Silicon Alley Insider air their Netbook ignorance
In a comically inept piece of blogging/journalism, Silicon Alley insider have published a ‘What Do Google (Android) netbooks mean for Microsoft and Apple’ article.
What takes the cake for me is this paragraph –
It’s always possible Microsoft has something up its sleeve — the killer netbook platform, or something. But given the way they’ve punted so far in the next-gen mobile platform war — Windows Mobile is weak compared to iPhone and Android — we’re not holding our breath.
It’s amazing to me that SAI are oblivious to Windows 7 and how it works not just on netbooks, but also on UMPCs with just 512 MB RAM –
Take a good look at that – if it can run on a 512 MB RAM UMPC, Windows 7 will definitely run well on Netbooks (and a lot of people are installing it on netbooks already). People are used to Windows and just as they prefer Windows XP to Linux, they’ll prefer Windows 7 to rival OSes. The real threat to Microsoft is not Android but the success of Apple’s iTouch-magnified Netbook that might release in summer or fall 2009.
Windows 7 has multi-touch and though the Beta doesn’t carry the applications that really make the most of multi-touch, the full release will. Google is a few years behind both Apple and Microsoft in OS technology. Android based netbooks haven’t taken off – to be precise they aren’t even available. So they can’t mean anything for Apple and Microsoft. SAI need to actually do their due diligence before posting.
Another gem they offer up is –
Assuming Apple’s tablets can access an equivalent of the iPhone App Store, it’ll be hard for Google or Microsoft to catch up quickly with similar offerings of lightweight, powerful apps. Android’s app market is a disappointment so far, and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile apps would be useless on netbooks.
Netbooks are going to run Windows 7 – just as they run Windows XP right now. And if you take the time to browse through Apple’s iPhone App Store you’ll see that they do not compare with the breadth and quality of applications available for Windows. App Store Apps are for the most part time wasting apps. Windows is the most mature, proven platform to develop software and applications for. And it’s the platform that makes people the most money. The App Store and Facebook Apps and Google Open Social and Android platform are just ways of getting developers to work for free. Perhaps not the Apple iPhone app store – the others definitely. Sooner or later, developers are going to become smarter and realize that 5 developers out of 5000 making a killing is just like a lottery. Especially if someone else sets the rules of the game.
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