TAB fails to put the Wind up Apple

Over at theappleblog.com Darrell Etherington talks about Realtek’s OSX wifi card drivers for the MSI Wind and suggests that Apple is missing out in the netbook market:

In short, Apple, the netbook train is leaving the station, and unless you want to be stuck on the platform holding your luggage, you’d better hoof it and jump on that caboose.

But this is a train Apple has chosen not to catch.

What are netbooks good for? Lightweight mobile computing – if your fingers are small enough for the cramped keyboard and your eye sight is good enough to use the tiny screen – they can handle e-mail, the web and lightweight gaming. Apple already has two devices available that can do all that: the iPod Touch and the iPhone. And they’re great music players. And they’ll fit in your pocket. One of them is also a phone!

Sure netbooks are cheap clean fun if your’re the sort of computer nerd (like me) that likes hacking about with hardware or playing with Linux, but they’re underpowered and cramped. The netbook form factor isn’t a very useable one. The iPod Touch and iPhone easily beat netbooks for useable lightweight mobile computing.

Apple has in effect created its own mobile computing form factor, is so far ahead of the competition it barely has any, and bizarrely, half the Apple community doesn’t seem to realise it.