Macbraughton Culture – Creativity – Conflict

Give me Netbooks, or Give me a Break

Wow, there is a lot of crap out there about netbooks. And by crap I mean disinformation and FUD by Microsoft and Apple now as well. These big guys really like the status quo. They feed off of each other and have since the eighties. Everybody buy a PC or notebook, or laptop, or netbook running Windows or buy a Mac. Don't buy anything else because that is all that there is and anything else that comes around sucks, right? I don't believe it. Maybe that has been true in the past but it doesn't necessarily mean that it is going to be that way in the future.

I admit, I love my Macs. I just got a 20" iMac about a month ago and it is amazing. It takes up very little space, has the screen built in, and it is fast. I mean, I the multitasking that I can do on this thing is wicked. I feel like I've still barely made the thing break a sweat yet when I'm encoding video, listening to music, surfing the web, playing Civilization IV, editing documents in OpenOffice, and whatever other stuff I happen to be doing. It is a workhorse, and it just works. I can't believe how fast the thing reboots too.

This was a compromise for me though. I have another computer that I built out of bargain parts and installed Ubuntu that I was using most of the time before this. I love Linux. I love the idea of Linux maybe a little more than the reality of Linux but I love it nonetheless. I love it because it is free. And by free I mean as in freedom. But like they say in Team America: World Police... "Freedom isn't free, no there's a hefty fuckin' fee." Yes, Linux is free as far as money is concerned, but it is expensive in the time and energy that you have to put into getting everything to work.

At least that has been the case up until now. That may be changing. In fact, I think that it may be a safe bet to say that it is changing as we speak because more and more hardware companies are beginning to get on the Linux bandwagon. The great netbook revolution is also becoming a battleground for Linux to assert itself more into the mainstream. This is because when a company builds a computer that they are planning to run Linux on all along there aren't going to be the same problems that there are when you're trying to get a PC built out of odd components to work. Adding to that netbooks aren't going to be used for running a bunch of peripheral devices and software. I won't be using my netbook to encode video or play video games. So the fact that there aren't smooth and easy Linux applications to some things doesn't really matter that much. I will able to surf the net, check my email, edit documents, and play video.

I'm speaking in the future tense because the netbooks that I'm talking about haven't even hit the market yet. So far the netbooks that are out there are all running on Intel Atom chips and most of them have Windows XP as the operating system. The new wave of netbooks coming to the market this summer and fall that I'm talking about will be using ARM CPUs. They are SoC (System on a Chip) devices that have Linux pre-installed as their operating system. Whether they'll be running Ubuntu, Xandros, or Google's Android will be a matter of preference for their manufacturers, but they won't be running Windows because at this time there is no version of that operating system for the ARM architecture. The most spectacular fact about these newest additions to the PC ecosphere is their projected price, $200 to $300.

Apple is dissing netbooks because they say that they've already got that part of the market covered with iPhones and the iPod Touch. Give me a break... these are cool gadgets I have to admit, but they are too small. They don't have real keyboards, and they have watered down versions of OS X as their operating systems. In the defense of the coming Linux + ARM netbooks, they have much larger screens and full keyboards (though slightly smaller at around 92% of a normal one). There is one in development from Always Innovating called the Touchbook that has a multitouch touch screen in addition to a detatchable keyboard. I don't know about that one in particular but I know that some of them have cellular network capabilities built right into their SoC motherboards (in addition to GPS, Wifi, Bluetooth, etc.) They are also going to have not a watered down OS but fully loaded, fully customizable Linux operating systems like Ubuntu and Android. You won't have one company controlling what will and will not be able to be done with them. From a developer's perspective there is no contest, the more flexible the environment the better.

Microsoft is going about their business as usual with their Windows 7 Starter Edition plan. Again, give me a break. The only reason that they are working on Windows 7 is that because Vista was such a dud, and oh yeah, because Vista is way too bloated to work on netbooks. Yes, Microsoft is making Windows 7 mainly to try to get their paws into the netbook market. At this time I don't know of any plans for the ARM architecture, though it is feasible that they could port it (the real problem for them here would be third party software, which unfortunately for Microsoft is the majority of the actual software that is worth anything in Windows). Windows 7 Starter Edition will come pre-installed for free on some Intel Atom based netbooks and you will be able to run a grand total of 3 applications at one time! Huh? Yeah, three applications, and if you want to run more then you have to give them more money. Yes, you heard me, you have to upgrade to the full version to run more than three applications.

So, let's see, you can run virus protection software, open a web-browser, and one other thing at once. What a joke. Why would I pay Microsoft more money when I can get a netbook that runs an unlimited number of applications at once and isn't going to cost me a dime for software? As long as it does the main things that I want to do with it, browse the web, instant messaging, watching video, editing documents... who cares about the brand. At this point North Americans are the only ones who seem to be buying into Microsoft's bullshit. The rest of the world is happily moving towards open-source software.

Not to mention the fact that Linux is free, there isn't the same malware and virus problems as there is with Windows so you can go without the virus protection software. You don't have to pay for anything in fact. There are an unbelievable amount of programs that work on Ubuntu that are in the process of being ported to ARM right now. It isn't that big a deal either because of the Unix source-based development model most of the existing Linux software out there can be recompiled to work on ARM without much difficulty at all.

Apple could feasibly move into the netbook market a lot more easily than Microsoft, but from the banter that they are dishing out lately I am starting to think that they are going to miss the boat. It looks like that by the time they realize that everybody is getting a netbook for a second or third computer, the new entrants to the market are going to have driven prices down so drastically that there isn't going to be any way for them to make a profit or differentiate themselves. This is the real crux of the netbook revolution: the eradication of the need for big software companies. The hardware companies that make these devices no longer need someone else to buy their software from. They can plug in to the Linux community and customize it however they like and not pay any licensing fees. Apple has great designers and developers today, but if enough people start moving into the open source community then that is where all of the cool stuff is going to be happening. I think this trend is inevitable myself, that eventually Apple will be just a hardware brand or a design shop and that eventually there will be no such thing as proprietary operating systems. As for Microsoft, I think Keith Curtis said it best in his book After the Software Wars, "they are toast."