of those iconic devices, OS X may be trimmed of a lot of unnecessary fat found on the desktop side, since it will, no doubt, also be running on Apple's upcoming OS X Snow Leopard, a much more secure, powerful, faster and leaner OS to begin with. In other words, don't expect to see any MacNetBook released any time before the release of Snow Leopard itself! Hopefully, that may be as early as June, so too, likely will be any release of an Apple netbook.
Normally, I'm not too crazy about netbooks, but having seen hackintosh versions running on various PC netbooks, such as the one picture at the beginning of this post, I have to admit, I have played around with the idea of buying a PC netbook from MSI or Dell and hacking it myself, and that despite the fact that I"m both lazy and totally inept at such things. Having a more expensive, but much more usable and featured packed Apple produced netbook, however, is a far more favorable solution. Providing, that is, it's not too expensive.
Even though, at the moment, OLEDs are rather expensive to produce, as ElectricPig brings out, I don't believe that will remain the case for much longer. Technology doesn't sit still and I can only hope that both Apple and LG have something up their sleeve that will result in them being able to market them at reasonable costs, because if they can, there isn't going to be any netbook out there that will be able to compete with them at any price.
And that's my 2 cents 4 this Thursday, March 19, 2009
Hackintosh netbook photos via: Gizmodo
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