Macopinion

Why The Notebook Still Rules, iPhone Notwithstanding

On The Register last week, FreeForm Dynamics' Jon Collins reported results from a The Register Technology Panel that most road warriors still prefer packing a laptop computer as opposed to a handheld device.

Among more than 1,000 corporate respondents comparing mobile access via a handheld device to remote notebook access more than twice as many favored the notebook over the handheld option.

In the article, Collins speculates that the reason for this preference may be that mobile email is no longer an adequate support for a remotely accessible corporate presence, and many users need access to a wider pool of applications. Another possibility cited is that the majority of people who need laptops these days have them, lessening the need for handheld connectivity.

Personally, it's no contest. For me, relying only on a handheld, even a powerful, comprehensively-featured device like the iPhone or one of the newer Blackberries, simply involves too many compromises. Which is why I'm extremely skeptical of the assertion that "the PC era is over" with smartphone handhelds representing the future.

No way.

The biggest reason is simply ergonomics. You can make machines smaller, but people remain the same size, with the same visual acuity. Doing serious work with teeny-tiny keyboards or touchscreens is simply not practical or efficient, and extensive Web surfing on a display the size of the iPhone's an exercise in eyestrain and frustration. Even on the road, I want a real, full-size keyboard and trackpad and a display that doesn't make me squint.

It may not be stimulating enough for cutting-edge junkies, but the basic laptop computer form factor is pretty difficult to improve on as a mobile production and communications platform, which is why there have been no really radical innovations in laptop technology over the past decade. For Mac laptops, the 1998 WallStreet pretty much laid down the paradigm that we find in the latest MacBooks and MacBook Pros, with changes and additions (and some subtractions, alas - removable device expansion bays and daughtercard-mounted processors were great) being evolutionary rather than evolutionary.

With a modern notebook, you have an astonishing amount of computing and communications power in a remarkably compact package. Unless you are an out and out power-user, there is very little you can do with a desktop tower that can't be executed with a notebook. It's a point that struck me in about the first half-hour using my first PowerBook back in 1996. I had bought the PowerBook anticipating that it would serve as an auxiliary to my desktop Mac, but the opposite obtained from the get-go, with the PowerBook immediately taking on the role of my number one workhorse computer, and I've never gone back to using a desktop as my primary Mac. The newest desktop that I have is a late-'90s UMAX SuperMac S-900 with a 200 MHz 604e processor.

And of course my current number one Mac, a getting long in the tooth but still tremendously capable 1.33 GHz G4 PowerBook, is vastly more satisfactory in its role than that 1996 PowerBook 5300 ever was, and I still find it tremendously gratifying that I can essentially contain my entire computing orbit in this small package, tuck it in a computer bag or backpack, and use it to enter and access my normal work environment anywhere I happen to be, especially of there's a WiFi hot spot handy. To me, this is a lot cooler than what is possible with any handheld device.

A lot of other people evidently think so too. PC Mag is reporting this week that in mid-2006, more laptops were shipped than desktop PCs for teh first time (if I recall accurately, Apple passed this tipping point back in 2001 or 2002). PC Mag notes that "What's even more interesting is that this trend is only getting stronger. There's a lot of activity in laptop computing today, as the focus shifts toward increased mobility. The reason for this is relatively obvious. Laptops provide computer users with much more flexibility. And now that they're cheaper than ever, the need for a full-fledged desktop computer has diminished.

This is not to say there's no potential for crossover convergence between laptop and handheld devices. Indeed, a big hole in Apple's portable lineup for the past 14 months or so has been the lack of a road warrioring subnotebook since the 12" PowerBook was discontinued at the introduction of the MacBook. Rumors continue to swirl about a forthcoming MacBook Pro in the subnotebook category, which may be very light (under three pounds), have NAND flash solid state memory instead of a hard drive for storage, and maybe (I'm skeptical but not dismissive about this one) even touchscreen functionality.

It is perhaps a bit fanciful to speculate that such a machine might also have full iPhone-type wireless communications capability built-in, although there should be no technical reason why it couldn't be. However, Apple would probably be reluctant to do that because it would cannibalize iPhone sale to a degree.

Phone or no phone, a sub three pound MacBook Pro with flash memory would be pretty much a slam-dunk hot seller, as continued demand and high resale prices for the 12" G4 PowerBook indicate. There's a lot of pent-up demand, and certainly lost sales to the PC side, where a selection of subnotebooks is available until Apple fills this gap.

However, a MacBook Pro mini or whatever it might eventually be called would not be Apple's first computer blurring the distinction between handheld and laptop devices. Mac veterans will recall the Apple Newton eMate 300, produced for just a scant 11 months in 1997 - '98.

The eMate wasn't a Mac - it used Apple's Newton 2.1 OS - but it had a laptop form factor, and featured a 25 MHz ARM 710a processor, 8 MB of ROM, 3 MB of RAM (1MB of DRAM, 2 MB of Flash Memory for user storage), a PCMCIA slot, and IrDA-beaming capabilities, and and standard Macintosh serial/LocalTalk ports.

The eMate 300 was packaged in a funky-styled and super-rugged translucent aquamarine and black clamshell case (stylistic resonances of which lived on in the original clamshell iBooks) with a 480x320 16-shade grayscale backlit LCD touchscreen display that could be used either Newton PDA style with a stylus or laptop-style with a built-in conventional keyboard, and came bundled with a suite of built-in software applications including a word processor, draw program, spreadsheet, graphing calculator, address book, calendar functions, and more. It could also run hundreds of applications that had been developed for Newton 2.0.
The eMate 300 also had TCP/IP capabilities for Internet and email access. A very cool characteristic of the eMate was that it could provide up to 24 hours of continuous use without recharging, depending on usage, according to Apple.

Measuring 12.0" x 11.4" x 2.1" and weighing in at four pounds, the eMate 300 was heavier than the MacBook Pro subnotebook is anticipated to be if and when it materializes, and the eMate was lighter, but not smaller than either the contemporaneous subnotebook PowerBook Duos and PowerBook 2400s, or the 12" PowerBooks and iBooks that followed. The eMate was, however, a lot cheaper than any PowerBook available at the time, selling for US$800.00.

If you think you might like to own one of these somewhat esoteric but as it turns out considerably ahead of its time pieces of Apple history, CustomMacs.com has some available for a modest $89.99. You can check it out here:
http://www.custommacs.com/store.html

And if you're at all handy, no need to be concerned about battery availability. Check out this tutorial:
http://www.hackcanada.com/homegrown/palmpilot/emate/battery/index.html

The eMate 300 gave us a brief but tantalizing taste of what is possible with flash memory subnotebooks. With a decade of technological advancement since its introduction and the power of Mac OS X, Apple should be able to give us a truly paradigm-busting and awesome handheld/laptop crossover device if they choose to. Let's hope they do.


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cmoore@macopinion.com


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