Will "the year of the laptop" screw existing desktop owners?

Steves announcement did a couple things for Apple.

One, it took the focus off the desktop machines officially, which have been lagging behind and will do so until a new processor is announced for them. Two, it gets the consumers who don't really need desktops to look at laptops. Apple really wants to have a solid line between their computer lines. They want the pros to buy the towers and they want everyone else to buy something else. They have not focused on towers at a major show in a long time.

There are already threads about the future possibility of using Airport Extreme on existing hardware. Again I point out, tho you may already know, that Extreme is entirely pointless unless you do heavy filesharing across your local network. it will not boost an internet connection.


pnw

Airport Extreme may not seem like a benefit now, but I seem to remember someone saying that when networking between computers was first emerging, that 9000 bits per second was blazingly fast...

I think the laptop may be the future of the home computer. The only thing home users need in a desktop these days is maybe multiple drives, and a kick a$$ GPU for games. Other than that, a desktop provides no other benefits above a notebook for basic, home computing. If you need faster processors, more screen space, bigger HD's, or anything like that, you are obviously not a basic home user. You probably use the computer as a server, a photoshop machine, or whatever, but you use it for more than e-mail and web browsing...

Originally posted by G4scott
I think the laptop may be the future of the home computer. The only thing home users need in a desktop these days is maybe multiple drives, and a kick a$$ GPU for games. Other than that, a desktop provides no other benefits above a notebook for basic, home computing.

Click to expand...

I don't know if I agree with the premise. Home users like the "feel" of desktops much more than the compact feel of a laptop. The full keyboard, the mouse, the ajustable display. These are all factors in deciding which type of computer they want. On top of that, they have kids who are rough with computers and blowing more money on a laptop that can be easily broken is not something they are prepared to do.

Compete where you can...

Ok, so Apple is getting hammered in the Pro market- weather we admit to it or not.
What to do? Easy. Compete in the portable department wher it's really hard for Intel and AMD to provide cool, reliable, energy efficient CPU's.
G3's and G4's are very powerful compared to P3's and P4-Mobiles so you don't get the "a 3Ghz P4 will blow a 1.25Ghz Dual G4" comments.
As soon as the PPC970 makes it's home in Pro towers Steve will declare "the year of the PowerMac".

i agree that it will be very beneficial in time; but it will probably be at least a couple of years before broadband speeds catch up to it, and probably that long before the average user needs to transfer files of this size. So i don't think that a lot of people really *need* it (yet) as much as they simply want the cool new technology. which i certainly understand

pnw